(Glitter)balls to neo-trad, as Mànran take on a different hue. (Don’t worry, it’s fine!)

Release Date: 16th May 2025

Label: Mànran Records

Format: Digital

“hope you like our new direction”

Was it something I said? Only a week ago I was near apologising for my reviewing the single from the not Mànran unaligned band, Gnoss, giving good reason for my so doing. A week later, here I am again, doing the same. Mind you, a single from arguably the greatest and certainly the most longstanding providers of a Scots/Gaelic neo-trad. Something would be very awry were attention not drawn. Fair’s fair and all.

This is not only new, it is very new, in both style and substance. Written by newer members, Kim Carnie and Aidan Moodie, yes, the same one from Gnoss, who each came on board in 2019, immediately identifiable within the band’s last full length studio release, Ùrar, from two years ago. Wait a minute…… Style and substance, that statement bringing out flavours of “here’s a new one/hope you like our new direction.” So often words that send an audience to the bar, until the band get it out their system. Hmmm, we’ll get there.

THE STRENGTHS OF MANRAN

Let’s remind ourselves the strengths of Mànran: traditional instruments of fiddle, accordion, pipes and whistles, Gaelic songs and melodies, interspersed with English language, from a variety of singers, and a buoyant engine room of bass and percussion. Well, whilst most of these are present, let’s just say you haven’t quite ever heard them like this. OK, the clues have maybe been there, with two earlier singles, Standing Still, from September last year, and Annie, from November, but neither neither quite as overt as this.

Opening with the voice of Carnie in the lower reaches of her register, it is then straight into a smooth pitter patter of percussion, that may or not be hand driven, that the song begins. A guitar strums and a keyboard hums, Carnie carrying forward the lilt of melody, upping a key and her volume to take it forward. The rhythm is distinctly of the dancefloor, a glitterball in the rafters dancefloor. A discotheque in Dundee maybe, rather than a ceilidh in Lochalsh. A fiddle does come scraping in with some background jiggery-pokery, a contrast against the smooth sophistication of the rest of the arrangement, but it isn’t any Mànran we have much known previously.

Explosion of perfect pop

Sounds awful, right? Well, no, oddly enough, if possibly needing a change in perception. Once the shock is acommodated, and a few more listens safely under the belt, there comes a building sense of awe and appreciation. Remember, or not, when Roxy Music first went disco? Or Blondie, even? Or, alternatively, the rush of far more recent feelgood that Ross Ainslie injected into his last release, Pool, with High Place Phenomenon? Similarly, with Gnoss having last year worked with Valtos, peak percolators of neo-trad mixology, I feel that Moodie learnt as much as he probably offered. With that or those hats on, listen again, and it makes a whole lot more sense. In fact, it becomes a full blown explosion of perfect pop.

And what is wrong with that? Plus, any unconnected listener, heedless of any backstory, and, possibly, ignorant of the heritage aspect of Scotland’s traditional music, hearing the song by chance, on the radio, alongside all the anonymity of what else is available, I think it likely they’d fall for the undeniable charm of it. Given that is most people, I’d love to see the band, the brand and all they stand for to have that chance of a spot in the glare of a non-partisan audience.

So it’s a yes from ATB!!

Here it is:

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