The Scotsman Sessions #444: The Yummy Fur
Welcome to the Scotsman Sessions, a series of short video performances from artists all around the country introduced by our critics. Here, ahead of the release of their new album Everybody Talks About the Weather, Glasgow’s The Yummy Fur perform their new track Wanda
The Yummy Fur were one of the most idiosyncratic bands to emerge from the crucible of Glasgow’s 90s indie scene. Mogwai, The Delgados and Bis may have made more trenchant commercial inroads but The Yummy Fur were exemplars of the irreverence and freedom of the time. Their talented merry-go-round of members included three future Franz Ferdinands - Alex Kapranos, Dino Bardot and ex-drummer Paul Thomson, who is part of the revived line-up alongside frontman John McKeown and guitarist Brian MacDougall.
The band originally split in 1999 with McKeown going on to form unabashed glam pop trio 1990s. The Yummy Fur first reformed in 2009 for sporadic gigging but emerging on the other side of the pandemic the desire to create new music took hold and the trio are now finally following up their second album with Everybody Talks About The Weather, a typically offbeat collection which collapses the years since 1998’s Sexy World.
“That album was decorated with lots of vintage analogue synthesisers,” remembers McKeown. “This time we wanted to strip it all back. These days we're quite a muscular beast and it felt right to try to capture some of that energy and brutality.”
Lyrically, McKeown has unleashed “a mad kaleidoscope of literary and film references” with songs inspired by the Mitford sisters, the Nemesis the Warlock comic book series, the emotional punch of Picasso’s Guernica, Susan Sontag, Byres Road and headphones.
“These are in many ways quite bleak times and nobody needs a 55-year-old man telling you how awful everything is when you're just trying to have a good time and get through this thing called life,” says McKeown. “This left me in a bit of a predicament: what to sing about? I started by just writing the very first thing that came into my head; a kind of automatic writing with imagery and concepts springing up unfiltered from the subconscious.”
McKeown describes their Scotsman Session song, Wanda, as a love letter to Barbara Loden, director and star of said 1970 film, who was dubbed the female Cassavetes. “Loden shot Wanda on a shoestring budget with very little outside help,” he says. “It’s an incredible portrait of a lonely housewife wandering through the landscape of coal mining country in Pennsylvania.”
The performance was filmed where the album was recorded - in the Washington Street studio run by musician/producer Chris McCrory. “It's a great big hub for artists of all disciplines working at the outer edges of the mainstream,” says McKeown. “There isn't a shop or pub for a million miles which helps cut down on both calories and distractions.”
This places The Yummy Fur back in the sort of vibrant creative melting pot from which they first emerged, not reliving glory days but attracting new fans “who have no nostalgic umbilical cord to the 90s. It's still nice to see the older folks at shows but, despite being in the older age bracket ourselves, it can be disheartening when the audience feels like a particularly unforgiving mirror. Onwards…”
Everybody Talks About the Weather is released by Upset the Rhythm on 25 September
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