The Smashing Times & ballboy

plus Count Florida
Saturday 30th November, 8pm
MONO
18+

The Smashing Times are your new favorite MOD heart throbs. 
Is there REALLY a new Merseybeat Revolution?
How many times can you really REALLY watch The Blow-Up alone in your room?
 Why don't you venture out the front door and take a bite of the real thing?
The Smashing Times are a mainstay in the indie pop underground. 
The group mistrals the new modern life perfectly, 
the sharper world.
collaged with 12 string guitar and mallet on the floor tom.

Featuring Thee Jasmine Monk and Zelda-Anais (The Smashing Times, Midden Heap) as well as scene stalwarts Britta Leijonflycht (Almond Joy, Children Maybe Later, Linda Smith), Paul Krolian (Expert Alterations, Linda Smith), Blake Douglas (Corduroy, Midden Heap, Linda Smith)

“When you call your band Smashing Times you can’t help instantly getting the flavour of the Television Personalties and Dan Treacy but on their second album, the band deliver that and so much more. This really is a fusion of psychedelic, twee and freakbeat  that will make your heart skip and your head smile. The guitars shimmer, strum and jangle whilst the vocals float effortlessly on top of the efficient rhythm section. Every song is a bundle of energy with hooks that come both instantly and after multiple plays. Without doubt, if it had been recorded in the 80’s would have been released on Whaam or Dreamworld but luckily for you pop kids this 2023 and K have the honor of releasing it.” (Sean Forbes)

ballboy Favourites of the late John Peel, who invited them to perform five sessions for his BBC Radio 1 show 2000-2004 as well as featured them many times in his Festive Fifty chart, ballboy are a cult indie-pop band from Edinburgh whose warm, whimsical and savagely witty speak-sung songs about bored sex, DIY drugs, civic shame and polar bears helped to define a generation of fiercely independent Scottish music around the turn of the millennium.

Much of ballboy’s most evocative and enduring work was captured on a trio of EPs – Silver Suits for Astronauts (1999), I Hate Scotland (2000) and Girls Are Better Than Boys (2001) – later collected on the 2001 compilation album Club Anthems 2001. Lost Map Records are excited to work with ballboy on a reissue of Club Anthems 2001 – available to pre-order now – which will see the album released on vinyl for the very first time. This anniversary edition of the record comes with tracks from the follow-up EP, All The Songs On The Radio Are Shite (2002).

ballboy are Gordon McIntyre, together with Nick Reynolds (bass), Gary Morgan (drums), Alexa Morrison (keys, vocals), and Katie Griffiths (synths). Evoking shades of The Wedding Present, The Field Mice, Arab Strap and Billy Bragg, Club Anthems 2001 helped to break ballboy to an international audience and saw the band go on to tour widely around the US and Europe, as well as release four full-length albums – A Guide for the Daylight Hours (2002), The Sash My Father Wore and Other Stories (2003), The Royal Theatre (2004) and I Worked on the Ships (2008). In parallel, Gordon has released solo records both as ++Money Can’t Buy Music and under his own name. In 2008 Gordon co-created the Traverse Theatre Company production Midsummer [a play with songs] together with David Greig. Following a critically acclaimed run in Edinburgh that year, it has since gone on to be performed around the world. The debut Gordon McIntyre solo album titled Even With The Support Of Others was released on Lost Map in 2022 to much acclaim.
The 21st anniversary reissue of Club Anthems 2001 marked a much-anticipated return to full-band activity for ballboy after the best part of a decade’s stasis. It has also offered the chance for Katie Griffiths to rejoin the band for shows making ballboy a twin-keyboard 5-piece band at present. They are currently writing and recording, with plans to release brand new music soon