“One of the best British records of the year. A tartan-clad debut of aspiring proportions.”

The Face, on ‘Loss’

“A beacon of originality in a tiresome sea of dross. MacIntyre is a major new British songwriting force.”

The Guardian, on ‘Us‘ 
 

"A great album....melodies with the sticking power of industrial strength Velcro. Brimming with breezing melodies. The monolithic closer, ‘In The Next Life (A Requiem)’ is MacIntyre’s Life On Mars."

NME, on ‘This Is Hope’

“From the adrenalin fix of ‘You’re A Star’ to the spiky ‘Famous For Being Famous’, here is a one-man anthem maker with more ambition and scale than many a band."

The Sun, on ‘The Water’

A quick tally of his recording output so far confirms the Hebridean, Colin MacIntyre, under the Mull Historical Society pseudonym, has released 3 acclaimed albums: Loss (2001), Us (2003) & This Is Hope (2004). And since releasing under his own name, we’ve seen from the songwriter, producer, and now writer, ‘The Water’ (2008), Produced by Lemon Jelly’s Nick Franglen and dubbed ‘pop perfection’, and hot on its heels comes his most stripped-back, self-production, ‘Island’ (2009), MacIntyre’s 5th album.

So far MacIntyre has achieved 4 UK Top 40 Chart hits and 2 Top 20 UK Chart albums. He has also been named Scotland’s Top Creative Talent at the Glenfiddoch Spirit Of Scotland Awards, and voted by the Scottish Public as the 12th best Scottish artist of all time. Colin has toured w/wide and played some major supports including with REM, The Strokes & Elbow. He has performed in wide-ranging venues, from the Millennium Wheel to the Scottish Parliament. He has appeared across the board on TV and Radio, including ‘Later with Jools’, T4, and Soccer AM. Colin has collaborated with ‘Trainspotting’ author Irvine Welsh on video, taken on the persona of Andy Warhol on screen, and recorded a very special spoken word guest appearance by Tony Benn on ‘Pay Attention To The Human’. Music from ‘The Water’ appeared on films such as ‘Stormbreaker’, and ‘Surf’s Up’. MacIntyre has also been made ambassador for World Fair Trade Day, as well as his unofficial role for Mull!

‘Island’ is a special project for MacIntyre, and is the sound of a songwriter at the height of his story-telling powers, grand in scope but intimate in delivery. It is released in the UK on July 6th on his own label, Future Gods Recordings. The album will have a w/wide release and will be preceded by the driving ear-worm single, ‘Cape Wrath’, on June 22nd. In the 10th anniversary year of MacIntyre’s father’s death (Kenny Macintyre, the respected voice of BBC Scotland’s Political & Industrial output, who has recently been honoured in the renaming of Mull’s football pitch) the album is his most personal collection yet, at times soul, pop, folk & rock. As well as ‘Cape Wrath’, highlights include the heartbreaking ‘Samuel Demster R.I.P.’, which tells the story of MacIntyre’s great-grandfather, a young man never to return from WWI, “Goodbye to this small town,” laments MacIntyre, in character of the young soldier, who died at 21, never to know of his unborn child (MacIntyre’s late grandmother). There is the beautiful ‘The Edge Of Nearly’, and ‘Out Stealing Horses’, based on the Per Peterson novel, on which MacIntyre duets with King Creosote to unforgettable effect. ‘No Ordinary Queen’ is perhaps his best narrative to date, highlighting Eliza, “who cannot leave the island, this empire of doubt”.

The beautifully illustrated artwork on the ‘Island’ album is by ‘The Water’ designer Jo Burton. It includes a unique short story written by Colin, which is part of a collection of inter-related tales by him based on each of the album’s song titles. This collection will be called ‘Stories From An Island’, for publication later in 09. The iTunes album release will feature 3 bonus tracks.

Meanwhile MacIntyre is working on his ‘electric’ follow-up to ‘The Water’ album for early 2010. For now though, they say no man is an island, but MacIntyre has gone back to his, to stunning effect.

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In Colin’s own words….. ‘Island’ sleeve notes

“This wasn’t meant to happen, until I realised it had.

Gordon Maclean, who runs An Tobar, the arts centre in my home town of Tobermory on the island of Mull, had asked me to come home and record for their 10th anniversary. The recording of The Water album took a while but I was still feeling quite fresh after it and keen to record again. There is some good symmetry in that An Tobar translates in Gaelic to ‘The Well’. The timing of Gordon’s request was good for me and got me thinking. We spoke about the recordings being stripped back. I started picking at the acoustic. Then while I was in America, in NY, and NE Florida, a lot of the songs were formed, lonesome, in various basements and gardens while logs piled up around me. The Atlantic Ocean rushed to the shore as I cycled alongside it, a reminder of what was on the other side. I had a child’s miniature guitar to write on that made the world grow annoyingly big. ‘No barriers’, I told myself, ‘it’s time to lay myself bare’.

When I stepped off the ferry back onto Mull - I’d left all the electricity plugs behind on the mainland - I could just as well have jumped off a cliff. On the first night of recording there was a Harvest Moon, which we took as a good sign. I was creating back home again; the last time would have been as a teenager in my bedroom just 200 yards up the road. An Tobar also houses what was the first classroom for me when I was 5 years old. That’s the room we were to record in. I remember that the wood panels in the room once seemed as high as the sky. The room is now also a venue, all wooden floorboards and remnants of pupils, teachers and ghosts-past. It felt odd at times to be recording back home, but good odd. Great odd. I’d never have thought that I’d actually become a professional musician and be back here, where the same wooden floorboards used to graze my knees and I’d peak under my teacher’s skirt.

It was a beautiful night that first one, with the sun setting over lumpy Mull. 10 full-on days, but every part of it was great fun. The songs were coming out as I’d hoped. It’s rare for me to record live in the studio with other musicians in this way and I knew then this was to be my next album. For the second session I arrived feeling shaky and vulnerable, but still a lot of work was done. But I was struggling. I looked out at the Atlantic Ocean roaring away and busied myself with string arrangements because my voice wasn’t doing much till late each night. I was lucky the Mendelssohn on Mull festival was on and suddenly a brilliant string section of one arrived, called Seonaid. But that trip was a tonic. I got involved in a music workshop with some of the local kids. I taught them ‘The Final Arrears’ and they'll keep playing it each week. Who knows where they'll take it. I could identify with the sight of the boys leaving to walk home with their electric guitars over their backs, the rain coming in sideways, with no cases to take the brunt.

During the last session, for the final night's recording, I put a notice up on the local Co-op (the scene of the 'Barcode Bypass' / ‘The Supermarket Strikes Back’ story) to invite fishermen, plumbers, pupils, teachers and whoever else in the local community wanted to come up and sing choir and foot-stomp on the last song. It was a special atmosphere in the room as the dust circled the dim light. Some of the songs feature my family members, including my uncle Donald, who was the first person I ever saw with a guitar, and being a plumber, reminded me of that absent sink.

I've never been so laid bare as a songwriter, and it’s felt right to be back home for it. I remembered where the blackboard used to be, so I sung in that direction, and the mixing desk, Gordon’s den, is now located where the old headmaster's room was. Some days we had to ask the local council workers if they'd pause their garden strimming because the mics were picking them up. They nodded in agreement.

I've loved recording the album, and it’s been special to use local musicians including Gordon & Sorren Maclean; sparks have flown, but somehow I’ve stuck entirely to acoustic instrumentation. My first album to do that. In some ways the album has sprung out of pure instinct, and now I realize, necessity. I needed to make it, to go home, to go back to where I started. This is 'Island'. Belated Happy Birthday to An Tobar.

I couldn’t have done it without Gordon. If only all angels had sideburns.

Colin, April 09.

Class Primary 1; teacher: Mrs McNabb.”

From Gordon Maclean, who engineered the album & runs An Tobar Arts Centre:

“This whole adventure began when I suggested to Colin he might like to record a few songs as part of the celebration of An Tobar’s 10th birthday. It was meant as a side project but slowly turned into a complete new album. This was a very spontaneous record with lots of first takes ending up on the final versions. There were lots of special moments for me – staying up late talking about the old days (I remember listening to Colin’s grandpa Angus reciting his poetry at ceilidhs in the local hall) – and lots of great tunes.

What were we doing this for? Maybe for the island we come from, which is not to say that the record is any kind of obvious tribute to Mull or celebration of island life, it’s just that the atmosphere and our sense of how this place affects us pervaded the whole process. I think all that fed into the grooves on the record (not that records really have grooves any more) and helped create something special.”

Colin MacIntyre Biography 2009 - Island