Ballboy - Dreaming of flying in space

Retracing the history of Scottish indie-pop means digging through a treasure chest overflowing with precious hidden gems, sometimes forgotten, often simply overlooked. Among the "best kept secrets" of a music scene that is far too often underrated and overlooked are undoubtedly Gordon McIntyre's Ballboy, who to date have released five surprising and delightful albums, certainly not inferior to the work of similar but far more famous bands.

Ballboy formed in Edinburgh at the end of the '90s, when singer and guitarist Gordon McIntyre joined forces with bassist Nick Reynolds, keyboardist Katie Griffiths and drummer Gary Morgan. Their origins are about as far removed as can be imagined from the excesses and transgressions typical of rock mythology: as the story goes, McIntyre and Griffiths were simple schoolteachers, Reynolds was a nurse, and Morgan a sound technician. Indeed, there's very little of the rock-star swagger or transgression in the music made by the fledgling band either: an indie-pop firmly rooted in the C86/Sarah Records tradition, with a few nods to British folk, some psychedelic ripples that seem to recall Dean Wareham's Galaxie 500 and, through them, the sonic minimalism of the Velvet Underground, predominantly acoustic and easygoing atmospheres, lyrics that are dreamy but also surprisingly witty (and above all self-deprecating), with a typically Scottish streak of bitterness and melancholy that never tips into despair or nihilism, always reaching, one way or another, for a ray of sunshine and hope.

The band signed to SL Records, for whom they made a name for themselves by recording a series of four EPs. The first three, along with some unreleased material, were collected on the album Club Anthems, released in 2001, which, although made up mostly of previously released material, stands as the young Scottish band's first full-length release. The album, marked by a lovely cover photo and a very sparse booklet accompanied by hilarious liner notes (such as thanks to everyone who attended the band's shows, except for those who thought the gig sucked), is not easy to find these days, but it offers a delicious opportunity to discover the songs with which Gordon McIntyre's band took its first steps.

The collection opens with the delightful minimalist indie-pop of "Donald In The Bushes With A Bag Of Glue", a track with ironic, mocking lyrics (“The last time I saw you, you were lying in a bush with a bag of glue/ Now you’re baking cakes for middle-aged ladies, and you’re married to/ A good-looking girl who gets on well, with your family/ You’ve made your mother proud at last and I guess that’s good enough for me”). The second track, titled "A Day In Space", is also one of the album's masterpieces, a moving, intimate, yet also amusing reflection on the desire to fly into space, even just for an hour, even just half an hour, though, as the lyrics specify, a whole day would be even better! The track is almost psychedelic in its smooth, persuasive flow, and McIntyre's spoken word delivery is perfect for creating the dreamy, suspended atmosphere the song describes.

The theme of wanting to fly into the sky (“And I have wings with which to traverse oceans/ and I’ll take you with me/ upon my back”) returns on the third track, the slow and melancholy "Dumper Truck Racing", with acoustic guitar and little else accompanying Gordon McIntyre's emotional vocals. The following "Public Park" is far more lively, adopting a more solemn, percussive pace that at times recalls the Cure's "Plainsong", though it never abandons the lyrics' irony (“You have dogs instead of children/ You take long walks instead of spending time with your husband/ But if I had a husband like you/ I would take long walks too”).

Echoes of Belle and Sebastian can be heard in the crystalline, fun pop of the lovely "Essential Wear For Future Trips In Space" (once again on the theme of space travel), while "I Hate Scotland" is a bleak, grandiose spoken-word piece in which McIntyre takes aim at the way, in his view, young Scots are raised by their families to be unhappy. The following "One sailor was weaving" is upbeat and fun, with the usual mocking, self-deprecating lyrics ("I'm not the brightest hope, I'm not the shining light of my generation/ there's nothing in my heart"). After the delicate (if perhaps slightly syrupy) acoustic interlude of "Olympic Cyclist", comes the dreamy, psychedelic "Leave The Earth Behind You And Take A Walk In The Sunshine", perhaps the collection's second masterpiece, with its vaguely shoegaze atmospheres, its absorbing, nearly eight-minute guitar crescendo, and its melancholy lyrics that repeat, again and again, the crucial question: "Are you happy with your life?"

In the end, Club Anthems has the classic strengths and weaknesses of any compilation of previously released tracks: on one hand, it's a kind of greatest-hits set with very few weak spots; on the other, its nature comes at the cost of a certain unevenness that makes the record less cohesive and unified, occasionally leaving the listener slightly disoriented. And yet, within the grooves of this handful of songs, it's clear the band has talent to spare.

The chance for Gordon McIntyre and co. to fully express their talent came soon after: in 2002, again on SL Records, Ballboy released their true debut album, one that comes remarkably close to masterpiece status. A Guide For The Daylight Hours, produced by Grant MacNamara, is a wonderful work that combines gorgeous sounds with witty lyrics and - a nice touch, if one that's bound to be lost on download-only fans - brilliant artwork. The album's digipack is in fact a genuine gem of creativity and wit, designed by Glasgow artist David Shrigley, who has also worked with other musicians such as Malcolm Middleton and Jason Mraz. Some of Shrigley's illustrations inside the digipack are hilarious, like the photo of a stretch of dry leaves captioned "One day a big wind will come and...", or the unsettling image on the back cover, showing a sign fixed to a lamppost warning whoever reads it that, at that very moment, someone is photographing them from one of the windows across the street, and will use the photo to make a doll with which to play strange, perverse games.

From a purely musical standpoint too, A Guide For The Daylight Hours doesn't disappoint: the album opens with the lively, fun "Avant-garde Music", a heated, ironic tirade against a woman who works in a record shop (“The girl who works in the record shop/ she says that I am not avant-garde enough/ well so what/ she only works in a record shop/ and I don’t give a fuck what she says or she thinks about me”). The rhythm is frantic, while Gordon McIntyre's languid, almost bored vocal delivery seems to openly nod to Dean Wareham and his Galaxie 500. After the shoegaze atmospheres of the gorgeous, driving second track, "Where Do The Nights Of Sleep Go To When They Do Not Come To Me?", and the breezy pop of the witty "You Can't Spend Your Whole Life Hanging Around With Arseholes", we arrive at the brilliant "I Wonder If You're Drunk Enough To Sleep With Me Tonight", an unusual example of crystalline, Belle and Sebastian-style indie-pop paired with lyrics that are simply disarming in the self-deprecation with which they describe the romantic approach of a chronically insecure man toward the object of his desires (“A fear of failure won’t hold me back from hoping someday you’ll be mine/ … / and I will write my name upon you, take you home to bed and keep you warm/ through the darkest night/ and I wonder if you’re drunk enough/ to sleep with me tonight”). Irony is poured on just as generously on the following, very short, acoustic and relaxing track, given the gloriously shameless title "I Lost You But I Found Country Music".

The sixth track, "A Europewide Search For Love", is a lovely one, with an elegant, airy melody enriched by Caroline Evens and Pete Harvey's strings, while the following "Something's Going To Happen Soon" is perfect guitar-driven indie-pop for broken hearts content to watch the woman of their dreams from afar ("And no-one will ever love you/ as much as I do"). Among the remaining tracks, also worth noting is the mocking "Sex Is Boring", already featured on Club Anthems, with yet another sharp, ironic set of lyrics (“Take me back to your room/ tie me up and strip me naked/ and lie me on your floor/ and then you’ll see that sex is boring with me”).

All in all, A Guide For The Daylight Hours is an excellent work, with a tracklist that never falters and plenty of irony seasoning a thoroughly delicious dish. Perhaps its only flaw is that, despite the consistently high quality of the songs, it probably lacks a standout track capable of leaving an indelible mark and turning a wonderful album into a full-blown masterpiece. These are, however, quibbles that do little to diminish the great worth of a beautiful, timeless work that, as is so often sadly the case, very few people ever noticed. Gordon McIntyre's band thus became a hidden gem available only to a lucky few, among whom must surely be counted the famous John Peel, who, smitten with the Scottish band, invited them in for some of his legendary Peel Sessions.

Ballboy's new album came out in 2003, but it's quite different from its predecessors. Much sparer and more stripped-down, the record, titled The Sash My Father Wore And Other Stories, is in effect a genuine Gordon McIntyre solo work, played mostly on acoustic guitar with just the added support of Caroline Evens and Pete Harvey's strings. The leap is abrupt: where A Guide For The Daylight Hours was a rich, multifaceted record, almost baroque in places, The Sash My Father Wore And Other Stories is a work stripped right down to the bone, with clearly folk-derived songs that are intense and moving, but also too similar to one another and, ultimately, at times even a little dull. The album's artwork is once again by David Shrigley, but it too is extremely spare, with a small stylized drawing illustrating the cover and two completely blank pages adorning (so to speak) the meagre four-page booklet. The lyrics have shed the mocking irony that marked the previous records, slipping instead into a mournful, introspective twilight of the soul.

It's hard to single out a track that stands apart from the others or stands out for particular beauty - perhaps the achingly elegant "I Gave Up My Eyes To A Man Who Was Blind", which tells of a love that could never be (“And all I have left, is the heart in my chest/ and I’d give it to you, if I thought you’d be impressed/ but what would you do, with a heart split in two/ and a heart that won’t work, is of no use to you”), or the gorgeous, (almost) electric sixth track titled "You Should Fall In Love With Me", with lyrics that are melancholy but not depressive, deeply steeped in a yearning desire to live, to love, and to warm oneself in the rising sun (“The sun is shining in the east/ it means the summer is here/ and I stretch out beneath the sky/ injured but not hurt/ dying but not dead/ and the cemetery will get me in the end/ but the cemetery’s not ready for me yet”). Also worth mentioning is the thoroughly lighthearted love story between two cannibals (!) told on the eighth track, "Kiss Me, Hold Me And Eat Me", quite clearly inspired by the childlike, playful minimalism of Jonathan Richman.

The collection also makes room for a couple of interesting covers: a beautiful version of "Tell Me", from Galaxie 500's second album (clear confirmation of Dean Wareham's band's influence on Gordon McIntyre and co.), and a surprising take on Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The Usa", rendered practically unrecognisable in an acoustic version that calling "stripped-down" would be a serious understatement. By the end of the journey, what remains is an alternation of light and shade and the impression of great potential exploited only in flashes: The Sash My Father Wore And Other Stories is a thoroughly dignified work that only truly takes off in patches, leaving one slightly puzzled and concerned about the future of Gordon McIntyre's band.

Fortunately, the doubts raised by Ballboy's third album last only a year: in 2004, in fact, the Scottish group returns at full strength and in fine form for what, as you can tell from the very first notes, will be another small masterpiece. There have been a few small but significant changes to the band's line-up: Katie Griffiths left to focus on family life and was replaced by the excellent Alexa Morrison on piano and keyboards. On violin we find Meggan Reid, while the record is co-produced by the band together with Michael Bannister. Something has also changed with regard to the album's artwork: David Shrigley has been replaced by Elizabeth McLean, while the photographs illustrating the booklet are by Gordon McIntyre himself. The band pulling back together has clearly worked wonders for its internal chemistry, stringing together ten tracks without a single misstep: the only disappointment is a slight shortage of the irresistible irony of A Guide For The Daylight Hours, but the band will make up for that later on.

The Royal Theatre opens straight away with one of its masterpieces: the gorgeous guitar pop of "Let's Fall In Love And Run Away From Here", in which a McIntyre back in splendid form, both vocally and in terms of songwriting, tells a small story from the city's underbelly, with a strip-club patron fantasising about pulling a beautiful Eastern European dancer away from her squalid performances to run off together towards a better future, until his dream of love shatters at the bottom of yet another glass, bringing him crashing back to bitter reality (“Finish up my last drink/ finish what I came for/ and lift my head up from my chest/ head into the darkness/ I’ll be back tomorrow/ another day another dance”). Also very fine is the upbeat second track, with the simply brilliant title "I Don't Have Time To Stand Here With You Fighting About The Size Of My Dick", while Belle and Sebastian seem to peek through on the magnificent "The Art Of Kissing", enriched by Alexa Morrison's backing vocals and marked by a melancholy lyric that clashes strangely with the melody's sunny disposition (“You taught me how to love/ and you taught me how to hide it/ …/ and now, you’re in the garden in the rain/ and your skin’s so wet it’s like you’ll never be dry again/ and you’ll never be young again”). The album's second gem probably comes with the fresh, lively indie-pop of the fourth track, titled - once again brilliantly - "There Are Only Inches Between Us, But There Might As Well Be Mountains And Trees".

"We Are Past Our Dancing Days" is instead a pleasant interlude, enriched by the poignant notes of Meggan Reid's violin, which lend the track pleasingly folky colours, while with the unrestrained guitar pop of "I Died For Love" and "Time Out Duide" it's almost impossible to stop your foot tapping along to the rhythm. The collection's third peak undoubtedly comes with the psychedelia of the eighth track, the breakneck "The Ghosts Of New Orleans". The album glides elegantly towards its close with "Shallow Footprints In The Snow", a romantic, seductive ballad telling of a love lost in snow falling through the night (“And you go, shallow footprints in the snow/ leave the darkness in this hole/ I watch until you go/ I wonder if you know”). The curtain falls for good with the soft, enveloping shoegaze atmospheres of "Now You Can Be Good To Yourself At Home".

In short, The Royal Theatre is an essential record for any indie-pop fan, a veritable treasure chest overflowing with precious gems. Here too, predictably, hardly anyone notices, and the Scottish group falls into an obscurity that, helped along by McIntyre and co.'s decidedly relaxed, far-from-commercial approach, lasts a full four years.

Ballboy's next record, titled I Worked On The Ships, came out in 2008 on the tiny Pony Proof Records: the band's line-up is practically unchanged, while the music takes on more folky, melodic and delicately melancholy tones. Gordon McIntyre's band has definitively matured: the boisterous jokes and irony of the past are more sharply focused, as is the melodic construction of the songs and the awareness of their own ability to write magnificent, timeless tunes. The album opens with the sweet notes of "The Guide To The Short Wave Radio", a love ballad introduced by the cello of the returning Pete Harvey (“So kiss me in the night/ dismantle my whole life/ trade private kisses in a public place/ with a secret smile upon our face”). The romantic theme is confirmed by the collection's second track, probably also its masterpiece, the smooth, extremely delicate "Songs For Kylie", which, in a delightfully anachronistic way, tells of songs kept on a Tdk cassette and seems to invoke love as the only cure to change one's life before it's too late ("Before the desert comes/ you can change your mind"). The song is truly superb, perhaps the most intense the Scottish band has ever recorded, with Alexa Morrison's piano well to the fore and Gordon McIntyre's melancholy voice lending weight and intensity to the minimal tale told in the lyrics. Once again, Ballboy prove themselves to be wonderful chroniclers of small things, painters of watercolours for a village fête, perfectly ordinary people with the gift of writing beautiful songs. A melancholy female figure returns in the third track too, the livelier "Cicily", while the following "Godzilla Vs The Island Of Manhattan (With You And I Somewhere In-Between)" brings back the band's proverbial irony to surprise and entertain, as its crystalline indie-pop describes the devastating effects of Godzilla's attack on the island of Manhattan, with the song's unfortunate protagonists trying to save their own skins!

Simply hilarious are the lyrics of the following "Disney Ice Parade", performed by McIntyre alone with the help of ukulele and harmonica (“You left your notes on lesbian sex/ on the fishtank in the hall/ it took me all afternoon/ to read them all/ I learned more in that day/ than I’ve ever learned before/ I don’t think you and I/ should go clubbing anymore/ last night your mother called to say/ your father’s run away/ with the man who plays the polar bear/ in Disney’s Ice Parade”). After the fine crescendo of "A Relatively Famous Victory", once again enriched by Pete Harvey's cello, the next track, titled "Empty Throats", has us decidedly flying back among the stars of Galaxie 500, yet another confirmation of McIntyre and co.'s passion for Dean Wareham's band. The desire to fly returns in the title of the lovely "Above The Clouds The Sun Is Always Shining" and in the even more effective "We Can Leap Buildings And Rivers, But Really We Just Want To Fly", sweet, sunny and carefree, surely one of the album's best tracks, which closes in style with the excellent "Picture Show" and "Absent Friends".

I Worked On The Ships is probably Ballboy's masterpiece, the quintessential perfect record, a true compendium of the art of a band that, with maturity, has reached full awareness of its own abilities and a songwriting skill that surprises and convinces. And yet even a record of such beauty, yet again, passes completely unnoticed.

Ballboy will never become famous, that much is now certain, but the fact doesn't seem to trouble the sleep of the Edinburgh quartet, who continue to paint their delightful little sketches from the furthest provinces of the empire. In 2009 Gordon McIntyre decided to devote himself to alternative projects: after recording the soundtrack for a theatrical production called "Midsummer", the singer released an album on Pony Proof titled The Universe For Beginners under the name ++Money Can't Buy Music, a side project in collaboration with Swedish singer Maja Mangard, described on the fledgling band's Myspace page as a work of "electronic folk pop", with the (self-deprecating, as ever) caveat that the pair have no idea where the band is headed, but know perfectly well how to get there. Among the sources of inspiration cited by the newborn duo are, among others, Galaxie 500 (no surprises there), Stereolab, New Order, My Bloody Valentine and Mercury Rev.

Ballboy's story, for now, ends here, with an extremely positive tally of five albums that have become cult objects for a small circle of devotees. The Scottish band will probably never be mentioned in the history books of rock, is unlikely to win over commercial audiences or fill the glossy pages of music magazines. And yet Gordon McIntyre and co. don't seem to mind all that much, too focused on the things that really matter in life: making music, telling funny and romantic stories and, above all, dreaming of flying through space.

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