Scotland has a proud history of great indie bands: Belle and Sebastian, The Blue Nile, punk band The Skids, Primal Scream, but before I heard April Skies by Jesus and Mary Chain, I thought the only Scottish bands where Travis and bane of my existence The Proclaimers. Now I loved Travis, listening to both The Man Who and The Invisible Band when I was eleven started me on the course to the musical misery gut I am today, but April Skies showed me that a group of pasty Scots could be the coolest guys on the planet.
The Reid brothers have a special place in my heart because they were so ridiculously different than my idea of the cool indie stars of the time, probably because I got to April Skies 18 years after its release. The song, and the album Darklands was as big a revelation to me as The Smiths were. Here was a band singing about getting your heart violently broken by a girl that’s cooler than you while sounding both hilarious and un-bloody touchable. I was someone else when listening to the Mary Chain, I wanted to be the bike=r with the heart of poetry that was nothing but bravado, I wanted to pour my heart out to the back drop of insane feedback, and ridiculously powerful new wave riffs. I loved the New York cool of bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol, but it took four pasty guys from East Kilbride to make me feel cool.
