With all the recent hoo-ha about a certain Glasvegas album, one other ‘major’ Scottish release was quite overlooked. Perennial indie chancers ballboy put out their 5th album to little fanfare. Even our tardiness in publishing this review bears witness to this fact. By way of defence, this is an album which improves with every listen – and, anyway, time to set the record straight. ballboy are alive and kicking and sounding better than ever. This album has seen the band develop from slightly shambling indiepoppers to a fully-fledged pop outfit, taking their previous work based on Gordon Macintyre’s sterling songwriting and building on those occasional moments where they’d suddenly vanish behind a wall of noise. Like Camera Obscura, who spent 3 albums ploughing a similar twee song-based furrow before calling in a big-gun producer, ballboy now sound like they’ve upped the ante.
But, crucially, the emphasis on songwriting as strong as ever. Macintyre’s lyrics. “You left your notes on lesbian sex on the fishtank in the hall… it took me all afternoon to read them all”. Is genius too strong a term? That’s ‘Disney’s Ice Parade’ which goes from laugh-out-loud to tragic pathos in a few lines before heading back to hope via almost blind optmism in time for the end of the tune.
Of course, this is just what ballboy do so well. However, it’s the extras, the bonus features, that make Ships. The piano flourishes on ‘Songs For Kylie’ which match the poetic tale of the discarded tape which lies “in a landfill site picked over by birds and bugs and parasites”. ‘Cicily’ is about a girl who “colluded at the bus stop” and might go down well with fans of Belle and Sebastian, but since Gordon and pals are as veteran as Stuart Murdoch’s mob we can cut them some slack. Especially as it’s a mighty fine toe-tapper. ‘Empty Throat’ defines on a new genre – acoustic shoegaze, a beautiful swimming lazy thing.
The songwriting is still distinctively ballboy, but it’s come on a little – the songs don’t all sound the same, testament to development and perseverance after, what, 100 tunes? And, the things is, ballboy have always has heartbreaking string arrangements, big choruses, moments of death-defying loud/quiet, bombastic singalongs. Just they’re all come together on this album.
And that brings us full circle, what other bands wil stil be producing work of this quality 10 years on?
As a footnote, that Glasvegas album was indeed released the same day as Ships. And was heralded as the best Scottish release ever. To paraphrase Paul McCartney’s Ringo Starr jibe, not even the best Scottish album that week.
Available now via iTunes on the band’s own Pony Proof label