The Tidal Wave of Indifference

Scottish indie music is surely in the rudest health it’s been in for years. Frightened Rabbit have blazed a trail with signing a major label deal and the likes of Admiral Fallow, We Were Promised Jetpacks and Broken Records all now have international profiles.

And that’s before you even scratch the surface. Readers of this blog and many others will know all about the many great bands dotted around the country that just don’t get the same recognition.

If there’s one band that could – and arguably should – be ready to hit the same heights, it’s Glasgow’s French Wives. With a number of singles and EPs already under their belts, work on a debut album is well under way with the renowned Tony Doogan in the producer’s chair.

In typical Tidal Wave-style, this is yet another party we’re late for. Desperately late, in fact. Even though they won the inaugural Radar prize, shortly before we linked up with the popular Scotsman-affiliated site, it took us until this year’s Stag and Dagger festival to properly notice them, and we were more than happy to pen a few words about just how damn good they were for the Skinny. 

We’re definitely fully paid up converts now, which is why we asked them to play our first ever gig night later this month with Star Wheel Press, the Douglas Firs and Lost Telegrams, and were seriously chuffed when they said yes.

While some of the bands could be considered to be quiet and low key, French Wives will be bringing brassy, sing-along choruses and catchy melodies to the Wee Red Bar in a few weeks.

We can’t wait, and had a word with singing guitarists Stuart Dougan and Scott Macpherson this week.

So who the hell are you?

SM: We’re French Wives, a 5 piece indie-pop band surviving in Glasgow. We’re four boys and a girl (the band are completed by violinist Siobhan Anderson, bassist Chris Barclay and drummer Jonny Smith).

Describe your sound in ten words or less!

SM: Melodic indie pop music that is hopefully intelligent, yet accessible.

SD: Definitely not folk music!

You’re in the middle of recording your debut album proper – what can we expect from it?

SM: I think in terms of songwriting, arrangements and production it will represent a massive step up from us. We’ve been immensely lucky to convince the excellent Tony Doogan, who has produced some of our favourite bands, to produce the album for us, and what we have so far sounds like it’s coming along nicely. There are eight new songs, and we’ve completely rearranged our “smash hits” (note the inverted commas!) Halloween and Me vs. Me for the record.

SD: At the moment it’s only about 60% complete but it sounds a lot bigger and better than anything we’ve done before. Tony has made a huge difference in terms of bringing out the best in the songs. It makes us slightly shy in offering up any of our old music in the knowledge that this is going to be vastly superior to what has gone before.  All of which makes it increasingly frustrating that it isn’t finished yet!

And when can we expect to hear it?

SD:  The plan is that it will be out in February 2012 via Electric Honey Records.  There will be single coming much sooner though.

A lot of nice things have been said about the band in the last year. Do you feel a burden of expectation?

SM: Ha, not really. With all the nice things that are said - which isn’t really THAT often an occurrence  there is normally an equal amount of bad press, so it evens itself out somewhat in the end. Plus we’ve been so quiet whilst writing the album and stuff for the past while that it seems that everyone has forgotten about us! So we’re hoping to come back with a bang and be a new exciting band again over the next few months.

SD: It’s nice when people say nice things about your music but it’s all to be taken with a pinch of salt.  There are people that gushed about our band when we first started that don’t seem to bother with us anymore and don’t come any see us anymore so I don’t think there’s a burden as such when it can all be quite fickle.  Ultimately we’re confident that we’re making a record that’s much better than what we’ve done previously and if you like our band you’ll really like this.  A lot of our praise has been garnered from quite a small and specific group of people and something Tony has drummed in to us is that the world is a very big place and there a literally hundreds of thousands of people that are yet to hear our music so it’s not really do or die for us just yet.

What can an Edinburgh gig-goer expect from your live show then?

SM: Hopefully some nice songs and some fun and some singing along if they know the words (we like that!).

SD: Generally plenty of space around them as hardly anyone comes to see us in Edinburgh (we’re keen to address this issue – Ed)!  That being said, those that do venture out will see plenty of the aforementioned melodic indie pop, only a little louder and faster.

French Wives? I’ve heard dodgy Dave down the Duck sells DVDs called that…. how the hell did the name come about?

SM: There is an old “erotic” film called French Wives that was released in the ’70s however none of us have seen it – but that’s not through lack of trying (try harder! – Ed)!

SD: A friend was going to use it for their band name but didn’t so we pinched it as we needed something for our first gig.  It was to do with a conversation about Jarvis Cocker having a French wife I believe.  It’s nothing to do with the porno, though we’re all eager to see it if it can be tracked down.

Bloggers running gigs – it’ll all end in tears, right??

SM: Not at all! You bloggers seem to be getting dead good at putting on gigs, and of course the major advantage is that they always get coverage in the blogs! We’ve never played a blogger’s night before though, so it all remains to be seen. I think it will be a good one though. It will be nice to go over and play in Edinburgh at a night with a bit of press behind it.

SD: From what I gather we’re going to play to a group of people, get paid and drink beers.  You might actually be my favourite promoter ever?

Perhaps we should hold back such accolades once we know it won’t just be two mates and a flatulent dog you’re playing to. On that note, you can get tickets to the Tidal Wave of Indifference Presents… right here. We have an amazing line-up, do come!