Louis Abbott, singer-songwriter with orchestral indie troupe Admiral Fallow, is musing on his dulcet croon.
"It's not the Proclaimers, but it's not Rod Stewart either," laughs the man who's been pegged as a Scottish pop hero, and who celebrated Hogmanay by singing live on BBC 1.
Flanked by Aly Bain, Phil Cunningham and Jackie Bird, Abbott and his Glasgow-based alt-folk collective performed their philharmonic indie reel, Squealing Pigs. It concluded a year in which Admiral Fallow were championed by Elbow and touted as Mercury Prize outsiders by the BBC – and it kicked off a new one that's already seen the band announce a record deal and sell out their biggest headline show to date, at Glasgow's ABC this Friday.
Admiral Fallow also covered the Proclaimers' Sunshine on Leith on Hogmanay Live. While Abbott's warm Edinburgh burr is gentler than the Reid twins' heady brogue, his voice and dialect are embedded in Scotland. "It's not something I ever consciously decided – I never sat down and said, 'Right, I want to sing in a broad Scottish accent'," he offers. "But at the same time I was, and still am, a big Idlewild fan and when we first started making music it felt natural to sing that way."
Admiral Fallow's musical charms are rooted in Scottish (sub)culture. They've been allied with the rousing likes of Frightened Rabbit and King Creosote, both of whom they have supported. But the foot-stomping folk-rock and chamber balladry of their 2010 debut album, Boots Met My Face (released on Glasgow label Lo-Five, and re-released in 2011), also recalls earlier decades of Scottish pop. Their day-to-day anthems, grey-blue lyrical palette and male-female harmonies invite comparisons with Deacon Blue (although the Trashcan Sinatras or Pearlfishers could offer equally valid late-eighties/early-nineties reference points), and their orchestral alt-pop swoon evokes much-loved late-nineties/early-noughties indie luminaries the Delgados.
It is likely they will win new fans when they support Snow Patrol at the SECC this Saturday, but Abbott is quicker to credit the influence of touring partners such as folk-pop chanteuse Rachel Sermanni (he'll play at her Celtic Connections show at St Andrew's in the Square on February 5) and side projects with indie-folk "super-group" The Moth and the Mirror. The latter features members of Frightened Rabbit and The Reindeer Section, and their album, Honestly, This World (Olive Grove Records), was released to acclaim in October.
"The past year has just thrown up so much experience, both musically and in life generally," says Abbott, who is also a guitarist and classically trained percussionist. "Me and Joe [Rattray – bass, double bass] have done a lot of playing and recording with other folk this year – playing different instruments and different roles – and that's been really insightful."
The band's line-up is completed by Sarah Hayes (vocals, flute and piano), Kevin Brolly (clarinet and keyboard) and Philip Hague (drums and vibraphone). They formed as Brother Louis Collective in 2007 and became Admiral Fallow in 2010, but the collaborative spirit of their original moniker still rings true. "Yeah, Phil, Sarah and Kev have got their own side of things," offers Abbott. "Phil plays percussion with the Scottish National Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Sarah teaches and has many irons in many fires, and Kev's at university, so everyone kind of does music-y stuff all over," he says.
"It's great because if you've been working with someone else that week – or you've learned a cool thing or a new ethos – then that comes back to us when we're working together."
Abbott believes the band's combined experiences have inspired and advanced their second album, which is due for release on their new label, Nettwerk, "around May". "The new record's much less of a personal account," he ventures. Boots Met My Face offered a candid, sometimes brutal, depiction of the frontman's adolescence (the title refers to a time Abbott was beaten unconscious), but its follow-up is "more about looking out, at other situations and other people".
If live airings of a new choral stomp, The Paper Trench, are anything to go by, they've also penned an anthem for humanity's great unsung misery: the paper cut. Admiral Fallow's new songs may be less introspective, but they clearly still observe wounds and enliven hearts.
Admiral Fallow play Glasgow ABC tomorrow. Louis Abbott and "very special guests" play Brel on Wednesday, February 1. Both gigs are part of Celtic Connections and sponsored by ScottishPower.
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