LISTENING to BMX Bandits Forever, the band’s ninth album in three decades, doing the social media rounds was a picture of Jeremy Corbyn’s face superimposed on to the body of Kurt Cobain pictured during Nirvana’s 1993 set for MTV Unplugged. The National was reminded of two things: that if he had lived, Cobain would be getting on a bit (50 this year) and secondly, of his love for the naïve, ramshackle but sincere pop which blossomed in late 1980s Scotland. Wearing that pond green cardigan, Cobain sang the relatively unknown Jesus Don’t Want Me For A Sunbeam by The Vaselines, and he was regularly photographed beaming in his Captain America T-shirt. But it was BMX Bandits he wanted to be in.
With an unruly family tree which reads as a Who’s Who of Scottish indie, BMX Bandits have featured at least 25 different musicians since forming in Bellshill in 1986. The two constants have been frontman Duglas T Stewart – who named the crew, not in tribute to Nicole Kidman’s stunts in the 1983 movie, but as a nod to his beloved Beach Boys (“Brian Wilson didn’t surf,” Stewart told an interviewer in 2011, “and I never had a bike”). The other, as newest member Chloe Philip – also one quarter of all-conquering girl group TeenCanteen – explains, is having a good time.
“BMX Bandits is just kind of fun," says Philip, who became a full-fledged Bandit when Rachel Allison left the band in 2014 due to work and family commitments. "Often people in rehearsals have said that BMX Bandits are one of the most fun bands to be in. It’s almost like whoever is in the band becomes more ‘Duglas-y’ or lets that side of their personalities show more, more whimsical, kind of heartfelt.”
Stewart’s right-hand man on BMX Bandits Forever was Stuart Kidd, who, along with Joe Kane as Dr Cosmos’s Tape Lab features on a trio of tracks at the album’s heart. The first of those is the ostensibly jolly, Philip-sung Way Of The Wolf. Elsewhere she sings Love Me ‘Til My Heart Stops, a composition inspired by an unsettling poster she spotted in Berlin. There’s also the fuggy sass of Razorblades and Honey, a song written with Anton Newcombe of Brian Jonestown Massacre, and a rebooted version of Saveoursmiles, written with Stewart’s long-term musical partner (and one fifth of Teenage Fanclub) Frances MacDonald. An airy groove about allowing love to mend shattered hearts, it was originally written for Korean singer Yeongene.
“It was Chloe who was really responsible for giving that song a new lease of life,” says Stewart. “I was singing Saveoursmiles a lot live and Chloe came up with this really nice, different bass line. Stuart, who played bass on the original, said to me: ‘I think that’s a much better line actually’, so we recorded it.”
“The thing about Chloe is that she’s very creative, and that’s good to be around, inspiring,” he continues. “When I first met her she was doing a lot of stand-up comedy, and she would play her flute and help out my friend Norman (Blake, of Teenage Fanclub), and when she sang BMX Bandits songs, it wasn’t like she was trying to be someone else, she brought her own spirit to things.”
Just as TeenCanteen frontwoman Carla Easton had faith in Philip (“I couldn’t play guitar when she asked me,” Philip says of Easton, “But she said: ‘I think you can do it.’”), Stewart saw her relative musical inexperience as an advantage.
“Chloe can come up with things that the more experienced guys in the band are the first to admit they wouldn’t come up with,” he says. “I still really don’t know how music works and what the technical rules are. But I think if you put musical primitives like us together with people who are musically very, very able, it can be a quite interesting combination.”
You couldn’t call Anton Newcombe a “musical primitivist”. A hugely talented musician with a studio in Berlin, Newcombe’s professionalism may surprise those more familiar with tales of his erratic behaviour, most famously depicted in 2003 car crash rockdoc DiG!
“Anton was great to work with, very similar to working with David Scott and Stuart King,” says Stewart. “He has this ability to just pick up an instrument and just start playing. We did that song from start to finish in about four hours.”
Stewart says that most of the tracks on BMX Bandits Forever were recorded in around that time.
“I take comfort when you hear it was a case of ‘bang bang bang – capture’ with David Bowie, not that I’m comparing us. Get the instinctive magic – and quickly. Don’t go back and dab, dab, dab with a fine brush, you’ll always get it wrong.”
For Philips, recording was sometimes more dab, dab, dab with a hanky. “Some of these songs can get you on a gut level,” she says. “There are universal themes here, and some really break your heart.”
“A lot of BMX Bandits songs have dealt with serious subjects while the music has tried to shine some light in; like Serious Drugs or Scar,” says Stewart. “But hopefully there’ll soon be a track that makes the listener go: “It’s OK, we can get through this together.”
That’s exactly the tone of Somewhere, the Bandits’ cover of the West Side Story classic.
“People like Stephen Sondheim are as much an influence as conventional rock music,” says Duglas, before recounting how BMX Bandits were once on Radio Four’s Loose Ends programme. The other musical guest that evening was – you’ve guessed it.
“It was such a sweet thrill. Francis got an album signed. We kept checking to see if Stephen Sondheim had his head in his hands though. But he was tickled by the fact how we played a song about someone who makes your day complete and had called it ‘Death and Destruction’.”
Stewart notes there may be a couple of surprise special guests at Saturday’s launch gig.
“I’m keeping them up my sleeve,” he teases. “It’s not Les Dennis, though we’d be very happy to have him; he’s got more diversity than you think.”
Saturday (w/Spinning Coin), Saint Luke’s, Glasgow, 7pm, £16 (+bf). Tickets bit.ly/BMXStLukes BMX Bandits Forever is out now via Elefant Records bmxbandits.net
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