Edinburgh School For The Deaf - New Youth Bible - Bubblegum Records - BGUM019 - ****

Historically, Scottish indie rock favours either the transcendental power of feedback, from the surly Jesus And Mary Chain to the spiritual Snow Patrol, or winningly winsome feyness, from The Pastels to Belle And Sebastian. Teenage Fanclub switched from the former for the latter. Edinburgh School For The Deaf do both simultaneously.

Like all today's youngsters, the group are liberated by the internet from the tyranny of imagining that musical evolution follows some restrictive linear progression.
They take whatever they need. Their debut opens with the seven minute Of Scottish Blood And Sympathy, alternately softening or serrating the same repeated female vocal phrase with digitised Wall of Sound echo or flagellated guitar fuzz.
Having established its operational procedures, the album then wears the fragments its cannibalised influences on its sleeve with devil-may-care insolence.

Thirteen Holy Crowns smothers Joy Division in sugary space dust. All Hands Lost and Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness brutalise Brill Building pop classicism. The Memories Of Wounds shares The Jesus And Mary Chain's dependence on snatches of trademark Phil Spector sounds amidst dirty guitar noise, the spoken word section echoing those desperate Ronettes dramatic interludes.
Lonely Hearts Beat As One is a narcoleptic Mazzy Star pastiche. And Run With The Hunted has an authentically lysergic, sixties Texas vibe, like something rare on the International Artists label.
This conveyorbelt of grade A source material represents a grounding in the greats, of whom ignorance is now inexcusable. But the question, for this and all today's well schooled indie bands, remains.
What next, with all your learning?

(11/9/11)