I was joking just the other day with someone from Carluke about their local music scene. – the joke being of course that here wasn’t one.
Yet, the PR for this tells us that Evil Hand – Derek Bates – is from that seemingly musically-starved Lanarkshire. town. The bandcamp page from which this album can be downloaded also tells us that Bates performs with Bottle of Evil (me neither) and Nae Records, and previously Genaro – who regular Scottish indiewatchers will certainly have heard of.
Genaro weren’t a bad wee band so that bodes well, but I wasn’t prepared for how unexpectedly good this release is. It’s introspective, almost folky singer-songwriter stuff for sure, yes, but there’s a languid quality to the songs, almost shoegazey – ‘Returned in Time’ could be a Ride / Beta Band hybrid, opener ‘Garmin’ is like Lone Pigeon fronting Joy Division, title track ‘Huldra’ is kind of 21st century psychedelia, like Pink Floyd had they been born in, well, Carluke and gone on Temazepam rather than LSD. You get the idea. There’s 16 tracks here and while they’re all in some way laid-back, ambient songs, there’s always enough atmosphere and clever production trickery to set this aside from the norm.
And did I mention it’s free? What do you have to lose? Well, apart from any bets about the next big thing to come out of Carluke, anyway.
http://evilhand.bandcamp.com/
