No McShane, No Gain

We expect lots to get lost in the post in the coming weeks. And for our heads to get turned by a blizzard of huckstering and snake-oil salesmanship.

So, before it all kicks off, while you’re all still bright eyed and eager of heart, let’s do some general house-keeping, and allow me to bring you up to speed with a few developments that may get passed over in the pre-Crimbo deluge.
Any excuse to big up Tom McShane (pictured) is welcome round these parts. We’ve been fans for many years of his low-lit and gently moving take on the teary-eyed Smog blueprint. Mainly because, where many who share his record collection sometimes tend towards minimalism and miserablism, Tom’s songs have always striven for scope and understanding. He’s released a number of EPs in the time since (following the demise of Ninebar International) he struck out on his own, and they’ve been full of wonderful, thoughtful, minor-key successes.
There’s a new one on its way early next year, but in the meantime, he’s decided to gather together a few of the best tracks from the early work and, in advance of a short West Coast tour in December, release them in the US. It’s a typically unassuming, but ambitious move on Tom’s part. And you’ll no doubt be glad to hear that it’s paid off royally.
Beautifully packaged and designed (with pics from our Ambers), Departures gives a gentle reminder of Tom’s ability to balance tender introspection with choruses that look sunnily outward. If it crosses your path, snap it up and hold it close to your breast.
Then we’ve got Canizares. Now don’t try to hide: I know there are lots of you out there trying to maintain a productive life while in the grip of a debilitating Pixies fixation. Well, I suggest you hook up with this lot. Judging by the ten tracks on their debut album, Is This My Stop, this trio seem perfectly qualified to set up a support group. They bound through these tunes in a flurry of vertiginous guitars and yelped vocals, and while it struggles in places to find an individual personality – too often lapsing into the generic and poorly realised – the likes of ‘On The Beach’ show that there’s potential there to work with. And, judging by the likeably hic-cuppy ‘Forever Young’, a fair bit of off-beam personality too.
News also reaches us that those old scamps Olympic Lifts are planning to stuff a single in the old year’s pocket before it makes its way out the door. ‘I Am Cursed’ it’s called, and you can get a copy through the Bruised Fruit label.
A few years ago that ever enthusiastic Electric Penguin, Sean Quinn, forced a tape on me that he insisted I was going to love. (Note: I phrased that sentence deliberately. He did not suggest; he insisted. As far as Sean was concerned: I was going to adore this record… or else.) It was called Love Me, Love My Dogma, and was by a Belfast band called St Vitus Dance. And he was right. I played the thing diaphanous.
Released by Probe Plus back in 1987, it was a record that, with its vocal flamboyance and joy in literate word-play, obviously shared the same aesthetic tailor as many of that era’s best talents, and felt no shame in tying its flag to the same mast as Microdisney, The Smiths and Teardrop Explodes. It was a record that, if you like, read Melody Maker rather than the NME. And although funny (check out ‘Napoleon’s Nose’), and more likely to reference shenanigans at late night taxi stands than any contemporaneous horror, in its own subtle, odd way, it said as much about religious hypocrisy, ingrained sectarianism and political inequality as any Northern record before or since.
Now, aside from lead singer Noel Burke’s brief, and ill-starred, tenure as replacement for Ian McCulloch in the Bunnymen, not much has been seen of this mob in the years since. Unless, of course, you count the protracted homage paid by Neil Hannon. How brilliant then to find that early next year, the reformed, and hopefully re-energised St Vitus Dance plan to release a new album. Glypotheque it’s called. And Hit The North can’t wait.
Not that we’re easily pleased or anything.