Not so much a side-project as an attached-at-the-side-project, Evelyn Evelyn is not only one of the must thinly veiled musical hoaxes in history, but also one of the most interesting and affecting (barring of course Joaquin Phoenix’s foray into hip-hop– that was a hoax, right?). Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer and long-time friend/collaborator Jason Webley bring out the best in each other as siamese-twin sisters Eva and Lynn Neville on this album, finding the perfect outlet to capitalise on the former’s taste for the intelligently macabre and the latter’s hand at carnivalesque folk.

The tone of this album is has two-headed as its stars, exploring both the interior thoughts of the twins as well as the exterior view of them, and this binary is set up immediately. Beginning with Evelyn Evelyn, the day to day concerns of the the sisters are reeled off as they navigate their path along the periphery of a society who see one oddity rather than of two people, ‘Should we be movie stars, can we be millionaires?/ I want to be famous, they’re watching us anyway’. Conversely, second track A Campaign of Shock and Awe is principally narrated by this external gaze. A seasick waltz carries the step-right-up sales pitch of Palmer and Webley, a dizzying call and response which encircles the girls, and the listener, like a drunken vulture as it presents a catalogue of exploitation.

The dress-up opportunity is taken to float, as they sing themselves, “between eras and genres”, from the Vaudevillian shuffle Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn? to the country twang of You Only Want Me ‘Cause You Want My Sister, in both cases masterfully pairing the appropriate subject matter with their chosen mode. This playful spirit is also seen in the gypsy-classical lunacy of Chicken Man and in naive ode to animal husbandry Elephant Elephant, but care is taken to balance whimsy against woe– and whoa is there woe. The inventory of misfortune and abuse extolled by the twins against a haunting score in the three Tragic Events narratives gives J.T Leroy a run for his/her money, and is made all the more disturbing by the disembodied monotone through which its narrators speak.

Palmer and Webley don a number of masks on this record and it works almost perfectly, the only misstep perhaps being My Space, which lovingly lampoons the New Wave Power Ballad; While succeeding comedically, it makes for relatively turgid listening after a record of such energy and accomplished musicianship. The duo find their footing for a redeeming finale of Love Will Tear Us Apart on the ukulele, thankfully, bookending an absorbing tale of oddity and audience with tongue fitfully and firmly in cheek.

Support is important. Pillars, counsellors, bras — if all of these things suddenly disappeared there would be disastrous, and in some cases humourously puerile, consequences. Support bands, ideally, should warm up a crowd for the main act. A carbon copy is not what you want, but it is always good practice to attempt towards some point of similarity. Unfortunately tonight, all we were given was a point of collision that proved impossible to recover from, despite the valiant efforts of tonight’s sidelined star.

Superbad Comrade, a band with their neck painfully craned not only westward but back in time also, were not particular good. They sound like the kind of band that might play the Bronze in an episode of Buffy, and not a very good episode. This is no great sin in itself, different stroked for tasteless folks and all that, and on another night my wordcount would not be wasted mentioning them, but the lasting effect is seen in the crowd attracted: a crowd, objectively speaking, of ignorant loudmouths.

Hoop tries to be philosophical. “Well, we can’t change what we do, we can only do what we do, no matter what is going on in the back”, and beginning as she does with the flute-like siren call of Whispering Light, we get a good idea of just what it is that Hoop does. The cabaret influence of her previous album Kismet has left its mark on her newer material, but tonight’s songs are much more introspective, akin to a kind of stripped-down, celtic goth-pop, owing much to Kate Bush and Nick Drake, but with shades of Robert Smith pervading. Feast of the Heart is another great example of this, though the unexpected hip-hop assault through the bridge gives us a more modern reference point, as well as setting the scene for the kind of playful rhythms Hoop employs. Four Dreams is the pinnacle of this, the syncopated melody recalling the frenetic excitement of playground chanting, while the infectious, radio-friendly chorus of “come and bring your stereo” has great potential to become a break-through single with a bit of luck and the right exposure.

Angel Mom, a song dealing with the recent death of Hoop’s mother, is delivered heartbreakingly by Hoop, but even more heartbreaking is the fact that we are having to twist our ears towards the stage to hear as shouts from the back drown her out. A plugged in version of Money finally attains a degree of authority over the crowd, Hoop leaving electric guitar duties to her band and laying down her own instrument in favour of a vintage telephone handset. She swings and sways to the immensely catchy tango for the first half, but sings the second verse into the phone, walking circles on the stage and twisting her hair as if carrying a conversation with someone unseen. Talking money down the phone and making it spectacle: Noel Edmunds could learn a thing or two.

Hoop rounds the evening off with the murder ballad Tulip and another older track, Love and Love Again. The finale is a pure piece of musical theatre, almost Disney like in execution. Hoop gesticulates with all the grandour of Piaf to the finger-plucked melody, and throws in the towel after eight songs. I don’t blame her, but it is a shame; in another room it would have brought the house down, whereas here it just underlined what a wasted opportunity tonight has become. Miss Hoop, on behalf of the city of Glasgow, I apologise whole-heartedly.

Bryce Dessner will be best known as a member of The National, but this guest star-studded extracurricular effort may prove much more timeless than anything his day job has produced so far.

The album begins on a high with Cocodrillo, a polyphonic jungle hymnal. Vocal articulations rebound and reflect off each other, unaccompanied, to immense effect as the orchestration spirals outward, conjuring something altogether otherworldly and too perfect for nature. This sonic tapestry recalls the vocal layering of labelmate Nico Muhly, especially once the operatic singing of My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden comes into play. Her refined and trained delivery serves as perfect counterpoint to the organised chaos of composer Padma Newsome’s arrangements. On The Owl of Love she is haunting and desolate against the bardic guitar accompaniment, while on Adages of Cleansing the lack of tonality pitted against her vocal command results in something altogether terrifying. Sufjan Stevens’s guest spot on the album’s final song We Were Here is not so revelatory, a by-numbers lullaby which is really more of an afterthought than a finishing touch.

Red Seas may be the real crown on this album. The first half of this song heavily recalls Nick Drake lyrically, musically and vocally as Dessner takes charge. Its extended instrumental coda is the most arresting part to the song, and possibly the album, jagged strings taking minor-key dives into overheated glockenspiel and punctuating horns — in other words, a hot mess of classical proportions, much like this record as a whole.

Oisín Kealy sees what is on offer at this year’s Celtic Connections festival

The Swell Season – Glasgow City Halls – 16/01/2010
Marketa Irglova, looking very Celtic in a green dress more Riverdance than rock and roll, kneels down with a toy keyboard beside Glen Hansard, past lover and current musical soulmate, and the two begin on playful ground with Fallen From the Sky.

Winsome and whimsical, the accessible pop of this song may seem to confirm suspicions of twee from their detractors, but in no way prepares for the ferociously impassioned turns taken tonight, mostly through the astounding musicianship of Hansard.

The two could not be more different; he a born showman and she a tentative ingénue, but it works, Irglova’s sweetly artless vocals leveling the ragged valleys of Hansard’s. Their chosen instruments speak volumes about this relationship. Hansard’s long suffering guitar, shot through with jagged holes and frayed lacquer (the same one he can be seen playing in their breakthrough film Once four years ago) may not be beautiful, but it has a forceful immediacy that well compliments its owner’s own power. Irglova is most comfortable by the grand piano, not hidden behind but draped over it, delicately framing the band’s sound by way of suggestion rather than command

The new material is for the most part strong, beginning our introduction to it by way of Low Rising, a smooth, soulful number that owes as much to Van Morrison as to Marvin Gaye, an influence Hansard acknowledges by singing a bar of Sexual Healing during the bridge. The catchy and purposeful Feeling the Pull is prefaced with a typically rambling exposition by Hansard on its origins, but thankfully he is as good a public speaker as a musician and these digressions add to the charm of the evening.

Irglova is given centre stage for If You Want Me and Fantasy Man, but the uncertainty in her voice does little to pacify the downbeat nature of these songs. Just as uncertain is her attempt to emulate Hansard’s storytelling, but while Hansard’s sense of humour enhances his numbers, her overly-earnest explanations have a slightly weakening effect.

Hansard is left alone on the stage after this, giving us something more robust. With the usual loquacity, he relays a touching story about an old woman he encountered in Chicago who lost her son in 9/11, before stepping out in front of the microphone to sing Say It To Me Now completely unplugged.

As it reaches its crescendo, Hansard’s delivery reaches blood vessel-busting intensity, every vein on his forehead raised in desperate trails, the tendons in his neck as taut as the strings on his guitar. He follows this with an equally fiery rendition of Leave, though this time with the aid of amplification.

The band returns, though tonight is still about Hansard. A Tim Buckley cover with both singers on one microphone goes down particularly well, but is followed by a rare slump with the laboured and lead-footed Go With Happiness. They regain their passion, thankfully, with Mind Made Up and High Horse, the latter calling for some impressive audience participation. As the first of their five-song encore they play the crowd-pleasing, Oscar-winning Falling Slowly, but it is the finale of Red Chord, a song from Hansard’s long established band The Frames, which proves the most appropriate, as he segues into the old Irish traditional song, The Parting Glass. “Goodnight and joy be with you all” he sings, and he has certainly done his best to make that come true tonight.

Laura Veirs – Oran Mor – 17/01/2010
Four sets of legs walk on to the stage, but there is a fifth member of Laura Veirs’s band tonight, one inside her stomach. Six months pregnant, she is a brave woman to kick of a two month tour in a different continent, though having heard how Martha Wainwright went in to labour on stage she feels ready for that eventuality. Luckily for this kid, Laura Veirs has the perfect voice for a lullabye. Its timbre is completely untrained, rather child-like and distinctly American — most likely coming from her days playing riot grrrl music at college — yet still melodious, and it has a cartoonish air about it. In fact, it calls to mind what might be the singing voice of a character from The Moomins, Finnish illustrator Tove Jansson’s comic and cartoon. Like the cartoon, Veirs’s music too can be outwardly sweet yet still harbour shadows. She seems to have an affinity with Scandinavia anyway, settling on Copenhagan as the city she would want to go into labour in if it must interrupt her tour.

The set opens with an ode to bassist Carol Kaye, a pleasant finger-plucked melody on guitar, while the band join in for a blast of four-part harmony recalling the knit-in-the-woods choral efforts of Grizzly Bear or Fleet Foxes. There is more vocal interplay between the band later with Life is Good Blues, layers of off-sync “puh-puh-pum”s creating a surround-sound affect, like a choir of crickets in the undergrowth.

This gig is really about new material, with only a few tracks from previous albums, and most older songs only going back as far as one album — for a woman on her seventh release, the scope is a little disappointing, but she never misses the mark with the songs which she does play. At odds with her guileless, innocent way of singing, she is surprisingly confident and friendly, encouraging a clap along for traditional number Cluck Old Hen and splitting the audience into a two-part choir for To the Country.

Whether by herself or with the help of the room, Veirs’ music is a softly enchanting trip. Hopefully motherhood will continue to provide inspiration for this hidden treasure.

Way to Blue: The Songs of Nick Drake – Glasgow Royal Concert Hall – 17/01/2010
After an instrumental introduction, in which the instantly recognisable bass figurings of Drake’s bassist Danny Thompson can be heard, tonight’s first guest Robin Hitchcock flounces on stage with matching polka dot shirt and guitar. A gentle reconstruction of Parasite is an absorbing start, distorted guitar worked to excellent symphonic effect. Time of No Reply is the next song, Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch relaxed but apt in his delivery, followed by Vashti Bunyan. She looks effortlessly cool as she walks on stage, but her voice trembles and sinks a little into the much more purposeful strings of Which Will, a little too tentative to make comfortable listening. It is up to Lisa Hannigan to rescue the stride of the evening with At the Chime of a City Clock. Hannigan is absolutely in her element here — with a voice milked from moonlight she explores the sinister paths of Drake’s melody with neck-prickling authority.

An instrumental One of These Things First is given an orchestral flourish through Zoe Rahman’s piano, which initially makes up for the lack of vocals, yet as the song becomes increasingly mired in expressive timing, the performance perilously approaches the realm of lounge music. This vacuity is remedied by Krystle Warren’s slowly swelling take on Time Has Told Me, a muscular, blues tinged performance. Her voice has a familiarity about it that is impossible to place, though somewhere between Nina Simone and Joan Armatrading is a fair attempt; It has the texture of a voice truly informed by time.

A disarmingly soulful version of Poor Boy with Teddy Thompson at the helm is another winning interpretation. Aided by the girl-group vocals of Hannigan, Warren and musical director Kate St. John, Thompson leads the song in a soulful makeover, a great degree of propulsion lent to the song by the house band. Way to Blue is performed with determined faithfulness by the trio of Green Gartside, Teddy Thompson and Lisa Hannigan, each taking a verse for their own. This works perfectly for Thompson and Hannigan’s parts, but their effort is diluted by the strained vocals of Gartside. After this, the previously shaky Bunyan returns in fantastic form for a charming, folk inflected song by Nick’s mother. Warren’s acapella take on Deem Me So High follows, while Teddy Thompson’s Riverman has all of its edges sanded off by the infusion of a shuffle rhythm through the drums. The effect is pleasing if a little lightweight, unlike the ensuing highlight.

Accompanying herself initially with only a portable harmonium and the stomp of her foot, Hannigan’s version of Black-eyed Dog begins messily engrossing, melodically unclear but visually astounding as she rocks possessed over her instrument. As the band enters, you start to see it for the true session-song it is, especially once it finds its centre around a driving Celtic guitar rhythm. The applause after a false ending is interrupted by a rollicking coda, but rather than ceasing it integrates, clapping in time as Hannigan repeats the chorus plea “I’m growing old and I wanna go home”. The Mercury-nominated songstress’s charm offensive shows no signs of stopping — this is the finest tribute given to Drake tonight. She takes a sheepish curtsy, modesty at odds with the revelation we just witnessed, and my heart drops, wishing I had pockets deep enough to house her.

The rest of the night is pleasant, but not transcendent. Teddy Thompson and Krystle Warren’s Pink Moon duet is endearing, singing it to each other rather than us, and all the better for it. A finale including all of tonight’s singers taking on Voice From the Mountain, gathered Feed The World-style around the front of the stage, is a fitting end. Despite a few missteps tonight, its hard to leave without feeling a modicum of that inspiration yourself.

Oisin Kealy speaks to Stewart Henderson about his record label, Chemikal Underground

Did you start Chemikal underground primarily as an outlet for your own band, The Delgados?
Well actually, I’ll disabuse that notion right from the start. The Delgados were certainly the first band to be released, but Chemikal Underground was not created by us as a vehicle for The Delgados, it was always our intention that we would create a full grown record label and start signing bands as soon as possible. It was definitely born out of naivety as much as anything else. At that time as well it’s fair to point out that Glasgow was experiencing a rebirth, if you like. For a number of years prior to when we started the label, Glasgow had been stagnating a bit, after the success of Teenage Fanclub you had a lot of copycats floating around.

What were the main teething problems you faced?
The biggest issue for us was that we had too much success too quickly. We had started working with Bis, and we got a phone call to Paul and Emma’s kitchen (which was our office at the time) to say that Bis were going to be on Top of the Pops and we needed another 30,000 CDs. We had only manufactured two, we only had a couple of hundred quid in the bank. So we had the Bis thing, The Delgados were getting pretty good press, then we signed Arab Strap from a demo we’d been sent, and Mogwai came on board shortly after. Arab Strap were a bit of a phenomenon, and then Mogwai just took off like you wouldn’t believe. So we were up, and running, flying even, before we knew it. Given that none of us had ran a business before, it got a bit messy. There was a lot of money being spent and not a lot of budgets being done. Not to mention the fact that the Delgados were trying to balance running the label and being on tour at the same time.

Now celebrating fifteen years in business, would you say you are any more or less selective in the bands you sign?
Certainly not any less selective. I would like to think that it’s incredibly hard to get signed to Chemikal Underground. We also don’t have the time to wade through all these postbags of demos, which, in the main, I mean ninety-nine percent of the demos we get sent are fucking rubbish, no point beating about the bush. I think from Chemikal Undeground’s point of view, we’ve always tried our best to satisfy our own taste in music. It’s not a public service, it’s a vanity project. It’s about trying to find something that appeals to the four of us.

Would you say you are quite hands on with your Glasgow-based bands in terms of encouragement and advice?
Yeah, I’d say more as time goes on. As we’ve got older and more experienced, the bands got younger, and there does come a point, it’s not in an interfering way, but we do feel that having been in a band ourselves, we do have experience of things that some younger bands wouldn’t have. I think that we would sit down and suggest things to bands now that we wouldn’t have suggested back in ‘96 or ‘97, sat around a table with Arab Strap. At the time we were learning ourselves, everything was done on hunches and instinct, but after you’ve been doing it for fifteen years, you start to get some sense of… “That’s not really the best idea, I don’t think you should be doing it like that, because we did it like that before and it was a fucking disaster.”

Have you felt the effect of online downloading on business?
Absolutely. I don’t want to sound like a Chelsea pensioner, but the last fifteen years that have coincided with the time the label has been running have recognised a siesmic change in the music industry, it’s unrecognisable from when we started, the internet was a babe in arms when we started. There will always be traditional music lovers who will want to go to record shops and buy vinyl, but they will be in the very sizable minority. We can’t compete with all the big supermarkets, so what we have to try and do is to set up our website, set up our online shop, and make the punters feel like they are part of the company, that they are supporting human beings. We’re not philanthropists by any stretch, we are trying to make a profit, but if people respect what it is we do and feel that we’re worth helping and supporting, that’s the best way that we have to try and secure our future.

What does 2010 hold in store for Chemikal Underground?
We’ve got an Unwinding Hours album, that’s the new project from Craig and Ian who used to be in Aereogramme. Emma Pollock from the Delgados, she’s got a new album that’s coming out in March. We’re also going to be reissuing the first two Arab Strap albums with a whole load of bonus material in a box set called Scenes of a Sexual Nature. Beyond that, there’ll be another Phantom Band album later in the year, there’s a few other things we’re looking at but I’d have to torture you if I told you.

As with her acting, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s music tends towards emotional minimalism. Her last album made for pleasant listening but carried little weight; certainly not enough to put any strain on the legs of a coffee table. IRM is thankfully a much less anaemic affair, and though it may be useless to scramble for any personal meaning in this collection (the majority of which is penned musically and lyrically by her partner in this endeavour, Beck), she seems to be enjoying herself much more here, and this proves infectious.

From the start of opener Master’s Hand, it is clear that the masterful hand of Beck has been hard at work; techno-tribal percussion the first of many Beckisms in this album’s production. Second track IRM, the french for an MRI scan, has a junkyard punk feel, illustrating the abrasive mechanisms of the machine. Inspired by the sounds heard when scanned for a brain haemorrhage, Gainsbourg is more interested in the limitations of the practice than meditating on life and death: “Analyse EKG, can you see a memory?”. Heaven Can Wait combines elements of french chanson with the drive of David Bowies’s glam rock, yet results in something thoroughly contemporary. The lush blues of Dandelion, however, make it something of an understated triumph, strings and whispers of brass approach and recede like some imagined orchestra.

There are still a few songs which lack thrust, but for the most part Gainsbourg has created something that won’t appeal to everyone who frequents Starbucks — and that is a good thing.

Does it feel like thirty years since It’s a Mystery?
No, because I performed it six weeks ago to thirty thousand people, it’s remained completely constant. I don’t really think back, I’ve got too much going on. I feel absolutely no connection to the eighties at all. That said, I think it’s because for me I’ve never stepped away from that music, I’ve always performed it. So I’m more in touch with the music than with the actual eighties. For instance I’m not very fond about shoulder pads coming back in!

Do you think you retained your punk spirit as you grew older?
I don’t think I ever grew out of the punk ethos. It was absolutely remarkable being there. It was the first time where I saw that race didn’t matter, disability didn’t matter, sexual orientation didn’t matter, and if you had a good idea, you had ears that listened to it. It was the most all-encompassing thing that I’ve ever come across. It’s probably the most rewarding movement I’ve lived through and I’m 51. I never thought I’d be alive, I thought I wouldn’t survive past thirty. I knew that I could never have family because I’d rather have glass inserted under my skin, and I knew I would never stop working. In a way I’ve kept to that but I never conceived what it would be like to hit fifty. I think that’s because the media ignores the power of each decade, and I feel very critical about that. I never believed that there would be value beyond thirty, and there is incredible value. I’ve moved away from my roots very obviously — I’ve presented the Good Sex Guide live, I’ve presented Songs of Praise, I do pantomime, but at the same time I’m working with Bill Rieflin and Robert Fripp, who are both legends. So I feel very lucky in that I’ve never been trapped by any particular type of genre.

How did The Humans come together?
The Humans came together because the president of Estonia, who is a big fan of Robert Fripp (my husband), asked him to play for his birthday three years ago, and Robert couldn’t do it. I found this out and phoned the embassy and said I’d put a band together that will be economically viable and we will write the whole project for the president and perform it for him, and they accepted. So we went out there, we played for the president, we sold out a tour literally overnight, and dedicated the first album to Estonia.

If you say why Estonia, Estonia until 1992 was ruled by Russia, and it’s been through the most unbelievable recent history. The paranoia Russia brought to that country… for instance, it removed all signposts so that children during the winter months couldn’t find their way home and froze to death. So to go there and to perform and write for a country that is just newly independent is very important to me.

You covered These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ as part of The Humans, how did you choose that song?
That was Bill Rieflin’s idea which took us all by surprise. Now, Bill has been in Nine Inch Nails, he was in Ministry, he was in R.E.M for seven years, and he does not compromise on anything, he is the ears of this project. He said “Boots was written for your voice”, I said “okay, it’s about forty years old…” and he said “no, you’re gonna do it”. I think he’s very clever because, I remember Boots coming out in 1966 and it was a quirky little love song, but now all the barriers of sexuality and sexual proclivity have come down and the song has a very different meaning. I was about eight years old when it came out, and it started a trend of wearing PVC boots, and men loved it! There was absolutely nothing feminist about that song, but now I think it’s completely gone the other way.

How does The Humans differ from your solo work?
The Humans is deeply personal and very, very dark, and my blueprint when people work on it is that you’ve got to think of European film noir, you’ve got to think of an audience who want to touch the dark side of their nature. It’s very, very internal rather than external.

With this in mind, who do you imagine your audience to be?
Obviously we’re still exploring that. Both Robert and Bill say this is a European band, meaning that the European audiences go into theatres to listen to the most obscure stuff. The European audience can accept something you have to listen to. I disagree, and I think The Humans can find an audience on a worldwide basis, because really I’m after the punks that are my age, and I think it’s a natural progression for a punk to do something that deconstructs the pop song, turns it on it’s head, and gives it a very dark nature.

It would be hard as a student not to have come into contact with Bret Mckenzie and Jemaine Clement’s subtly brilliant brand of musical burlesque. If you happen to be deaf, you will at least know them as the reason animal jumpers are now in improbable vogue. After spending their best on last year’s release, scheduling commitments left them little time to restock their catalogue, but while there is a lot to love here, this strain is at times painfully apparent.

Rather than taking on entire genres as before, many tracks here are parodies of particular songs. You Don’t Have to Be a Prostitute takes on that liver-damaging classic of Sting’s, Roxanne, only now the game is “drink every time you bemoan their decline into Weird Al Yankovic territory” — you’ll get plastered. Similarly, I Told You I Was Freaky is fun, but its reliance on nonsense rhyme has a Mighty Boosh vibe to it that is truly disheartening, containing none of the observational acuity that so set them apart in the past.

Disappointments aside, there do exist real high points on this album. Too Many Dicks (On The Dance Floor) is a fantastic, vocoder-led protest for diversity in the disco, while new romantic send-up Fashion is Danger and acapella lullaby Friends also hit the mark. None of these gems are so beautifully conceived, however, as penultimate track Carol Brown, a gently hilarious, bossa nova amble through Jermaine’s romantic history. Not overtly a parody of anything, it dispels any notions that their only talent lies in aping others. These are greatly talented and acutely tuned musicians. If only this collection truly did them justice.

Burnt out pumpkins strewing the hall, an out-of-control bonfire across the street spewing smoke across Byres Road, people walking home at 8am dressed as Snap, Crackle and Pop — I don’t even need to leave my flat to see the signs: it’s Christmas. Halloween should really just be rebranded “Christmas launch night; with costumes and sweets!” Loudon Wainright sums up the interminable holiday season best in his song Suddenly It’s Christmas: “Dragging through the falling leaves in a one horse open sleigh / Suddenly it’s Christmas, seven weeks before the day“. I for one don’t mind. I mean, it is Santa’s birthday after all, like, hello?

More than this, for me, is the fact that I can now listen to Christmas music without judgement — not that this ever stops me in July. There is something about this period that provokes an intangible feeling of… somethingness, for better or worse; a kind of nostalgia for the present. It may not be happiness, for many of us it’s just a reminder of what we lack but, exploiting these sentimental connotations, a perfect Christmas song hitchhikes on this emotional melange to an elation or catharsis that may not have been otherwise achieved, but for the subtle employment of sleigh bells in the background.

The idea of Christmas alone often proves sufficent inspiration, a recent example of this being the cautiously hopeful, cynically joyous It’s Christmas So We’ll Stop by Glasgow’s own Frightened Rabbit, truly the finest example I can think of that fittingly encompasses the agony and ecstacy of the season. Low’s celebrated Just Like Christmas is a similar anthem of ambivalence, at once heart warming and alienating. Sexual tension is another winning theme, because there’s nothing sexier than a fat old man forcing his way into your house, apparently. Santa Baby is an obvious one, but Baby, It’s Cold Outside beats them all hands down. Nobody is knocking Cerys Matthews and Tom Jones, but theirs has none of the inviting warmth of Zooey Deschanel and Leon Redbone’s rendition for the movie Elf, not least because Redbone has the trombone-like voice that as a child I imagined Santa to have, and not least-er because Deschanel’s could deliver a terminal diagnosis and leave you smiling. When you just want to wallow, however, there is nothing like the lonely-on-the-holidays variety to melt the ice. The closing lines of Tom Waits’ Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis are a heavenly punch in the gut, especially when performed by Neko Case with only a cheap organ for company. Likewise, Joni Mitchell’s River subverts the strains of Jingle Bells to devastating effect, a frozen river of tears and no escape for the chronically alone.

This column is undoubtedly jumping the gun on the yuletide spirit, but that is exactly the point.These songs are too good to confine to just one month — never let the calendar stop you listening to great music.

Photo: Claire Maxwell

Oisín Kealy

Walking to the Barrowlands in the daytime is somehow harder for me than at night. I don’t recognise these streets when the sun is, if not out, at least buried behind a mountain of rain clouds, and as such am slightly derailed on my way to this interview on an absolutely miserable day.

Rain is soaking through my hood and I’m pretty tired after walking from the West End, but it’s all okay because I’ve got my headphones, simultaneously functioning as ear muffs and pumping the strains of Camera Obscura’s Honey in the Sun into my head. Tracyanne Campbell’s pop choruses are so utterly steeped in dejected elation that, no matter how wet your socks are, it is impossible for the corners of your mouth to turn any way but up, and it makes this detour fly by.

As keyboardist Carey Lander suits up in the restroom adjoining on to this dressing room, Campbell is quiet, arranging chairs and exchanging a couple of shy smiles, halted by a tightening of her features. Two minutes of near silence and awkward small talk as we wait, and I’m starting to feel like I’ve pulled her out of class.

This atmosphere does, thankfully, melt away when Lander joins us, and Campbell becomes visibly more comfortable in conversation. As this year has seen them go from strength to strength with the release of My Maudlin Career, I’m interested to hear the highlights of the last eight months.

“We went back to Mexico again which was pretty cool”, Campbell begins, Lander agreeing: “That was probably our most enjoyable gig of the year because the Mexican crowds are just amazing. Playing here last time was pretty special.” Here, of course, being the venerable Barrowland Ballroom, a venue which Campbell recently listed as her favourite to play. “It’s a legendary venue, I’ve been here many times to see bands and I’ve had a great time. It is about aspiring to play in the venue that everybody says is the best in the city, it’s still a little bit surreal.” Lander adds to this: “It’s the place you think you’ll never play.” They have no ambitions to occupy the SECC, however, wryly figuring “I don’t think we’re anthemic enough to carry off a stadium,” and I have to agree, the breed of intimate anthem they play would be lost in that cave.

Like any high-profile band of the moment, an album leak was inevitable when they were preparing it for release in February. Guitarist Kenny pointed out on the band’s Twitter feed an interesting hypocrisy shortly afterwards, stating that the people who deride Iggy Pop for lending his image to sell car insurance are most likely the same people who will be downloading his music illegally. Discussing some of the implications of this, I ask Campbell what she thinks of the justification file-sharers who consider themselves musically-conscious give, questioning how much money gets through to the band after the label have claimed all the profit. On this topic Campbell is suddenly animated.

“Even less money gets through to the band if you download the record illegally. I think people should think about it before they actually say it, they should do some research. I think a lot of people justify themselves and say ‘oh well, Iggy Pop did this so I’m just going to steal his records’, or ‘they don’t get much anyway, what does it matter to them?’ It’s not even so much about the money, it’s the arrogance of people to dismiss the group and the effort that the group have made, and the record label, and the people that work with the band, and the people who design the cover — all of it. It’s a lot of hard work from a lot of people, and it’s a special thing.”

Lander considers more the premature availability: “I think it was more painful because it leaked before it came out, it takes away from your big release date. Generally I can understand that there is certain amount of music sharing and streaming…” Campbell interjects: “Yeah, before it comes out, and people have the cheek to…” Here Lander finishes her thought with a weary laugh, “…moan about the quality of the stolen downloads.” Campbell is, it seems, thoroughly unimpressed, and rightly too. “I mean honestly…” she pauses, eyes darting to find the words, “the cheek!”

With the release of My Maudlin Career, one piece of information that came up time and time again in their press releases and interviews was the fact that they were now, finally, a full-time band, having supplemented their careers thus far through more traditional realms of employment. What is peculiar about this is that many bands as big as Camera Obscura, and a couple bigger, have yet to achieve the luxury of quitting their day jobs.

Tracyanne accepts that their situation is not half as exemplary as the public might be led to believe: “I don’t think there are a lot of people very tuned in to the reality of the situation.” Launder, meanwhile, suggests that: “It’s because you’re fed the main record label bands, who are obviously thrown a lot of money straight away and get to quit their jobs and be big pop stars, but there are so many bands struggling on the periphery.”

Campbell gives a very considered proposal that, to be honest, I had been far too cynical to consider up until this point. ”Nobody wants to burst any young music lover’s bubble. You don’t want to be the one telling them, ‘actually it’s hard, maybe you make more money than me.’ I don’t want to do that because there does have to be some kind of perception that it’s all great and magical”.

What is remarkable about Campbell’s song writing is that it marries what can often be quite bleak, confessional lyrics to such infectiously sing-a-long melodies, that results, predictably enough, in crowds joining in at gigs. I ask if Campbell finds it a little surreal to have people singing along to her heartache, as such.

“I don’t really think about that when people are singing it, I think it’s just people having a good time and singing a pop song. I don’t take it for granted, I think it’s really special when people sing along, but I don’t think this is about me and my lyrics.” Is this technique of combining lyrical sadness with musical beauty a kind of therapy, a reclaiming of hope? “I think that’s just the way they come out, but that makes sense, that you turn something that’s a negative into a positive. As much as some people may disagree, I think I’m very much into that.” Lander affirms this — “cashing in your maudlin career” — with a laugh. I’m curious as to whether this title was a joke, as I would never consider them a miserable band.

“It is to a certain extent, we’re having a bit of a laugh with it. You have to take everything with a pinch of salt, and it’s not that we’re not serious about what we do, we are, but it’s not all doom and gloom, we don’t want people to get sad listening to the songs.”

As one of Glasgow’s most successful exports, I found it strange that in past interviews, Campbell has been painted as having a reticence to talk about the city’s music scene. A sharp intake of breath, and I wonder if I’ve finally stepped on that egg shell with my last question.

“Well I don’t actually think that’s true but anyway…I think the thing is we’re not really reluctant to talk about the Glasgow music scene, but back in the day when we were starting to get interviews about the band, why did people not ask us about us? Why did they assume we are influenced or only ever listen to certain bands from Glasgow? I mean, we are influenced in that there are a lot of decent bands from Glasgow, and it’s something of a breeding ground for groups, and we’re part of that. At one point it was inspiring to think we could do the same as bands like Teenage Fan club or The Belles.”

Lander is eager to point out that they do feel pride for their role as a Glasgow band.  “I think we are really proud to be part of it, but the idea that all Scottish bands are only interested in Teenage Fan club and The Pastels and stuff … that would be really awful, no good new bands would come out if they only ever listened to other Glasgow bands. It would just be a bit too crazy and scary.” Campbell nods: “That’s the kind of thing I object to.” “Inbreeding?” Lander offers. Campbell concurs “Yes! Incest,” laughing as she continues.

“I think for a long time we felt that we were some fake band that nobody could take seriously, so we felt like it was an honour. We are part of that, and we accept it, and we’ve proved to ourselves, to a certain extent, that a lot of them are our contemporaries now.”

As this evening’s homecoming gig attests, they haven’t merely proved it to themselves, they’ve effortlessly convinced us all.