Here I am, looking my age, at the start of T Shirt Month on I Don't Hear A Single, a celebration of the upcoming 9th Anniversary of IDHAS next weekend. You will see a different T Shirt each day until the end of the month. We begin with one of my favourite bands who are now in their fourth decade. Unlike many bands from those beginnings, they are still around and releasing albums as good as, if not better than, their perceived heyday and that heyday was Britpop.
Britpop was the last scene that I was immersed in, Since then, it has been here there and everywhere and it wasn't the headliners that really moved me. Oasis and a great first album and a half and then became the sound of Coke. Blur were interesting, but you felt that Daman Albarn wanted desperately to be Andy Partridge. Ditto Brett Anderson with his Bowie fascination with Bernard Butler as his Mick Ronson. I had a lot of time for Pulp, but it was away from the noise that the better stuff resided. Guitar Pop bands that concentrated on the Pop that were the most interesting and still are. The Supernaturals were the best of these, run close by the likes of Dodgy and other bands such as Straw and Octopus that we celebrated on Anything Should Happen.
Since reforming in 2015, the band have released four superb albums that don't rest on their past, but are every bit as good as those glorious Brit Pop days. Their current album, Show Tunes is as good as they've ever been and they are currently working on their next opus. Reviews are aplenty on here of all stages of their catalogue. Not only did the band remain relevant in the now, but they also caressed their past. Releasing the tapes of their pre major label days that were as easy to get hold of as record horse droppings. As well as bringing them to CD and download. The big albums were also released with loads of bonus tracks and you realised that these songs were as good as anything that you had previously heard.
Although many outsiders will know them as a singles band due largely to Smile, the quality throughout their career is unrivalled. Never afraid to take chances, but never forgetting about how strong the chorus is meant to be. I was also delighted to see the addition of Joe Greatorex to the band, an artist I had followed throughout his career. His band, Colin's Godson, remain one of my obsessions, the most underrated band ever who made their releases unique with the artwork and extras.
The band's discography remains fully available on Bandcamp. If you haven't been there, you are in for a treat. It Doesn't Matter Anymore and Show Tunes have also been released on Vinyl recently. Embedding wise, I have gone for my favourite song by them showing them live on Scottish TV and my favourite on the latest album.There is no better band to start off T Shirt Month. Look out for tomorrow's guest and I will try to look younger.
You can listen to and buy the albums here. You can also buy T Shirts there. The two Vinyl releases can be bought here.
Our favourite Glaswegians are back and of course we are more than interested, The Supernaturals have never been afraid to experiment, but Show Tunes finds them back in the genre of their Heyday and you are reminded of what a great Pop Rock band they are.
The trailing singles Roy Wouldn't and Burn The Witch warned us of what we were in for. The former is Power Pop Gold, dripping with James McColl's wit and the latter takes us back to the glory days of Brit Pop which I still think is yesterday, not 30 years ago.
At times the vocal gold that McColl sounds a tad more mellow, but he can still belt it out, especially on the splendid If You Can't Love Yourself which sounds a little 70s. Killed By Submarines is up there with the best things they have released to the world.
The Dread comes close to it, much slower but beautifully arranged, wonderfully haunting yet providing a real optimistic vibe. We Were On Fire is incredibly jaunty and Of Human Bondage is mellow until it bursts into 70s Piano Pop, another highlight.
The main Ballad, Clockwork Orange, is outstanding, a co write with long time Anything Should Happen friend and guitarist Joe Greatorex. Show Tunes is a fine example of how uplifting, well written Pop Rock can make you forget about all the dirge that surrounds us politically.
McColl, lyrically, is on the top of his game and the five piece link perfectly. The CD and Vinyl are on the excellent Late Night From Glasgow label which seems a marriage made in heaven. Any album from this lot is worth attention, but Show Tunes is particularly worth the effort. You even get to hear James McColl's hidden Brass expertise.
You can buy the Vinyl and CD from here. You can listen to and buy the download here. (I was struggling to pick which three tracks to embed, so I've sneaked a fourth below.
Joe Greatorex's work in bringing The Supernaturals' early adventures pre the big It Doesn't Matter Anymore 1997 release is more than admirable. It allows fans who joined in the Brit Pop days to get their hands on what were holy grail self released recordings sold largely at gigs.
It also allows the new generation of fans to learn about the band's history and realise that there are even more recordings to enjoy. Sitting In The Sun is the last of these, originally released in 1994 and the only one on CD at the time. The re-release is also available now on CD.
The signs are really apparent at what was to come in the Food days. James McColl's lyrics are as essential as they ever were and are. Stories of everyday life's banality are delivered with a self depreciating wit and weariness in jaunty fashion.
The Supernaturals were one of the great Guitar Pop bands of Britpop and there are great examples of that here, particularly on Slab, I Don't Think It's Over and Deep In My Heart I Know I'm A Slob all including wonderful turns of phrase.
But there are also more stripped down moments delivering an Indie Pop feel at times. That is when the comparison of MCColl's vocal with Paul Heaton is more apparent. A song like There Must Be More To Life Than This is great Piano Pop.
People will tell you that Brit Pop was about all the big names and neglect the rest. To me it was more about the stretch from the middle to the outer edges when the Great Melodic Pop shone through. I could name you at least a dozen bands that proved this, but The Supernaturals were the best. Oh and the title track here is still a fantastic song.
You can buy and listen to the album here. It is available on CD and as a download.
Joe Greatorex is doing a cracking job in bringing The Holy Grail recordings from The Supernaturals to those who have searched for them for years and the new audience that the band have been successfully building.
Big 7 was the first release from the band in January 1993, Cassette only. The band toured Scotland and the cassette was sold at gigs. So pre-internet days meant that this was hard to find outside of the country and has remained so until now.
7 now becomes 8 with the addition of a bonus track from the time, Robinson. The CD release and download is a welcome addition to anyone's collection. Firstly Robinson is a great addition, very close to the Brit Pop that was to go ballistic.
The songs themselves have always been a great listen. They also underline the two comparisons that James McColl gets as a vocalist in Paul Heaton and Glenn Tilbrook. Big 7 has all the indicators that are needed to show how much bigger the band were to become.
St Paul is very Housemartins and Dylan's Day Off is very Labelled With Love. Beach Ball has the jauntiness that we have come to know and love, whilst Korpsecatcher is great Indie Pop. NATM is more of a strum along but adds a wonderful Psych Pop riff.
Her Majesty shows that the band's trademark sound and wit were already well engaged. The signs and pointers to It Doesn't Matter Anymore are all here, but so few would have heard that. Until now of course and this will be a real treat to so many.
Welcome to the first Here Is The News, a new addition to the IDHAS jollity. It is intended to be a weekly affair that informs followers about upcoming releases, gigs, labels and much more. As with everything on I Don't Hear A Single, it contains no influence whatsoever from anyone but us. We get lots of releases, PR, label contact, but we have always decided what we like and want to tell you about.
We are only ever limited by time. We only review what we like. People mention from time to time that we don't seem to do negative reviews. It is actually much easier to do a negative review than a positive one, but why waste that energy? From the beginning, we were only ever going to write about what we like and there is more of that than we could ever cover.
As IDHAS approaches 8, the Blogging world is very different than when we started. The influence that Blogs have has decreased at a rapid rate. It is hard to keep interest and even grow as streaming playlists seem to be the in thing.
There is no doubt that we have evolved and compare to different Blogs than when we first started. But we are still here and hope that we help artists on the way. We are never going to make mega stars, not that we would really ever want to. Adding things like this keeps interest and hopefully informs.
This is a cut down version of what this section is intended to be. A sort of test the water to gauge reaction.
King Black Acid - There's A Spirit Moving In Your House
I think you know how much we like King Black Acid. Portland Oregon must be so proud of this lot. Our review of the new album, Victory For Mad Love, has been really popular. You can read that here. There is now a video for you to enjoy of the new single, There's A Spirit Moving In Your House. You can buy and listen to the album here.
The Supernaturals
It is frightening to think that I have been listening to The Supernaturals for half my life. Initially, through their jaunty wit filled Pop Rock, but I've sort of matured with them as they have experimented and shown completely different sides to the band. Many will know of the big singles and albums, but the early cassette releases were like Rocking Horse shit.
So the archive releases from the pre It Doesn't Matter Anymore days are a godsend to both established and the new fans that the band has been gaining at a rapid rate. Both Big 7 and Sitting In The Sun join Let It Bleat as CD and Download releases. Both will be reviewed on here in the coming week.
It is less than a fortnight away from Local Drags' fourth album. We've covered them well on here and the last album, Mess Of Everything, appeared in our Best 100 Albums Of Last Year. You can read that review here. The new one sounds less noisy than what has gone before, more reflective, but is every bit as good as you might expect.
The CD and Vinyl are available from Stardumb Records. There are alternate covers depending on the format you choose. The album will also be on the Bandcamp site. A review will be on here, just after the release date. City In A Room should certainly gain many appreciative ears.
It has been too long since we covered Winston-Salem's Michael Slawter. Ashamedly, he hasn't appeared here since 2017's An Assassination Of Someone You New. There's an ethical theme to his new mini album and it is a cracker. Great Pop Rock that edges towards Power Pop.
There will be obvious connections to The dBs and Mitch Easter, but Slawter is very much his own man. You can pre-order the CD or Digital album now. It is a great listen. A review will appear on here shortly after the release date.
Canadian Guitar Pop has had an exceptional couple of years and Motorists are another example. Their second album is on Madrid's excellent Bobo Integral label. Touched By The Stuff revels in its 90s Power Pop vibe with heaps of Jangle Pop.
The band are not afraid to spread further afield though and this is an album that underlines the slow but sure return of Classic Power Pop. It knows its influences, but also adds its own take bringing the genre to a new generation.The album is available on Vinyl and digitally and will be reviewed here shortly after release.
My love of The Supernaturals knows no bounds as you can probably tell by how often they are on here. They've even had the Mick Dillingham treatment in one of my favourite interviews here. They lit up a particularly dour back end of Brit Pop.
But did you know that in between the jaunty pop of 1998's A Tune A Day and 2002's moody Paul Heaton-esque What We Did Last Summer that there was a lost album and here are the candidates for inclusion? Me neither! So what an exciting release this is.
A few things jump out. James McColl has lost none of his wit, taking on a cynical take on the banal and everyday, witness Richard And Judyincluding the Brass Refrain. Secondly, his chops are as great as ever, checkout the soulful ballad that is How Do You Stop Loving Someone?
The bemusement of relationships is still present, particularly on She's A Robot which sort of out Heaton's Paul Heaton. She's The One is prime time Supernaturals, but also has a chorus that intimates what is to follow in 2002.
Golf is great Indie Alt Pop, but it is the slower songs that impress you must. That is where the real melody impresses most. Whether these songs are Guitar or Piano led, they are incredibly catchy and beautifully arranged. There is a gentleness, but also a yearning to sing along.
Grooving In The Sunshine even bridges both the sandwiched official release and even that turns into harmonic pop gold. As lyrical adept as ever and with a vocal than can sooth monsters, this is a wonderful set of 12 songs, as good as anything around. This has made my year musically thus far,
For the last few years We have compiled annual Best Of 's because these posts seem so popular and the aim of this Blog is to get exposure (and Sales) for the artists. A reminder that anything reviewed on I Don't Hear A Single is highly recommended.
Narrowing things down to this 100 has been really difficult. The countdown is posted in reverse batches of 10. For each album, a song is embedded from the album and a link is provided to the IDHAS Review where you can find further details and how to listen or buy the album
Most casual listeners would be used the happy clappy jaunty Guitar Pop and that is understandable as the first two commercial album releases mastered that. But the third album was very different and may be my favourite album of the band's output.
What We Did Last Summer is a wonderful offering. Far more restrained than what had gone before, songs largely concentrated, built on soundscapes and vocal harmonies, this was a Pop album with minimal guitar and of course contained the barmy Life Is A Motorway, a sort of Pet Shop Boys version of Go West Part 2.
The album went far more electronic and the James McColl vocals were nearer say Paul Heaton, but just as listenable as ever. As the chirp returned, I have often thought about a follow up to that album and It Only Gets Worse is it with spades.
Songs are just as addictive as anything that has gone before, but this album feels even more electronic. There is little Guitar, although its appearance on the magnificent Candle is really welcome. For all intents and purpose, this is an Indie Pop album.
Although very different to what Sparks do, McColl does have that ability to switch between self effacing lyrical greatness and repetition. Here the repetition is incredibly melodic, instrumentally is wonderfully moody and addictive.
The songs are also built on layers of vocals with instrumental themes that enchant you, but are not afraid of diverging. and are beautifully put together. McColl's voice is in fine fettle, it partially dominates It Only Gets Worse and that, of course, is a great thing.
My love of the poppier end of Brit Pop is well known and The Supernaturals were possibly my favourite band rom that brigade. Their brand of chirpy chappy melodic Pop Rock was for all four seasons, not just the summer.
Now, more than a generation on, there is a real maturity to what they do and Burn The Witch underlines that in Spades. Still as melodic as ever, their is a deeper, slightly darker feel at times to what they do. They are still ace, but they've sort of grown up gracefully.
The title track is slightly moody initially, there's almost a Prog vibe, certainly Classic Pop Rock feel, but they still can't help breaking out, but even that is a little restrained. Adding a great Guitar solo, psych-iah Guitar sound and solo and you have a winner and they do.
We Were On Fire has a bigger sound and is great 70s Pop Rock that came along towards the end of Glam Rock. There's a great instrumental track, led by keyboards and even a Toytown trumpet fanfare. James McColl is in great voice and this slower material, suits his vocals perfectly.
Someone Who Doesn't Exist is a bit Windmills In Your Mind. Certainly more Acoustic, bordering on something from the Canterbury genre. It is particularly Midsomar sleepy mood setting and rounds off three very different songs. A splendid EP, but would you expect anything less?
In the Anything Should Happen days, we spent quite a lot of our time telling people that the more interesting side of Brit Pop wasn't in the centre, but around the edges where the Guitar Pop flourished if not sold the quantities of the good, the bad and the ugly.
Bands like Octopus, Straw and The Supernaturals were every bit as good as the more known Dodgy and The Bluetones. To some extent, the United States was similar, the Pop Rock and Power Pop revival over there was much more interesting around the edges even though that whole scene was a breath of fresh air following the I am so unhappy vibe of Grunge.
The Supernaturals have also wrongly been labelled as joining Brit Pop in the second half, when they had been there all along, self releasing. A band's life does not begin when a big label comes calling, they actually are around to get that label interest.
The two hardest things to find from the band's back catalogue are the two self released cassettes, they are like Rocking Horse Shit. The first release was the Big 7 cassette followed by Dark Star. So it is an absolute delight to have the latter released for all to witness.
These eight songs reveal that the band were already there. They lack the Food (EMI) gloss that money brings, but lower fi or not, the songs stand up. In fact, The Day Before Yesterday's Man and Dung Beatle made the major label debut, It Doesn't Matter Anymore.
Both of those songs still feel just as good as today, particularly the former. I often wonder why the song was the fourth single release off that album. Smile was obvious, but The Day Before Yesterday's Man encapsulates everything that the band is about. Pop, wit and fun.
At times, the album is a little rough around the edges, but the majority of it is not and would fit untouched on any subsequent album. Ragamuffin and Bipod-X in particular are noted for the quality of the production and both reveal that The Supernaturals were not just about chirpy songs delivered at pace. The latter is very Paul Heaton.
Dark Star is splendid mix of noise and fuzz, Ballad Of Dweez is a jangling joy and Curtains is a Country twang and piano cracker in Squeeze's Labelled With Love territory. Unlike other pre "fame" recordings, Black Star stands up brilliantly on its own and it is a fiver for god sake.
The return of The Supernaturals in made my day and it continues on as great as ever. There is much interest in It Doesn't Matter Anymore due to Extended version and upcoming Vinyl release. Although the underrated A Tune A Day probably remains my favourite album, the quality has never dropped from the start to now. Highly Recommended!
So the end of 2022 is reached. Two Top 5s. I Don't Hear A Single doesn't cover many of both these categories, primarily because it is a place that is about the new. Phew! I'm glad this is done. It is a major piece of work, but is incredibly popular. Onwards into 2023.
Compilations
01 : We All Shine On : Celebrating The Music Of 1970 IDHAS Review
Brit Pop was never really a movement, it was the Press telling us it was. It was disparate and encompassed many styles, the common factor was that it marked the return of bands and in particular, the Guitar. It also revived the live scene and people attending Gigs, particularly College gigs. It was never really about Blur v Oasis, the latter being treadmill Rock, the former raiding the XTC cupboard, particularly The Great Escape which was more Black Sea 2. Nor was it about Pulp v Suede, as interesting as Jarvis was and how ever Bowie Anderson and Ronson Butler tried to explain where The Spiders actually were now.
It was also very retro. Fawning to The Kinks, The Small Faces, The Who and of course, The Beatles. I remember writing that the main benefit of Oasis was that they were introducing The Beatles to a new generation. Paul Weller even forgot that he was Curtis Mayfield and became Steve Marriott. As with any movement, the more interesting stuff was much farther from the centre. In Brit Pop's case, it was the Guitar Pop that was most intriguing and even that scene had lesser bands getting more attention than the more worthy. For every great Pop Rock band such as Dodgy, there was the underwhelming and overrated The Bluetones.
For our generation, Brit Pop was also the last occasion that FM Radio meant something. Playlisting was much less, plus the TV Shows all wanted bands on, so both provided a much wider audience and a much wider field. These were of course, pre Internet days and so you bought magazines to read about these bands and Record Collector with its many ads provided direction on where to buy. This was also the last great period for the Record Shops and the CD prices reflected this. All this nostalgia has meant that The Supernaturals haven't been mentioned until the fourth paragraph.
The Supernaturals were (and still are) a fantastic band. Guitar Pop at its best, big choruses, great riffs, melodic solos, lyrical wit and one hell of a front man in James McColl. One of the nicest guys around and a voice that brought a Paul Heaton like pleasantness to proceedings. It Doesn't Matter Anymore was the band's debut album, released in 1997, although both Smile and Lazy Lover had been trailed as singles the year before. The quality of the 12 songs is admirable. There isn't a duff song here. Many will know Smile from the TV adverts and The Day Before Yesterday's Man, one of my favourite songs ever, marked the peak of their TV appearances.
It is hard to pick out any song as the standout, the album really is that great, but the Singles are a great place to start and four of the songs were released as such. It is also a sign of the times that all of the 19 Bonus Tracks were studio recordings. No live padding out here, as great as a live act that The Supernaturals are. Brontosaurus is a cover, a really unusual slowed down version of The Move classic, but most are originals. Two part, three track CD Singles enabled this wealth of material.
The band headed a list of splendid, not appreciated enough, bands such as Octopus, Superstar and Straw. There will be moaners about this being a Digital only release. I certainly don't subscribe to the Flat Earth like nonsense that an album isn't an album unless it has a physical release. The original album can still be bought on CD cheaply online from many of the numerous bazaars. The artist still gets paid for a download. So these people who buy one album for every 20 they listen to on Spotify should also remember that a play or a like is not a purchase in reality. It Doesn't Matter Anymore remains one of the best albums of the 90s and high up in any decade. The extra stuff just underlines how prolific and talented The Supernaturals were in that short period.
It's been difficult to get these choices down to 100. I'm also not a believer in saying one album is better than another. Most of the time you are comparing Apples To Oranges. I'm not a List person, I just think what's the point.
However, for the last couple of years I have compiled Best Of 2019, normally I just said what my favourite album of the year is. I've done it again, because these posts seem so popular and the aim of this Blog is to get exposure (and Sales) for the artists.
There is no meaning or judgement on an album that is Number 1, Number 100 or not on the list. Anything that I review on here, mention on Social Media or play on the Radio Show is as highly recommended.
I would also add that the Top 100 includes albums available as Download Only. To suggest that they are anything less than equal to a Physical release is patently nonsense and omits many wonderful albums.
I will compile a Top 20 of Reissues and Compilations combined after all this is complete. For each album, I've posted a song from it and a link to the review, where you can find further details on how to listen or buy the album.
We've been talking a lot on here about the new Supernaturals album. The only reason is that we are massive Fanboys and have been for more years than we'd care to remember. Following on from Mick's interview with James McColl (Which you can read here), James also gave us a Song by Song Breakdown of Bird Of Luck.
The CD is available to buy in the UK now at Amazon hereand has a worldwide Digital Release on 1 August. There are plans to make the CD available in the States and I'll add any further details when the Bird Of Luck Review appears on IDHAS during the last week of July.
Here's James's words on the album's eleven songs :
Bird Of Luck
"This was a try at taking an old ska song and then straightening it out a bit. I play the saxophone on it and I like the part. Sometimes with sax and trombone, it’s just a couple of notes and it really lifts the song…the less fancy the more powerful. Tried to sing it in an old rock and roll voice like Gene Vincent with the echo. It’s just got lots of energy and is a really up song about my wife."
Negativity
"This is just a simple jangly guitar song, which I wrote quickly. It’s got those drums like “Ticket To
Ride”. It’s about that person who’s just always complaining. You know the kind."
Abracadabra
"We did this Radio Scotland show with Donovan a few years ago. Me and a friend Paul thought we needed to go and see him and chat to him, he’s a legend. So we knocked on his dressing room door and he was so friendly, telling us about his guitar design being based on the Book of Kells and just shooting the breeze and chatting for half an hour.
I was asking him about “Catch the Wind” and he said, “You mean the new version?” And I was like “what you recorded this year?” and he said “No in 1969!” He does speak in a kind of poetic voice like he sings, that’s a sort of mixture of Scottish, Welsh and Irish. I tried to sing this song in that voice. I got to play the bass on this one. It’s one of my favourites. It’s about my now wife putting little notes through my door when she was trying to charm me back in the day."
At This Time Of Year
Gav the drummer had a child, Kieran, who died in July. My Mum and Mark’s Mum both passed away in July and August. So this song is about July and that long mist of depression you get which just permeates your life when someone you love dies. Obviously Madness and Dexys are the big musical influences here."
Roberta and Zica
"This is about two lovers having a midnight tryst on a football pitch in Brazil to try and lift the voodoo that’s settled over their football team. They bury things like frogs under the centre circle and the goal mouth in Brazil. That’s why it mentions Flamenco and Vasco De Gama. Kev who engineered the album thought it was about Scotland. I think to lift that voodoo you’d need about 50,000 people shagging on Hampden at midnight and then it still wouldn’t lift."
Well Well Well
"The chords just came out of the blue one day when I was sitting at the piano playing some rudimentary grade 2 sheet music. Just a nice downer song about existential angst and longing."
Magpie
"A straight down the middle power-pop song. There’s a Magpie in my garden and it’s always trying to monopolise the bread that I put out for the crows. It seems to intimidate birds twice it’s size. That’s the girl in the song."
Veronica
"Back in 1994 when we were running around the Highlands, we all went back to this girl’s flat and took mushrooms. She was a hippy with all the stuff in the song, badly painted pictures of half man-unicorns, lava lamps with red scarves on them, healing crystals.
There’s lots of standing stones near where she lived and she suggested we should go out and “feel the power of the stones”. It was an electronic dance song on the demo, but the band played it like Creedence and we just went with that."
Chill Pill
"Derek wrote this one. He just stood up in the studio as it was getting mixed and started quoting all this poetry about “pieces of eight” “upturned boats on the shore” and “man in a Zoot suit”. It really enhanced the song."
Summer Girl
"Mark’s bass playing is really good on this one. I really like its slow dreamy pace, like something on the White Album."
Country
"This song is basically about the natural beauty of Scotland. That, mixed in with stuff about my wife who is Mauritian/Scottish and her sense of belonging to Scotland and some of the things she said to me about belonging and not belonging. I don’t know if I got what I wanted to say over properly. I spend a lot of time mountain biking, fishing and windsurfing around the country and it’s an astonishingly beautiful place despite the midges and the weather.
I kind of like the fact that the weather keeps tourists out and people like me can have it to ourselves. It was hard trying to say something sincere and not go all Runrig on its arse with bagpipes and that. We tried to go like “Tupelo Honey” on it. Having said that if someone from the Scottish Tourist Board wanted to use it in an advert, we’d take the money and run!"
While for myself, personally, the Nineties were dominated by mostly North American alternative and power pop bands and solo artists (you know who I’m talking about), there was still enough listening time to heartily embrace the handful of new British combos producing their own unique take on melodic acid tinged guitar pop. Straw, Octopus, Orange, Super Furry Animals, Dererro, Out Of My Hair/Comfort all spring immediately to mind here and I’m sure Don could add just as many to that hallowed list that we would agree on. The Supernaturals feature high on that list for both of us and with a welcome new album on the horizon, Bird Of Luck, it felt like the right time to sit down with the main guy James McColl. In the first part of this interview we talk about the band's career. The second part next week will feature a track by track breakdown from James on the new album. So James! What are your earliest memories of getting into music?
"The first instrument I learned. when I was eleven. was the flute. I can read music and play it to a decent standard. My school was St Ninians in Kirkintilloch and there was a little school band with five members. It was like a secret Masonic Society, two flutes, two clarinets and an oboe. There was a girl in the year above who played the other flute and I fancied her, so that was an incentive as well. I had to hide my flute in my school bag in case some hard nut spotted it and kicked my head in for trying to get above myself.
I’d tell my friends I was away down to Woolworths for my lunch and then sneak over to the music room. It was in the days before they realised that getting kids to play music stimulates them. It was great playing little bits of Mozart and Telemann with other people and sneaking lustful glances at the girl playing the flute.
In the late Seventies, everyone would watch Top Of The Pops on a Thursday night. It would be the best night of the week for Telly. I’d watch Tomorrow’s World as an appetiser and then Top Of The Pops. From about 1978 to 1983 there would be a couple of great artists on every week. From Blondie,
Squeeze, The Beat, The Police to The Smiths and Orange Juice. It was like a conveyor belt of magnificence. That was when I got hooked on music."
So when did you form a band?
"I got into playing the guitar when I was sixteen. My Dad bought me a little practice amplifier called a “Badger” and a Japanese copy Stratocaster called an Ibanez Roadster as a reward for studying for my exams. I practised with all my spare time. Derek, the other singer in The Supernaturals, saved his odd job money from his summer job and bought a sky blue Tokai Stratocaster and a “Badger” as well. With our other friend, Dwees, who played the bass badly, we would rehearse in our bedrooms. He had a “Badger” as well. The noise was incredible and not in a good way. The neighbours would complain incessantly.
We then saved up and bought a Dr Rhythm BOSS drum machine and tried doing a gig, in front of primary school kids, with the drum machine. Gav, the eventual drummer in the band, ran onstage, pressed the start button on the Dr Rhythm and then ran off, with stage fright. The kids stomped their feet and started clapping. It was a buzz.
We finally chipped in together and bought Gav a battered old drum kit off Del Amitri and we sort of had a four-piece band. We did try to make a demo in a studio in Dumbarton. Derek was the main singer at the time and he refused to sing for some reason. The engineer offered to sing the song for us and finish writing it. It was an inauspicious start and put us off studios."
When did you start writing songs?
"I started writing songs a few years after I learned the guitar. In the late Eighties we’d go to a rehearsal room in Glasgow for the Saturday afternoon and pay twenty pounds for six hours. I’d say to the band “I’ve got this new song” and then play “Come Round Here (You’re The One I Need)” by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, without changing the lyrics. It would be battered out on a Telecaster so it didn’t really sound like the original anymore. The band would be like “Wow! That’s amazing! How did you write that?”
Then I quickly realised that songwriting was about writing about yourself and pulling apart and putting together other people’s songs and adding your own element. We just enjoyed banging away every week without playing gigs."
How were The Supernaturals formed?
The Supernaturals were basically me, Derek and Gav and we were at primary school together. Our manager, Gerry, was at school with us as well. Mark the bassist came along in 1988. Around about 1990 things changed in music in the UK. It seemed like the old fashioned stuff we liked like The Move, The Monkees, Slade and Madness was swinging back into fashion. There was also a lot of great bands like The La’s, Teenage Fanclub, Suede, Primal Scream, Dodgy and many more.
At the same time we started going to a studio in Edinburgh called Split Level. It was run by this eccentric guy called Neil. You’d be doing your guitar overdub while trying not to trip over an oily gearbox for a VW Scirocco that Neil had decided to dismantle on the floor of the studio."
So Big 7 was Recorded?
"We put together cassette albums called Big 7 and Dark Star in 1993 and then two CDs “Sitting in the
Sun” and “Let it Bleat” from these recordings. There was no record business in Glasgow and no internet at the time so we decided to just get in a van and tour and sell our cassettes after the gigs like one of our favourite bands, The Replacements. Every weekend we’d head off in a Transit van to places in the Highlands and then gradually, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London and festivals.
Our manager, Gerry, was a real hustler. At one point he got us onto the bill at T In The Park on the Sunday by going to the Promoter’s house and hassling him like Eddie Murphy in Trading Places. The downside was that we had to play outdoors in Hamilton Town Centre the day before to a procession of people going to T in the Park. It was a heatwave and the local alcoholic likely lads, wearing just shorts, were trying to get on the stage and play our instruments, while we were performing. We had to do it for the cash, which was £500, I think.
When we toured in 1993-95 we’d play two- hour sets. We’d play our own stuff and do loads of covers like “Skyways” by The Replacements, “Flavour of the Month” by the Posies, “Look Out Here
Comes Tomorrow” by The Monkees, just music we liked. People would think we’d written these
songs, which we never denied.
I’d wandered into a fancy dress shop in the West End of Glasgow called “Starry Starry Night” in 1993 and bought this amazing full sailor suit. I looked like I was on the deck of HMS Ajax in 1938. The girls in the audience at a gig in Skye loved it. The band all started dressing up for gigs. We’d do anything to liven up things up, get people to remember us and sell our cassettes.
By this point Ken had joined as a keyboard player and he would ride around on a BMX during the encore. We’d jump on tables and play guitar behind our heads. It was brilliant fun. Every weekend was an adventure. We gradually had to quit our jobs as the stress of getting home at 7am and then getting up at 7.30 am got too much. Gav, our original drummer, had to drop out and Alan joined. We sold lots of cassettes and built up a big mailing list.
By about 1995, after about three hundred gigs around Britain, we could just about fill King Tuts in Glasgow without having a record deal. We even put a tour together that summer where we went round seaside resorts like Torquay and Falmouth. We were camping at campsites. We’d sit around during the day cooking on our Camping Gaz burners, playing keepie- uppie and then at 5pm, we’d get in the van, put our stage clothes on and head out to the gigs."
So then you were signed to the Food Label?
"Andy Ross at Food heard one of our mini CDs “Let it Bleat”, decided we had potential and signed us that year. Our first trip to a recording studio was with a producer called Phil Vinall, who worked with The Auteurs. It was Fish’s (from Marillion) studio in Edinburgh. Fish’s wife was the beautiful model from the “Kayleigh” video. I’d last seen her in 1985 peering longingly through a fence in East Berlin.
She cooked the meals at the studio. We’d get to watch her dollop bits of ham pasta on our plates while she creaked around the kitchen in tight leather trousers. That was the best bit of the recordings. The actual recordings were terrible.
Eventually, Andy persuaded us to work with a guy called Pete Smith and he produced “It Doesn’t
Matter Anymore”. Pete had recently worked with Chris De Burgh. We weren’t really up for it as we hated the De Burgh. But Pete did a fabulous job of disciplining the band, chopping our songs up to make them more to the point and his engineering skills were amazing.
He was like a football team manager and he’d hairdryer us all at different points. He'd been an apprentice at Spurs and was always trying to get a bit of football banter going about Celtic and Rangers. We would ignore him to wind him up, it was one long psychological game. I really liked him though. He’d break you down to the size of a full stop and then build you back up again. He’d worked with Sting and he’d say things like “Sting couldn’t even play that as good as you James.” Just to butter you up. It was patently nonsense."
The album did really well!
"Yeah it was reasonably successful, as were a lot of the singles. Smile was a decent hit in the UK and quite successful in Japan. The song had been quickly written in a rehearsal studio in 1995 by me, Ken and Alan, the drummer. I’d gone home that night, scribbled some lyrics while eating my Spaghetti Bolognese and the next day the band thought the lyrics were alright for the time being, so they stuck. It has gone on to be our most successful song and has been used in a lot of adverts and TV.
We spent almost all our time either touring or recording at this point. We loved it all. If it was a treadmill for some bands. then we were like a gym instructor who was raring to get on and work out. After playing to so many difficult and sparse audiences in our pre Food days and sleeping in sleeping bags on the promoter’s kitchen floor. being signed to Food/EMI was wonderful. We played with a lot of good bands like The Boo Radleys, Gene, Silver Sun, Grasshow and Blondie.
Our second album with Food was called Tune a Day which we recorded in 1997 with Pete Smith again. At one point in the studio at Chipping Norton we were watching the live feed of Lady Diana’s funeral on a TV screen and Chris De Burgh was singing to the congregation in St Paul’s. Pete was raving at Alan, telling him to up his drumming game while shouting at the TV screen telling the “De Burgh” to “get into fackin tune”.
The main single off Tune a Day, “I Wasn’t Built To Get Up”, was a No 25 hit. The album did quite well and got some good reviews. Our final single was called Everest and we’d done it as a loving pastiche of AOR records like Foreigner and Toto. The video had us throwing a giant metal rose off Snowdonia, while we all got dressed up as Sir Edmund Hilary.
We thought it was great, but that may just have been the large amounts of whisky we were consuming. The public thought it was crap and didn’t buy it, so we knew we were in trouble with the label. We did a gig in Portsmouth and there was a long coffin shaped cardboard box backstage. We carried it onto the stage like a coffin and wrote “RIP The Supernaturals” on the side and had a mock naval burial for our career. The audience seemed to like that.
Around about 1999 lots of the bands that had been signed in the 1990s were dropped by EMI and we were just another one of them. There was a pre millennial thing going on. Orchestras and heartfelt songs with acoustic guitars were “in” and we didn’t really fit into that. In hindsight we should have shamelessly jumped on that particular bandwagon.
EMI were amazing at promoting us, they really knew their stuff, so it wasn’t really the usual blame the record company thing that bands have. Basically the record buying public weren’t into us that much and didn’t buy enough of our records. We just had to accept it and move on."
You responded with "What We Did Last Summer"
"After we got dropped ,we decided to record our next album, What We Did Last Summer, ourselves. We wanted to mix things like Beach Boy harmonies, “My Love” by Wings and also a lot of French music I was listening to like Mellow and Serge Gainsbourg- with some electronics. It took about two years to make and I thought it was really good and had a chance of doing well. It was a mix of 60’s harmony pop and 2000’s electronics.
Koch Records signed us. They needed a “proper band” after having made millions from Pokemon and World Wresting Federation records and wanted to waste some of that money on us. The first single was called “Finishing Credits” and by this point, things were on a bit of an upswing for us. We had an excellent guitarist called Paul and a new keyboard player, Davie. Radio 2 loved the song and were going to playlist it at the end of September 2001. All was looking rosy.
Then 9/11 happened while we were in London doing a BBC World Service Acoustic Session and the BBC put it on their banned songs list because of the lyric “It’s the end of the world as we know it, it was written in the stars that we’d blow it.” In retrospect, I should have got that fax of the official list of songs that were banned and framed it on my wall for posterity."
Mark, the bassist, had left earlier in the year as had Ken. By the release of What We Did Last Summer in 2002 it was just me, Derek and Alan left. I kind of missed Mark and Ken and after a pretty dismal tour of places with murals on the wall of Johnny Cash and Bob Marley, we chucked it. We should maybe have taken time out, but we’d been going for ten years, pretty much full tilt and we were worn out.
As an aside we sold our equipment to a Christian Rock band. Gerry, our manager went off to work in the building trade, to quote him, “Because there’s a lot less sharks than the Music Business” and Alan went to work for William Orbit."
Then you were involved in The Hussy's.
"I spent the latter part of the Noughties doing The Hussy’s. Fili was an amazing singer and a really good-looking front woman. She has a sort of deadpan voice and a deadpan sense of humour and it was such a great experience writing and co-writing songs for a girl singer.
You could go somewhere completely different than The Supernaturals. We had an excellent band with some great players. We did a few albums, which were all worth checking out and some really good songs like Roller Disco, Tiger and Just Think Of My Heart Like A Campervan amongst many others. Fili went to live in Calgary, Canada, as her husband got a job there, So that was The Hussy’s kyboshed."
So we got the surprise of 360, a new album by The Supernaturals?
"I thought that was me finished with music and to be honest I was quite happy because I’d done lots of stuff, some of it quite successful like Smile, Built To Get Up” by The Supers and Roller Disco by The Hussy's. Also quite a lot of music that was obscure and unsuccessful. I had done all the things
I wanted to do like get on Top of the Pops, tour around and get in the Guinness Book Of Hit Singles.
Because we were all at school together and had the same circle of friends, most of The Supernaturals would still see each other socially. Around 2012, we decided to go into rehearsal rooms and play cover versions, like a lot of old guys do. We started playing “Blue” by The Jayhawks and it was uncanny how the lyrics seemed to document some of our times together. Lyrics like “where have all my friends gone”, “I always thought I was someone, turned out I was wrong” and “It’s hard to sing with someone when they won’t sing with you”.
We then started playing our old songs, which were basically cover versions to us. We had to get the albums out and try remembering the chords. One thing led to another and we put “360” together over a few years. We just went back to the basics of the band from 1993, it was the same four guys and it was very easy to do. We all had the same roles and we didn’t want to have much technology in our music. We wanted to just sing about heartfelt and amusing things at the same time."
How do you approach the songwriting process?
"Compared to some of my peers I’m not all that as a songwriter. But when it comes to the actual process I can add my my tuppence worth. The obvious one is I just to sit with a guitar or a piano and wait for ideas to come. Sometimes that can work straight away. Then if you’re not getting anything, listen to something you like and try and imitate it and add your own thing or reverse chords or change Rhythms.
Drums and Rhythm are really great ways of stimulating your mind. So a good strategy is to sample some drums you like and play along with them. You’re just doing that in a rehearsal studio with a drummer anyway. Unexpected sounds and instruments, tunings, instruments you’re not familiar with - these are great ways to stimulate song. I once had to do a talk to some kids at a college and that was pretty much what I told them.
As regards lyrics, I’m like a magpie, I always listened out for people saying catchy phrases. Could be a friend, could be a movie or even a phrase from a novel or book. You get the general idea for the lyric and then build it around the phrase. That’s how songwriters have been working throughout the twentieth century. It’s an old thing. It’s a mixture of the subconscious and the conscious and tricking yourself.
I’m fortunate that I can write songs whenever I want and I’ve always been like that. I think a part of it of the really amazing songwriters like McCartney and Prince and so on, is that they don’t think too much about it all and just do it. They are really good at using their subconscious.
Finally which bands are you influenced by?
"If I was to pick 4 it would be the Move , The Replacements, Slade and maybe Madness." The second part of this Interview is published next week. This will cover the new album, Bird Of Luck and includes a track by track explanation from James. Bird Of Luck has a digital release on 1 August 2019. However initial copies of the CD are available via Amazon here. CDs will be available in the States via CD Baby from 1 August.
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