Café Disco

Don’t you just love it when a new band sounds so promising that you feel compelled to tell them by email how wonderful they are and invite yourself along to film them at their next rehearsal?

I rarely devote a post to one band, not because I have an insatiable preference for writing idiosyncratic features about the Scottish music scene, but because approximately 0.05% of the new songs I listen to genuinely excite me. When I find that something special, though, sharing it with you is by far the most satisfying part of this blogging malarkey.

Two days ago, I was reading the brilliant The Daily Dose, who published a Q&A with a Scottish band I’d never heard of called Café Disco. They only started gigging last month after forming in March and, so far, the sum total of their recorded output is a 62-second clip on Facebook of their debut single Persona, due for release in October.

The members of the band are: bass-playing frontman Fraser Welsh, 26, from Irvine; 18-year-old Biggar twins Paul Swinton and Rachael Swinton on guitars; and drummer Clare Gallacher, 18, from Glasgow. Having spent a couple of hours with them, I can say they’re lovely folks too.

All four are enrolled at the Academy of Music & Sound in Glasgow, which is where they formed Café Disco (named after an episode of the American version of The Office) and where I stopped by today to film them playing Terra Nova, which contains the peachiest guitar riff I’ve heard in ages.

The song reminds me of a cross between The Strokes and another American band (now defunct) called Hockey Night. Café Disco would be the first to admit they’re not the finished article, but they’ve got a bright future ahead of them so give them your support. - The Pop Cop

‘We love nice melodies, we are all fans of Jimmy Eat World'

Café Disco. What’s that then? Are we on the brink of a revolution in clubbing/dining?
Actually, it’s an excellent pop-rock four-piece from Scotland’s west coast, although they have said that the band ‘is actually just a way in which we hope that one day we’ll be able to fund our burgeoning careers in the catering industry.’

We salute a band with creative ambition. That’s good forward planning. Seriously, though?
‘It was a nightmare trying to come up with a name but then as luck would have it Clare [Gallacher, drums] and Paul [Swinton, guitar] independently watched the ‘Café Disco’ episode of The Office one night, and when we next met up and were spit-balling names again, that was one that we all liked.’

Fair enough. What do they sound like then? You’re not really giving much away with this ‘pop-rock’
We’re not, but that’s because they’re a fairly broad-ranging band – great guitar hooks courtesy of Paul and twin sister Rachel; tight, driving drums from Clare, with singer Fraser Welsh’s charming Irvine brogue weaving through it all. ‘We are not afraid of pop,’ they say. ‘We love nice melodies, we are all fans of Jimmy Eat World, as they’ve got great pop melodies which is something we look to convey in our music. We like the balance of something quite rocking that you can still sing along to.’

Sounds good. Where can I see them?
‘Just now, because we’re quite new, we’re just trying to play live, free gigs, work on our own stagecraft type of thing,’ says Fraser. ‘We’re doing that just for ourselves at the moment, then in October we’ve got a single launch, so we’ll take a break after playing these shows, then focus on getting as many people along to gigs as possible.’ - The List