Sit down for a second and lemme tell you a little-told indie story of old. Y’ see, while you youngsters are all tripping over yourselves to let us all know how Franz Ferdinand are the sound of young Scotland and ensuring their chart positions continue to sell their good-lookin’, angular pop to the masses, for us (ahem!) slightly older brothers and sisters out there, there was only ever one ‘young sound of Scotland.’ It came, like so many things, in the aftermath of punk and centred mostly around Alan Horne’s Postcard Records.
Bascially the precursor for Alan McGee’s Creation label, Postcard put out ace records by foppish characters such as Orange Juice, serious singer/ songwriter protégés like Aztec Camera’s Roddy Frame and Edinburgh’s brilliant Josef K: a band who just about personified the idea of an ‘angular’ indie rock band years before such terms became the norm.
Somehow, though, Horne never quite got hold of Edinburgh contemporaries THE FIRE ENGINES: another bunch of magnificent, crazed young straplings who came across like a glorious amalgam of the Magic Band and Soft Boys, but with larger reserves of alcohol and a penchant for the kind of charged, skinny guitar magic that the likes of Franz and Maximo Park have given such a charismatic makeover for the new Millennium.
From the excellent recent Fire Engines compilation “Codex Teenage Premonition”, “Discord” still stings gloriously. It’s got cowbells! It’s got tambourines! It’s got guitars that scrape like rusty cheesewire, basslines that loom like V2s and leader Davey Henderson squealing like a stuck pig on a skewer and it’s got the sort of ageless appeal that would have Dorian Gray sticking pins in an effigy of them faster than you can say ‘indie pioneers’.
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B-side (and former A-side, actually) “Candyskin” then proceeds to remind us that The Fire Engines also had a hand in inventing shambling indie pop long before the C86 brigade and its’ wonky, naïve and brilliant guitar motif surely launched everyone from Primal Scream to Half Man Half Biscuit through to Franz and their inevitable clones.
History lesson over then, but the music remains and sounds as joyful, fresh and possibility-fuelled as ever. By all means enjoy bathing in the modern tributaries, but I’d suggest you check out the wellspring when you feel a little more adventurous. It’s one journey into the recent-ish past you’ll never regret taking.
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