Adrian Thrills – can he pick ’em
Article published in NME, 27/02/82
The Bluebells | Springtime For Bluebells | IF THIS is springtime, then these must be The Bluebells. And if this is Glasgow, then these Bluebells must be one of two things — either the true flowers of romance or just another bunch of spotty Scottish wimps trying to disguise their calculated cynicism as naive boyish charm.
For now I’ll stick with the former, forgetting reservations that this crisp Glaswegian quintet are no more than another cloying cup of the same old coy Celtic juice, and state my case on the strength of the excellent four-track demo tape that is already enticing an array of major label moguls to the alluring Bluebells bait.
The Bluebells play pop. Pure, but not quite as simple as it first appears. One listen to their chiming, jangling guitar attack and those light-headed five-part harmonies and you might label them anachronistic refugees from the Cavern Club or some other dingy haven of the ’60s beat boom, so authentic is their rendition of classic guitar pop.
A few more plays, however, and the timeless quality of such lovelorn masterpieces as ‘Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool’ and ‘Some Sweet Day’ becomes apparent.
The Bluebells — Robert Hodgens, Russell Irvine, David McCluskey, Kenneth McCluskey and Laurence Donegan — played their first date in Glasgow almost a year ago. Since then they have landed, through contacts and bluff, some plum support slots, heading south with Altered Images and also attracting Haircut Heyward’s nose for a good song.
The Bluebells | Springtime For Bluebells
The songs are usually written by singer and guitarist Robert, who resembles an academic vole and was one of the Postcard – praising pens behind Glasgow’s fabled fanzine Ten Commandments until he decided that he could do better than most of the bands he was writing about and formed The Bluebells, inspired not so much by punk but by a pop legacy stretching from The Monkees to T. Rex.
The chance of a debut single on Postcard last year fell through, partly because The Bluebells failed to match the Postcard “aesthetic”, partly because of their reluctance to be branded alongside the likes of Josef K, Orange Juice, Aztec Camera and The Jazzateers.
Now they are on the lookout for a major, though there lurks a suspicion that the band retain some of the cosy little Postcard attitudes, the contrived charm and the wilful amateurism.
In the dressing room of an Oxford college, where The Bluebells had just placated a couple of thousand student types who had initially come to crown Queen Clare, Hodgens protests that any rough edges exist only because the group are bone-fide amateurs.
“The thing is we’ve only been going ten months, so you can’t expect us to be technical wizards. Maybe we’ve made too many mistakes in public, by playing some big London dates sooner than we should have, but we’re not claiming to be completely proficient yet.”
Right now, The Bluebells have got about as far as they can get without making a record. Their following is small but growing, their songs strong and their hopes high. Their main chance would seem to be getting something like ‘Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool’ out as a single before their unique fire dies.
The Bluebells | Springtime For Bluebells
“In Glasgow, it’s the same old story. If you’re in the papers or on the radio, everybody likes you. Of course, if you become too famous, then they don’t like you any more.
“But we’re doing this because it’s the sort of thing that comes naturally. We’re not doing it because it’s in vogue or anything. Too many of the groups in Scotland are too aware of what’s in the NME this week, or what’s on the cover of The Face. They just try and copy whatever is hip at the moment and invariably end up a couple of months behind the times anyway.”
But The Bluebells have none of these credibility problems. As they say, they’re just a pop group . . .
“yeah, y’know, just like The Fall or The Good Missionaries.”
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