Dublin quartet THE SCRATCH announce ‘Mind Yourself’ album for November 3rd release!

The Scratch are a band that sound like no one else you’ve ever heard before.

‘Mind Yourself’ was produced by James Vincent McMorrow

“Embracing absurdity and anarchy in equal measure, The Scratch’s refusal to box their sound into any easily-definable genre has resonated powerfully with a generation” – Hot Press

Dublin quartet The Scratch are a band that sound like no one else you’ve ever heard before. Today, they’re proud to announce the release of their James Vincent McMorrow-produced album, Mind Yourself, on November 3rd in the UK on Music For Nations.

New single, the high-energy melodic earworm, ‘Blaggard’, as well as its accompany video, perfectly portray the band’s electrifying energy and their witty sense of humour.

Describing the single, Daniel Lang (cajón, percussion, lead vocals) commented; “We have been working on the idea of this song for a few years. It’s vastly different to anything we as a band have written before. We played it for the two James’s (James Vincent McMorrow – Producer and James Eager -Engineer) and their reaction gave us the confidence to go back into studio and finish it.”

Adding to this he said “Jordo (guitar, lead vocals) referenced ‘DDevil’ by System Of A Down as a starting point and the song just flowed from there. ‘Blaggard’ is aggressive, it’s bouncy, and the first of probably many a heavy banger to come in the future so get it right up ye.”

THE SCRATCH – ‘Blaggard’ (Official Music Video)

Like all the great progressive musicians, The Scratch turn music on its head and pour their hearts and souls into their art to forge something original and new.

Musicians making the time-honoured leap from acoustic to electric are well-documented, but The Scratch did it the other way round. Bob Dylan famously received a hostile reaction when he went electric in 1965. When The Scratch went acoustic, they ushered in a new and exciting creative chapter. What’s more, they signed to Sony Music Ireland and are now on the same roster!

Prior to The Scratch, they were a “a full-blown metal band”, who released an album and toured the UK and US. After that fizzled out, three of its five members re-convened. “We started looking at ways to express ourselves a bit more authentically,” Conor Dockery says. “Something we could put our individual personalities into.”

They swapped the electric axes and amps for acoustics. The fledgling band found their feet jamming in their kitchen, creating freewheeling, intrepid music, which is laced with humour, honesty, devilment, and an overwhelmingly positive spirit, refreshingly free from the constraints of a recording studio or rehearsal room.

Upon discovering Glen Hansard‘s version of Gold by Interference, an Irish band featuring the late Fergus O’Farrell, The Scratch were profoundly inspired by the song’s tuning, especially its percussiveness and the creative possibilities it opened up. This provided a template for the band to pursue a musical journey incorporating hard-rock and metal dynamics with adventurous acoustic-based music, while additionally using a cajón, a box-shaped drum that originated in Peru.

This organic method was liberating on so many levels. They jammed, wrote, and rehearsed to their heart’s content, and at entirely their own pace. The lads adopted a similar approach to playing live. Rather than juggling all the cumbersome requirements of lugging gear around, arranging backline, and the all the usual behind-the-scenes palaver that comes with putting on a gig, they chose to busk. The immediacy of busking was so much fun that they took their music beyond the Pale into the towns and cities of Ireland.

This readiness to play anywhere and everywhere brought them to Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal for the annual Rory Gallagher International Festival. The spirit of Jimi Hendrix’s favourite guitarist of all-time hovered over the proceedings. A video of The Scratch in full flight was uploaded online. The rest became viral history, quickly notching up over a million views.

This sudden boost to their profile led to new opportunities. Whelan’s in Dublin, one of the country’s best-loved music venues, who have a long-standing reputation for incubating national and international talent, invited them to play a free gig on Wexford Street. They stuffed the joint to the rafters, instantly winning over new hearts, minds, and ears and creating a deeply committed and loyal fanbase in the process.

The Scratch put out a self-released album, Couldn’t Give a Rats. So far, so good. Only problem was its timing, emerging in early April, 2020, literally a few short weeks after the world shut down. An appearance at the Sunstroke festival in Punchestown alongside Faith No More was shelved, as was a host of other tantalising live engagements.

Towards the end of the pandemic, the band felt an overwhelming compulsion to give it their best shot as full-time musicians, channelling all the frustration and disappointment of the previous two years in the most positive and proactive way they could. They were invited to appear at James Vincent McMorrow’s Imagining Ireland event at the Barbican, London. McMorrow would prove to be a key ally, later producing their forthcoming album, Mind Yourself, at Black Mountain Studios, which is nestled in Louth’s Cooley Mountains and modelled on the world famous studio facilities of Memphis.