MUSIC: We’re going for the Burns

Broken Records have admitted they’re having to brush up on Burns – as they’re set to play a gig with a difference on Sunday night.

The group will headlining a Burns Supper at King Tut’s that will see them joined by Woodenbox And A Fistful Of Fivers and the ceilidh band Whiskey Kiss, while haggis will be served up to gig-goers on the night too.

But frontman Jamie Sutherland has confessed he’s not a Burns expert.

“Shamefully, I don’t actually know a huge amount of Burns, aside from the obvious ones!” he says, speaking from the band’s tour bus just before they headed abroad to play a Dutch festival.

“In a previous version of the band, years and years ago, we reworked O Let Me In Thes Ae Night for a Burns night gig we were doing, though, and we always enjoy playing Tut’s. We’ve done it three times before and it’s a great venue – you always get a good crowd there, so hopefully it’ll be quite busy, and everyone will be up for a good time.

“We’ve previously always gone out of our way to avoid any overly Scottish links to what we do, but this should be a nice celebration, and a free haggis dinner too, which you can’t complain about!”

Indeed, while the likes of Glasvegas, the Twilight Sad and many others in the crop of recent Scottish bands sing with full-throated Scottish accents, the seven-strong collective have shyed away from that.

“I get accused of not sounding Scottish enough anyway!” Jamie points out with a laugh.

“But in the early days of the band, we had a Scottish ceilidh sort of link, which wasn’t really what we were aiming for – not that we don’t like that music. But we’re starting to get a little bit more of nationalism or at least embracing your roots in our music.”

The Edinburgh band might not be the sorts to paint Saltires on their faces, but they’ve certainly mastered the art of delivering epic, grand, rock music. Since forming in 2007, their gigs soon attracted a feverish, passionate following and last year’s debut album, Until The Earth Begins To Part, carried their swelling mix of folk, rock and traditional Celtic music over onto record.

Now they’re set to begin work on the follow-up, and Jamie promises that listeners can expect the album to turn the volume up even more.

“We’ve got an album pencilled in for early September, with a couple of early singles before that,” he says.

“We’ve got a whole bunch of good ideas we’re working on and we’re all quite excited about it. The new stuff still has all the main components (from the first record) but we’ve stripped back some of the grandness and tried to keep the energy levels up a bit more, and be more direct.

“We’ve turned the guitars up, but we can’t go too far away from sounding like Broken Records.”

That is certainly a good thing, considering their prior work. They’ve proved hard to categorise, with acts as diverse as the Verve and the Levellers being name-checked.

Yet it’s the Arcade Fire who Broken Records were most linked to, when they first started to be name-dropped in 2008.

That led to some surprise when the band’s album appeared, as it proved a different creature entirely to the Canadian troupe, and Jamie insists that he was never inspired by the band.

“It was one of those weird things getting hyped up. We didn’t create the hype but we did feel a wee bit of a backlash when we brought the album out because some people seemed to be expecting Funeral (the classic Arcade Fire album) Part 2, but we never wanted to do something like that. We’re in a better place for all that now.”

However, he does admit that one thing that will always be in place for the band is loving a large sound, even going back to the group’s earliest days.

“Every band I’ve played in has always gone for a bigger sound, even when I was in university. We’ve always enjoyed Spiritualised, or the E-Street Band, where they have a big sound.

“ You can’t escape the music you love. When the first record came out, we were accused of pomposity a bit, but that was never the intention.”

Now they’re starting to play venues and stages to match those aspirations. The band’s favourite moment of 2009, perhaps unsurprisingly, involved one of the largest shows yet, in Edinburgh.

“One of the biggest highlights was playing the Queens Hall in August – it was sold out and it was an amazing moment for us, as we weren’t sure whether people would turn up or not.

“It was somewhere we’d aspired to play, as we’ve been based around Edinburgh all our lives and seen a lot of great gigs there – Gil saw Spiritualised there doing an acoustic set, and they were a massive band for most of us.

“ I saw Low play there several years ago, so we always wanted to play there as it’s a grand setting, and we try to make grand music. It felt right to be there.”

Even bigger stages may follow in 2010. The group will be heading out to play South By South West in Texas, while more festivals and gigs are planned, so it’s understandable that Jamie wraps the interview up on a positive note.

“Yesterday we had our first rehearsal of the year, then we’re heading to Holland to play in a festival there and check out some great bands afterwards – it’s not a bad life!”