Doorways

I don't know if it's just me, I have a feeling it is but I find the BMX Bandits infuriating. I really want to love them, they originated in deepest Lanarkshire, they are about as indie as indie can be,  I know a guy who used to play sax for them and they have written some absolutely brilliant pop songs and recorded a couple of a wonderful cover versions; but to be honest I can only say that I like some of their stuff.

The problem being,  as well as being brilliant they can also be incredibly twee with songs so sweet and sickly that your teeth start to ache just looking at the titles.

A case in point is the track posted.  Doorways was a double a-side single and is one of my favourite songs of the past few years it is a beautiful song of love and lost, But then flip it over and you are hit with a track so twee I can hear a thousand indie kids sighing into their anoraks.

The tracks I do like by the BMX Bandits I love but I think that somewhere there is something I'm not getting.

A few years ago when Isobel Campbell was touring the excellent  Ballad of The Broken Seas  album and Eugene Kelly was standing in for Mark Lanegan, I had the pleasure of attending the gig in the ABC2 in Glasgow.L and I  were sitting at the back corner before the band took to the stage and there was this group of 3 vaguely familiar guys sitting next to us. One of these guys L thought looked quite strange what with the RSPB T-shirt and munching on Smarties the whole night. It wasn't until we were walking along Sauchiehall Street that it came to me who the "smartie chomping weirdo" (L's words, not mine) was, it was Duglas T Stewart, thee BMX Bandit. I ask you, is there anything more twee than eating smarties at a gig? Probably only if doing so while wearing a duffle coat.

At the subsequent 2 Isobel Campbell concerts over the next year that I went to, Stewart was also in attendance but I don't know if Smarties was still the confectionery of preference.

BMX Bandits - Doorways