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Mull Historical Society 'This Is Hope'

added 16 July 2004 at 16.21

It’s fair to say that Colin MacIntyre isn’t the most likely of alt.pop heroes. Firstly, the name Colin is up there with Montgomery in the never-gonna-be-a-star category. Secondly, he’s from Mull, an island which makes the Isle Of Wight seem about as cosmopolitan as New York. And thirdly, did this country ever really need another quietly spoken, slightly quirky singer-songwriter?

Well, yeah. ‘This Is Hope’ is Mull Historical Society’s third album and MacIntyre, the face behind the, er… society, has really hit form. If his first two offerings presented a man whose idea of a song was to find a pleasant melody, hit a few bum notes on the way and tell an off-kilter narrative, then here he’s finally shaken off the angular streak. Like his Scottish peers Belle & Sebastian, MacIntyre has realised that there’s nothing wrong with making low-key, accessible pop songs. Especially when you’re rather good at it.

Musically, ‘This Is Hope’ is closer to those other come-good oddballs, British Sea Power. It’s pop, but not that pop. ‘Peculiar’ is the link to what has gone before, but it’s on ‘How ‘Bout I Love You More’ where MacIntyre begins to hit stride, resembling Flaming Lips covered by Del Amitri (we don’t know how, but this is a good thing). From here, the party begins. ‘Treescavengers’ is the sort of understated, melancholy hymn that Fran Healy is dying to make. And, of course, there’s a bum note in the chorus. ‘This Is The Hebrides’ is schizoid electro-folk, leaping from a sweet piano hook to synth’n’beats verses, ‘Tobermory Zoo’ sounds like The Boo Radleys on Broadway, a Britpop verse leading into a jazz-hands chorus. 

‘In The Next Life’ is the highpoint, though, beginning funereal and gospel and ending on an uplifting and, aptly, hopeful high. Like the debut from Hope Of The States, hope crops up throughout the album, the underlying theme that melancholy and self-pity are always defeated. “It’s your way of holding on,” sings MacIntyre on lovelorn ballad ‘Your Love, My Gain’ as he cements his place as a modern day troubadour. The unlikely hero? Too fucking right.

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