Album Review: The Nectarine No.9 - Saint Jack

20 November 2015 | 3:50 pm | Christopher H James

"It's as if the band jammed through a troubled night and staggered toward a moment of clarity that arrived with the morning light."

One of the weirdest and hardest to verify CVs in rock is that of Scottish gutter-poet Jock Scot.

Roadie to unlikely pop star/thesaurus swallower Ian Dury, Scot became renowned as the alleged supplier of good vibes and an unaccredited muse to the likes of Talking Heads, Blondie and The Clash. In the mid-'90s he teamed up with The Nectarine No.9 who were known for being little more than 'the other band' of Davy Henderson (who managed a modicum of success with post-punk outfit The Fire Engines) and little else.

Their offspring was Saint Jack, an unwashed, woozy clatter that was a world away from the sunny nostalgia-fest of Britpop. Gloriously unpredictable, the lacerating opening title track wandered into two understated instrumentals. Perversely going against the standard method of sticking the hits at the front and letting the quality taper toward the end, Saint Jack got better the further in you went, as the lo-fi Sister Ray-esque grind of Couldn't Phone Potatoes ceded to the touchingly unabashed ballad of Un-Loaded For You and the filthy but beautiful Firecrackers. It's as if the band jammed through a troubled night and staggered toward a moment of clarity that arrived with the morning light.

A chemistry this volatile was never likely to last. The partnership of The Nectarine No.9 and Scot survived this and one hodge-podge EP before going their separate, meandering paths.

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