Scotland’s Unkle Bob unashamedly and unassumingly ply an old fashioned trade in acoustic pop with folk overtones. Their sound is resolutely out of step and out of time with the current vogue for sharp guitars and/or the digital mastery of music software.
This 5-piece have been given a recording grant by the Scottish Arts Council, have set up their own record label in Friendly Sounds and have garnered positive live reviews at W&H and elsewhere. But on record are they any good or is the novelty of their difference the only substantial attraction?
Main track ‘The Hit Parade’ displays a strong ear for a tune, albeit one bound by acoustic conventions forged in the seventies by the likes of Cat Stevens. Fortunately its attractive but straight-laced and conservative delivery is undercut with a pithy chorus, “I wanna get laid, I wanna get played / I wanna walk down the hit parade”. Even the obligatory remix is politely restrained, preferring the ambience of light tabla-based percussive enhancements rather than opting for anything as remotely garish and ‘in yer face’ as a modern club mix: in itself a small cause for celebration.
When placed alongside the original mix of ‘The Hit Parade’ the low-key remix seems to say that the music is always going to speak for itself and that Unkle Bob are content to accept that they will stand or fall by that approach. That they’ve set themselves up on their own label will (hopefully) secure a greater chance of longevity, unhindered by major labels looking primarily at the quarterly sales figures for deciding where to make cuts or throw money at the problem.
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Further evidence is provided by the string-laden chamber pop of ‘Swans’ and the moody atmospheric folk balladry of ‘This Way’, both offering a deeper insight into the band’s musical psyche that is only barely hinted at on the soft touch of the main track.
Taken as a whole these tracks demonstrate convincingly that Unkle Bob are a band with much more to offer than just a fleeting distraction from the main pop/rock/indie treadmill. In fact they could well be one of those bands that stick around for the long haul, happy to let the fashion police and the arbiters of taste find them rather than the other way round.
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