Venerable Glasgow label Chemikal Underground offers up a wide variety of seductive sounds, from the profane musings of Arab Strap to the delicate pop of the Delgados. The past decade has been a good one for Scottish music with bands like Belle and Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand burning up the alt-rock charts. Not to take anything away from either group (and it’s hard to take anything but good from a classic like B&S’s If You’re Feeling Sinister) but CU has been serving up a more challenging variant for years now, and has helped introduced the world to the highly-internalized work of Interpol, the late Aereogramme, and Mogwai, the instrumental stylists behind the soundtrack to Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait).
The good news is that even some of the less familiar names on this two-disc set have talent and personality to burn. Witness the feedback-laden pop of Magoo (”A to Z and Back Again”), the angelic folk of Suckle (”To Be King”), the raucous what-the-fuckery of Mother and the Addicts (”Oh Yeah…You Look Quite Nice”), the static-bedecked post-rock of Model Fighter (”Metallic Rutland”), or the spirited girl-group bop of Cha Cha Cohen (”Heck Singhi”). Truth of the matter is this: it’s all good…in the Scottish hood. (Iot’s worth pointing out that Cha Cha Cohen spun off the Wedding Present, while Suckle spun off the Vaselines.) Encompassing 11 years of audio and visual adventurousness, the CD features 17 tracks, while the even more impressive DVD consists of 28 videos, including six from the Delgados (the now-defunct quartet who runs the operation) and eight from Arab Strap (Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton, both now solo). Though the retrospective eschews liner notes, the Delgados do provide a DVD introduction. CHEMO87CD+DVD comes highly recommended.