Review: Scotland's girl bands movie Since Yesterday is a smash hit

Cameo, Edinburgh

Five stars

Ever heard of Scottish bands The Ettes, The Twinsets or Sally Skull? How about The McKinleys, Pink Kross or The Hedrons? You might know Strawberry Switchblade, but how are you on Lung Leg or Sophisticated Boom Boom?

If your answer is ‘Hell yeah, saw them on a triple bill at the Cooler in ‘94 and I can still remember every song in the set’, then Carla J Easton and Blair Young have the film for you.

If (more likely) your answer is ‘Nope’ or ‘So-so’, then they definitely do. The film is Since Yesterday: The Untold Story Of Scotland’s Girl Bands, and its choice as the closing night gala for this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival was an inspired one. It’s a doozie.

Grounded by talking heads interviews with an impressive number of former members of the above bands and others, the documentary overlays their recollections with a wealth of archive footage and stills photography.

There’s also a cute linking conceit in which a young girl’s bare bedroom wall is gradually plastered with posters, images and newspaper cuttings – acclaim, finally, for these under-acclaimed women and the rousing can-do attitude they displayed in the teeth of chauvinism and prejudice.

Strawberry Switchbade’s Rose McDowall and Jill Bryson (Image: Kat Gollock)

In that respect, Since Yesterday slots reasonably well onto the shelf alongside Grant McPhee’s two films about Scotland’s historic music scenes, Big Gold Dream (the Edinburgh of Josef K, The Scars, Fast Product and The Fire Engines) and Teenage Superstars (Glasgow in the 1980s and early 1990s). And it also wouldn’t look out of place in the company of Lukas Moodysson’s spirited comedy We Are The Best! (girls with guitars in 1980s Sweden), riotous Channel 4 sitcom We Are Lady Parts (girls with guitars in hijabs) and Sini Anderson’s film about Kathleen Hanna, activist frontwoman with 1990s Riot Grrrl punks Bikini Kill (forget her friend Kurt Cobain and his group Nirvana: it’s clear today that of the grunge era bands, Hanna and Bikini Kill have had the most lasting influence).

Where Since Yesterday differs from all those films in the very personal edge Carla J Easton brings to it. As well as co-directing, she narrates and, as a former member of all-female Glasgow band Teen Canteen, she’s also part of the story. More than that, she has questions. Many in fact, and they are powerful to behold and difficult to answer.

Why do so few women succeed in the music business? What do you say to a record label which drops you because they’re worried one member of your band will become pregnant? Why does one interviewee say she felt safer on stage than in the audience? Why, even today, is sexual harassment such an issue at gigs? Where, in 2024, are the female producers and record label bosses? Where are the safe spaces for women to express themselves?

Lung Leg, one of the bands featured in Since Yesterday (Image: Picture: Graham Gavin)

“We don’t normalise women making music together,” Easton says at one point. It’s a matter of fact, but also an indictment.

Spanning a period of close to 60 years, we begin with the story of sisters Jeanette and Sheila McKinley, who supported The Beatles and The Rolling Stones but who weren’t even given enough money to buy food after they decamped to London. They’re Ground Zero, at least in this reading.

Then it’s fast forward to Edinburgh in 1979 where The Ettes form in the maelstrom of creative activity around the Fast Product label. Then we hop over to Glasgow as Strawberry Switchbade’s Rose McDowall and Jill Bryson tell their story of fame and eventual disillusionment. It’s their 1984 single which gives Since Yesterday its name, and a point of irony which underscores Easton’s overall thesis: it’s still the only single by an all-female Scottish girl group to make the top five in the UK singles charts.

McDowall and Bryson followed by members of subversive 1980s band Sophisticated Boom Boom (later His Latest Flame), and the linear tale continues as we meet members of 1990s band Lung Leg then move into the Noughties with the likes of The Hedrons.

As we intercut between eras there are some million dollar anecdotes. A former member of Lung Leg recalls her riposte to a male Peel session techie who tells the band their guitars need tuning: “Naw, it’s supposed tae sound like that.”.

Sophisticated Boom Boom. Picture: Peter McArthur (Image: Picture: Graham Gavin)

A member of The Twinsets jokes about the gig they did at Saughton Prison at the request of Jimmy Boyle: “There’s no lengths we wouldn’t go for validation” (The Twinsets also had a male handbag roadie). One sonic sister recalling the pure buzz of it all simply says: “Rehearsing with a band is the best fun on the planet.”

The message? Plug in, make a noise, find your voice – and maybe sell branded knickers as tour merchandise. Lung Leg did it in America but had sold out after just a few dates and came home kicking themselves at a commercial opportunity lost.

So yes, Since Yesterday is a gleeful and nimbly done birl down memory lane for anyone nostalgic for the Riot Grrrl or C86 movements, or who likes anecdotes about The Beatles or the thrills of touring in Japan. But as the final section reveals it’s so much more than that. It’s essay as much as entertainment. Manifesto as much as straight-up music documentary. Its real heft lies in its polemical side, and it’s all the better for carrying that weight.

Since Yesterday is out October 18