Happy New Year!
Here is a playlist of the essential 100 (or so) tunes to come out of Scotland in 2023.
To mark the end of the year this is the latest edition of the annual journey of the best tracks from Scotland.
Thousands of tracks were distilled into a long list of over 220 and whittled down to this 100-or-so.
And it is fair to say that it has been the most difficult of years to choose the cream of the cream - but here we are.
It is a playlist of some of the most essential tunes of 2023 , from mainstream pop to the avant-garde, from alternative rock, dance, electronica, hip-hop, rap, indie, trap, choral, punk, post-grunge, folk and... well, as always, see for yourself.
The 100-or-so were being published over four days with the final part dropping now, New Year's Day.
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2023 Part 1 (100-76)
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2023 Part 2 (75-51)
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2023 Part 3 (50-26)
Part 4- 25-1
=25 Rudi Zygadlo - Thriving Not Driving
This riveting single from the wonderfully crazy Doggerland, the first album in ten years from the Glasgow based multi-instrumentalist, producer, and artist reveals a fascinating wiring of disparate styles from dance, prog rock, indie and synth-pop but with the kind of eccentrically creative dynamic that the likes of Prince and Talking Heads would employ with influences as wide as Frank Zappa, John Carpenter, Eastern European Classical music and contemporary US indie.
=25 Lost Map presents Weird Wave - Astral Difficulties / Weird Wave
As the Scottish indie label Lost Map Records turns ten this year, label chief Johnny Lynch – aka Pictish Trail – created a supergroup of players from across the roster - members of his own band, Tuff Love, L.T. Leif, Savage Mansion, Kid Canaveral and Eagleowl for an experimental project that is expected to lead to a fully blown album.
This triumphantly barking nine-and-a-half minute debut single is like some warped psychedelic v krautrock child of Tubeway Army and all produced from the Isle of Eigg.
Guitarist and singer Kate Lazda of Kid Canaveral says: "This was the final thing that we worked on the first full day that we were on Eigg. At this point we knew we were playing at Green Man Festival and I'm pretty sure Suse said 'what would people at a festival want to hear?' Bart and Iain started on bass and drums and we all jumped in. I am mainly improvising guitar on this track, even on the final recording, so am maybe not the best person to describe the creative process. Ha ha. It was really fun to just make an insane amount of noise on the guitar though."
24 Lvra - venom (ft Spent)
A face-melting three-minute R-rated bass-heavy monster moulding hyperpop rhythms into a block-rockin experimental industrial carcase about a "particularly eventful night out" with haunting vocals from the alt-pop singer/producer who was born in Edinbugh to Chinese parents.
She is more than ably supported with the swaggering vox of Glasgow-based producer-artist Spent and overseen on production by list favourite Glasgow producer Taahliah.
"Venom is a song that oozes confidence out like green sticky dew, and was written after a particularly eventful night out,” says Lvra. “For me, going to clubs is a chance to put on all the sh*t I can’t wear during the day. It’s a place where I’ve seen so much individuality and style, and the queer club scene here in London has been where I’ve been able to explore my own queerness — something that I never felt safe enough to do before I came here.”
23 Bleed From Within - The Will To Resist
The unsung 18-year-old Scots metalcore thrashers and list regulars produced their best album last year and followed it up with a deluxe version adding an EP's worth of tracks taking their cue from the band's move to become more than just another niche rock combo by adding to their riff crushing and ragingly intense vocals with hair metal melodies, an almost gothic atmosphere and actual singing. In this undeniable epic we even have a stadium ambitious ohhh-ohhh-ohhh for good measure. Anger is most definitely an energy.
Ali Richardson says: “It’s been an amazing year for us since the release of Shrine. As the touring schedule started to fill up, we truly began to appreciate the effect the album was having on our career, so we put this idea in motion of releasing a deluxe edition for our fans. The three new songs that can be found here were very nearly a part of the initial release. They’re all very different in their composition, and many arguments were had whilst settling on our final track listing. The Will To Resist takes the lead single here as a band favourite."
22 Supermann on da Beat & Mind23t - Blood Tears
Sometimes, not often, something comes along that sounds so out-there that my jaw drops. This Scots disabled south Asian producer aka Hip Hop Scotland head Sanjeev Mann blends everything from hip hop to metal and pop in this crazed track that sounds like Death Grips possessed by Slayer. He calls it trap metal.
The hip hop enthusiast is also a development worker with Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance, a charity which aims to promote quality of life for people with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and similar conditions.
He says the ain inspiration for tracks like this is Kanye West, Slipknot, general emo rap and modern hiphop.
21 Joesef - Let's Stay Together
The 28-year-old Garthmalock lad with the golden larynx has rightfully been flung into the limelight with that gorgeously soulful voice. But you can't cover an Al Green classic. Surely not. Well he has. He sprinkles magic stripped back smoky jazz club vibes all over it. You could even say he is bringing saxy back. It was released to mark Green's 77th birthday, but no feeble excuse is needed to create gold.
"This song has been with me my entire life, I love to sing it and have been doing so since I was a kid. It reminds me of every major event in my family's history. Al's voice rings true through the good and bad times. No one does it like he does, and never will. A little surprise gift to anyone who wants it, my favourite song of all time I think," he said.
=20 Post Coal Prom Queen - Sapere Aude
They describe themselves as "just a couple of science geeks who also make big dramatic music". And in producer-composers Lily Higham and Gordon Johnstone's new album Music For First Contact they have produced a totally eccentric space opera which is like nothing you will ever have heard.
This divergent eight-minute album finale could be described as their Bohemian Rhapsody. As with much of the album there is a fusion of styles - except on this there is all that and more - jazz, folk, prog rock, electropop and glitch to name but a few - but it is topped off with a a feel for drama and romance and features a divinely deranged operatic part. It is bewitchingly disjointed and complex, consisting of of disparate music sections, but without ever being less than totally enthralling.
=20 Quiet Man - Hollow
A stunning piano-led ballad single from the Glasgow artist that has all the melodic nods of an undoubted anthem complete with a strings finale and a surefire classic. He says: "I write songs at my piano, they're sometimes sad and I feel them in my bones."
19 Uncle Kid - What A Wonderful World
It is tough to do cover versions, let alone one that is a familiar standard that any talent show hopeful would have tried. The Edinburgh-based artist aka Craig Nicholson has delivered the song in the style of a nursery rhyme done by Arab Strap. He originally released this radical invention of the Louis Armstrong classic in aid of the Specialized charity, converting the euphoric song into one that takes the perspective of someone dealing with mental health issues. "I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do," has never sounded so desperate.
18 Rosie H Sullivan - Timeless
Included in a Spotify-curated playlist of The Most Beautiful Songs In The World, this 21-year-old singer-songwriter who grew up on the Isle of Lewis delivers a magically touching indie-folk ballad from the opening hushed acoustic guitar and compellingly enchanting vocals, to the magical strings-to-the fore finale. This outstanding gem from her second EP In My Nature sounds like an 18-carat classic. It features moving spoken narrations from Hamish Gow, who died in 2017, and is considered one of Scotland's sea kayaking pioneers.
She says: "In his final years, Hamish Gow, a close friend of my father’s, passed onto us old cinefilm that showed their kayaking adventures in the 1960s. Part of his narration now resides within the heart of Timeless. It’s a moment of remembrance and reverence for my family."
17 Alex Tronic - Smoke A Kipper
The Edinburgh electronic musician, DJ, producer and label owner, quietly released volume six of Sunset Sessions, an Alex Tronic Records compilation of tracks from artists currently signed. It features this quite remarkable and reworked fusion of jazz, trip hop and electronica from the man himself.
16 King Creosote - Dust
It is one of the blackest moments of the soon to be 57-year-old's 100 and somethingth album - but make no mistake the morbidity is both honest and intoxicating. A beautiful funereal hymn to reality from one of the albums of the year I DES and one of his most human yet.
"And yet one day you too will be done.. you too, will be dust," he deadpans as synths, organs and weird percussion noises squeal around him.
=15 Lomond Campbell - Altered
The Scottish multi-instrumentalist and producer, and past list favourite, delivered a delightfully obtuse EP in Interference Patterns - with no definitive formula but consistently inventive.
This beguilingly mind-bending electronic epic is a sprawling mash of dislocated drum patterns, teasing piano breaks and industrial noise that Squarepusher and Boards of Canada would die for and is nothing short of intoxicating. Consistent with the non-confirmist nature of the output - you won't find this on Spotify. Indeed, it is only on offer on the cassette-version of the EP. Yes - cassette!
=15 North Atlantic Oscillation - Coil
The fifth album from Edinburgh artist Sam Healy's incarnation after Sand is quite simply the most out-there and inventive of the year with a unique ugly beautiful combination of experimental rock sensibilities and technologicial soundscapery that make full use of studio wizardry without ever sounding self-indulgent and turgid.
Coil is probably the most slow paced of all the tracks on offer and the most conventional 'song' here without ever being anything other than fabulously weird. It is another of a series of aural epics on the album, with aching strings, slightly offbeat piano, and a soaring vocal performance that might be a nod to Peter Gabriel, and a percussive evocative finale.
14 There Will Be Fireworks - Classic Movies
Take the heady sentiment of The Blue Nile (they even namecheck Tinseltown - in love) and blend it with the band's cleverly structured, building post-rockish sensibilities and you get this overwhelming first release of any sort in a decade from this gorgeous five-piece Glasgow band who never cease to send chills down my spine since those early days in the early 2000s when I overheard them play in the Solus tent at the late lamented Wickerman Festival. Of course I had to go in.
The sucker punch here is the captivating "It was only us, just the two of us" hook which ends this majestic single all to early. The band said of the Blue Nile parallel: "Good spot. The Blue Nile are a big thing for us. And the bridge / build up section in Classic Movies is probably us at our most consciously trying-to-be-the-Blue-Nile moment."
13 Hudson Mohawke and Nikki Nair - Set the Roof ft Tayla Parx
The transatlantic producer team featuring Scotland's superstar knob twiddler is an old-guard-new-star collaboration that bring the best out of both. This fascinating standout title track from their debut EP is a crazy mash of minimalist electronica, hyperpop and two-step which cutely shapeshifts all over the place combining skips, bumps, bleeps, mad breakdowns and familiar old skool teases and all held together with Tayla Parx's mutant chipmunk falsetto vocals.
12 Young Fathers - Holy Moly
It has been years since their Solus tent performance at the late lamented Wickerman festival in 2014 opened my eyes and ears at how great a a hip hop hybrid band they were both not just recorded but live. Their democratic, all-together camaraderie that comes through on stage is an imprint on their releases. There is no lead singer, it appears to be an unspoken about democracy. And their fourth album Heavy Heavy takes all that and runs with it even further to new heights. This euphoric seize-the-moment epic from the alt-hip hop combo's SAY Award-winning fourth album starts slowly and builds to an almighty gospel-soul influenced climax.
'G' Hastings of the band said: "Strangely, we recorded this album in a studio with no windows in a basement, just the three of us and no-one else there. I think that helped us punch out-the-way and try and make a record that sounded like a bunch of people being together and reacting in moments, rather than the typical songwriting avenue. We really leaned into our comfortability with each other. The years we've been together, we've known each other 21 years so, we are very comfortable telling each other when something is good and something is bad.
"We didn't really talk that much. I think if we talked maybe the album wouldn't have been made. All the talking comes out in the music. It wasn't a planned thing. We just wanted to see what would happen. And this is what happened."
11 Michael Timmons & Yoker Moon - Practice
Recorded mostly live and apparently musically improvised with Glasgow electronic musician Yoker Moon, the East Kilbride songwriter Michael Timmons has placed an evocative and fragile lyrical hook within a tense computer generated soundscape. It is a sparce but kaleidoscopic, ethereal but magnetic orchestral electronic drone, like My Bloody Valentine force-fed avant garde ambient. And all with Frightened Rabbit's Andy Monaghan at the production controls, It's an exhilirating, mind-bending shift from Hanshin Railway Line, which made this list last year. It features in a loop the simple lines: "Did you practice this? Who did you practice with? Did you practice with me in mind?" It is one of the extra tracks that are due to feature on a physical release of Pastel EP.
"It was really nice to create," he said. "The bones of the song have been around for a while and similar themes to my EP Pastel - love, insecurity, the need for it and the need for closeness. "It's been great working with Yoker Moon (Ross Prentice) a really talented musician who has backed me up at a few of my own shows to add textures/sounds to my tunes live. We're on the same wavelength musically, driven by the emotion, so we've just been improvising things out musically, and Practice was performed mostly live in the studio. And yeah, musically, been really interested in pushing out from the usual comfortable miserable tones."
=10 E.M. Kane - Wasted Time
She is the daughter of former South Scotland MSP and deputy editor of this newspaper Joan McAlpine and that Pat Kane. You know, Hue and Cry, Labour Of Love and Looking For Linda, jazzy soul pop swagger Pat Kane. So the singer-songwriter won't want to be reminded there is a lot to live up to if you are going to follow in his inimitable musical footsteps. So I just have. But this effective debut single - a previous release was a group of session songs - reveals a damn accomplished rock-pop-soul artist in the making with an explosive and emotional track that starts like a smouldering bluesy ballad and then builds and builds into a goosebumpy Prince-like anthem with a frenzy of guitar histrionics and raw singing power. The girl can sure wail. Like her dad.
"This story means a whole lot to me," she says. "When you're in your twenties and life is pulling you in every direction, decision and extreme, you sometimes wonder who you are without all those things and how to exist and channel all the love and lust you have in the right way, to the right people places and things. And how do you know what that is? Many vulnerable lil questions I've tried to answer and still have not idea what's going on really."
=10 There Will Be Fireworks - No Christmas Bells
A late late entry to the list is for a Christmas song. Now normally I dread Christmas songs which are normally a sign of desperation or selling out. Not so this, which will be my Christmas number one.
Having produced their first album in a decade, their third, and their most accomplished in Summer Moon the Glasgow alterno-indie combo produced this gripping, spine-tingling Christmas anthem with all proceeds going to Social Bite's Festival of Kindness mission to provide 300,000 meals, gifts, and essential items to homeless and vulnerable people.
More than ably assisted with strings by the Cairn String Quartet and a delightful piano part, this is a stirring, emotional song of hope and putting aside the past that builds and builds to an inspiring climax.
9 Nü Cros - Ill
Rock is dead. Or so they say. If Capital radio is the barometer, it is. This raging young nu-alternative four-piece things don't think so. This, only the third track to be released by the band is like some devilishly experimental snarling combo of hardcore, punk, metal and goth with no rules as to when things slow or explode, it seems. What holds the intense mind-altering atmosphere of total madness together is a keen ear for a melody, a devil-may-care attitude to structure, meaning nothing is predictable, and a fasincating grasp of noise-driven macabre. I remember when I first heard The Pixies and my ears couldn't cope. They couldn't with this, until a few plays and then the penny drops, big time. If this is the way forward, then these boys have a future.
Kevin O’Brien of the band says: “When we stopped playing shows, we took time to try to find our sound, find what we wanted from our own art, and this single was where our new-found vision started. We thought it was only right to let this be our first release for our fans and new listeners.”
8 Rebecca Vasmant - Flowers
The Glaswegian musican, producer and DJ popped up on the obscure Paloma 009.1 EP the first in a series of four showcasing artists affiliated with Berlin's widely acclaimed Paloma club. And make no mistake, while the beats have their roots on the dancefloor, this is nothing short of a nine-minute post-modern electronic masterpiece, building and building around an ever evolving hypnotic keyboard loop that sounds almost oriental, a bizarrely shape-shifting slow-then-fast clap beat, and an undercurrent of carnival atmospherics which is impossible to pigeonhole, but I will try anyway. Call it a little bit jazz, a little bit Latin, a little bit dancefloor, and a whole lot totally inspired. How many times have I played this nine minutes? Too many.
She says: "So around 10 years ago, I made this jazzy house track that I kind of lost belief in, let it sit on my laptop and didn't do anything with. I got an email from Paloma in Berlin asking if I had any music for a compilation that they were doing. They loved my track, wanted to sign it and it is out. So let that be a lesson. If you believe in the music that you're making, that means it is good. Don't doubt yourself. In many ways that track really led to the journey that I've been on for the last 10 years learning how to be a music producer, make my own music, work with musicians, so I really I'm so grateful for that track and it feels really amazing and really special and like a little full circle moment that it's actually been released."
7 The Reverse Engineer - Bathysphere (Goodnight Louisa Remix)
Dave House, the imaginative Edinburgh-based experimental sound artist who specialised in incorporating found sounds and previously championed here as long ago as five years ago teams up with another list favourite (and former numero uno) Edinburgh's Louise Anna McCraw (Goodnight Louisa) for what is unusually for Reverse Engineer simply an exhilarating arms-in-the-air dark electropop banger with much of the weird abstracts retained and with parallels with to Chvrches at their most epic forced-fed the blackest of Blanck Mass.
It is less of a remix, more of a fully formed song created from what was normally a dark instrumental with the evocative vocals of McCraw added and to the fore.
"It's very different," said House. "Thought it would be interesting to get someone different to remix. I love what she did, it's basically a brand new tune."
6 Sixth Wonder - Let Down
It started in 2020, when the band's vocalist Rebekah Kirk from Cambuslang was tasked to do a project at the University of the West of Scotland which had to be something niche. While being a pop lover, she decided there were not that many female-fronted metal bands, and the extreme metal v pop combo was formed. With just a fistful of singles to their name, they have carved out a knack for fusing Britney pop to ferocious metalcore.
Let Down isn't. It isn't often metal is so tight it sends shivers down my spine. It isn't supposed to provoke that reaction. But the equal parts punishing and tender pop delivery from Kirk, the in your face guitar histrionics, the clever balance between pop sensibility and posssessed screamo rage, the soft-loud-soft sucker punch dynamic and the momentous anthemic chorus hook make this their Smells Like Teen Spirit.
She says that the song, which is heavier than what the band have normally put out, is about the general feeling of being let down to the point of feeling that enough is enough. "It’s a song that delves into putting so much energy into a person who just won’t give you the same in return, it is also quite an anger filled song as the resentment starts to build," she says. "When writing, I do tend to lean more to the pop side as that’s where I personally started writing and have found that it blends really nicely with the metal instrumentation. The screams are coming from lessons and practice! Everyone has been very supportive of the screams and like the tone that I have so far anyway! Female fronted metal is a bit of a niche but it’s starting to expand which means opportunities for women in metal are expanding too which is incredible."
5 The Joy Hotel & Iona Lee - Killing Time
The genre-defying seven-piece caught my attention at Doune The Rabbit Hole in 2022. In a line-up that featured Belle and Sebastian, Amy Mcdonald, Teenage Fanclub and at 10cc they were the standout - an exciting band who do their thing and as a whole sounded like nothing else. That's three years after forming in Spring 2019 with initial rehearsals taking place in the living room of a tenement flat in Glasgow's East End. They are many things - but productive is not one of them, having released just three singles since then. This, the third comes over like a dazzling and grandiose pastiche of incongruous musical styles, starting like a dusty old 70s midtempo folk-inflected forgotten American classic with whispers of xylophone and an Everybody Hurts mood before it explodes in a engagingly disorientating ramshackle explosion of cosmic psychedelia, guitars, strings and the kind of energy evoked by the little-known Curtains by proto-metallers Arcane Roots. Not that they are anything like them.
At Doune, they hoped to have a debut album out in 18 months. It may take a little longer. "The album release has been delayed until possibly April because of our new signing with a label," they said. "We’ve decided that the best thing for it is to delay the project by six months to get our new team members on board with everything."
4 King Creosote - It’s Sin That’s Got Its Hold Upon Us
History has it that the folk singer-songwriter Kenny Anderson, the Fife for lifer who will be 57 in January, was so prolific it was difficult to keep up with him: over 100 albums, anyone? Well that changed. November saw the delivery of I DES, his first album in seven years. And quite possibly his best, certainly his most experimental. Keeping the best to last? Well, with a tombstone on the cover and a title that's an anagram of ‘dies’, one might be mistaken for believing that the latest might be.
This opening track with its unexpected techy drum scratch start, heart-stopping deathly strings, thumping heartbeat ticks and a skyscrapingly memorable chorus hook, could well be his best. The only fault, which is not one at all, is that it just stops - leaving you begging for more while the words of wisdom of the late Phil Crowter – a pastor who circulated cassettes of his sermons in London and surrounds in the late 20th and early 21st Century actually ends proceedings.
Anderson came into a copy via his brother Gordon, aka the Beta Band’s Lone Pigeon. “In Autumn 2020 I began building a modular synth, recording patches onto old cassette tapes to make use of the pitch wheel on my tape deck at a later date," he says. "As the drum track rumbled to a close, these words from one of Phil Crowter’s sermons burst forth exactly as you hear them, and I had my chorus. The four short verses ought to take on different meanings depending on the listeners’ particular choice of drugs - recreational (whimsical), prescribed (personal), or mandated (diabolical).”
3 There Will Be Fireworks - Love Comes Around
A spine-tingling track from the Glasgow combo's absorbing third album Summer Moon which was ten years in the making - and while the inventiveness of their post rock roots remains - this has all the harmonic and dynamic class of a lost Blue Nile classic complete with atmospheric synths and a beautiful piano part. And I cannot give a higher compliment than that. A luxuriant aural feast from one of Scotland's great bands that you might not have heard of.
Gibran Farrah, (guitar, vocals, synthesisers, piano) says: "Love Comes Around has been something I’ve returned to time and again. The song began as a few synth chords that Nicky sent round to us all and I remember having an immediate reaction – it just had a melancholic feel that was unique and that’s stayed throughout the studio process."
2 North Atlantic Oscillation - Matryoshka
Sam Healy's previous incarnation Sand has always been a list favourite. Under a new guise, the Edinburgh artist and his band have quietly created with their magnificent, adventurous fifth LP United Wire, one of the albums of the year and the nearest thing on this list to the worthy enterprise of Kid A-era Radiohead. Pretty much every track is worthy of inclusion on this annual list - such is the album's quality. That intrepid spirit is encapsulated in this six minute and twenty second aural masterpiece that begins like a digital rush, all loping hyperdrums, freaky glitch percussion and harsh super-distorted vocals before giving way to a heavenly tranquil, piano-led coda with an angelic falsetto-driven middle section which has all the melancholy of Thom Yorke on Pyramid Song and then builds to a finale of discordant machine-made noise-pop craziness. It is the first new studio album since 2018's Grind Show and it will be difficult to better.
"It's been a strange five years, I think we can all agree," Sam Healy says. "Some strangeness might have leaked into this album, but there's still a core of optimism under the ectoplasm and rubble. Plus, rubble makes for great percussion."
1 The Jesus and Mary Chain - jamcod
One of the great bands of my lifetime from anywhere let alone Scotland and certainly one of the most influential return 40 years on with freeform jazz. As if. This new single starts off like a dabble with experimental percussive industrial noise but then switches to an oh so familiar dirty post-punk bass riff, the trademark swaggering, sneering, sloganeering vocals of Jim Reid, the odd thrash guitar, a few electronic squelches, some snarls for words, a dollop of Ramones slacker-ness, and the killerest of killer melodies.
“Tears are what you want, tears are what you got,” Jim sneers before brother William’s guitar explodes. This dazzling psych earworm of a comeback is almost an A to Z of all that JAMC are about from the experimental to the familiar, all distilled into one blissful sonic blast. It is a cut from their eighth album Glasgow Eyes due in March and recorded at the Glasgow studio Castle of Doom, which belongs to fellow Glaswegians Mogwai. The Reids now 60-somethings recorded their last album, 2017’s Damage and Joy, at the same studio and on this evidence have lost none of their fire.
Jim Reid said the track came from “remembering painful past issues”. He says: “It was about the break-up of the band. It was actually about the night in the House of Blues when the band broke up [in 1999]. People should expect a Jesus and Mary Chain record, and that’s certainly what Glasgow Eyes is. Our creative approach is remarkably the same as it was in 1984, just hit the studio and see what happens. We went in with a bunch of songs and let it take its course. There are no rules, you just do whatever it takes. And there’s a telepathy there — we are those weird not-quite twins that finish each other’s sentences.”
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 2023 Part 1 (100-76)
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2023 Part 2 (75-51)
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2023 Part 3 (50-26)
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