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SMALL TOWN BOREDOM

Currently residing in Paisley, Scotland, and recording in a cramped attic apartment, Small Town Boredom’s Fraser McGowan & Colin Morrison record melancholic lo-fi songs for those quiet winter nights spent alone.

Small Town Boredom released their debut album Autumn Might Have Hope as a vinyl-only LP on The Remains Of My Estate in late 2007. The unwavering band and label ethos 'to make something of beauty' meant that the record was released as a vinyl-only LP, meaning that only minimal promotion was achieved.

Their sound is slow and understated but beautifully fragile, forging outsider-pop melodies through brittle yet warm acoustic arrangements and various lo-fi production techniques, interspersed with subtle field recordings & effects. The delicate musicality of the instrumentation is underpinned by dark, confessional & deeply personal lyrics, sung with uniquely heavy-hearted vocals which have been described by one critic as 'exuding a kind of lethargy of broken dreams'.

The pervading mood of the record was one of oppressively heavy melancholia, and, clocking in at just under an hour the album provides a challenging listen when heard in one go, or as Fraser has described it, "...it's fucking relentless". Autumn Might Have Hope continues to garner critical acclaim however, and a small yet fiercely protective following.

After the album's release the personal themes which permeate through the songs inevitably found their breaking point within the band; something had to give. Through managing the fall-out of alcoholism and subsequent hospitalisation, fraught nerves and broken relationships they confronted their own self-doubt, even with their own recordings. There followed Small Town Boredom's most reflective period so far. Through constant travel & different recording locations they were to spend the next year slowly crafting, recording & rediscovering a longing for music.

Notes From The Infirmary is now available.

+ TROME RELEASES +

+ ARTIST LINKS +

www.myspace.com/learnaboutboredom

+ RESOURCES AND PODCASTS +

Dylan and The Mule podcast

+ INTERVIEWS AND ARTICLES +

Record-Play.net article

Under The Radar (The Scotsman) - article and interview with Fraser McGowan #1

Under The Radar (The Scotsman) - article and interview with Fraser McGowan #2

Song By Toad article

Sonic Reverie - interview with Fraser McGowan

+ PHOTOGRAPHS +

White Cart Water from Small Town Boredom on Vimeo.
Footage shot by the band.

+ SELECTED OTHER RELEASES +

'Tomorrow, When You Go' EP
CD-R, Acoustic Autumn 2002
out of print

'For Only The Chosen Will Love' EP
CD-R, Keep Recordings 2005
out of print

+ OTHER REVIEWS +

SMALL TOWN BOREDOM - 'FOR ONLY THE CHOSEN WILL LOVE' CD-R EP

Keep goes international with the debut EP by Scotland's Small Town Boredom. This is an excellent collection of singer/songwriter style tracks with some instrumentals thrown in to mix things up. "Sorry (for the Setting Room)" is the real stand-out here. Lightly strummed electric guitar is backed by soft drumming, and a generous helping of reverb makes this song breathe the night air. This is homerecorded pop music at its best. There's a dark element happening here that keeps this song from coming off as trite. It's well done, especially when both members trade-off on vocals during the first verse. I feel like I'm watching a funeral procession when they sing, "Have you ever touched the hand of God? Do you believe in fate?" Excellent. The seven minute "Leaving Priesthill" feels like a journey through rural Scotland while the morning fog is still thick. The first part of this song is a sprawling instrumental based around casio drums and empyrean guitars. It unfolds slowly as you climb the rolling green hills. It's very well crafted. The second part is a quiet guitar/vocal affair. It's as if they pulled out their guitars and started playing as soon as they reached the top of the highest hill in Scotland. It feels terrene. The opener, "I Live Alone, Behind the Churchyard," is also quite good. Subtle percussion and delicate strings add to the melancholy of the song. Good stuff.
7/10 - Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis

Scottish balladeers Small Town Boredom's EP, "For Only The Chosen Will Love", evokes the downtempo majesty of Low and early Leonard Cohen (before he discovered synthesizers and his work got so brittle). Clocking in at under 20 minutes, the CD's hushed vocals, delicate guitars and buried samples fashion a stark aural urgency and general serene desolation that hold up from song to song. On the first track, "I Live Here Alone, Behind The Churchyard", a brief sample and keyboard flourish lead to a sparse arpeggiated guitar part that could have come right off of Songs of Love and Hate. The audible string noise and muffled vocals on "Sorry (For the Setting Room)" create a gnawing tension that's nicely contrasted by the pleasant vocal melody. Small Town Boredom breaks it up a bit with "After the Harvest, I'll Still Remember You" by employing a drum machine, burbling keyboards and a prominent bass melody, sounding a bit like the Beta Band slowed to a crawl. For such a quiet album it boasts a number of interesting sonic touches which, coupled with its thematic heartbreak, make "For Only The Chosen Will Love" a fine headphone experience. - Jon Rooney, Blue Mag

Indie label Keep Recordings have a great limited edition CD by a little band called Small Town Boredom from Scotland. The tunes are always very subtle and never hard on the ears. Earnest vocals emanate from the sparse arrangements and whisper of secrets and intimacy. Odd fades of samples and effects speckle the six-song EP of lo-fi apartment folk. “To Watch the Blossom Fall” is a one-minute number with a soaring acoustic guitar part—most couldn’t get away with such sparseness but somehow Small Town Boredom are able to have a huge memorable sound without relying on a zillion multi-layered tracks. The packaged CD also contains a unique Polaroid to further the notion that this is art from beginning to end. Truly a slow-down record that doesn’t feel that pace is as important as melodic desolation and inventive recording techniques. This is all aces. - J-Sin, smother.net

Scotland’s Small Town Boredom is two people: Fraser McGowan and Colin Morrison. Recording their music in a cramped attic apartment, the musicians somehow convey a deep-seeded emotional power to these six melancholy and moody songs. With lush production and hushed vocals that lend the songs a stark yet textured feel, each track is powerful in its quiet, intense in its solemnity.
“I Live Here Alone, Behind the Churchyard” starts things off quietly but impressively. Light guitar and keyboards provide the melancholy and dreamy feel of the album, and the vocals are sung in a hushed, moody manner that feels like it could be played in a churchyard. It leads into perhaps the most impressive song here, the short but sweet instrumental “To Watch the Blossom Fall.” With nearly perfect acoustic guitar, it’s a perfect interlude.
Things take a more intense feel on the drifting “Sorry (for the Sitting Room).” While still moving at a slow and introspective pace, the lyrics and instrumentation add greater emphasis to the song, as they sing: “You can go anywhere in your mind / but how much can you take? / Have you ever touched the hand of God? / Do you believe in fate?” The drums on the seven-minute “Leaving Priesthill” give the song an electronic feel, and keyboard atmospherics mix with the guitars for perhaps the most unique song on the album. Instrumentation is most important on this track, even as it manages to convey the same amount of stark moodiness of the rest of the release. The vocals don’t even come in until about six minutes, but they’re hardly missed. “The Broken Hearts of Falkirk” end things even more moody, as the lyrics “Feed me these bitter pills / for I don’t want to sleep” come in over bare guitar, mixed so every brush of the strings is heard. KEEP Recordings develops unique and homemade packaging for every release, and Small Town Boredom’s EP may be my favorite yet. The band took 50 unique polaroids – a different one for each CD – and signed the back, and the picture shows through a circle in the front of the album, making each cover different. And the three-inch CD and packaging comes in a hand-sewn folder. This is Small Town Boredom’s third release, and it’s wonderful – yet possibly depressing – stuff. - Jeff Marsh, Delusions of Adequacy

The 'smalltown' in question being Paisley, but it could be anywhere - 'boredom' doubtless a common factor which drives songwriters to plumb the depths of their collective soul, going beyond laid-back - which is after all a more PC definition for manic. "I Live Here Alone, Behind The Churchyard" via both title & recording encapsulates the band - a kind of acoustic Joy Division. When they say, "danced like David Gedge" you wonder which jangly tune would have attracted them. However as anyone knows, the wedding present, for all their bounce & spark, were a vessel brimming with dark tales of broken hearts. Clocking in at 20 minutes, the 6 tracks include small interludes - a delicate guitar instrumental & the barely perceptible "After The Harvest", which at least provides respite from the emotional times between. Small Town Boredom do teen angst as it's meant to be - slow, quiet & at times, desperately beautiful.
- BB, Is This Music Magazine

Tucson label provides a home for Scottish arch-miserabalists to deliver a low key slow motion prescription for prozac. Fed up with MTV2 and all those emo bands fronted by middle class poseurs articulating their angst by shouting loudly and gruffly over serrated guitars? If you are and you want to feel some real pain, agony that hurts so much that it is difficult to even let it out, not this nonsense primal scream therapy but the blackness of real debilitating depression, you’re in the right place. Coming on like a mix of the Cure circa ‘Faith’ & ’17 Seconds’ (the mainly instrumental ‘Leaving Priesthill’ could have fitted on either of those discs) and the hushed tones of Low, these Scottish bedroom types find a home on the Arizona label, a long way from the drizzle of a cold Paisley morning. In the background of the songs you can hear ambient noise that seems to hint at an alternate existence or a reminder of the reality surrounding the recording, memories of dancing to David Gedge setting the tone of ‘I Live Here Alone, Behind the Churchyard’ - the minute that the simple acoustic guitar of ‘To Watch The Blossom Fall’ spends in your ears is enough to suggest that after flowering most plants die. ‘After the Harvest, I’ll Still Remember You’ is so fragile that it barely exists, like thin porcelain if you hold it too tightly it will shatter. This is the perfect antidote to the summer heat. You’ll have to hurry though, they are strictly limited. - David C, Americana UK

Scottish attic-folk is the order of the day from Small Town Boredom. Fraser McGowan and Colin Morrison perfectly capture that small-room ambience in the despondent balladry and poetic soundscapes of this six-song, nineteen minute EP. The creepily claustrophobic "After The Harvest, I'll Still Remember You" is the record's most unsettling track, offset by the lengthy ambient excursion, "Leaving Priesthill" and short field-recording collages that sit either side. - Matt Dornan, Comes with a Smile

At first, For Only The Chosen Will Love sounds as if it's going to be in the vein of a whispery Low or recent Yo La Tengo record. Then it takes on a more electronic edge as the group plays with production tricks. Then, as the EP ends, the music heads into lo-fi territory, finally ending up with a simple, beautiful acoustic ballad on guitar, flute and quiet drums.
Overall, For Only The Chosen gives the impression of an artist who is just settling into his skin. Each track is interesting in its own way, but together they seem less a statement of purpose than several statements of interest. The gentle acoustic guitar solo that kicks off "I Live Here Alone, Behind The Churchyard" could easily indicate a love for a more classical approach to the guitar. The later modes are each aspects of the same sparse approach, but the band doesn't sound settled enough on how they might best express their ideas.
For Only The Chosen is full of likable music, but perhaps the best reason for you to pick it up is the fact that it gives you a look at the development of a band's sound. Once Small Town Boredom get a little more experience under their belt, it'll be fun to compare these early iterations of their sound to their fully established style. - Brett McCallon, Splendid