Sometimes, Glasgow’s feted music scene seems to struggle under the weight of its own history; the commercial success of numerous indie bands from the city and its Lanarkshire satellites in the ‘80s and ‘90s in particular has created a generally accepted narrative that all too often omits some of the more interesting artists who marched to their own drumbeat.
James King & the Lone Wolves are now receiving some very belated but welcome recognition, while Michael Rooney’s garage-rock lifers The Primevals remain perennial outsiders, forever overlooked by Scotland’s cultural gatekeepers, despite amassing a highly impressive back catalogue and continuing to deliver high energy live performances that would give The MC5 a run for their money.
Occasionally, a new band comes along that re-writes the narrative; in the space of a few short months since the release of this assured debut album, The Tenementals have completed the remarkable achievement of winning over music journalists from across a range of traditional and new media, garnering vital airplay on BBC 6music and coverage on the BBC News website. Even more astonishingly, they have done so with an album that is explicitly political and musically eclectic. Like the afore-mentioned Primevals, the members of The Tenementals are politically aware and committed; one of the group’s three main vocalists, David Archibald, is a Professor of Political Cinemas at the University of Glasgow, and key album track ‘Universal Alienation (We’re Not Rats)’ includes an excerpt from iconic trade unionist Jimmy Reid’s University of Glasgow Rectoral Address.
The nine songs that comprise the album are characterised by scholarly yet deeply heartfelt political and historical analysis and reflection, firmly rooted in compassionate humanism; The Tenementals are too smart and well-informed to lapse into trite or condescending polemics. With funding for the album provided by the Glasgow City Heritage Trust, ‘Glasgow: A History (Vol.I of VI)’ chimes historically with ‘I Am the Common Man’, the Scottish Trades Union Congress-sponsored 1978 album by Scottish folk group The Laggan, led by Arthur Johnstone, himself a lifelong advocate for trade unionism.
Most new bands dream of having a breakthrough single that grabs the attention of the casual listener, and The Tenementals have achieved this in dramatic fashion with easily one of the best songs released in 2024, ‘The Owl of Minerva’. Taking its title and central concept from the writings of philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, this is a blazing battering ram of a single, instantly as dramatic and compelling as The Sex Pistols’ era-defining debut single, ‘Anarchy In The UK’, or The Stooges’ dagger in the heart of hippy complacency, ‘Search and Destroy’. Iggy Pop’s seminal proto-punk pioneers have been referenced by at least three reviews of ‘The Owl of Minerva’, with good reason; guitarist Simon Whittle has clearly studied Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton’s incendiary guitar-playing closely, as ‘The Owl of Minerva’ is built around a dramatic, over-driven guitar foundation featuring Asheton-esque drone notes, bends and licks. Not to be out-done, drummer (and Strength In Numbers record label boss) Bob Anderson lays down a heavy groove worthy of Scott ‘Rock Action’ Asheton, locked in tight with bassist Mark Ferrari’s pulsating bass-line.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FffdSfynIBc
Archibald’s vocals are delivered very effectively in a Sprechstimme spoken word style, enabling him to declaim a head-spinning socio-political/historical/geographical overview of Glasgow. “If the past is just one thing after another”, the singer concludes, “Perhaps interruption is the true revolutionary act”. If it feels like the Stooges’ late free-jazz saxophonist Steve Mackay could have fit in very well in the closing section of ‘The Owl of Minerva’, maybe it’s not such an outré notion; Mackay’s family roots were in the Isle of Lewis and, like many an islander visiting Glasgow, he was known to frequent the city’s much-loved Park Bar when in town.
‘A Passion Flower’s Lament’ brings a dramatic change in mood and sound, as signer Jen Cunnion brings to life the story behind sculptor Arthur Dooley’s statue of Dolores Ibárruri, La Pasionaria, which was commissioned as a monument to the 534 British volunteers of the International Brigade who died fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Set to a gently swaying waltz’, subtly fleshed out by cello, harp and Spanish guitar, the delicacy of ‘A Passion Flower’s Lament’ is just as affecting as the opening track’s raw power.
Archibald joins Cunnion on vocal duties on the stately ‘Pentimento’, which artfully employs the metaphor of painted-over images to ask questions about Glasgow’s reckoning with its imperial past, before the tempo picks up again on the rousing ‘Peter Pike or Pink’, featuring a guest vocal by Sarah Martin of Belle and Sebastian, the lyrical focus shifting to Scotland’s ‘Radical Rising’ of 1820. By this point, it’s clear that listening to the Tenementals’ debut album is as much an education as it is entertainment; with so many fascinating historical threads to un-pick, the listener is quickly sent scurrying down numerous rabbit-holes, guided by the album sleeve-notes. ‘Glasgow: A History (Vol. I of VI)’ may not be a psychedelic album as such, but it’s probably the most genuinely mind-expanding album released in 2024.
The first track on side two of the vinyl format of this extraordinary album, ‘Universal Alienation (We’re Not Rats)’ is a deeply moving centrepiece, featuring the previously mentioned excerpt from Jimmy Reid’s powerful Rectoral Address. While the song takes its inspiration from the days of heavy industry, there’s something particularly poignant to the chorus, “We’re not rats, we’re human beings”, in an age when the world’s richest man is promoting far-right political parties and industrial scale on-line disinformation threatens to crush the traditional community activism favoured by progressives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us9SMeP_DKY
‘Machines For Living’ finds poetry and unexpected beauty in the debris of failed Modernist housing, “broken beyond repair”, as the “Utopian imagining” of post-war architects and town planners turns from dream to despair, while Simon Whittle’s chiming guitar channels Bellshill’s Teenage Fanclub. Poignant and catchy in equal measure, ‘Machines For Living’ demonstrates that weighty subject matter can still make a great pop song.
“We don’t need to make things when it’s all post-production, the city a stand in for every location”, Archibald and Cunnion lament on ‘Post Production’, summarising the loss of identity in modern, post-industrial cities, and mirroring the themes explored to great effect by North Tyneside’s Hector Gannet, who share much in common with their Glaswegian counterparts. ‘Fossil Grove’s reflections on the relationships we have with our surrounding landscapes further enhance this connection, bringing to mind the similar themes of the North Shields group’s song, ‘The Whin Sill’.
‘Glasgow: A History (Vol. I of VI)’ closes on an appropriately upbeat note with ‘People Make Glasgow’ providing an all-encompassing overview of the great city’s inhabitants, from the Red Clydesiders to imperial merchants; Archibald cautions that “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”, quoting Karl Marx, but concludes that “people make Glasgow”, the rousing chorus landing with a similar force to Patti and Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith’s deathless anthem, ‘People Have The Power’. Glasgow may be reduced to being a stand in for New York or even perhaps Detroit in Hollywood flicks these days, but artistically there are genuine resonances.
The Tenementals are no ordinary group, and their debut album stands out in a year of exceptionally high quality releases, particularly for folk-influenced artists, with Snowgoose’s‘ ‘Desecendant’ and Nev Clay’s ‘So Little Happened For So Long’ having already set a very high bar in 2024. At the time of writing, coverage of the Glasgow group is snowballing, suggesting that there’s an appetite for thoughtful political song-writing that could never have been dreamt up by a major record label focus group meeting or AI algorithm. The Tenementals understand the importance of having an awareness of working class history and the constantly evolving connections between our past and present day realities. At a time when many of us feel increasingly disempowered and isolated, this remarkable collective of musicians and academics are a beacon in the darkness.
Buy Glasgow: A History (Vol. I of VI)
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