Over the decades, Scottish musicians have made many classic, cult or under-appreciated albums that have stood the test of time. Today, we look back at The Bathers' 1997 album, Kelvingrove Baby.

KELVINGROVE Baby is, says Stefan Kassel, all these years later, an “absolute classic masterpiece”, a masterpiece of Glasgow music. So much of the city, he observes, is in there.

Kassel is the co-founder of the Hamburg-based label, Marina Records, which in the space of four years released three influential albums by Chris Thomson’s group, The Bathers. The albums were, in order, Lagoon Blues (1993), Sunpowder (1995) and Kelvingrove Baby (1997). “I love all of them”, Stefan said earlier this week. “They have aged very well”, he said, and are “classic recordings”.

Marina was notable for the number of excellent Scottish groups it had on its roster.

"There was never a plan to focus on Scottish music", Kassel wrote in an email earlier this week. "A lot of music that we love just happens to come from Scotland. Why is that? I don't know. You never know what exactly touches you when it comes to music, which is great, or what music does to you.

"And why? The chords, the vocals? Scotland certainly has a huge amount of really great vocalists. And there's a very distinct Scottish Soul/soulfulness in my opinion. Glasgow, especially, also has a great melodic sensibility, I'd say. And many great guitar players.

"For me it certainly started with Orange Juice, Josef K, Fire Engines and and Aztec Camera. A bit later, Jazzateeers and Bourgie Bourgie. I saw The Bluebells live in my hometown in Germany as a teenager. I heard all of them for the first time on John Peel's weekly show in Germany on BFBS, each Wednesday.

"But I also loved many other bands from that period who were not from Scotland. The Pale Fountains, Dislocation Dance, Haircut 100, The Specials, The Beat, A Certain Ratio, New Order, Everything But The Girl. So, so many. This list is endless. Exciting years in music for a teenager".

Kassel's very first contact with the Bathers' Chris Thomson was when he and Marina's co-founder, Frank Lahnemann, interviewed him at the office of Island Records in London, in relation to the album Thomson had released with Bloomsday, a collaboration with ex-Commotions Neil Clark and Stephen Irvine.

"I really loved Friends Again [Thomson's previous band] and the Bathers' album, Sweet Deceit", Kassel adds. "We spoke about that and somehow stayed in touch - it started from there. Lagoon Blues was the first full-length album on Marina ... after an EP by the Glasgow band Gazelle (who were just fabulous -- and short-lived).

The sheer quality of the Bathers' Marina Trilogy, as it came to be known, attracted praise from fans and discerning critics. As the label itself put it when reissuing all three albums in October 2020, the Bathers’ musical universe is one of “intricate arrangements, lush orchestrations, swoony vocals and songs of deep emotional beauty”. 

Read more:

Money problems, Liz Fraser and damp tapes: Chris Thomson on the Marina Trilogy

Chris Thomson on Friends Again, The Bathers and earning his living as a gardener

Chris Thomson and The Bathers are back with a superb new album

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Kelvingrove Baby is so good – lyrically, and the way in which it was played, sung and recorded – that, not for the first time, you have to wonder why Thomson and his group have habitually been described as one of Scotland’s best-kept secrets.

Other albums have since followed: Pandemonia (1999), the best-of compilation, Desire Regained (2001), and Sirenesque, which was released a year ago on the Last Night from Glasgow (LNFG) label to hugely enthusiastic reviews. For many fans, however, Kelvingrove Baby remains the Bathers’ high-water mark, so to speak.

“I love Kelvingrove Baby”, says LNFG’s managing director Ian Smith, who next year will bring out the next Bathers studio album.

“I love all Bathers albums; perhaps selfishly I’d hold Sirenesque as his opus work and I possibly prefer Sweet Deceit [1990] but I guess it all hinges on where and when you first hear something. Kelvingrove Baby is probably the most accessible of all The Bathers’ records and thus it doesn’t surprise me that so many hold it as the finest”.

“Such a timeless album … Sounds as good today as it did the day it was released”, remarks a fan on the band’s Facebook page.

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The album’s opening song, Thrive, is a bittersweet recollection of a relationship that is now no more. “I wear the rain like tears” runs one particularly poignant line.

The second verse – “But if you find her/ let her know/ tell her I’m sorry/that she had to go” – reminds you of Dylan’s “If you see her, say hello/ She might be in Tangier/ She left here last early spring/ Is livin’ there, I hear”, in If You See Say, Say Hello, from his mid-70s classic, Blood on the Tracks.

Thrive, and Girlfriend, No Risk No Glory, the wondrous title track, The Fragrance Remains Insane: all are among the compellingly literate, impassioned and intoxicating highlights of an album that has not aged in the slightest.

The Scotsman, in 2003, ranked it at number 42 in its list of the best Scottish albums. The Herald, for its part, described Thomson four years ago as one of Scotland’s most underrated singers and most overlooked songwriters, with a voice that is, in equal parts, tar, whisky and Tom Waits.

Hazel Morrison, who was just 23 when she played drums and percussion on nine of Kelvingrove Baby’s dozen tracks, retains vivid memories of that time, and in particular of the way in which it was recorded.

“When I went to the studio” – Golden Acrid, in her native Edinburgh – “I was given very little information about the songs”, she said. “I was slightly nervous, because when you go into a music situation, to have knowledge is to be forearmed, because you can then start adding your own personality.

“I was slightly uncertain as to what was happening – ‘What are those things?’ We’ve got beautiful chords, we’re got this magic in the room and we’re got people throwing ideas around. But we were all just playing rather delicately, and I think the way Chris did that was extremely clever.

“He did not give us too much information, so that the songs could just grow in the room, and it meant we weren’t restricted in any way. So there was form, and there were definitely sections when we knew – like on the song Dial, when it goes into a distinctive shift in the middle – that there was something we could all play out on.

“But it definitely brought about a different vibe for the creative process. During the making of other albums you might be told, ‘Right, here’s the song, let’s record it. That’s not quite the way it was with this album.

“I had been classically trained and was not long out of music college at that time. For me to start working in this way [on Kelvingrove Baby] was really petrifying”, she adds, laughing. “You’re sitting there wondering, going ‘Oh my God, what is this all about?’ But it woke me up. It made me into a different musician from what I had been trained to be”.

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On the title track Hazel contributes a highly effective, almost spectral, backing vocal. “I had never sung in a professional space before then”, she says. “Chris had had a party at this flat, and several drinks were consumed. The guitars came out and then the piano was switched on. I sang an Erma Franklin tune, Piece of My Heart, and accompanied myself, and I could feel this thing in the room, where there was a sort of ‘What….?’ reaction. Chris was sitting in an armchair, looking astounded.

"So I could see the thoughts were turning in his head already and he got me in pretty quickly to do backing vocals.So I went from being a sad music graduate to someone who discussed harmonies with Justin Currie in a booth, going, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here?” (Currie, of Del Amitri, sang backing vocals on a couple of other songs on the album)

]When the musicians entered the Edinburgh studio, they were quite unaware of Hazel’s soprano abilities. “I started just doing normal backing vocals on the title track and as I was warming up Chris was noticing that I could go quite high”, she said. “Chris and the producer, James Locke, were sitting there, asking me if I could go any higher. And higher. And higher”. She pays tribute to them for bringing something out of herself that she never knew she had.

The Bathers have recorded sporadically down the years, but Hazel remains part of the group, both in the studio and in the live setting. A few months ago, the Frets Concerts series, which was established by Strathaven musician Douglas MacIntyre, saw the band play the Strathaven Hotel and entertain fans with Kelvingrove Baby in its entirety, and other songs from the catalogue.

Reviewing the concert on the Into Creative website, Brian Davidson observed that on two songs from the album – Once Upon a Time on the Rapenburg and The Fragrance Remains the Same – Thomson “appeared to only be with us in body, his eyes closed as he seemed to drift off somewhere us mere mortals could only wish to go to”. As for the title track itself – “More Glaswegian than [Billy] Connolly, more International than Austin Powers” – it was seven minutes of “unadulterated luxury”, which ended with Morrison “combining drum rolls and cymbal bashing with a gorgeous, operatic vocal. Imagine Karen Carpenter having an out-of-body experience and you’re halfway there”.

Towards the end of the show, Thomson told the audience: “We never imagined all those years ago that we would be playing Kelvingrove Baby live, in full. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did”. 

* The Bathers are on Facebook. The band plays the Queens Hall, Edinburgh, on Oct 16. Pandemonia is reissued on double vinyl by Past Night from Glasgow next June.

Next week: Gallus, by Gun.