Multi-talented Colin MacIntyre is about to have a busy 2023 which includes “wrapping a bow” on his early work at Mull Historical Society.
The 51-year-old from Mull will, next Friday, play his first two albums, Loss and Us in their entirety.
Later in February he’ll release an 85-track anthology of his first three albums, Archaeology: Complete Recordings 2000-2004. Loss, Us and This Is Hope will also be released on vinyl. Colin will record a new album next month in the room his grandfather used to write poetry in and his first crime book will follow later in the year.
How did Archaeology – which is the first three albums, demos, rarities and covers including The Strokes’ Last Nite – come about?
I moved from London to Glasgow and had more space. I brought stuff out of storage and dipped into lots of boxes of old recordings, photos and tour stuff. I keep everything.
I’d even forgotten the debut album Loss was originally going to be called Community. I also found a bottle of red wine from REM with a note saying “To Mull, sorry couldn’t get Buckfast but this will have to do, love Michael and REM”. There are also anniversaries. The second album Us will be 20 next month. I’m wrapping a bow around the early period of Mull.
Are you happy the three albums are being released on vinyl?
Yes. I never had a record collection. It was partly growing up in Mull, which had one shop where you could buy a bar of soap and a record if you were lucky. Then at a coffee morning, I won a record player in a suitcase and three albums, Queen’s Greatest Hits, With the Beatles and Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel.
I got an acoustic guitar and started playing in a covers band supporting my uncle’s band, and when I hit my teens got my first electric guitar, a Fender Telecaster. My dad got it for my Christmas and missed the ferry. So my uncle, who was a clam diver, went to get him but couldn’t get close to the mainland jetty, so my dad held it above the waves and brought it home. I always had 15/20 songs on the go. By the time I got a record deal in my 20s, I had recorded 350 songs, most of which the world should never hear. So when I started making albums, I just thought of them as those 15/20 songs but now people get to hear them.
So for the first two albums I’d recorded 35 songs for each.
Your 2001 debut was inspired by the death of your dad Kenny, a BBC Scotland political correspondent, in 1999. What would he have thought of your success?
Before he died, I was looking to move to London to try and get things going musically but he didn’t want me to go. But 18 months later I was home from uni for the summer and in the same hall in Tobermory where I’d performed as a kid there was a sign for the Mull Historical Society AGM.
I had never heard of them, so I wrote a song imagining they were some Orwellian group controlling the islanders. Writing that song and Barcode Bypass, which NME made the debut single of the year, gave my music an identity and I started to feel they weren’t feeling like my influences but like me.
So my father and I had quite a similar journey. He wasn’t musical. He was a builder until his early 30s and began interviewing local characters and sending them to Radio Highlands via the bread van. And then I used to send my demo tapes from Tobermory Post Office.
Fans will love the fourth disc of rarities. Any songs you’ve enjoyed rediscovering?
I supported the Strokes when they were the hottest new band on the planet. We played King Tut’s in Glasgow and I took them to the Garage. They were singing one of my songs to me and I was singing Last Nite. We were then asked by Rough Trade to cover each other’s songs. I did a big Phil Spector production on it. I had fun pulling that disc together.
What else are you up to in 2023?
I’ve got my first crime novel coming out in October, When the Needle Drops. It’s set in Mull and follows Ivor Punch, the focus of my debut novel in 2015 when he was younger. Next month, I’m recording my new album in the flat my grandparents used to live in above the old Clydesdale bank in Tobermory where my grandad was the manager.
The flat has been made into a recording studio. I’m doing the music and the words are coming from my favourite authors like Ian Rankin and Nick Hornby, who I’ve asked to provide 25 lines on a room which is significant to them.
* MHS play Saint Luke’s, Glasgow, as part of Celtic Connections next Friday. Archeology: Complete Recordings 2000-2003 is out on February 24 as is the first three albums on vinyl, Loss, Us and This is Hope.
