A look back at the year in

Highs and Lows

We take a look back at the year in music across Scotland, celebrating the highs, the lows, and our favourite Scottish albums of the year

Words: Tallah Brash

‘All Correct At Time of Writing’ was the get-out-of-jail card coverline we emblazoned across the front of our January 2022 issue as we unsurely readied it for print in the middle of December 2021. Sadly when we returned in 2022 our fears had become a depressing reality with many of January’s music venues and festivals facing yet more hurdles and financial uncertainty, as government advice forced temporary closures, cancellations and postponements in abundance. But towards the end of January, things started to look up as Dan Snaith and co of Caribou rolled into Glasgow to play a sold-out Barrowlands show, with things continuing to pick up after that. In April, we tentatively launched our Music Festivals special with breakout stars of the year Wet Leg on the cover, and much to our delight, most of the festivals we covered in that issue – Knockengorroch, Kelburn Garden Party, Hidden Door, Jupiter Rising and Riverside Festival to name a few – went ahead. Not all returns were a success, however, with Doune the Rabbit Hole currently in a spot of trouble that we quite simply do not have the time or energy to get into here, but Doune, please pay your performers. The same could be said for the newly launched in June 2022 Junction 1 venue, with a source close to The Skinny telling us they’ve yet to be paid. There were new glimmers of hope to celebrate in the Scottish festival calendar this year too with new music, art and culture festival Otherlands making its debut at Scone Palace in August (recently nominated for Best Festival in the DJ Mag Best of British Awards 2022) and the excellent, not to mention the surprising return of the muchmissed Connect festival. Wehave to admit we were pretty sceptical about its return, and the fact it was taking place right next to Edinburgh Airport did have us confused, but we doff our hat to you as Connect truly did exceed our expectations and we’re genuinely looking forward to its return in 2023. Following a pretty much back to ‘business as usual’ summer of festivalling, October brought with it the annual Scottish Album of the Year Award, now in its 11th year, which took place at Stirling’s Albert Halls for the first time. While The SAY Award did make its return to the live format at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall in 2021, this year everyone was a lot more at ease, with fewer people hiding behind masks or afraid to hug one another. On the night, Cocteau Twins’ Heaven or Las Vegas won the second-ever Modern Scottish Classic Award, with the Seonaid Aitken Ensemble paying homage to the record on the night, while Berta Kennedy was dubbed The Sound of Young Scotland for her exciting brand of slick, r’n’b-infused pop. Of course, the big winner of the night was jazz pianist Fergus McCreadie, who took the title of Scottish Album of the Year for his masterful third studio album, Forest Floor, which saw his beautiful piano compositions heavily influenced by Scottish traditional music. The record entered the official UK Jazz and Blues Chart in the top spot, and also saw the 25-year-old musician receive a nod from the Mercury Prize.

Photo: Recompose

The Skinny’s Scottish Albums of the Year

It’ll come as no surprise, then, that when we asked our Music Team what Scottish albums they’d been loving this year, Fergus McCreadie’s Forest Floor appeared on many a list, placing in pole position on several. But, the return of Hudson Mohawke struck a chord with many Skinny contributors this year, too, who loved Cry Sugar equally, making it impossible to separate the two from the top spot of our Scottish Albums of the Year list. Closely following the two was Kathryn Joseph, with the quiet rage of for you who are the wronged, while Lady Neptune’s gabba-fuelled, face-melting Noz and the dark pop of Goodnight Louisa’s Human Danger weren’t far behind.

Walt Disco who, like McCreadie and Joseph were also nominated for this year’s SAY Award, saw their debut Unlearning take the sixth spot, while our November Album of the Month, Andrew Wasylyk’s Hearing the Water Before Seeing the Falls, came in seventh. A late-in-the-year aural treat came in the form of Alliyah Enyo’s breathtaking Echo’s Disintegration, which takes the eighth spot, while the self-titled debut from Poster Paints picks up a very well-deserved ninth place, with our top ten rounded out by the gorgeous Mooching from the exceptional talents of singer-songwriter Lizzie Reid.

Remembering Mimi Parker

Following the untimely passing of Mimi Parker, we take a look back at her three decade-spanning career as the drummer and vocalist of Duluth, Minnesota band Low

Words: Tony Inglis

When Mimi Parker died on 5 November – at 55-years-old, as a result of her diagnosis of ovarian cancer – Low, the consistently brilliant musical project she was a part of for nearly three decades, lost a member. Parker may have been one half of Low, but she was an absolute whole in a relationship. In both instances, this was alongside her husband Alan Sparhawk, another absolute whole. Their partnership, a symbol of persistence and enduring love, ultimately epitomised Low. Not that their relationship was particularly public, though stru les with Sparhawk’s mental health and the strain it placed on them was not hidden. But those qualities were infused in the music they made together, the way their voices overlapped, either in direct harmony or one following the other as if tied together by rope. In a heartfelt letter eulogising Parker, one-time Low bassist Zak Sally wrote: “[Mimi was] just as happy singing at home with Alan to nobody.” This is a truth that seems so evident on their recordings – which recently Jeff Tweedy aptly described as a kind of “secular church music” – what many have described as an unpretentious approach to creativity. Her death signals, perhaps, the end of a beloved band. But, more importantly, the severing of one creative soulmate from another. In Low, Parker was a singer and drummer. For their minimalist slowcore (a genre signifier Low pushed back against) her voice was an anchor. When writing on women’s voices in these musical styles turned to reductive descriptors like “ethereal” and “otherworldly”, you could not say that about Parker’s. Her vocals are earthly, grounding Low’s often ghostly music in reality. They showcased strength. They are crushingly human. On the title track of Low’s most recent album, HEY WHAT, when the song drifts off into the ocean, Parker’s singing crashes through the waves of ambient noise tu ing the listener back up. No matter what her singing was surrounded by – on early albums, as if emanating from a damp, dimly lit corner, or more recently outlined by fiery shoegaze – they were never engulfed, always the brightest thing in the room. In an interview with experimental music publication Tone Glow last year, Parker said Sparhawk was “always trying to see what can happen” when they were making music. “And she’s the control valve for that,” Sparhawk interjected. This su ests the idea that Parker approached her artistry with an open-mindedness but also with a willingness to be a conduit, a mechanism for Low to be something truly great. Nowhere is that more obvious than on the

“Mimi Parker’s vocals are earthly, grounding Low’s often ghostly music in reality. They showcased strength. They are crushingly human”

astounding sonic developments on their two most recent albums, which recalibrate the Low sound into something noisy and loud and chaotic. Not only are they two of the great late career pivots, but they are also two of the best albums of recent times. On HEY WHAT, Parker’s transformation is significant. From her early stripped back, effective drumming, to something approaching rock’n’roll on The Great Destroyer, here she accepted foregoing discernible

Photo: Martyna Maz

Low

drumming altogether in pursuit of a higher purpose. When her percussion finally appears on the closing track The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off), it is utterly cataclysmic. Parker was Mormon, converting after meeting Sparhawk in high school. To those with agnostic and atheistic tendencies, their religious devotion and spirituality could perhaps seem in conflict with Low’s progressive musicality. But it’s this juxtaposition which powered their art. In the Tone Glow interview, Parker was asked about her relationship with God. She said: “When it comes to faith, I think it’s healthy to doubt. If you’re not checking it, you’re missing out… I don’t know, that sort of thing is just so foreign to me. Blind faith.” It was this attitude – a healthy back and forth with your beliefs – that allowed Parker to tap into everything Low exhumed in their songs: despair, outrage, skepticism, and a questioning of authority, among them. But that inquisitiveness never allowed the joy and comfort that faith and spirituality can bring to be blocked out. We need only look to Parker’s words on Double Negative’s Fly to feel consolation in her passing, which she sang with her usual transcendent beauty: ‘I don’t mind. Take my weary bones, and fly’.