Scotland the (not so) Brave.

• Reflections on the connection between Scotland's music, history, and culture.

When I find time between blogging and complaining about university I write songs. Recently I was toying with some lyrics that raised a few eyebrows from a band mate:

Edinburgh is in my soul -
in poetry, pain, and worn stone. 

There's grit and rain in my bones.

To me this seemed largely self explanatory but apparently it is not. Here I'd like to talk a little about where I was going with these lyrics, and the influence that I think that Edinburgh and Scotland generally have over their resident artists.

Before we begin, I'd like to set a couple of things straight:

• This is a link to 500 Miles by The Proclaimers. Watch it. Purge it from your system. If we're going to have a serious discussion about Scotland and music, certain songs need to be very much out of consideration.
  
  
• I'm not a nationalist. Here I'm talking about cultural pride, not nationalist pride. Cultural pride is healthy, nationalist political pride is not. Being an advocate for a nation's art and culture is not the same as wanting a nation's independence because of a thinly veiled bruised ego. Sadly the distinction all too often becomes a little blurry.
  
  

I don't want to talk politics, so let's move on to art. In 2009 Pitchfork reviewed We Were Promised Jetpacks' These Four Walls. The most interesting line in the review suggested that "perhaps there is something about a thick Scottish accent that allows us to indulge in grandiose emotional sentiments... swaddled in glottal stops and guttural consonants, the dramatic changes in dynamic feel earned and the sensitive lyrics feel roguishly honest." 

So it would seem that Scots have an innate ability to convey sentimentality with a certain legitimacy. Indeed, Pitchfork has been far from forgiving when Americans wear their hearts on their sleeves: they demolished Seattle-based The Head and the Heart and Texan Josh T. Pearson for their over-earnest, pandering lyrics and delivery.

Where might Scotland derive this innate ability from? From a young age I have had a vague awareness of being part of a literary and artistic culture. My first exposure to adult literature was through the massive collection of Inspector Rebus novels owned by my mother and grandmother. Ian Rankin made Edinburgh itself a character in those novels: a dark and troubled one plagued by the constant sense of the weight of history. Indeed, Rankin has authored an entire book on the essential "Scottishness" of his characters. More classically, Scotland was the birthplace of Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns. I studied Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde in high school and I think it would be fair to say that the polarised light and dark of the main character/s symbolises Edinburgh and the mysterious contrasts that Rankin brings out so well. Elsewhere in high school I studied Muriel Spark's ultra-bohemian, ultra-upper-crust-Edinburgh Miss Jean Brodie. What's more, Edinburgh boasts the tallest monument to a writer in the world and plays host to the world's largest arts festival.

The country's geography and architecture - and the way they often combine - add to this foundation of inspirational sentimentality. The view from the window of the room I write in looks a little like this. The photo collages on the Wikipedia pages for Glasgow and Edinburgh are perfect showcases for the sorts of scenes that I find inspire the songs I write. The literary history is the "poetry" I mention in the lyrics I opened with, the physical appearance of the country is the "worn stone". 

To move away from my own work, I find that the songs that I make the strongest connections with are those in which the lyricist drops in small details that make the events and settings in the songs real. It gives the impression of the song existing as a small part of something with much greater significance. This occurs regardless of whether the songs are about places, events, or people. A good non-cultural example is Ryan Adams. Adams is a master of picking out the most painful post-break details, honing in on the memory of "the way she loses her keys" or the striking absence of "the dresses, the shoes, and the clothes". To consider more nebulous concepts but to bring argument back to music channelling a wider culture, I found that living in America brought the music of bands like The Hold Steady to life, allowing me to truly appreciate the little tropes, characters and stereotypes that comprise Craig Finn's world.

The examples of Scottish artists using Scottish details to give their songs a sense of being part of an extensive history are many: Scott Hutchison references the Forth Road Bridge and Roddy Woomble describes the "rain in Albion Street". Look deeper than these explicit references to Scottish locations and we find Woomble describing "tartan blankets" (in Hour after Hour, a song so folk I can't find it on YouTube), a simple artefact that ought to fill anyone who has spent time in the Scottish Highlands with a nostalgic glow. Deeper still is the atmosphere created by King Kreosote and Jon Hopkins, depicting the sense of awesome lonely space that the Highlands can fill us with.

Once all explicit references to Scotland are removed - what remains? I like to think that Scots artists channel their history and surroundings to create ineffable connections to their home country whether they intend to or not. I think that with the lyrics I mentioned in the introduction to this piece I was trying to describe the sense of history that I find inescapably affects the way I think and write, but yet can't quite put my finger on. This would indeed offer some explanation as to why Pitchfork felt that there was a hard-to-pin-down reason that We Were Promised Jetpacks could be sincere without being clichéd or gimmicky when others perhaps could not.

Of course I know that this argument isn't without its flaws. I appreciate that I could be putting sentimental carts before logical horses. It could very well be the case that the centuries of history do not lend legitimacy to the art, but instead the Scottish accent forges a false connection to the past and fools the listener into thinking there is legitimacy where in fact none exists. Maybe the Scottish accent is like the kilt towel or the whisky flavoured condom: a gimmicky exploitation intended to do nothing more than encourage the gullible to depart with their cash.

I realise that by stating my argument is based on something ineffable I make it unchallengeable in the same way that religious types make the existence of God unchallengeable ("aha! But you can't prove God doesn't exist") but that, I suppose, is sort of the point. With this piece I have presented some evidence which may or may not point towards something that cannot be proven or dis-proven. I suppose I'm arguing that a degree of faith is required. Scots are a sentimental and emotional people after all...