David McAlmont is the last piece of the jigsaw that helped Sean Dickson pull his life back together again. “Sometimes I hate myself for not making music for 15 years,” says Dickson, the Bellshill producer, DJ and songwriter, known to a generation as frontman of Scottish indie rock band The Soup Dragons.
“What I could have done with that period of my life is mind-blowing. But my life fell apart, I ended up in a mental ward, and music fell to the side for me for a long time. I was in a terrible situation of being a married man with a child who was realising he wasn’t in the right place. I came out in 2000, hideously, and it wasn’t all unicorns and rainbow flags. I was in a room locked away, singing the Only Way Is Up by Yazz. I couldn’t get that song out of my head. Yazz was married to the Soup Dragons manager and I couldn’t get that song out of my head.
“When you’re at the lowest point, the next hour can only be a step up, and that realisation was one of the most profound of my life. And I’ve taken it from there slowly getting back to a place where I feel comfortable again.” That place is, or will be by the end of this year, three albums into a musical partnership with David McAlmont, the vocal virtuoso and one half of sometime epic-pop duo McAlmont and (Bernard) Butler.
The pair teamed up when Dickson worked up a compendium of collaborators, featuring everyone from Yoko Ono to Crystal Waters. Having followed McAlmont on social media, and being a keen fan of his towering vocal prowess on M&B singles (Yes and Falling, in particular), he contacted him. What followed was a fruitful connection between two unlikely kindred spirits. McAlmont says: “Sean just laid it all out and I could identify and understand. No-one I ever collaborated with had ever been that vulnerable before. It could only have got better from that point.
“I identify as gay, and Sean does as well, and that was the last barrier to really good creativity with my collaborators, because I feel I can really express myself without worrying what Sean is going to think about what I want to say thematically. That’s not a criticism of the people I have worked with in the past, but that insecurity was there and it is no longer there. I think he maybe feels a version of that too. He has always thought outside of where he comes from. He has always been thinking more internationally than nationally, musically.
“I would say that everything I have done has been in preparation for this moment. It’s the happiest collaboration I have ever been in. I was getting tired of being the black, indie, gay Kate Bush, making an album and disappearing for years. So I’m very happy with HSDM.”
The pair’s music leans into the electronic euphoria of clubland evidenced earlier this year when they released Daylight, their second record. It’ll be followed next month by their third LP, Daylight’s companion, entitled, naturally, Twilight. “When you hear Twilight, Daylight makes more sense. It’s a clever thing that we didn’t actually mean to happen,” says Sean, who goes under the creative moniker HiFi Sean. “The whole thing goes into a circle. We’ve released the lyrics a month before the records come out. A lot of people have said that it’s really interesting to know the words before the music.”
For McAlmont, whose multiple collaborations include the likes of composers David Arnold and Oscar-winner Craig Armstrong, there’s been an element of redemption in the new partnership.
“This has been an answer to a prayer,” he says. “I was getting frustrated with being a serial collaborator. I was hoping this wouldn’t be just one album and then goodbye. Sean is very driven, and has lots of energy. I call him Taz. Nothing is ever finished, there’s always more coming. I have been coaxed back into a situation I thought was over. I was done with the recording industry, and in some ways I still am, because it feels like what we do is autonomous as an outfit. A lot of the barriers, insecurities, fears, they disappeared when I collaborated with Sean.”
For McAlmont, there’s also the Scottish connection. His partner is from Argyll and his affinity for the country goes well beyond his collaborators. “It was always very important to me that my mother instilled in me that my name was from Scotland,” says the London-born singer, whose parents were Guyanese and Nigerian. “She was like: “You’re a McAlmont, your name comes from somewhere. That was empowering, because to have a name like McAlmont would suggest something otherwise of the Caribbean. She bought me an album of Scottish songs when I was a kid. There was a picture of Princes Street on it, and when I went to Edinburgh it was with a view that I had known my entire life.
“I remember singing Flower of Scotland with Aileen from Bjorn Again, who is from Scotland in the back of a taxi 20 years ago and she couldn’t believe I knew it. Not many people like me can sing all of Flower of Scotland.” For both men, the successes of their past continue into the present. The Soup Dragons reformed last year and will be awarded with a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Nordoff Robbins Awards. They’ll play gigs in Glasgow and Edinburgh this year, supported by a DJ set from Gerry Love, once of Teenage Fanclub, and upcoming Scots indie duo The Cords, aka sisters Eva and Grace Tedeschi.
McAlmont will take part in a David Bowie celebration at the Big Burns Supper in Dumfries next year. He doesn’t rule out working with Bernard Butler again, “but that depends whether Bernard is in the mood,” he says. He is asked to sing his 1995 smash hit Yes regularly, and is dismayed by the break-up song’s popularity among newlyweds.
“That’s really weird that folk would want it at their wedding,” he says, laughing “It’s so vitriolic. But I’ve also met people who have walked away from abusive relationships because of it. I’m sure I’ll do another McAlmont show, but I’m not ready for that yet. I’m really enjoying where HSDM are and what we’re doing now.”
Twilight by Hifi Sean and David McAlmont is released on Valentine’ Day 2025. They play King Tuts, Glasgow, on November 18. The Soup Dragons play Oran Mor, Glasgow, on December 11, and The Mash House, Edinburgh, on December 13. McAlmont plays Wall to Wall Bowie, on January 31, at Dumfries’ Big Burns Supper.
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