Paisley. Home of St Mirren FC. Home of… ummmmm… anyone?

Funny that a town of 75,000 people hasn’t truly put itself on the map (no, Paolo Nutini most certainly doesn’t count), despite being intriguingly named the UK’s eighth ‘most musical’ region by PRS for Music last year.

One act painting pictures of Scotland’s fifth largest settlement is Small Town Boredom.

The duo – Fraser McGowan and Colin Morrison – provide a bleak musical vision, not necessarily of Paisley itself but of the loneliness, heartbreak and – oh yes – boredom that comes with living outwith Scotland’s main towns of cities.

Musically, think Death Cab for Cutie (without the Cutie bit) combined with booze-soaked folk music, for a fair approximation what they sound like. I spoke to Fraser last week.

So who the hell are you?

My name is Fraser McGowan, I am a musician and home recording artist living in Paisley, Scotland. I play in a band with my friend Colin Morrison. We have played music together under the Small Town Boredom name for the best part of a decade and have had a few releases on London label The Remains Of My Estate. Our new album Notes From The Infirmary has just been released.

Describe your sound in 10 words or less!

This is a tough one for me…. I’ve never been great at defining how we sound. I think bleak, comforting, downbeat and honest probably describes us well. We were reviewed a while back and this is what the blogger had to say about our debut album.

“When you find yourself on a lonely Sunday morning with your lover gone, the rain pelting against your window, an empty fridge, lying in bed not able to move your limbs because of an over-powering grief, this is the album to play”.

I think this sums us up perfectly.

I’d have to agree! The name Small Town Boredom speaks volumes. Is that a reflection on your Paisley residence?

Paisley as a town is actually quite big and not anywhere as remote as many people think. I have always been drawn to the smaller towns and villages in the north of Scotland. I was very fortunate and spent a lot of summers sailing up north when I was younger; for me I think the name reflects more from that side of things. If I wanted to reflect my Paisley residence in a band name I would have called the band ‘Junky Shit Hole ‘or something along those lines.

The record sounds a bit miserable. Is there a particular reason for this?

No there’s no particular reason, it just kind of happens like that every time I pick up a guitar. I only tend to write lyrics when something’s bothering me, when I need to get something out. Also I learned to play guitar listening to early Leonard Cohen, it’s about the only style I can play. Both Colin and I have never really been interested or inspired by happy music, we kind of just do what comes naturally.

What are your key influences? To me this music has more texture than simple folk music. 

I said in a previous interview that initially I wanted to form a band that sounded like a mix between The Future Sound of London and Leonard Cohen. That still pretty much sums it up. You are correct about the texture; I tend to listen to a lot of ambient music and I’ve always been interested in background static, field recordings & various lo-fi recording techniques, I feel it adds something to our songs, gives them something special. I tend to be more influenced by actual albums rather than bands. When we were recording our first album (Autumn Might Have Hope) I was very influenced by a record called Centralia by Norfolk and Western, I think our album reflected that. When recording Notes From The Infirmary I was heavily influenced by Alone In The Bright Lights Of A Shattered Life by Library Tapes and Cherry Tree by The National.

You’ve recently recorded a Sparklehorse cover. Tell me more.

The Sparklehorse tribute album was great, we were really happy to be involved in such an excellent project. I think the death of Mark Linkous took the indie music scene by surprise and hit pretty hard. I had been a huge fan of his music for years and when we were asked to do a cover, I was really pleased because I genuinely felt we could do it justice. We had talked about covering ‘Eye Pennies’ initially but recording the drums and piano we wanted, wasn’t something we could have done easily. Both Colin and I had loved Dreamt for Light Years. from when it had appeared as a B Side on the Gold Day EP under the name Maxine. I had always been fascinated with the repetition and layers of that song, the way each part seemed to wrap around the other, so yeah recording it was a lot of fun, we finished the whole thing in one afternoon, which was extremely quick for us and we got it mastered by Mark Beazley (Rothko/Trace Recordings) which made me personally very happy. The compilation album on a whole has some great artists on and all the money goes to a very worthwhile cause, the Depression Alliance. 

Will we see you playing live any time soon? 

No. If Im being honest, I hate it, absolutely hate it. I’m not a front man, I struggle with it. We used to play quite a lot because I felt we had to for various reasons, like promoting our work and I also kind of felt obliged to as someone had released a record for us, so felt indebted to them. When we played live I always wanted to give a good representation of what we had on record and that usually involved more than just Colin and I. But running a band is a big fucking headache and something I don’t really want in my life. So yeah, I don’t do it anymore. I’m not saying I never will again but at this moment I don’t want to.

So I guess what you should take from that is not to expect any shows any time soon! Not worry, listening to Small Town Boredom is a fine experience on record. You can listen to Void Lighting below and Notes From the Infirmary is available now via Trome Records. For more information on the Sparklehorse tribute, head over to The Steinberg Principle.