Hailing from Stirling (a town in Central Scotland about equidistant from Glasgow and Edinburgh), Jack Butler were a four-piece consisting of Liam Kelly (vocals and guitar), Chris Lowdon (guitar), Allan Conroy (bass) and Greg Moodie (drums).
They released a debut 3-track CD single in 2006 on Whimsical Records, and as I said when I featured the band on the blog back in November 2013, lead track Velvet Prose did have a wee bit of the standard indie-pop sound that was all over the charts at the time but I was more taken by the two b-sides which took me back a fair bit to some of the best bits of the 80s. Candles seems influenced by the early Zoo Records stuff of the Teardrop Explodes and the Bunnymen with the angular guitar work found on Josef K songs. But it’s He Got No Game! which is by far the standout – it sounds as if the early Associates had reformed with Alan Rankine to the fore and a reasonable impression of Billy Mackenzie too….
mp3 : Jack Butler – He Got No Game!
A debut album would eventually surface in 2009, for which a writer with one Scottish-based tabloid paper went nuts, but it wasn’t enough to propel the boys to fame and fortune.