Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2022 Part 4 (25-1)

It began with a long list of some hundreds, was distilled to a (not so) shortlist of 200 and now this 100-or-so

This Scots playlist of the most essential tunes of 2022, contains everything from alternative rock, dance, electronica, hip-hop, rap, indie, trap, choral, punk, post-grunge, folk, jazz and... well see for yourself.

It is a mix of the known, little known and the unknown, leftfield and mainstream, immediate pop anthems, challenging (very) experimental projects and the completely barking.

We have had 100- 26... now for the final chapter, the top 25.

 

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2022 Part 1 (100-76)

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2022 Part 2 (75-51)

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2022 Part 3 (50-26)

 

Part 4- 25-1

=25 Sean Focus ft Verseless - Arikuda Ndiani (Who Wants This?)

The Edinburgh-based Afro-fusion artist with Zimbabwean roots switched things up to team up with Harare-based music producer Verseless, to offer this ear-opening exhilirating single that is an irresistible combo of hip-hop, electro influences and Amapiano, a hybrid of deep house, jazz and lounge music from South Africa.

“This is my first Amapiano song to put out and it’s looking good so far. I think I may just have to release the other collection of Amapiano songs I have," he says.

 

=25 Alliyah Enyo  - The Healer

Edinburgh- based sound artist's first release Echo's Disintegration is a delightfully disorientating warped experimental choral.

This cunning standout takes a hybrid of church choirs, twists in the mood of Laurie Anderson's O Superman, a spiced up Enya and adds some simple minimalist percussion parts. 

She said the track was "a very special one for me because the vocal loop was one of the first things I had ever made".

She added: "I've got a loop pedal that was my first bit of equipment and had recorded the loop but didn’t know what to do with it. Naafi, my flatmate at the time, was working on the track when I was out. She resurrected it, that's what it feels like, she was so empathic with the way she responded with her own production, it feels like some kind of battle cry and it allows the album to culminate with this energy of hope. I believe you can surround yourself with loops of trauma and this track, even though it's a loop, ends up breaking apart and allows this new space to open up."

 

24 Zoe Bestel  -  Oh Lori

A deserved regular on this list, one of the undiscovered great voices of not just Scotland, due to its raw, vulnerable nature takes a 70s hit by Alessi Bros, strips it down, sprinkles autumnal magic all over it and the flowers bloom, the lions nod and the gods swoon.

 

23 Kami-O  -  Float

This superbly crafted, shuddering gem that has a drum 'n' bass vs trip-hop vs dark ambient feel and a killer hook that sounds like a lost John Barry 70s detective show theme, is a haunting standout track from the innovative underground Glasgow-based DJ and producer's stunning second album Veiled, one of my LPs of the year.

 

22  Sun's Signature   -  Underwater

This is the transcendentally blissful first fruit of the collaboration between Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser and her partner, former Spiritualized and Echo and the Bunnymen drummer Damon Reece.

Originally written two decades ago, this second single is a sprawling mash of jewellery box style melodies, Celtic folk, swirling noises, clatters, winds and spooky synth quirks underpinned with Fraser's ethereal trills to create a majestic melancholic and psychedelic adventure.

 

21 Callum Easter  -  Dark Angel

The renegade Leith troubadour followed up his second proper album System with this beautifully crazed multicolour Jon Spencer collision of garage rock 'n' roll and R 'n' B.

 

20 Becky Sikasa  -  Learning

The new Glasgow-based neo-soul songstress sung her first notes at the age of four, sat next to her mother at the piano and played spirituals and devoured Prince and Stevie Wonder from her father's record boxes. And so goes the story of this exciting new talent who sounds like the real deal on this sparsely smoking, colourful off-pop song.

=19 Ashenspire  -   The Law Of Asbestos 

What makes this avant garde metal-influenced combo so transcendent is the sheer breathtaking audacity of their experimental compositions with this opener from the Glasgow combo's second album Hostile Architecture starting off with a jazz vs John Barry tilt before a  funereal sax and smooth violins twist in and then all hell breaks loose with an anti-capitalist outrage rampage.

It ends with a bang: "Always three months to the gutter. Never three months to the top. Another set of f***ing homeless spikes outside another empty shop. Always three months to the gutter. Never three months to ascent. This is not a house of amateurs. This is done with full intent." 

A discordant protest anti-anthem that you won't hear on Capital UK.

 

=19 Wukasa  -  Nic Cage

The Edinburgh-based alt-pop combo believe they are walking a sonically fine line between a chilled night at home with the cat or waking up with ringing ears, sore feet, some unforgettable memories and that special someone youʼve been unhealthily admiring on Instagram for way too long...
Yet to release a debut album this gorgeous mid-tempo anthem with flavours of Foals and Everything Everything shows immense promise.
 

 

18 Pumajaw  -  The Smell Of Trouble

From the Orkney-inspired leftfield eighth long-player over the space of two decades from Fife-dwelling duo John Wills and Pinkie Maclure comes this spellbindingly spooky downtempo electro gem built on a simple, nagging loop reminiscent of Laurie Anderson's O Superman.

 

17 Maranta  -   Let Your Lover Go

Patience can be a virtue, and is certainly the case with this over 7m long avant-garde standout opener from this leftfield Edinburgh duo's Deux Pleasure EP which builds for nearly 3.30m before changing pace into infectious acid-pop.

 

16 Xaar  -  Destabilise

A throbbing, anthemic sledgehammer of industrial synth metal like a cunningly crafted and exhillirating collision between Nine Inch Nails and Lamb of God formed by Glasgow bass player Kenny Lehan who is working on a live line up following the release of this. 

 

15 VanIves  -  Bardennoch

Gorgeously layered vocals with flicks of soul harmonies and strings over simple acoustic licks from the  south west Scotland pastoral alt-folk duo formed of childhood friends Stuart Ramage and Roan Ballantine transport this self-doubt hymn from their debut album Thanks to heaven and back.

 

=14 Zoe Bestel  -  Utopia

This list has previously championed this now 25-year-old nu-folkster who might just be Scotland's answer to Eva Cassidy possessing one of the most delicately vulnerable and heavenly voices around.

Glasgow-based but with roots in the rural Wigtown in Dumfries and Galloway, this early swoonsome ode to climate change hope from a new album due next year transports her usual ukelele-led sound with sweet twists of strings and neat percussion and into the stratosphere.

It emerged, she says, from feeling lost during lockdown without a garden in a top-floor flat of a Glasgow tenement.

“I feel deeply that important issues are emboldened when entwined and understood with art, so my intention was to write a blueprint of hope for a world anxiously affected by climate breakdown, and ecological destruction. I believe nature has tools to heal and we have the intelligence to pay attention, therefore immense opportunities, with the ability to change, not just to avoid catastrophe, but to flourish harmoniously within the natural ecosystem. For the sake of everyone and everything," she said.

 

=14 Casual Drag   - Something Good 

After three years the Edinburgh garage-rock trio are still to return a debut album or EP.  What they did to is something not just good, but great, with feral guitar riffs and a clattering snarl on  this cross between Elastica's Connection and a lost Cramps classic from an upcoming debut EP due for release in early 2023.

13 L.T Leif  -  Pass Back Through

An adopted member of the Scottish DIY music scene, this inspired, charmingly off-kilter earworm of a single from the Glasgow-based Canadian is steeped in droney synths, scattering percussion and the lushest of lush harmonies.

The new album Come Back To Me, But Lightly due on January 27 was demoed in a room on Glasgow’s Great Western Road.

 

12  Katie Gregson-MacLeod  -  Complex 

Hailing from Inverness, the lovelorn vocals of the singer-songwriter studying history at the University of Edinburgh have brought this spinetinglingly raw sad-girl country-folk tinged anthem to a global audience thanks to TikTok.

“I was inspired to write the song when I bumped into someone that unexpectedly brought up tons of memories and I became very reflective," she said. "I wanted to capture all those feelings in the song, so it was a very unguarded moment."

 

=11 Geography Of The Moon  -  The Unravelling

The Scottish-Italian/French psychedelic dream pop duo got together in East London in the summer of 2016 and later moved to Glasgow, where their 2022 EP was conceived, largely influenced by "the longest Covid lockdown". 

This, the title track, is the most melodic ode you'll hear  to the desperation of being stuck in one place for far far too long.

 

=11 Sun's Signature   -  Apples

Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser, has always possessed one of the most significant and beautiful voices in popular culture during my lifetime, but at 59 and working alongside her partner Damon Reece in this new collaboration, the question is can she still hit the incredible heights of her past.  The answer is most definitely yes.

Their eponymously titled debut EP is most definitely not a Coctetau Twins retread. It is a pristinely produced, highly evolved and lushly instrumented cinematic thing of beauty - sent skyward with Fraser's irresistible, charming and otherworldy vocal annunciations that float through this magical near-half hour debut that at times fuses chamber music, movie soundtracks and  trip hop.

This standout is the nearest thing you get to Fraser's Cocteau Twins trill. It is a mystical seven minute wonder that has zero formula and an alluring ghostly neo-classical atmosphere.

10 Kaeto - Good Morning

The greatest debut tune on this list is this delectably deranged R Rated three minutes from the exciting London-based Scots star in the making that is funky like Prince, wild like Death Grips and adventurous like Black Dice.

Recorded alongside Pete Robertson, founding member of The Vaccines, it is a stylish toxic jewel in which she dances all over her inner turmoil while boldly confessing:“I’m gonna make you feel like a piece of sh*t today”. 

"This song in particular stemmed from feeling ridiculously uncomfortable in myself and my attempts to record music," she says. "I often feel quite embarrassed just to exist, so any position of responsibility or creativity can make my most uncertain inner voice come to life. I’ve often been told to give these negative assertions a name and so the song felt as though it was a manifestation of this process. In order to do this, and address some of those ill feelings about myself, I developed a character that I felt personified them. I hoped that in doing so, and seeing how ridiculous these things sounded out loud might enable me to dispel them.”

9 Young Fathers - Tell Somebody

This epic third single and the fourth track from the Edinburgh combo's eagerly anticipated fourth album Heavy Heavy due in February soars and glides like one great big beguiling three minute soul-infused chorus.

They said of the new album: "Heavy Heavy’ could be a mood, or it could describe the smoothed granite of bass that supports the sound. Or, it could be a nod to the natural progression of boys to grown men and the inevitable toll of living, a joyous burden, relationships, family, the natural momentum of a group that has been around long enough to witness massive changes.

“You let the demons out and deal with it. Make sense of it after.”

 

8 VanIves  -   Babyshowers

Childhood friends Stuart Ramage and Roan Ballantine who met as ten year olds lobbying to have a skate park built in Galloway are confusing.  They seem to present as another gentle alt-folk combo - then blow the whole concept apart with a definite R&B-hip hop lilt.  This soaringly euphoric shape-shifting highlight on their luscious debut album Thanks channels that furrow to spine-tingling results, even though the subject matter is as dark as dark can be.  

“While driving back to our home town on a dim morning, Roan showed me a beat he was working on. Stereo cranked, he played the intro to what is now called Babyshowers. The chord progression cradled the spring morning," said Ramage. "Reflectively, I started writing as he looped it for the duration of the drive. The lyrics reflect on a relationship I had when I was 16, where my partner had a miscarriage. Being so young I’m not sure I properly processed what had happened, so this song is my attempt to express how I feel now that I’m older."

 

7 Humour  -  Pure Misery

The Glasgow neo-indie newbies are one of the most compelling around and this crazed title track from their debut EP is a delightfully bewildering and erratic two-minutes-and-forty-seconds that begins with a guitar boom and imbued with lopsided dynamics and the delightfully psychotic vocal yelps of Andreas Christodoulidis that has echoes of the late lamented US post-hardcore combo At The Drive In with slivers of Pixies,  Idles and Pavement thrown in. 

There’s no tension and release. The tension is the release.

 

6 Lizabett Russo  -  Lessons

The avant garde Edinburgh-based Romanian singer-songwriter who made the top five of this list two years ago  remains far too much of an enigmatic secret and this deeply complex, otherworldly and resigned song of loss,  should really hit a wider audience, with Russo's haunting vocals front and centre embellishing the simplest of melodies,  while all kinds of weird strings flit in and out in a near-four-minute rapturous musical dream sequence.  From her captivating fifth album While I Sit And Watch This Tree Volume 2.

 

5 Bleed From Within  -  Levitate

The unsung 17-year-old Scots metalcore combo who have been regulars on this list, and who have all the fire and guitar mastery of Lamb of God dare to transcend the cliches of the genre marrying strident riff-crushing screamo mayhem with anthemic hair metal melodies, actual singing, strings, a beauty of a guitar solo and mood flips on this mould-breaking cracker from their sixth and best album.

It floats close to the territory occupied by album chart-toppers Architects but sounding far far more monstrous, symphonic and epic. 

"Shrine is the sonic embodiment of the dedication to our craft, representing everything that we’ve been through to stand where we are today. By far our most challenging album to complete, Shrine is a testament to our resilience. It is clear recognition of what we’ve been able to accomplish so far, but also a taste of our potential as we continue this journey," the band say. 

One of my albums of the year.

 

4 Barry Can't Swim ft Taite Imogen  -  God Is The Space Between Us

An immaculately constructed hands-in-the-air class slice of breakbeat-infused neo electro-soul which sounds like a twist of a lost early Massive Attack classic from the Lothian-born producer (real name Joshua Mannie), a classically trained artist who once worked as intern at Glasgow's SOMA Records, giving him an insight into the underground electronic scene. 

A standout from the More Content EP, it is a continuation of one of his older releases Lone Raver and is inspired by a 1995 movie starring Ethan Hawke. 

“They were both written in the same setting, being isolated during lockdown, and feeling reflective” he  says.  “I wanted to retain some sounds and elements of Lone Raver in this song because I felt like they're part of the same experience”.

His inspiration for the track and its title comes from the 90's film Before Sunrise in which he pulls this quote as a direct source of influence: “You know I believe if there's any kind of God, it wouldn't be in any of us. Not you or me, but just, this little space in between”.

He says: “I love that quote. I think what she's saying is that God and love isn't something you can own or acquire, but something that exists in empty space that connects people. It's always been there, and we tap in and out of it at various points in our lives. That was something I really wanted to articulate with the sound of this song”.

3 Sun's Signature   -  Golden Air

The unforgettable, unmistakable voice of Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser is at its most irresistible in this otherworldly imperial musical journey.

The first single from the debut EP from the collaboration between Fraser and her long time partner Damon Reece, the long-time drummer with political art-rock giants Massive Attack and former member of Spiritualized and Echo and the Bunnymen is simply breathtaking with Fraser's gossamer voice underpinned by beguilingly twisted light-and-shade structures and fascinating sonics reminiscent of the most adventurous prog rock dynamics.

It features a delightful 'do-do-do' trill in the middle before we are flung headfirst into what is a mesmeric finale. 

Former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett provides strident guitar flourishes as the duo, fascinated by his work on Genesis' 1974 concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway  recruited his "wisdom and experience" for a handful of tracks on the landmark EP.

 

2 Young Fathers  -   I Saw

A long-time favourite of this list, it would be easy for the insanely inventive alt-hip hop Edinburgh trio to rest on their laurels. Not a bit of it.

This first taste of their fourth proper album Heavy Heavy due in February, has a glam stomping, gospel strutting, soulful tribal groove and flits between the deadpan and the unhinged and sounds like nothing else on the planet.

“It’s a big bully with sh*te down their leg, still swaggering,” the band explained of the track. “That pamphlet through your door blaming the establishment and immigrants for everything going wrong. The stench of long-dead empire, trudging along, a psychological hammer to your head in every step. The delusion.”

 

1 Lizzie Reid   -  Love Of Her Life

Shortlisted for the 2021 Scottish Album of the Year Award with the Cubicle EP, the mesmeric Glasgow singer-songwriter returned with the far more potent Mooching EP and this shivers-down-the-spine cut that sounds like a lost heartbroken country folk-tinged epic that has been given a 2022 reboot and is the best thing she has done by a country (geddit) mile.   

It's a colossal, haunting tune oozing in hidden heartache and smothered with a gorgeous, simple melody that begins slowly and ends with a climactic guitar that could have been borrowed from a Spaghetti Western with Reid chiming out whooh-hoos into the distance.   It grows on you with repeated listens and it has been well road tested.

It is hard not to have a tear in the eye as she delivers the killer lines: "She told me I'm the love of her life.  She told me even when she changed her mind. I don't mind."  

 “At the time I wrote the song, I felt like I was looking at heartbreak from a new and less naive perspective,” Reid explained. “But now I have a bit of distance on it, I can see I was still carrying a lot of baggage. For example, when I say ‘I don’t mind’, I see now that I clearly do mind – but I have a different way of confronting my emotions.”

 

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2022 Part 1 (100-76)

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2022 Part 2 (75-51)

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2022 Part 3 (50-26)

 

 

This is the Top 100 Spotify playlist.

 

And this is the Top 100 YouTube playlist.

 

 

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2022 Part 1 (100-76)

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2022 Part 2 (75-51)

Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2022 Part 3 (50-26)