Press & Reviews
Reviews for debut CD - "Hope in little things"
Released 22 September 2003
Edinburgh is home to many things - parliament, tramps, posh idiots, me -
but smoggy country-tinged psychedelia ain't one of 'em. Or so I thought
'til I fell into Northern Alliance, who sound like Mazzy Star doing Mojave
3 doing the entire Matador back-catalogue. Slowly. Featuring the vocals
of Douglas Johnstone (boy) and Viv Strachan (girl), NA are seeped in
sadness and share a penchant for slowly unfolding dynamics and crashing
wave crescendos with fellow Scots sad-sacks The Zephyrs. They give their
songs nicely bleak titles like Campaign For Dark Skies and Skin Is Dust,
Dust Is Skin, which sound exactly as you'd imagine. It's a genuinely
affecting little record with a heart as heavy as the sun. Most promising.
Paul Whitelaw, Metro, 21.10.03 [3/5]
This provides pretty much what it says on the cover, with the Scottish three-piece of modest renown offering much to be optimistic about on this promising debut.
Certainly, it's a tad contradictory to follow the melodically boisterous opener 'Buildings Of The Future' with 'Earthquake Zone', which toys with the notion of living in a place "where I can feel those plates move beneath my feet".
But while Northern Alliance may not cause seismic shifts in our perception of rock, they know the value of a wheezing keyboard and stinging guitar, while their voices knowingly understate a sound case for the band's future.
Colin Somerville, Scotland on Sunday, 21.09.03
Although it clocks in at just under half an hour, the debut album from Scottish trio Northern Alliance never sounds rushed.
A wistful, laidback, countrified record, it unspools tales of earthquakes and entropy at a pace short of strolling.
But what's slow is also fairly sure, and it's a promising start.
Graeme Virtue, Sunday Herald, 21.09.03 [3/5]
Scottish trio unleash slow-burning, charts-baiting mini-album.
There's nothing like the sound of a band quite clearly giving the finger to the over-produced mainstream, and Northern Alliance
do it with an inebriated smile on their faces.
The three-piece formed at a New Year's Eve party early last year, now live in Edinburgh and Paris and deal lyrically with such
subject matters as seagulls, germs, loneliness, light pollution and the ancient dead rising from the grave. Musically, think the
dark beauty of Mogwai gone pop, with boy-girl vocals, and fuzzy downbeat intros which crescendo into searing guitar explosions,
rounded off with a gloriously rough and tumble quality that runs through the entire record.
'Hope in little things' is far from perfect; it's ramshackle, heartbroken and drunkenly swaying, but that's exactly where its
charm lies.
Camilla Pia, Kerrang, 20th September 2003 [KKKK]
Scotland's Northern Alliance like to make their records slowly, with all the rigour befitting a band
with two near-death experiences to their credit and a Nuclear Physicist among their ranks. Oh, and Kurt
Cobain once asked one of them for a shot of Benylin. It would have been more appropriate had they been
asked by Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, Will Oldham or Hope Sandoval, for these are the circles they
should be moving in. 'Hope In Little Things' also moves in circles; gentle, eddying currents that lazily
push the songs around, going nowhere in particular but possessing a mesmerising fascination. In lesser
hands this would be labelled as 'mere' slow-country (albeit with a mordant, Caledonian twist) but there's
nothing 'mere' about this.
Gillian Nash, Logo Magazine, September 2003
Scottish trio formerly known as – doh! The Taliban.
Having wisely ditched the name The Taliban early on, Northern Alliance’s
debut is a sleepy foray into muted atmospherics. Formed at a hogmanay party
to celebrate the dawn of 2002, the band have since combined the spooky
keyboards and gentle guitar of Sparklehorse with the sparse, experimental
noise of Mogwai. Doug Johnstone and Viv Strachan share vocal duties and
their distant voices tell of small-scale hopes and fears. Skin is Dust, Dust
is Skin covers pollution and germs while Earthquake Zone is a rock’n’roll
tale of urban destruction. Unlikely to crack the Afghan market, but
certainly promising.
Andy Penfold, Q, October 2003 [3/5]
It's one of those funny quirks of geography that so many Scottish bands seem
to make slow, hazy dreamy music that owes its existence to more energetic
Americana formed in much sunnier climes. Northern Alliance, for example,
sound like a slowed-down Teenage Fanclub on the first track here, ‘Buildings
of the Future’, and Teenage Fanclub, of course, sound like a slowed-down
Byrds or Big Star. Admittedly ‘Earthquake Zone’ begins with a faintly hectic
fuzz of feedback, but we’re soon sprawled out with a laconic vocal – and by
the lovely ‘Festivity In The Arms Of The People’, we’re practically in
Slowdive territory. Where their recent American equivalents (Will Oldham,
Sparklehorse) sing in leathery, pained drawls, there’s a freshness about
Northern Alliance which is kind of refreshing. This is an unassuming album,
but a very likeable one.
Trevor Baker, Rock Sound, September 2003
Like the Delgados reared on a diet of Codeine, Northern Alliance are a slow, sad, sleepy trio from
Scotland. Their first tiny mark on the world is ‘Hope In Little Things’, a seven-song mini-album that
comes close to being something special, but just not quite. It pushes many of the right buttons.
Festivity In The Arms Of The People and When The Clocks Go Forward are calming, final track Calibrate
Your Love fairly rattles, yet somewhere amid the near constant traces of feedback, in the hints of
post-rock, and in the ever-yearning murmurs, something’s not quite right. That’s partly because the
combined vocals of Doug Johnstone and Viv Strachan are pale and distant, but more so that those feelings
of disappointment and dismay hinted at are never quite realised. Northern Alliance are hurt, but they
seem unsure exactly why. So near, yet also so far.
Ian Fletcher, Comes With a Smile #13 - Autumn 2003
Même si Hope in little things constitue seulement leur premier album, tous les membres de Northern Alliance
sont déjà trentenaires. Et cela s’entend. Les chansons possèdent en effet toutes pour dénominateur commun
un certain son vintage, rouillé serait-on tenté de dire (guitares et synthés mal graissés font souvent
penser à Sparklehorse ou A Camp, bref à Mark Linkous) et des textes d’une maturité parfaitement étrangère
aux ados poseurs qui défilent chaque semaine dans le NME.
Le trio -deux gars une fille- est originaire des environs d’Edimbourgh. Northern Alliance ne sont
donc pas afghans mais leur musique n’en demeure pas moins planante. Attention il n’est pas question ici
de trip hop. Non, ces écossais lorgneraient plutôt vers le meilleur cru de la musique hypnotique et
nu-folk d’outre atlantique, le tout domestiqué façon pop. Les morceaux ne manquent ainsi pas d’évoquer
par exemple les travaux de Low notamment à cause de ces deux voix, mâle et femelle, entremêlées et
légèrement trafiquées/saturées. Les guitares et la batterie n’en oublient pas pour autant leur
appartenance à la patrie de Mogwaï. La plupart du temps lancinantes et retenues, elles délivrent, en
de rares occasions, des climax exemplaires (sur "Buildings of the future" par exemple).
Alors certes, à l’image de la photo de sa pochette, le disque pourra parfois vous paraître bancal
voire vacillant (confession détournée sur When the clocks go forward : "Well of course we were drunk
what the hell did you think?"). Mais qui ici n’apprécie pas de temps en temps les charmes des équilibres
précaires lorsqu’ils respirent le vécu et la sincérité ? Pas moi en tout cas. Surtout à l'approche de
l'hiver...
Liability Webzine, November 2003
If the band name reminds you of a bunch of morally suspect Afghan warlords,
then the album title ought to confirm that, rather than Northern Alliance
being gun-totin’ mercenaries, they’re an indie band. A nice little indie
band, with pretty melodies and budget production, whose personnel, divided
between Edinburgh and Paris, include sometime contributor to this magazine,
Doug Johnstone. There’s plenty of what the band does out there, but this is
lovely. The echoes of American shufflers The Kingsbury Manx, on the opening
‘Buildings of the Future’, give way to a robust coda, and Mormon quietist
legends Low appear to be required listening at Northern Alliance towers.
Still, that’s no bad thing; there are occasional reminders of Low’s dual
boy/girl vocals in Johnstone and co-vocalist Viv Strachan’s gentle lines on
‘Campaign for Dark Skies’, and if it’s a little derivative, well, who cares?
Leon McDermott, Big Issue in Scotland, July 17 2003
Hollow, scratchy vocals, purring organs and that grating, inorganic harpsichord sound that comes
out of an acoustic guitar with a cheap pickup; this is a home made record aspiring to lo-fi chic.
And I think its got it.
The lyrics are flimsy, avoiding anything too personal, some of the rhymes a bit forced, but atmospheric
in their own way. These songs are populated not by people, but with buildings, earthquakes, geometry,
clocks, dust and refrains that fulfill a rhythmic rather than a lyrical purpose:
Look out / Look out / Look out or... When the clocks go forward / When the clocks go forward /
When the clocks go forward
Pop lyrics don't normally stand up to much dissection, but at the same time they rarely invite it.
Northern Alliance have made an intriguing short album, aiming considerably higher than is considered
comfortable for mainstream playlisted material.
Long live lo-fi – when it's done like this.
Nick Miles, Baby Tiger
Wow! Every now and then a demo CD arrives which genuinely makes you wonder "where
the hell have this band been all these years". One such is the (debut, as far as we are
concerned) LP by Edinburgh's Northern Alliance, 'Hope In Little Things' (1 Sept). Seriously
fukked-up recordings and (possibly over-) distorted vocals mesh into a foreground chunk of
essential noise. We're playing 'Earthquake Zone'.
Radio2XS, August 2003
Not, as you might have quite reasonably expected, a gaggle of blokes with big beards and
bigger grenade launchers, but a Scottish three piece with a sound that wanders engagingly
from Electric Light Orchestra on heavy drugs in Nashville (see ‘Buildings of the Future’) to
George Harrison on top, commercial form (see under ‘Calibrate Your Love’). In between
these two lovelies we get another five gems, guitars consistently excellent, the phase-
smeared vox generally working well and the tunes are all strong, and the whole thing just
brings the old Miss World question* out for another airing: How come crappy, miserable
gits are shifting it by the truck load when the vastly superior Northern Alliance aren’t, yet.
You tell me.
Unpeeled, August 2003
It's not where you are, it's where you're at. So, fittingly, Northern Alliance
belie their east coast (Edinburgh, East Lothian) roots for some distinctly
mid-west (Louisville, Kentucky) action.
Many of the right buttons are pushed here as they invoke the wayward
spirit of Sparklehorse, the patient gentility of Mazzy Star, and thoughts of
a raft of down-at-heel, Marlboro' puffin', JD chuggin' country troubadours.
While there is some patchy vocal production in places, 'Campaign for Dark
Skies' could pass as the Palace Brothers aided by Isobel Campbell had she
eaten her spinach, and when 'Earthquake Zone' shudders to a rumbling
climax you may be convinced the walls are actually crumbling in around you.
Mark Robertson, The List, 10.4.03 [4/5]
With a line-up boasting a nuclear physicist – aren't biog sheets great? –you
might expect a vaguely technologically-driven album – aren't most of Warp
Records' roster graduates in sciences? And this band's seeming propensity
for medical troubles – including collapsed lungs and hernias – perhaps rules
out their over-taxing themselves in creating music. However, there are now
doubtless a host of grindcore acts cursing that they didn't think of the
name first. But this lot make music far removed from either postulation –
instead Northern Alliance are a sleepy-sounding band, winding their way
along a nu-folk trail humming a drunken melody. 'Buildings of the Future',
the opener, sets the pace if not the tone, a traipse somewhere between Smog
and Appendix Out, but 'Earthquake Zone' raises itself from its slumber and
pitches some quietly searing guitar work into the pot. It's an engaging
ride, twin vocals conjuring up images of Low but with some jarring
percussion putting them in the quietcore pigeonhole alongside Tugboat Annie
and Codeine. "Of course we were drunk – what the hell did you think?" they
drawl on 'When The Clocks Go Forward'. Never imagined anything else.
Stuart McHugh, Is This Music, May/June 2003