New indie music review with Mull Historical Society and Sparkling

Our weekly fix of the best new indie music as Julia Mason brings us her reviews of new singles from Mull Historical Society and Sparkling

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Artist: Sparkling

Track: We Are Here To Make You Feel

Photo Sparkling

Sparkling have released the title track from their forthcoming album We Are Here To Make You Feel, with the album itself set to be released on 27 October via Moshi Moshi.

It’s a feel-good electro-pop gem, bubbling over with the warmth created by the chant:

"We are here to make you feel good We are here to make you feel bad We are here to make you feel loved We are here to make you feel sad".

The positivity is just gorgeous and perfect for the summer. Sparkling use electronica to blend their pop sensitivities to create a little slice of sunshine. Their last EP was produced by Al Doyle and Joe Goddard of Hot Chip and that gives you a hint of the world they inhabit. By all accounts the trio’s new album We Are Here To Make You Feel continues this with Sparkling providing rousing choruses, synth toplines and an incessant desire to keep things upbeat and dancefloor friendly.

The band has shared the following on the album: "We Are Here To Make You Feel is an album about the importance of expressing your emotions. It's about love in every kind of way. Love for your friends, lovers and family. It's a reminder to tell your loved ones, that you love them. On this record, we wanted to say that in the most honest and straightforward way possible."

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Artist: Mull Historical Society

Track: 1952

Photo Mull Historical Society

Mull Historical Society is the musical project of Colin MacIntyre and he has announced his unique new album In My Mind There’s A Room where he has enlisted an all-star cast of literary giants to contribute their own words about a room that plays or has played a significant part in their lives. MacIntyre has then written the music for these lyrics and recorded them in his own special room - his grandfather’s flat above the bank in Tobermory, Mull, which has since been turned into a fully-equipped recording studio.

The first of these tracks to be unveiled is 1952. The lyrics are provided by arguably Scotland’s greatest living and most celebrated poet, Liz Lochhead. Here she writes for the first time about the first room of her own that she moved into the year of the Coronation (resonating with the events of today) when she was four. Lochhead lived there until she was 18, when she left home for Glasgow School of Art in the 1960s.

1952 has a wonderful vibe, with gratitude for the improvements of the new room. It paints a vivid picture and speaking about her memories of this room, Lochhead reflects: “This room was in the first home of their own that my parents got after eight years of marriage and staying in their parents' homes in overcrowded council houses in Lanarkshire. I slept in a cot with bars at the end of their bed till then, when I was four… And then this room of my own, a double bed and a whole new world emerged. It’s quite a visual thing, quite a rhyming thing.”

Of working with Lochhead on 1952 and the wider album project MacIntyre adds: “It has been a great creative experience and challenge to work with all the authors’ original words and their ‘rooms', and I was delighted to have Liz on board. I heard her on Desert Island Discs and was so moved about how she talked of her parents and her upbringing in the mining community. So it is a thrill to have her on the record — twice! One being on the more upbeat 1952 — from her contribution originally titled A Room of My Own — and then in the spoken word of Anaglypta, which she recited in my significant room in Tobermory, in the room where my poet-grandfather wrote his words. So for me it has something of the ‘full circle’ about it.”

The album is set for release on 21 July on Xtra Mile Recordings and includes contributions from, amongst others, Ian Rankin, Jacqueline Wilson, Sebastian Barry, Nick Hornby and Val McDermid. Simply extraordinary.

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