Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 23/05/09
Label: Bella Union

Glasgow breeds a peculiar brand of indie rock: elegant, literate, dignified and melancholic, but with an ear for the dramatic. It's a trick that's been employed spectacularly by Mogwai, Belle & Sebastian, The Twilight Sad and now My Latest Novel. There are vast differences between all four, but they share a taste for and a talent with using absence of sound to create the feeling of thoughtful sadness in wide, open spaces.

There must be something about Scotland's largest city that gets people dreaming. The most striking image "Deaths And Entrances" conjures is the spectacular vastness and harshness of the Scottish highlands, and the feeling of being absolutely and utterly alone with your thoughts in a brutally sparse wilderness where you are nothing but a blot on the landscape.

It's a perfect place for reading, something My Latest Novel are keen for you to know they enjoy. The five-piece's second record (after 2006's "Wolves") shares its title with a Dylan Thomas poem, and there are nods to Alasdair Gray and Archie Hind splattered around. They're proud of their influences, and want to turn it into music.

They do it with piano and string supported indie-rock, which also benefits from the past. "Argument Against The Man" takes as much from Arcade Fire as anyone ever has, and their use of violins and climactic finales to songs has been swiped from the mighty Montreal outfit. It's no bad thing.

Frontman Chris Deveney's voice bears an unnerving similarity to Guy Bannister from iLiKETRAiNS, most strikingly on "If The Accident Will". And the way some of his lyrics are expressed is suitably haunting. On "Dragonhide" he pleads: "Forget what I have said, watch what I do / In my head my hands on your neck" as if he were the lead in a production of Macbeth. He sounds tired, contemplative and murderous.

There's a sense of tragedy coursing through almost every song on the record. On "Hopelessly, Endlessly" the world may as well have ended in the bleakest of scenarios, such is the lack of joy. It's often added to by violinist Laura McFarlane (who has played with The Twilight Sad) whose sharp bow work adds a coarse and pleasantly grating layer to the often grim subject matter.

Nothing is taken lightly. Everything is deadly serious. Scotland's literary history is rich, and the hostile isolation of the country has inspired writers for decades. My Latest Novel want to be a part of the history. Their only downfall could be trying too hard.

    by Tom Howard