Shooglenifty are back, back, back, and, all infused with fresh blood and inspirations, it’s as if they’ve never been away.

RAW SPIRIT IGNITION

Each summer I eagerly peruse the festival line-ups, in search of a sight of this name, never yet having managed to coincide myself with any of their performances, and, every year, feeling those chances are slipping away. Indeed, I was beginning to wonder whether a towel had been thrown, following the splendid post Angus renaissance of Acid Croft No. 9, back in 2021. This proves thankfully not, together with a scattering of shows over the summer, now accelerating into the autumn.

It is an astonishing 35 years since their extraordinary debut, fusing the acoustic folk tradition of Scotland with the passion and precision of electronic dance music; o so accurately the ‘acid croft’ of their own design. Here is album number 10, or 11, if you include live.

Only James Mackintosh, drums, and Malcolm Crosbie, guitar, may remain from the inaugural line-up, but the raw spirit ignited by the late Angus R. Grant, fiddle player from the start and until his untimely death, in 2016, remains fully alight. With, now, Eilidh Shaw (The Poozies), sister of Donald, reprising her role as one of the few players capable of replacing her fizzy and fiery predecessor, the line up also shows a returning Ciarán Ryan (also of Dallahan) on banjo and, present since 2015, the vocals of Kaela Rowan, once so integral to Mouth Music. New boy on bass is Valtos and An Danssa Dub anchor, Euan McLaughlin.

PRETTY DARN NIFTY

Literally busting out the trap comes the opener, Up The McFud, which arrives, fully formed, at an already frantic bpm, fuelled on twangy guitar and motorik drums. Banjo, always a key Shoogle signature, hurtles in, in tandem with fiddle. Holding the mainbrace and sometimes splicing it, as the two constituent Shaw penned tunes morph together, is the deep throb of the bass guitar. It is a terrific start, with brief solos from Crosbie, Ryan and Shaw all adding extra kudos, especially that of Crosbie, where he exposes a hitherto unrealised rocky underbelly, along with slashing flashes of studio chicanery. This is prime Shoogles and pretty darn nifty.

Dig Deep starts with a distorting into clarity banjo motif, with the words of the title chanted briskly and repetitively. It sounds like the beep beep of a car horn: think Drive My Car, yes that one, if filtered through a Chicago club of the late 80’s, and it is a good trick. Rowan takes up the narrative for a song about finding untapped resources from within. Her voice is in a hurry that sounds deliberate, carrying along the words with similar velocity to the instrumentation. A sinuous weaving melody, echo and FX all feature applicably and appropriately. Shaw, actually taught to play by Angus R. Grant’s father, Aongas, digs deep, SWIDT, on that resource to keep the song driving sans frontières.

SYNCHRONISED SYMBIOSIS

Some treatments make the start of Sausage Gate, no, me neither, something about bratwurst, keep you on your toes, waiting for the seemingly autonomous banjo/fiddle duality to begin. Which it duly does. This is a further tune from Shaw, which bolsters along, ahead switching into a pair of Ryan’s, which is rather more led by the 5-stringer, with Shaw sending in sweeping side-salvos. This is fleeting, mind, before the two find again their inevitable synchronised symbiosis, allowing Crosbie’s rock God persona to fire off another doozy.

The aforementioned Aongas, father of Angus, then gets a beautiful elegy, Old Pal Aongas, he having himself died, albeit at 94, earlier this year. A co-write between Shaw and Rowan, it is shimmery texture of tinkling strings and gentle layered percussion. Rowan begins to keen what sound first like wordless vocals, the whole becoming the sound of a tribal wake. It forms a splendid centrepiece and is a worthy tribute to the Grants, both of them, the one impossible without the one ahead him.

BAIRNS O’GAZA

Bairns O’ Gaza we know, it part of an earlier released EP. I have to say it makes more sense here than in isolation, the mix of Gaelic and Arabic, both lyrically and in musical structure, working better with the embedding amongst the songs that build up to it. As it gets to the haunting dream section that it becomes, clashes and crashes of instrumental carnage force back the reality. The traditional Puirt, based upon Mo Run Ailean, might sound gentler fare, and is, if far from traditional in design, as the vocal puirt à beul spills out over a backdrop of electronic discord, the drumbeat as unforgiving as it is racing, faster and faster in step. It then breaks into Ryan’s Meg’s Jig, which is more conventional, just, with the two strands dipping then back in and out.

FROM DISCOMBOBULATION TO RECOMBOBULATION

Tronach is back on instrumental territory, and whilst sticking largely to the Shoogle format, seems to ladle in a soupçon of psychedelia into the mix, which adds a keel to the swell that is rather enticing. As I listen, I feel as if I am stuck in a lava lamp, and I don’t mind one bit, even as Ryan fires off into the second tune, one of his, to complement the Shaw written intro. Indeed, it all gets confusing as recombobulation is followed by further discombobulation. Excellent, as is Airborne, where McLaughlin gets to show off the pies he has brought to the party. Shaw and Rowan may have written the constituent parts, but the direction of flow is decidedly dubby. with Rowan then coming over all Patti Smith in her spoken delivery.

These tracks are largely in excess of 5 minutes, with only one shaving a few seconds off that, which means 9 is plenty, closing now with the title track. This is a triptych, featuring a first composition here from Crosbie to kick it off. Disturbing dystopian noise starts it off, before what might seem standard Shooglenifty unison play. But, listen carefully, the bass is ducking and diving all over, as is Crosbie’s guitar, with Mackintosh dripping venom into his aggressive percussion, a mix of manual and programmed. This is a more visceral Shooglenifty than we know, ahead breaking into the closing salvo of 2 Ryan tunes. The first of these conjures up the image of a bizarre Hebridean spaghetti western. (Should that be a porridge western?) It’s about Eigg and it’s apparently sleepless locals, anyway, before the applicably named segment, Comically Bumpy, draws all to a close.

CRAICAJAIC

This album is great fun, great craic as the band might themselves say, and suggests that the fretted about towel, invoked earlier, may have little need for use for, hopefully, some time yet. Now all I have to do is to catch the blighters play this, and more, live.

Here’s Up The McFud, with combined footage live from Celtic Connections and from Glo Worm studios, Glasgow:

Shooglenifty: Website

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