Man, this is gonna be good,  it does present a challenge in previewing the show however;  attempting not to overuse the word “scuzzy.”

All three bands do channel the scuzz though, and all three have a seam of late 80s/early 90s US stuff running through them, the good stuff that is…

Glasgow-based PAWS are one of the best live bands I’ve seen recently;  noisy, distorted, scuz..(damn), exciting…I could go on.  With more than a nod to Dinosaur Jr/The Pixies, their split single on Gerry Loves Records with Lady North last year was/is majestic.  If you pay any attention to those Scottish music scene “tips for 2012″ lists, you’ll have noticed their name popping up on a lot of them.  Here they are:

Frighteningly young Stonehaven two-piece DOLFiNZ have also been gaining the attention of people who spraff on about music on the internet, and with good reason.  Lo-fi, scuz..(f**k), garagey pop is what they do, and a single on Aberdeen’s Tuff Wax label (see below) lets us hear how they do it.  In my mind, if it actually was the early 90s and PAWS were on Sub Pop, DOLFiNZ would be on K Records.  It’s not and they’re not though, so you’ll have to make do with a new cassette they’ll have available at the show.  Yes, a cassette.

Oh, and as if that’s not enough, both bands will feature on a forthcoming split 12″ on Edinburgh’s excellent Song, By Toad Records…

Finally, Aberdeen’s Min Diesel are one of the city’s underground gems;  raw, ramshackle, grungy, and yes, scuzzy (I gave up), they don’t get as much coverage as they deserve.  Let’s put a stop to that.  Here’s a new song:

Love Disease by Min Diesel

See you there then…

DOLFiNZ

A lot of you will have been aware of the Save BBC Introducing in Scotland Campaign; set up by The PopCop and others in the face of proposed BBC cuts which threaten Ally McRae’s hugely important Radio 1 show, the resulting petition gained over 7000 signatures, one of whom was MSP Joan MacAlpine.

MacAlpine then took the campaign to Holyrood, leading the debate which can be seen below.  It’s great to see this kind of thing being talked about in the Scottish Parliament, and from a local point of view, utterly, utterly surreal to hear The Xcerts, Driveblind and Drummonds being mentioned.  That’s right, Drummonds got namechecked in parliament.  Amazing.

Saturday 14 January | Peacock Visual Arts | 7.30pm | £11.10 (From One Up)
Steven Severin – Vampyr
Siouxsie & The Banshees’ founder member soundtracks a silent film. Info

Saturday 21 January | Cafe Drummonds | 8pm | £6  Tickets
The Xcerts, Flood of Red, Duke
“Xciled” (heh) Aberdonian indie band return home

Saturday 21 January | The Tunnels | 8pm | £12  Tickets 
The Black Daliah Murder, Skeletonwitch, Fleshgod Apocalypse
“Face-melting” death metal from Michigan 

Sunday 22 January | The Lemon Tree | 7.30pm | £15  Tickets
The Maccabees, Trailer Trash Tracys
London indie types tour their new album 

Monday 23 January | The Tunnels | 7.30pm | £5  Tickets
Tubelord, Olympians, Cameo Colours, You And What We Are
Synthy, poppy, mathy, rocky outfit from Kingston Upon Thames headline

Friday 27 January | Cafe Drummonds | 8pm | £4
Amy Sawers
Welcome headline show for local garage/country/rock/everything else-influenced singer & band

Saturday 28 January | The Tunnels | 9pm | £? (Tickets in One Up)
Skank
Nineties house night reunion with guest DJ/chef Michael Kilkie

Thursday 2 February | Cafe Drummonds | 8.30pm  | £5
Paws, DOLFiNZ, Min Diesel
Double header from two of Scotland’s most exciting new noisy indie bands

Friday 3 February | The Lemon Tree | 7.30pm | £8  Tickets
Rachel Sermanni
Hotly-tipped Scottish folkster/singer-songwriter (pictured below)

Thursday 9 February | The Tunnels | 7.30pm | £6  Tickets
Aerials Up, Stanley, Brown Bear & The Bandits, Margaret Finlayson
Melodic, string-laden Glasgow outfit & great support

Tuesday 14 February | The Tunnels | 8pm | £6  Tickets
Pulled Apart By Horses, The Computers
Raucous Leeds post-hardcore band headline

Tuesday 14 February | AECC | 7pm | £42.50 (!)  Tickets
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
That guy who used to be in that band tours his album 

Hercules Moments has been a fine addition to the Aberdeen blogosphere (I know, I know), commendable not only for having a moniker that’s blissfully free of the words “Granite”, “The ‘Deen” (ugh) or, worst of all, “ABZ”  but for the fact that for the second year on the bounce they’re releasing a free sampler of music from the city.

Available to download from their site on Friday, this year’s effort includes stuff by The Xcerts, The Little Kicks, The Deportees, Seas, Starry, Glassman, Carson Wells, The Shakedown Project, Turning 13, Min Diesel, Katerwaul, Outbox and Foxhunting.  Cool.

To celebrate, they’re having a shindig at Drummonds with live sets from the superbly noisy Katerwaul and pop-rockers Outbox alongside the return of excellent Americana-tinged outfit The Deportees and Mr Steven Milne doing his solo thing.  Well worth supporting so they can keep on doing what they’re doing…

A confession:  I’ve  felt the need to give that little bit more to charity since the time I was given a ticket to a football match featuring some of the world’s best players a few years ago.  The game was to raise funds to help with the aftermath of a major disaster.  The ticket I was given was complimentary.  I mean, it’s pretty bad that there were even comps available for such a thing, but not nearly as bad as the fact that I accepted it and merrily went along, cursorily chucking a few coins into a bucket on the way in.  What a dick.  It still rankles. Ugh.

Anyway, here’s another chance for me to help try and offset this, and for us all to do something in the name of an incredibly good cause, with the added bonus being we get to run round some of the city’s music venues like a daftie.  Yup, it’s Oxjam time again.

This year’s event  kicks-off at 2pm in Kilau, with acoustic performances from Tim Courtney, Steven Milne, Craig Henderson and Lauren Hart & Paul.  This part’s free, but you’d never go to a charity thing without paying, right?  Ugh.

Which is why we”ll all be buying a wristband for the main part of the event, some cracking bands are on offer from 7pm, and some potentially difficult decisions will need to be made with regard to clashes, but hey, that’s always going to happen at these things.  Right, here’s what’s happening (deep breath):  The Tunnels has a hip-hop, erm, flava with the live debut from French-voiced, Aberdeen-based, 11-piece (!) Taco and The Sharpies (whom we’ve recently championed on these pages) and Edinburgh’s excellent, and distinctly Scottish Stanley Odd.

There’s a great, three-pronged noise attack at Snafu with the returning Katerwaul, alongside Carson Wells and Min Diesel, Drummonds has the ever-solid indie-pop sounds of The Little Kicks and Stanley, while The Blue Lamp goes down the folk and blues route with veterans The Lorelei and Gerry Jablonski.  Then, after all that, it’s everyone back to The Tunnels for an after-party.  Phew.  Full line-ups in the poster below.  Go.

Friday 14 October | Cafe Drummonds | 7.30pm | £6 | Tickets
Copy Haho, The Douglas Firs, Good Police
16 miles- from-hometown show by Stonehaven indie-popsters

Friday 14 October | Snafu | 11pm | £10 | Tickets
The 2 Bears, Joe Goddard, Raf Daddy
Joe Hot Chip’s housey side project

Saturday 15 October | The Lemon Tree | 7.30pm | £13 | Tickets
Aidan Moffat & Bill Wells
Former Arab Strapper & friend tour one of the albums of the year (pic below)

Wednesday 19 October | The Tunnels | 8pm | £10 | Tickets
Sons & Daughters, Peggy Sue
Opening night of Clash magazine tour feat. the Glasgow indie outfit

Wednesday 19 October | Cafe Drummonds | 8pm | £5 | Tickets
French Wives
Excellent Glasgow indie-pop types

Saturday 22 October | Various venues | 7pm | £7 | Tickets
Oxjam Aberdeen
Annual multi-venue event feat. some superb local bands. More info here

Monday 24 October | Music Hall | 6.30pm | £14.85 | Tickets
Noah and the Whale
Folk-popsters play show to be broadcast live on BBC Radio 1

Wednesday 26 October | The Tunnels | 7.30pm | £9 | Tickets
Scroobius Pip, B Dolan
Rapper tours his solo album

Friday 28-Sunday 30 October | Peacock Visual Arts | Various times | £22 weekend/£9 Fri/£10Sat/Sun | Tickets
IMP Present Sound@Peacock Visual Arts
Excellent-looking weekend of new music. More info here

Friday 28 October | The Tunnels | 7.30pm | £7.50 | Tickets
The Birthday Suit, Deportees, The Winter Tradition
Idlewild’s Rod Jones’ new band & great support

Saturday 29 October |The Lemon Tree | 7.30pm | £15.50 | Tickets
Roddy Woomble
More Idlewild-ery as Woomble stops-off on his UK tour

Monday 31 October | The Lemon Tree | 7.30pm | £14 | Tickets
King Creosote, Kid Canaveral
Mercury-nominated Fifer & superb support

(Don’t forget to pop into One Up Records, where there may well be cheaper tickets available for some of these shows)

It’s been a long journey, my fellow weary musical travellers, on a road equally populated by the good and, quite frankly, the utterly awful.  Yes, what has seemed, at times, to be the most drawn-out battle-of-the-bands competition ever finally reaches its conclusion on Friday.  I suppose it’s admirable that after the cancellation of the Northern Lights Festival (stage-time at which were to be the original prizes for this event), that the already-in-progress competition didn’t die on its arse and was allowed to continue, with a cash prize being put up for the eventual winners.

Whatever your opinion on these things, and the snidey comments and petted lips they can cause (I’m not suggesting this was the case here, just an observation), what we’re left with after all this musical whittling is a pretty good line-up for the final, and the fact that, hopefully, punters and promoters alike have discovered some new local bands along the way.

So (drumroll), your finalists are:  excellent weirdo popsters Stanley, folk/blues-tinged siblings-and-band Brothers Reid, powerful, rocky outfit Eric Euan, the garage-influenced Amy Sawers and cohorts (pictured below), Drummonds ska night favourites Willie G Trio and singer-songwriter Cara Mitchell.

Good luck to them all.  There better be one of those oversized cardboard cheques for the winner…

This is going to be great. They’ve been around a while have Stanley, and they’re easily one of the finest bands from this part of the world; think strange, beautiful pop music in the vein of Scott Walker/Neil Hannon/Jarvis Cocker and you’re in the right area. This is the launch of new single “Sandwiches and Tea” (via Kittiwake Records) ahead of their long-awaited, long-in-production long-player which is due later this year. The band also play instore at One-Up Records at 4pm the same day where you can pick up one of 50 limited discs for a quid which in turn gets you into the show for only £2. That, my wee friends, is an utter bargain. Here’s what the single sounds like (nice video too):

Click here to get your mitts on one

There may well be some other shows added too, here’s what it gets you in to so far (deep breath):

Max Raptor – 19 May

The Winter Tradition – 23 May

Penguins Kill Polar Bears – 27 May

Fatherson – 29 May

Jonah Matranga – 31 May & 1 June

All Mankind – 3 May

Trapped in Kansas – 6 June

Lucy Rose – 8 June

Cats and Cats and Cats – 9 June

Laki Mera – 16 June

Suspire – 18 June

Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou – 28 June

The Fire & I – 30 June

Cults – 30 Aug

Wow. Keep an eye on our listings or the AGP Facebook Page for full line-ups. Can I say “wow” again? I think I should. Wow.