Scruff Of The Neck Presents ... - 20160620
- Written by Dave Beech
For your entertainment during another working week here's five more hand-picked delights from the Scruff Of The Neck stable.
Blooms – ‘Porcelain’
Debuted on DIY just last week, ‘Porcelain’ is the latest cut to emerge from Blooms HQ. Building on the band’s idiosyncratic dream-pop melodies to create arguably their strongest release to date. While it’s breezy and optimistic instrumentation make it the perfect accompaniment to hazy summer evenings, its lyrics deal with a loved one’s mental illness, creating a pronounced dichotomy between its easy-going musicality and deep subject matter.
The Homesteads - ‘Another Mile’
Sheffield-based quintet The Homesteads peddle a brand of blue-collar indie-rock that maintains a safe distance from the LAD mentality that often dogs the genre. Latest single ‘Another Mile’ is awash in rich Americana and a vocal not dissimilar to The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle. Uplifting and emotive, it’s a track entrenched in classic song-writing traditions and not one to ignore.
Moscow – ‘South By South X Again’
Foregoing the shoegaze and post-rock often associated with Scottish bands indie-pop four-piece Moscow inject some Tropicana in to Edinburgh’s scene. Their latest release ‘South By South X Again’ is a sugary and frenetic affair; button bright guitars and evident pop sensibility drawing comparison to bands such as The Larkins. Excellent stuff.
The Nix – ‘LUNA’
Blues-driven and effortlessly propulsive, the title track from The Nix’s recently released LUNA EP is built around a chugging backline and spiky leads, its rigid, stop-start structure eventually segueing in to far less defined but no less impressive; each individual instrument pandering to its own tangent, before, seemingly out of nowhere, finding their form again and closing out the track.
3 Days From Retirement – ‘By The Power Of Greyskull’
At the other end of Edinburgh’s spectrum, 3 Days From Retirement create massively ambitious post-rock that’s both staggeringly pretty, and disconcertingly monolithic in its delivery. ‘By The Power Of Greyskull’ mounts almost from its outset. Intricate guitars build towards a towering, almost oppressive crescendo. A testament to the band’s latent skill as musicians.