Dublin quartet THE SCRATCH release suitably humorous video for new single ‘Cheeky Bastard’The Scratch are a band that sound like no one else you’ve ever heard before. New album ‘Mind Yourself’ is out November 3rd. |
|
 |
|
|
“Menacing isn’t it?” – Jack Saunders Indie Show, BBC Radio 1 “Another great Irish band” – BBC 6Music “Wow that is quite a noise!” – Radio X “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 |
|
|
|
|
|
In the run-up to the release of their second album, Mind Yourself, Dublin’s rising quartet The Scratch have offered another taste of what to expect from the highly-anticipated project with new single ‘Cheeky Bastard’. Accompanying the track, the band have released an official tongue-in-cheek video. Directed by Sophie O’Donovan, the video brings the band’s sense of humour to the forefront, portraying them as guests on a TV makeover show before things take a turn for the worse. Describing the new single, the band explain “Cheeky Bastard is cheekier than Anne Doyle reading the Six ‘o’clock news in a pair of trackies. And if it doesn’t get your hips swingin’ like two balls in a hanky there’ll be wigs on the green I tell ya. Scallibalucci baby YEEHAW”. |
|
 |
|
|
THE SCRATCH – ‘Cheeky Bastard’ (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. |
|
 |
|
|
‘Mind Yourself’ Tracklisting 1. Banshee 8. Cold Eye |
|
|
Pre-Save/Pre-Order: |
|
 |
|
|
THE SCRATCH – Mind Yourself (Mini-Documentary)
|
|
|
FORTHCOMING UK LIVE DATES: NOVEMBER 2023 (Album Launch Parties) 17: LONDON Signature Brew 18: KINGSTON Pryzm FEBRUARY 2024 06: GLASGOW King Tut’s 08: LIVERPOOL District 09: LEEDS The Key Club 10: MANCHESTER Deaf Insititue 11: NOTTINGHAM Bodega Social Club 13: BIRMINGHAM Castle & Falcon 14: BRISTOL Exchange 15: BRIGHTON Patterns 16: LONDON The Garage |
|
 |
|
