Ette - Homemade Lemonade (2016)

Since the advent of Postcard Records and its core roster of bands Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera Scotland, and Glasgow in particular, has been a fount of extraordinary pop music. Scottish bands seem to have an unquenchable fascination with pop history, but their approaches are tempered with enough irreverence to interpret those influences in a way that makes the end result unmistakably their own. The Pastels, BMX Bandits, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Teenage Fanclub, Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura each group conveys an unabashed sense of joy as if the mere opportunity to make music is its own reward. Lack of technical ability has never been a barrier to entry; some of Scottish rock’s landmark records are the direct result of enthusiasm trumping formal skill. Orange Juice’s epochal debut single, “Falling and Laughing,” applied punk’s dilettante amateurism to a bubblegum melody; the Jesus and Mary Chain’s equally game-changing Psychocandy took the band’s affection for Phil Spector girl groups and barraged it with a hailstorm of ear-splitting feedback.

Ette’s existence is as much a surprise to Easton as anyone. Having returned to Glasgow recently after five years in Edinburgh, she had a cluster of new songs that seemed too personal and idiosyncratic for TeenCanteen’s comparatively uncomplicated (and diplomatically constructed) approach to pop. BMX Bandits linchpin Duglas Stewart a long-time friend and supporter recommended she connect with Kane. The result is Homemade Lemonade, an album that was birthed in a mere five days at Kane’s own studio using a significant number of synthesizers and, in Easton’s estimation, a “psychedelic” aura. It flits from the drum-machine-assisted balladry of “Bird in the Sky” to the minimalist disco of “Heaven Knows” to a closing track that deserves to become a new holiday standard, “Spending Every Christmas Day with My Boy.”

TRACKLIST

01. Attack Of The Glam Soul Cheerleaders (parts 1 & 2)
02. Bonfire (feat. Leroy 'Shines' Moncrieffe)
03. Bird In The Sky
04. I Hate You Song
05. Fireworks
06. Heaven Knows
07. My Mother Says
08. Birthdays (album version)
09. Bones
10. Spending Every Christmas Day With My Boy