The Catburgers - Galashiels The Catburgers

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The Catburgers formed in Edinburgh, Scotland in late 1985, inspired by a chance encounter seeing The Television Personalities live and the explosion of DIY pop that was rolling across the UK at the time. They quickly developed a driving, melodic sound that balanced a love of 60s pop with a moody, almost post-punk edge that fit right in with fellow Scottish pop bands like The Pastels and Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes, as well as the bands coming from labels like Creation and Dreamworld.

The Catburgers played often and enthusiastically throughout 1986 and 1987, recording demos that kept the gig offers coming and led Dan Treacy to invite the band to record a single for Dreamworld. Alas, that single didn't materialize at the time and while the band continued to write and play, shifting tastes and work obligations led to the band splitting in 1990.

Before they parted ways, though, they hit the studio one last time to document their set and with no real plans to release it, the recordings that would become Galashiels gathered dust in the attic. Eventually the album was given a rough mix, and a 7" of the Dreamworld session was released in 2022. A chance Instagram post let the cat out of the bag about the unreleased album, and after some heroic mixing work from Archie Moore (Velocity Girl, Black Tambourine) Galashiels was complete, a lovely snapshot of The Catburgers and also the mid-to-late 80s pop scene.

Songs like "I've Got a Friend" and "The First Day of Spring" are thrilling, bursting with youthful enthusiasm and solid gold tunes, the kind of songs that would have been on a thousand mixtapes if released at the time. "Summer of Love" and "The Frightened Girl" are moodier, mid-tempo numbers, calling to the mind the jangly sounds of LA's Paisley Underground, while the epic "I'm Leaving on the 7:52" hearkens back to those same Television Personalities that inspired the band's formation several years and dozens of gigs earlier.

What's really striking is the strength of the song-writing throughout. The Catburgers had a real way with a tune and it feels like a genuine gift to be hearing Galashiels almost 40 years later. It's a perfect  epresentation of a time when starry-eyed kids in far-flung locales like Edinburgh, Dunedin, London and Los Angeles took a resolutely DIY approach to pop and in so doing came up with something fresh, vital and enduring.