Scorpio Leisure From The Stagger Rats

Sometimes the musical connections I make are pretty unusual. I have my share of bands I discovered by overhearing them on my travels, but I think The Stagger Rats may be the first I found based on travel daydreams!

I have long wanted to go to see Up Helly Aa, a yearly fire festival in Shetland. So far it has not worked out but one day! Anyway, Up Helly Aa was webcast back in 2012 and I watched it. Before the festivities kicked off,  the pre-programming included showing The Stagger Rats video for Fuzzy, Fuzzy.

That was it, sold! Loved the video both for their upbeat music and the cinematography. I went pretty much straight to Amazon and found the song in their MP3 shop. Luckily, I also signed up for their mailing list.

Some time passed and I heard they had their debut album out. I listened to it online several times but I was bummed out that I could only find an option to buy the album as MP3. I’ve hit the point that I have all my digital music in FLAC and I swear I can hear the difference, not just I think I can. I hope I can considering how long it took me to complete re-ripping all of them from the original CDs! There is an option to buy the CD on their site but I have a feeling that shipping outside the UK would be pretty darned expensive.

Or at least expensive enough, I figure to make the other alternative comparable. And that’s what I finally did this past week, after giving up on any other alternative ever appearing, I paid $20 to buy the album in FLAC format from Juno Downloads. For that price, I really would have liked to have a CD just because those CDs packed away after they are ripped are a nice back-up for my music.

Ah well, no regrets here. In only a few days, Scorpio Leisure has become one of my favorite albums in quite awhile. “Fuzzy, Fuzzy” is still my favorite, but “When I get A Bit Older” and a couple of other songs are rapidly catching up. And I can tell there are probably an awful lot of influences from bands that I already like, but I’m hard pressed to name one band, as in, if you like band X, you’ll love The Stagger Rats. Every time I listen to the album, a lyric or a sound will strike me as being reminiscent of some band I love. It’s as if they distilled the best of an awful lot of great music and then put their own stamp on it.

The band is actually from Edinburgh, which is one of my favorite cities. There’s no doubt if and when I make it back, I’ll have to consult their schedule and see if I’m lucky enough to see them live! Not that I need excuses to go back to Edinburgh or Scotland in general. But between listening to their album and working on getting my Scotland artwork uploaded at the same time, I’m particularly nostalgic.

Anyway, that’s about as much as you’ll get from me in regards to a music review. I know what I like but I’m always hard pressed to put it into words. It’s very much a gut emotion thing. If you like good music though, give the Stagger Rats a listen and see if your gut agrees with mine!