THE BOY WHO TRAPPED THE SUN
home ep
Release Date: 01/03/2010
5 track 10" on chess club. the boy who trapped the sun, funnily enough, isn't his real name. colin macleod - for it is he - is a charismatic singer-songwriter from the isle of lewis, who releases his second ep, 'home', through chess club. like icarus himself - the mythic figure colin's moniker is based on - the boy flew dangerously close to the sun, before he eventually trapped it. he was discovered swinging round the rafters of an aberdeen bar, dishing out deep purple covers and, he says, "generally acting like an arse." having smashed his guitar and knocked himself unconscious on stage, macleod set to cleaning up both the broken instrument and his act. thus the boy jacked in his job as a salmon fisherman and moved to london; to become a solo artist, and an adult. 'home', then, is a coming of age record with a difference - for having journeyed to london to broaden his horizons, the boy spent two years writing about the land he'd left behind. the title track acutely chronicles such a transition, cross-pollinating the gaelic lure of the isle of lewis with the clinging claustrophobia of the cosmopolitan. its brooding, looped riff and pulsing beat owes as big a debt to a love for jay z as it does the folk-pop of nick drake and bon iver. macleod is more than the latest in the line of earnest singer-songwriters. his songs are strange, slightly sinister even, particularly on the 'autobiographical ghost story' 'in the dark'. elsewhere, ed harcourt-co-write 'lying to get on your good side' is almost vaudevillian in its menace, and sets the scene for an album full of songs about 'girls who will know who they are when they hear it.' being a gentleman, he won't name names, but he will let the odd story slip: see, for instance, the time where he was so drunk that a girlfriend's journey-home-lecturing saw him flee from her into the woods, only to wake up, fall off and bloody himself on 'a very big wall.' the search party didn't find him, but his then-girlfriend's mother did, sleeping quite soundly on her doorstep. ask him nicely and he'll show you the scars, or listen to the record, and hear them for yourself. mirroring the themes of 'home', macleod has recently split a six-night residency between glasgow's king tut's and london's the elgin. he co-produced his forthcoming record in london, following early, snowy sessions in stornoway involving a computer wired to a car engine. the boy played all the instruments himself, except for the strings and female vocals - but not for want of trying.
| 10 code: cc027 | 5.99 GBP |
