Tacoma Radar - No One Waved Goodbye Tacoma Radar

Tacoma Radar existed for a little bit more than a glimmer – they burned down the whole candlestick and then silently flickered into darkness. It’s 1996, and amidst a soundtrack of Low, Broadcast, Hydroplane and The Pastels, Kenny, Richie, and Ann begin writing together as a group borrowing local legend Gavin from Camera Obscura as they played their first shows at the 13th Note.

It’s difficult to find anything about their story. Not much exists except for a few short blurbs and a couple of grainy photographs on stage. By 2001, Jennifer was singing and Andy had joined on bass. They recorded their first and only full length, No One Waved Goodbye, in 2002. But by the time it was released in 2004, the band was pretty much done. The light trails they left are only beginning to brighten now.

Recorded at Chem19 in Blantyre and mastered at Abbey Road, No One Waved Goodbye is a collection of 9 tracks which, if you listen close enough, almost weave into one long journey. It’s similar in a lot of ways to early Delgados, Numero’s recent emo treasure Everyone Asked About You and Galaxie 500. It’s a record which focuses a lot on water – figuratively and literally – and how could it not, when rain batters the windows every day and the North Sea roars up the coast? There’s always a slight melancholy to living in these parts and it ripples through the tracks like liquid mist.

That Tacoma Radar are at the beginning of a discovery feels inevitable, listening to this utterly gorgeous music now. With tempos that encourage the songs to unfurl in their own sweet time, this incredible, lost band’s music stretches out through the years into the heart. Opener So Much Water’s sombre, elegiac guitar figure slow dances with its partner, separated across the stereo field to allow an impossibly fragile vocal to sneak through.

But it’s not all gloom, and No One Waved Goodbye is a shimmering blanket of gorgeously delicate sound, strings, slide guitar, space. It’s easy to define the songs as slowcore or dream-pop hidden gems (there’s truth to both), but they’re more of a snapshot of Scotland in the early 2000s – hair fuzzy from the rain, a dingy basement, your best pal on one side and the best band you’d never heard of on the other. Take Your Time positively aches with restrained yearn, Galaxie 500 squatting in a G post code. Tremolo’d guitar inflections that sprinkle light all over No One Waved Goodbye are a proper delight, specially when they bend and curl around the choruses here.

Who’s Gonna Hold The Line points Tacoma Radar much closer to the Camera Obscura sun, with some loving, light shoegaze inflections, a chorus that lifts your spirit up before allowing it to free fall back to earth. Listen to Loneliness Comes Without A Sound and you’re deep in the embrace of the sweetest melancholy recalling Rose McDowall’s later work or Sparklehorse, the sound of heart-worn losers battling on through, looking for connection.

This is magical music, from a special band, largely lost to time until now.

Reissued for the first time, this deluxe pressing features No One Waved Goodbye, the group’s two singles, and the previously unreleased Live From the 13th Note. We’re beyond excited to welcome Tacoma Radar to the Glasgow School.

One of the things we always came back to when discussing what would eventually become The Glasgow School was just how many groups had existed here for a small glimmer of time and then almost vanished without a trace. Our hallowed city has been the birthplace of so much; a rich tapestry woven below the surface for years – in rows of flats off Byres Road and in the dim basement of The 13th Note and up up up the high rises of the suburbs. So far, our series has mostly documented legacy acts – established and recognisable groups that we love dearly, who almost immediately spring to mind when we think of our city. But, there’s more than that to be celebrated and nurtured and given the spotlight. Here’s to the ones who weaved into the fabric and left even the smallest of patterns.

LT/MK Glasgow 2025