Raging Against the Machine

Glasgow’s Twin Atlantic are fighting against preconceptions, rebelling against their label and banging a drum for their home town. Larry Bartleet hears the story behind the new album that’s completely redefining them.

AH NO, I SOUNDED A BIT Bono then...” twin atlantic frontman sam Mctrusty is cursing himself because he’s just said the band’s new album ‘GLA’ is “giving a little bit of our version of Glasgow back to people” and he can’t quite believe himself.

Worry not, though, because ‘GLA’ – named after Glasgow airport’s initials – couldn’t be further from any bono-esque b***cks. the Glaswegian rock band’s fourth album is both a rough paean to their home town and a refusal to pander to expectations. Quite simply, it’s a rebellion. 

Those expectations stem from their 2014 single ‘Heart and soul’ – the band’s only uK top 20 single to date – and its accompanying album ‘Great divide’, which reached number six in the uK album chart and went on to earn them a slot on the other stage at Glastonbury and a headline set at t In the Park’s Radio 1/ bbC three stage in 2015. that album took six gruelling months to record and Mctrusty recalls spending periods of up to two weeks in the same 10m radius while putting it all together. “before you knew it I went mad,” he mourns. “We just all f**king lost the plot just because we were so detached from reality.”

‘GLA’ was the polar opposite. Recording took six weeks, not six months. In the demo stages they were living less than a mile apart, but worked separately at home in Glasgow. Why? “We were coming up with contrasting ideas and getting something more original than we’d ever achieved by all sitting in one room,” explains bassist Ross Mcnae. bringing those ideas together resulted in ‘GLA’s resolutely odd opening track ‘Gold elephant: Cherry alligator’.