Regular readers of this site will be well aware of our love for Savage Mansion, the Glasgow based project of Craig Angus. Not only was their debut album, Revision Ballads, one of our favourites of last year, we also hosted a brilliant live show of theirs, which hinted at where their music was headed next. The answer has come around quicker than we would have imagined, with the band’s second record, out this week on Lost Map, only fourteen months on from their debut. Today we’re premiering the video for the album’s brilliant title track, Weird Country.

Weird Country showcases the band’s shifting sound, Craig’s songwriting expanded by his increasingly vast cast of bandmates. Here Craig set out to replicate the sound of, “something like a runaway train, with drums that wouldn’t sound out of place on Queens Of The Stone Age’s Songs For The Deaf”. While from that you might expect a heavier, rockier sound than their slacker-pop debut, another, perhaps more surprising influence creeps in; the track is infused with a certain country-twang, finding a surprisingly enticing middle ground of The Band and Parquet Courts.

Lyrically, the track is described by Craig as, “a stream of consciousness ramble”, and, “the angriest track on the record”. It’s a reflection on pre-pandemic Britain, a world that sometimes baffled and bewildered. It finds Craig reflecting angrily on personal run-ins with, “football hooligans and bitter restauranteurs”, that pushed any faith in the inherent goodness of humanity to breaking point. As he sings of, “hissing adolescents” and a country, “Marie Kondoing” it’s history, you can feel his spirit slowly breaking and his temper boiling.

Weird Country was written with no idea just how weird a world it would be birthed into, now it serves as a beacon of creativity and hope, something to enjoy and look forward to devouring over the weeks and months ahead. Savage Mansion’s second step is an intriguing one, a gentle re-imagining of their sound that further marks them out as one of Scotland’s most intriguing new bands.

Weird Country is out April 3rd via Lost Map. Click HERE for more information on Savage Mansion.