PureVolume

Members: Iain McLaughlin, Paul Elliott, Andy D, Andy Davidson

IAIN MCLAUGHLIN & THE OUTSIDERS

Way up North there’s something special going on. Something to shake preconceptions and set out a glorious statement of intent from Inverness come the aptly named The Outsiders spearheading a burgeoning musical scene in the UK’s most northerly city, Inverness.

In recent times some of the most exciting music in Scotland has been coming from the peripheries, like Fife’s Fence Collective or the scruffy pop scene in Dundee that’s grown up around The View. Now it’s the turn of Inverness to start rewriting some rule books. Despite being the fastest growing city in Europe, with a rock heritage that includes being the location for The Beatles’ first gig under that name, it’s only recently that the scene has truly burst into life. While Rockness might have rapidly established itself as one of the finest festivals around, it’s in the plethora of venues around town that the real revolution is taking place, aided, uniquely, by a largely free-gig culture and an enforced geographical isolation that’s helped to create a solid creative bedrock. And now it’s time to start telling the rest of the world what they’re missing.

Iain McLaughlin has lived in Inverness most of his life and established himself as an integral and dynamic part of the city’s musical environment. Having been in bands since school a music course in Edinburgh served to prove to him that his instincts about what makes great music were right. Originally inspired, like so many of his generation, by Nirvana he decided that the songs he wanted to make could combine layers of sound and catchy melodies with something darker, something dirtier. It’s a sound that also draws on the big skies and wide horizons of the North of Scotland, music that could only come from where it was made.

The Outsiders feature a distinctive guitar sound that sweeps through proceedings with some panache, bringing to mind a 21st century take on the likes of House Of Love and Spiritualised. Glacial and then some.
The first two songs to be released are “Don’t Look Behind You” and “Remedy”, showing twin facets of the band’s verve, the former driven by cascades of sound, the latter armed with a raise-the-rafters chorus. They’re produced by Andy Miller, best known for work with Mogwai and Arab Strap and you can sense a similarly expansive sonic impulse running through what The Outsiders do. In the last year the band has played all over Scotland (including stand-out performances at Rockness, Belladrum and Go North) as well as sharing the bill with Reverend and The Makers and Turin Brakes among others.

First steps. And not scared of tilting at the stratosphere. Very, very special indeed

Paul Mathur - Winter 2010