A Bloody Good Read (My Latest Novel, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut 27/12/06) by Chris Ward for www.brazenmagazine.co.uk

After skulking around the local music scene for the past couple of years, threatening amazing things, 2006 was the year it all took off for Glasgow/Greenock marvels My Latest Novel. That’s saying something, considering the summer of 2005 alone saw them release their first single, Sister Sneaker Sister Soul, to huge acclaim and support Pixies on a bill that also included Teenage Fanclub and Idlewild. Following the March release of overwhelmingly lovely debut album Wolves, though, they were inescapable in Glasgow indie circles: threatening to upstage Sons And Daughters in the open-air finale to Ayr’s Burns An’ A’ That festival, partnering Camera Obscura in a showcase gig at Glasgow Uni’s QMU, triumphantly closing the ABC stage at the inaugural Indian Summer in Victoria Park. It only seems fitting, then, that following sojourns to Canada and Australia in the past couple of months, they should come home for a celebratory year-end gig in Tut’s, the spiritual home of Scottish indie.
Their growing success over the past year is all the more remarkable when you consider how much about them just shouldn’t work: that almost painfully precious name, punctuation-prone song titles (like Wrongfully, I Rested), spoken word segments, a fondness for instruments like glockenspiels and melotrons, the credit on the album sleeve that reads “additional vocals on ‘Learning Lego’ by Ravenscraig Primary School Children’s Choir”… it all makes them seem so studiously indie that you’d be forgiven for wondering if they were just taking the piss out of Belle And Sebastian.
The key to their success, though, is that like their Bella Union label-mates, The Dears, everything they do is founded on honest, unfiltered, raw emotion, something that becomes abundantly clear live when you can see the effort writ large on their faces. None of what they do is a mere pose; it’s catharsis, for them and us alike.
They also know how to use dynamics and instrumentation to their advantage in a way very few other bands do. It’s disarming to realise, seeing the songs played in front of you, how often there’s only a single instrument being played when the album sounds so lush; how often it gets so quiet that the crowd start shushing each other. Tonight’s set starts with album opener Ghost In The Gutter, and if there’s been a more dramatic opening to any album (or live set) this year, we haven’t heard it - a slow builder that starts off sounding like the soundtrack to some lost Scottish western, all solitary guitars, slides and ominous drums, adding new parts here and there before erupting in a joyous, spine-tingling swirl of three-part harmonies and violin four minutes in, then ending quietly, chanting “ghost in the gutter/doesn’t really matter” over and over until it’s done and you’re left breathless, eating out of their hands.
From here on in, it’s like every great Scottish indie band ever rolled into one: bits of Belle And Sebastian, Arab Strap, Mogwai, The Delgados, Idlewild’s folksier moments and Teenage Fanclub all surface at some point, but it never sounds like thievery, or even an homage; more like they’ve cracked a way to combine all those disparate sounds into one coherent whole. The Hope Edition weaves its sweet way through delicately picked guitars and perfectly-judged handclaps, realising that sometimes words just don’t cut it; When We Were Wolves, wonderfully, seems more piratey in its own sea-shanty-ish way than anything to star Johnny Depp; Sister Sneaker Sister Soul manages to be simultaneously intimate and epic, and is received like a stadium rock anthem; barely any of the songs finish the same way they start, shifting and changing as they go; and throughout, the audience treat them with a level of devotion that suggests they’re well on their way to being regarded as Scottish indie royalty. It’s another defining moment for the band in a year full of them. Roll on 2007.

 

NME - 9/10

"More Than Just The New Arcade Fire"

Let's get this out of the way:yes, My Latest Novel share similarities with Arcade Fire. But what will make you rend your garments and dance with joy are the differences between MLN and theur Canadian kin: they revel in the sounds made by noises, and whip through a heady mixture of Georgian chanting, stop-start-now-go rhythm patterns, alarming vocal tricks and even a dash of killer-Queen (on Ghost in the Gutter - honestly). It's an unsettling world, especially on When We Were Wolves, which feels like the episode of Buffy where Xander became a hyena, only with the threat amplified. Fight the fear, though as this is a part of the woods which rewards multiple visits

MOJO - 4/5

Romantic Boho-RockBravado from Greenock Quintet.

If they weren't hell bent on taking risks, these Scots could easily settle on being a replacement Belle and Sebastian, given their ramshackle, velvets sweetness, guitar-violin axis, boy-girl harmonies and more than an occassional traipse into the land of fey. But MLN inject their indie-pop frame with a swarthy melodrama that's more Tindersticks in flavour, and the word 'kickass' comes to mind when they really get going. The MLN experience is best savoured on 2005's lengthy debut single Sister Sneaker Sister Soul, with its languorous mood giving way to a violin-driven meltdown, but its matched here in range by Ghost in the Gutter and in tenderness by The Hope Edition. There's poetry too, "But just like a star, my pining subsides/Dropes but then swells, clamps my insides," If vocalist Chris Deveney is preoccupied by girl (or boy) trouble, his pain is memorable.

THE OBSERVER - 4 STARS****

WOLVES REVIEW

With such a lacklustre name, these Greenock twenty-somethings would have their work cut out to impress the masses. But it's not the masses that they're aiming to please. Thoroughly Scottish, from the curling accents to the sparse instrumentation, this is an eerily beautiful set steeped in folkish melancholy and bucolic dreaminess. Taking notes from Chemikal Underground's golden years, with a rummage through Belle & Sebastian's best bits, it's an accomplished, beguiling effort that's worth keeping on repeat.

TIME OFF - 4/5

Queensland Street Press - Wolves Review

Rising Glaswegian star Chris Deveney of My Latest Novel recently confided to this writer in an interview that he was getting fairly bored with music industry worthies comparing his band’s debut CD Wolves to The Arcade Fire. Wolves is a tad similar, but so very, very different. It seems like anyone who’s trying to do indie a little bit differently these days is dubbed the new Arcade Fire. Yawn!

MLN specialize in creating dreamlike, romantic slices of life, and each of their songs carries an often-heartbreaking melancholy story wrapped around its gloomy little heart, like little novellas all their own. And Deveney and company certainly aren’t afraid to give the world a taste of the lilting Glasgow accent, too, like on the oh-so-pretty ‘Pretty in a Panic’ and the almost lounge-esque’The Job Mr Kurtz Done’. An enthusiastic, rambunctious Scots children’s choir is used to great effect on ‘Learning Lego’, too.

It’s an impressive debut from these five gifted Glaswegians

SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

Sunday Newspaper - FEATURE

INSPIRATION comes from the strangest places. Like Greenock, for example. It doesn't get the best press in the world and it's not exactly known as a hotbed of musical creativity, but no one seems to have informed My Latest Novel of that fact.

The five-piece indie folk outfit hail from the west coast town and, despite their less than salubrious origins, they are creating an almighty stir in the music world.

Having only been together for a couple of years, things are moving pretty fast for My Latest Novel. The band, consisting of Chris Deveney (vocals, guitar, bass), his brother Gary (vocals, guitar), Paul McGeachy (vocals, guitar, xylophone), Laura McFarlane (vocals, violin, piano) and Ryan King (drums, percussion), have risen rapidly from playing bars in nearby Gourock in front of a handful of punters to performing at T in the Park and playing to 10,000 people at Meadowbank Stadium, supporting the Pixies.

Last week they played sold-out shows in London and Germany, and in the past few months they have also toured Spain, France and Scandinavia. It's all a long way from their stuttering genesis in a practice room in Greenock.

Says Chris Deveney: "Myself and Laura started working on some music ideas we had. Simultaneously my older brother Gary and our drummer Ryan were trying to work on some stuff. Strangely enough we were in the same rehearsal block, in different rooms, but it took us quite a while to realise we could do it all together as a foursome. Once we got a set together that was vaguely playable we did a couple of gigs down in Gourock, then Paul joined and it all went from there."

It didn't take long for the industry to take notice. After a handful of shows and one demo, the band - who are all still in their early 20s - had numerous record company A&R people beating a path to their door. Turning down more lucrative offers from bigger labels, they plumped for indie outfit Bella Union, run by former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde. According to Deveney, it was an easy choice.

"We'd met with quite a few record labels, and we were getting a wee bit fed up of people talking to us about units and product and all this kind of thing," he says. "We were like, 'What are you talking about?' Simon came to one of our shows in London and he never spoke about how many units we could sell, he just spoke about how much he loved our songs, and the kind of band we are. Simon doesn't phone us up and say, 'Right, you have to write a top 40 single' - he phones and says, 'God, your B-sides are pretty weird, I like them.' That's a whole lot better."

The band released a wee taster of things to come last summer with their Sister Sneaker Sister Soul EP, the title track of which is more than six minutes of moody, folky majesty, starting like a jangly Belle and Sebastian and finishing in a mess of post-rock noise, like Mogwai and My Bloody Valentine having it out in the studio.

After that taster, now comes the main course. The band release their debut album, Wolves, tomorrow and it fulfils the promise of that early EP many times over. Blending indie, moody post-rock soundscapes and folk-rock nuances with a distinctly literary bent in their lyrics, My Latest Novel manage to sound like a hundred bands at once, and yet entirely fresh and original in their own right.

The sculpted sounds and celebratory air of Wolves have brought comparisons with last year's Canadian indie crossover success story Arcade Fire, and given the right breaks there's no reason why My Latest Novel shouldn't enjoy similar success. For Deveney and the rest of the band, the enthusiastic reaction to their music from punters and critics alike is welcome, if a little bemusing.

"It was weird, we started getting all these reviews saying we were quite folky sounding," he says. "To be honest none of us had really listened to a lot of folk music, except for things like Bob Dylan and Nick Drake. So then we went away and listened to various things and thought, 'Oh yeah, maybe we do sound a wee bit folky.'"

My Latest Novel don't sound like any other band coming out of Scotland at the moment. That fiercely individual style and independent attitude stem, at least partly, from the fact that the band grew up outside the Glasgow indie circuit, a scene which, though creating many great bands, has a tendency to be cliquey and incestuous.

"We all moved into the same flat and lived together in Glasgow for a while, the five of us," says Deveney. "But it was too much. Sometimes you can't breathe, you know? That was a complete suffocation situation, and it was so much healthier for the band when we all came back down to Greenock. That distance, it allows us to come away from what we're doing and look at it a bit more objectively. Plus, we just practise all the time, every night, because there's nothing else to do around here."

One of the ways in which the band stands out from the crowd is in their thoughtful, intelligent lyrics. There is the obviously literary reference of their name, for a start, and in the past Deveney has namechecked the likes of Jack Kerouac and Aldous Huxley as being just as influential as indie bands such as Low and Smog in moulding the band's music.

"Lyrical inspiration can come from anything," he says. "A lot of the time it's just completely made-up stories. It's fun to write stories and to experiment a wee bit with language. We all love lyrics in the vein of someone like Nick Cave, it just adds another level to your sound. I would hate to have an album that was just 10 songs of me singing about some girl that I couldn't get or whatever - that would just be boring."

That sense of experimentation is mirrored in the band's music. At gigs, instruments are swapped between bandmates with abandon, creating something which is chaotic and shambolic at times, but never dull. Right from the beginning, the band were all about creating something new and different and not allowing themselves to be restricted in any way.

"When we started out, we didn't want there to be any boundaries in terms of genres of music that we played, and we also didn't want any instrumentation boundaries either," says Deveney. "It's funny in the practice room when we're trying to write a song. A lot of the time we'll just put down all our instruments, because if you're strictly attached to one particular instrument things can become stale.

"We have these big boxes full of percussion things, xylophones, melodicas and all sorts of other stuff, and we'll just go through the boxes seeing what we can find and what noises we can make."

As their debut album reveals, the resultant noise they make is spectacular. Says Deveney: "It's a first step for us and it's a bit scary, exposing ourselves to everybody and saying, 'Take it or leave it.'"

THE TIMES

LIVE REVIEW - LONDON - Bush Hall

My Latest Novel make a bigger sound than you’d expect to look at them. The five of them, four boys on guitar and drums and a girl with a violin, combine into a post-rock chamber orchestra, building dense songs with marching-band drum rhythms and chanted vocal harmonies, then stripping them back to one voice and drums, or guitars and xylophone. Their quiet/loud dynamics and waves of sound evoke A Silver Mount Zion or Mogwai, but with the pop sensibilities of Sufjan Stevens or Arcade Fire. Songs about daytrips to the seaside, and sleeping with your friend “but no, not like that – that would spoil everything” are on the twee side, sounding a bit like Looper or the Delgados, especially when they add speaking voices as well as singing. In my kitten-kicking mood I'm momentarily irritated, but by the end of their set I’ve become so drawn into their baroque, euphoric music that I’ve completely forgotten myself and my rubbish day.

 

WWW.THE DOWNLOADER.CO.UK

Sister Sneaker Sister Soul - Single Review

Having found refuge in the protective arms of Twickenham’s splendid Bella Union label (The Dears, Explosions In The Sky, Trespasser Williams) youthful Scottish quintet My Latest Novel will find themselves courting much attention with this, the release of their hugely-anticipated debut single.

Beginning life as a delightful Fanclub-esque lament • all gusting folk melodies, adolescent melancholy and the most beautiful of twee harmonies - you’d perhaps be forgiven for writing My Latest Novel off as a mere vehicle for some steady if unexceptional Gallic rehashing. You’d be wrong. For as the barren acoustics begin to sag and turn familiar circles the piercing chirrup of aged violin strings abruptly welcomes in an exhilarating bout of clashing percussion, stumped xylophone and a cascade of instinctive musical craftsmanship.

Like Belle & Sebastian after a couple of tins of spinach and a sweaty pub car-park grapple ‘Sister Sneaker Sister Soul’ becomes an idea perfectly realised. With My Latest Novel you’ve every right to expect the world. And more.

THE SKINNY MAG

Live Review

October 2005

"Fresh from supporting the Pixies at Meadowbank, My Latest Novel command the massive QMU stage effortlessly. Like a dark pre-Disney fairytale the band waver between frothy whimsy and grim drama. Morbid, marching beats thud beneath ethereal strings, beautiful harmonies and ocassional tempests of squaling guitars. A cross between Mercury Rev and God Speed You Black Emperor!, their music booms through the huge space, eddying and echoing around the gathered crowd. Effortlessly charismatic, the band capture the audience's attention, well deserving of the literary moniker they've given themselves. With a record deal long-since signed, enigmatic performances like this will surely rocket them to fame."

WWW.MUSICTRUTH.CO.UK

Live Review - Luminaire - London

Topping tonight’s bill are Glasgow’s My Latest Novel. This sharply dressed five piece certainly know how to build up an atmosphere as a flurry of military drum beats clash with the ghostlike violin works of sole female member Laura McFarlane during “Ghost In The Gutter” creating an intense climax. As well as some seriously impressive instrumental sections, not least the exquisite violin work during “Sister Sneaker Sister Soul” the band also manage to pull off some spectacular four way harmonies which are reminiscent of Belle and Sebastian in their careful construction.

The band themselves cite Mogwai and The Velvet Underground as influences but it is their lush indie harmonies and folksy serenity which seem best suited to tonight surroundings. Perhaps these intimate moments wouldn’t work so well in a larger, or outdoor venue, but this is not the time to contemplate such things. As the beautiful harmonies and melodies of “Hope Edition” soar overhead a £3.00 pint of beer doesn’t seem so dear after all.

 

UNCUT - 4/5

Fine Post-Post-Rock From Touted Glaswegians

Wolves raises the spectres of both post and alt rock, but adeptly avoids the lethargy of americana which has settled like a fog on both genres.It's a root stew of sea-shanty, melodic guitar, sober violin and unsettling percussion interventions, as on the hammering-on-the-front-door-at-mid-night of "Learning Lego".Singularly, MLN match both lyrical and musical busy-ness, particularly on "The Job Mr Kurtz Done" with its highly inventive Brian Wilson-esque vocal arrangments.An album and a bad you want to find out more and more about.

YAHOOMusic - (DOT MUSIC) - 9/10

Wolves Review

Only three months in and already 2006 has been a terrific year for music. Alongside excellent albums by established favourites like Morrissey (his most rewarding, determinedly serious record for years), Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai and Isobel Campbell / Mark Lanegan, there's been a host of new bands to get over-excited about (from the Arctic Monkeys and The Long Blondes to The Research and Tilly And The Wall). And here's another gem to add to the year's embarrassment of riches.

A twentysomething five-piece from Glasgow, My Latest Novel first came to our attention with the soft folk pop of "The Hope Edition", a quietly beautiful blur of jangled guitars and wistful recorder melodies that instantly pegged them as successors to Belle & Sebastian. Catching the band live was an entirely different affair however - they opened with a brooding post-rock instrumental and then proceeded to lurch, waltz and glide between hints of the Arcade Fire, Sons And Daughters and The Delgados. Understandably, we were smitten.

"Wolves" brings all of the above together with staggering ease, the group propelled by their meticulously artful vision and reams of ambition. "Ghost In The Gutter" and "Pretty In A Panic" kick the album off with a sense that this is a band with things to be achieved. The songs build with an almost military pride, upping the tension and momentum with their eyes on the horizon, but then pull different stylistic handbrake turns - the former bursting into a group chant, the latter dropping back for a coda of spoken word.

There's a sense that My Latest Novel inhabit a childlike-world of their own imagining - somewhere between Narnia and Neverland - but they're never cloyingly twee or affectedly infantile. "When We Were Wolves" could be a Victorian parlour game - "and we ran and we hid…and we banged on our pianos" - but there's something reassuringly dark lurking here too. "Wrongfully, I Rested" also charts a curious semi-innocence, naïve and serious and fit to burst with where they could go next.

Lyrically, the band tend towards the oblique. Often you're not entirely sure what they're getting at, but as with the many sudden (yet elegantly performed) changes in direction and the dark Victorian childhood world they inhabit, it's clear that there's a definite logic at work here - all that's left for the listener to work it out. This may prove a stumbling block with albums to come, but right now joining the dots between the wordy twee pop of "The Job That Mr Kurtz Done" and the anthemic decay of "Learning Lego" is all part of the fun.

A truly stunning debut.

CD TIMES - WWW.CDTIMES.CO.UK

Wolves Review

It begins in the most sedate of ways. Coming across as the next band to help the new Folk renaissance - acoustic guitars accompanied by the kind of balladry we've heard from Scottish bands before. But, where it takes you from here though is a whistle stop tour of British music past, present and maybe even future.

This Scottish five-piece certainly aren't afraid of using instruments - every song here seems to built upon layers upon layers of music, a lush blanket of sounds reminding me of Sufjan Steven's latest effort. There's also an interesting blend of vocals, both male and female, mixes of spoken word and singing. My Latest Novel becomes an appropriate name for this band - listening to this is like getting stuck into a good book, you submerge yourself into it, let it wash over you, picking up on little threads here and there and trying to follow them through these rich and evocative songs.

A great example of their ability to build a song is Learning Lego, beginning as a gentle strum, it builds into a sea shanty half way through (reminding me in parts of The Decemberists) before descending into a chanting school choir. Another band with which they get compared to is The Arcade Fire, and it doesn't take much to draw similarities between the two. They could be a British alternative to them - weaving disparate influences to form a dense web of music which becomes more than the sum of its parts. Though not everything on offer here is wildly ambitious, they can keep things simple and create songs with folkish tendencies. The Hope Edition certainly reminds me of James Yorkston's album (with added whistling) and Sister Sneaker, Sister Soul is the best song Belle & Sebastian never wrote until it descends into a beast of a crescendo of guitars, violins and everything but the kitchen sink - something their fellow countrymen Mogwai would be proud of.

As you might have guessed, there's plenty going on here; all kinds of influences flowing through the mix, but mentioning all these other bands distracts from what this album and My Latest Novel have achieved - the ambition to try something a little bit different, to take their obvious influences and spin them into something they can call their own, to create a sound they're comfortable in. Highly recommended.

WWW.HECKLERSPRAY.COM

Live Review - London - Bush Hall

Hecklerspray ventured to see My Latest Novel with some trepidation. Make no mistake - that’s a fantastic name. Surely the band we were about to see would be absolutely atrocious? Right? Right?

Wrong.

It’s not often hecklerspray dishes out such favourable comments, so relish this foray into the world of hype while you have the chance: My Latest Novel are quite possibly the Best New Band In The Country Today.

Comparisons have already been made to The Arcade Fire, and they’re not wholly unjustified - much like the Funeral-makers themselves, My Latest Novel embark on a sprawling, anthemic, uplifting and fresh sound that places them several heads and shoulders above their nearest contemporaries.

But there’s also something else - the slow burnt rock stylings of Mogwai, the immediate quirkiness and rhythmic grasp of Talking Heads (most evident on recent single When We Were Wolves), the passion and sheer scope of the second-album-overdue Hope Of The States, the wall-of-sound loveliness of My Bloody Valentine infused with the Scottish heritage of The Delgados. And that’s just off the top of our heads.

They’re an inventive little bunch, and they’re certainly not afraid to show it. hecklerspray actually lost count of the different number of instruments being used on stage. Hell - we couldn’t even name some of them.

The best thing about My Latest Novel is the heart-shuddering proof that the revolution is finally gathering pace. All the pork-pie-hat-wearing Doherty-worshipping no-marks will soon be cast into oblivion, remembered as the musically bereft halfwits they were. In a year’s time, young children will gaze up to their mothers and ask "Mummy, who were those twats The Kaiser Chiefs?" And nobody - nobody - will ever speak of The Ordinary Boys again.

Musicianship is coming back, people. Looking cool and appearing in the NME smacked out of your tits is no longer enough. Bands may now actually have to have possess some… whisper it… talent to make themselves known.

hecklerspray hasn’t felt this happy since the Olsen Twins turned 18.

(Note to regular readers: normal bile-filled hecklerspray service will be resumed as soon this glowing article ends. Don’t worry. Stay calm. Breathe. Breathe …)

DISORDER MAGAZINE

Live Review - London - Bush Hall

Well, kiddos, rather than just write you a boring old review, I thought I’d bring in some outside help and let my trusty rock n roll sparring partner Sharon Di Marco ask me a quick q and a, to boot the information out of me with her stiletto-sharpened interrogation style.

S: Right, ok, so what about these Scottish dudes? My Latest Novel? I hear there’s a bit of chat about them in the backrooms and on the dancefloors these days?

K: Rightly so, rightly so. I was so moved by their set that I was almost dancing with tears in my eyes. And I wasn’t even drunk, so it must be serious. Louise, Gary, Chris and Paul standing at the front, in unison, bellowing out the words, passion almost spilling over into shouting was more than powerful. And then their still, delicate, deeply intense moments; where Louise talks in her lovely Glasgow twang while the others harmonise, where the violin tweaks at the heart and the glockenspiel rings out. This music shines like a brass band in the sun and their confident performance glows. I defy anyone in that room not to be touched by their golden hand. ‘Wolves’ stands out blisteringly, with much stamping of feet (seemingly one of the bands favoured percussion methods). Hollered back for an ear-boggling encore, their hearts pour right out onto the stage with the pounding beauty of their sound. Sharon, it’s time to dig out that gift token and get in line at the book shop.

WWW.YAHOO.COM (Dot Music)

LIVE REVIEW - Luminaire - London

Three shiny new things to get excited about. Two bands, one venue. This is one of those "last-stop before stardom" double bills that makes gig going in the capital worthwhile.

Along with Brooklyn's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Glasgow's My Latest Novel are the new indie thing to get overexcited about this season. They kick-off with a brooding Godspeed-style instrumental, all distant thunder and plaintive violin, before edging into a territory that's equal parts Arcade Fire and Hope Of The States. At times it feels as if they've invented a brand new subgenre - the post rock sea shanty, anyone? - the folkish, almost chanted melodies and harmonies merging beautifully with the gathering noise. "When We Were Wolves" is a definite highlight, the suitably intense singer clinging onto his mic stand like this is his last chance, leaving his mini-orchestra of compadres to delight in all manner of blood red melodramatics.

No doubt about it - your latest obsession has just entered the building

THE LIST - 5/5

SISTER SNEAKER SISTER SOUL

SINGLE REVIEW

Sister Sneaker Sister Soul is six minutes of awesome, wide-eyed folk rock majesty. Starting like a humble Belle and Sebastian, it then trundles through singalong jangly pop territory before turning into the Delgados thrashing it out with My Bloody Valentine and the Arcade Fire in a massive, clattering build of guitars, drums and violins that is, frankly, bloody magic.

WWW.PLAYLOUDER.COM

LIVE REVIEW - Luminaire - London

If we're honest, though, it's really the headliners that have brought us here. We've always had a certain fondness for the mighty Bella Union label, but we never expected such album-happy tykes to be making two serious bids to appear in the records of the year, yet, sure enough, in the wake of the Dears' '22' cometh My Latest Novel's astounding 'Sister Sneaker Sister Soul', and it's that that we want to hear. It doesn't disappoint, either; it's an audacious abseil of a song, somewhere right up there with 'European Me' and 'Svefn-g-Englar' in the land of the enchanted epic calling card, but, interestingly, there's plenty here to suggest they're just getting started. Absurdly beatific, thrillingly imaginative, and rather sturdier than you might imagine, they're clearly having a ball, rocketing from Beta Band-style sculpture through Delgadosesque psych-drama and into the odd Bad Seed rumble while still incorporating four-part harmonies that Westlife would sell their hair straighteners for, and 'When We Were Wolves', which they threaten to make the next single, is a veritable banquet of twisted menace. Still deliciously, endearingly small they may be, but the Novel are a blockbuster in waiting.

WWW.RCT-MUSIC.CO.UK

LIVE REVIEW

First gigs can be a lot like first dates. You try hard to impress. You’re anxious that everything goes just right and you try to say and do whatever you can to appear cool. This never works because in the end you completely fail to relax and just be yourself.

However, if you were to go on a date with My Latest Novel it would start with candelit dinner in a swanky restaurant and fine wines. Greenock's laudable lotharios know the importance of making a good first impression. The confidence and charisma they exude from the minute they take the stage belies the relatively short time they've been on the city's live scene. Unafraid to let a big noise get in the way of a winsome melody or vice versa their sound encompasses the minimalist miserabilism of Mogwai with the summery harmonies of Belle & Sebastian or Mojave 3, with just a little bit of Low thrown in for good measure. The songs themselves are a glorious layering of shambolic sounds and tightly-plotted stories - not so much disposable chat-up lines but deep conversation that would make you desperate to return for more.

Debut single Sister Sneaker Sister Soul is simply stunning and, with their album expected very soon on Bella Union Records, music fans may be about to embark on a long love affair with My Latest Novel.

WWW.DROWNED IN SOUND.COM

Sister Sneaker Sister Soul - Single Review

Belle & Sebastian, The Delgados, Sons And Daughters, Big Country - just some of the bands that prove Scotland is a musical heartland of bittersweet indie pop.

Now, you can add My Latest Novel to the list. Their sublime single 'Sister Sneaker Sister Soul' starts off all cutesy and a little bit icky before 'ba-ba-ba-ing' its way into a post-rock style nervous breakdown. The achingly sad second track 'The Not So Reverend' utilizes whistling and xylophones as weapons of emotional destruction.

Both are, of course, bittersweet but also brutal and brilliant. On this evidence alone, My Latest Novel could well add another illustrious chapter to Scot-rock history.

WWW.AAAMUSIC.COM

Live Review

The quietly elegant surroundings of the luminaire seem the perfect environment for My Latest Novel's subdued almost funereal odes. Haunting melodies are met with a highly receptive crowd and in a culture of talking through most performances the fact that you could hear a pin drop is in itself an indication of how well received they are. The pleasure is usually in the little details, the co-ordinated handclaps, the deftly quiet violin of The hope edition and Pretty in a panic. Often, you get the sense that the songs are being created right in front of you, such is the way that each melody, and each subdued vocal seems positioned within the song for one specific purpose.
As a live proposition there could be the criticism that in some way they are possibly too subdued, turned inward toward the songs so much that there's nothing left for the audience to discover, never quite cutting loose in the way that their peers do, though this thought is banished when confronted with the epic ends to Learning Lego and Sister sneaker sister soul, all carefully arranged chaos and screaming violin. It's fitting that the loudest sound tonight is saved for the end when the band take their leave to thunderous applause.