Everyone in Scottish indie guitar pop loves Orange Juice. Especially Franz Ferdinand. But why...

It is pretty much a staple of music journalism that all bands are influenced by someone. They all are of course, but maybe not to the extent found in album reviews. The reviewer's over-reliance on writing about influences stems from it being pretty difficult to describe music in words [not as difficult as say brain surgery, but trust me it's kinda hard]. There's only so many times you can use the phrases 'gorgeous riff', 'catchy melody', 'bangs the drums' etc when trying to describe a pop song. Especially when not all music critics know one end of a guitar from the other. So influences it is.

Of course the more music-journo friendly bands are only too happy to play along and tell all and sunder about their influences. It's an easy way for bands to describe their music, ingratiate themselves with the press, and slyly align themselves with shit cool bands. Most indie bands will do this, and there is generally a competition to try and choose as obscure and generally forgotten a band as possible to claim to model yourself on. It's what you do.

One of the best examples of this is Franz Ferdinand's trumpeting of Orange Juice. FF frontman Alex Kapranos has long been fond of proclaiming his love for the little known early 1980s Glasgow seminal indie-poppers. While FF were breaking through last year you couldn't pick up a copy of NME without reading an homage from the bould Alex to the long forgotten by most, if they were noticed at all in the first place, Edwyn Collins fronted Scots. Here's a quote we chose at random:

"Of course Orange Juice were Scottish, but they seem to be these four kids that loved dance music and wanted to play it in their own particular way and didn't give a damn if they were getting it wrong. And yet it was still completely where they were from, as well. They were a Scottish band but you can hear what they were listening to, but they don’t sound like what they're listening to."

I'm still not 100% sure what Alex really meant by this, but he got his more general point across well. Orange Juice were a shit cool, underground, real indie band that he listened to when he was younger, and he'd like his band to be just as shit cool, underground and real indie as them. Of course what with FF being phenomenally successful and headlining festivals and that this won't happen, but it's a nice aim. And one that reflects well on him.

In fairness, Alex isn't the only Scottish indie kid to namecheck Orange Juice lately, he's just the most famous. Over the last few years bands as diverse as Teenage Fanclub, Belle and Sebastian, The Delgados, Dogs Die in Hot Cars and Sons and Daughters have all talked of how much they owe Orange Juice. Stuart Murdoch, the brains behind Belle and Sebastian, has boasted about how he was the only guy in his class who had an Orange Juice T-shirt. The latest New Franz Ferdinand - Sons and Daughters - got former OJ frontman Edwyn Collins to produce their recent single 'Dance Me In'. Which meant that lots of people were reading about Orange Juice, but very few had ever heard any of their songs.

[The less hungover of you will have noticed the name Edwyn Collins a couple of times above. Yes, it's the same Edwyn Collins, responsible for the unfortunately catchy 'Girl Like You' in 1994. That success apart, things have been very quiet hitwise for Edwyn since Orange Juice broked up in 1985. He is currently very ill.]

So it's hardly a great surprise that some enterprising music execs have decided to re-release some of Orange Juice's earlier, more seminal recordings, and introduce the band to a whole new generation and/or make some handy cash for all involved. That the album is called 'The Glasgow School' is a clue to their thinking.

So is the album any cop? Well yes, yes it is. There's lots of speedy guitars and short sharp changes of direction. There's plenty of gorgeous hooks and catchy melodies. No really, there is. Collins' intelligent, funny lyrics are winning, as are the slightly shambolic production values. It's a top notch indie guitar pop album. And it sounds like it was recorded yesterday. Orange Juice really were well ahead of their time.

These are the earliest Orange Juice recordings, some singles and their proposed debut album that ended up falling through. They released another album - You Can't Hide Your Love Forever - which you can still get if you try hard enough. Which I'm guessing plenty of people will do after they hear 'The Glasgow School'. It seems that Murdoch, Kapranos et al have actually learned from some masters. Maybe there is something to this influences malarkey after all.

first published on oxygen.ie