Saturday Night at the Howff with Lost Map, Nightshift and The Nettelles

howff /haʊf/. A favourite meeting place or haunt, especially a pub.

This week at the Howff, we welcome Lost Map, Nightshift and The Nettelles.

Micro-label Lost Map, established in a caravan on the isle of Eigg and host to the likes of Callum Easter, Pictish Trail and Randolph’s Leap, have gathered some of their esteemed artists to create a seasonal / seasonally-adjacent nine track album. ‘Lost Map’s Christmas Card 2020’ is fat with festive cheer to warm your sorry heart in this winter of our discontent. ‘Town for Tomorrow’ by Friends of the Guinness opens with pleasingly seasonal arpeggios that make you instantly sway from side to side in that christmas-jumper-wearing kind of way, A.R. Pinewood sends an auto-tuned message to Santa in ‘This Year’ and the album closes with a synth-tastic ‘I Remember Christmas’ by Happy Spendy. All in all, someone got a sore arm from furiously playing the jingle bells, and that is what this time of year is all about. The album will be physically posted (with download code affixed) to anyone who subscribes to Lost Map’s PostMap Club subscription service during the month of December – you could even get in the spirit of things and order it for a friend with a Gift Subscription.

Nightshift, out of Glasgow’s tight-knit DIY scene, have released their debut single: ‘Make Kin’. The arrangement is sparse, the tone is strange, the rhythms are primitive and the vocals are almost spoken-word. It is deconstructed postpunk. What really holds this piece together though is the clarinet, (not often we have two clarinet tracks in the Howff) which lends a soft, foreboding quality, complimenting the repeated line ‘Try to not get left behind’. Nightshift’s album Zoë will be out on February 26th.

You can hear more from Nightshift and support their work at their bandcamp here.

Edinburgh-based garage rock miscreants The Netelles came recommended to me off the back of my Girls Who Play Guitar playlist, as they boast not one or even two, but three lady musicians, of all things! Their debut album ‘Do You Believe In…’ was released on the 1st of December by Back to Beat records and has all of that retro, snarling, trashy, fuzzy, pulpy, punky-ness that you might want from a garage rock album. Featuring a few covers – notably a good one of ‘Drug Train’ by (one of my favourite bands) The Cramps – it is the originals that stand out. ‘Baba Yaga’ tells of the Russian forest-dwelling boogey-woman and legendary witch, and I like the satisfyingly unsettling keyboard in ‘The Incredible Disappearing Woman’. This one perhaps holds a deeper message, as guitarist and singer Clare sadly passed away this summer. Nevertheless, this is an especially joyful and energetic album with an authentic sense of fun. An excellent legacy!

You can hear more from The Netelles and support their work at their bandcamp here.