SUCKLE AND SEE

They're not recognisable yet, writes Mark Robertson, but it won't be long until Suckle are fully grown up stars

BLAME their coy press shots, their lack of pretention or just my poor detection skills but it takes a full ten minutes of sitting across the room from the Suckle party - Marie McKee, her older sister, Frances, and guitarist Brian McEwan - for me to recognise them.

Introductions over, Frances has this to say when asked to explain how her band signed to hip Glasgow indie label Chemikal Underground: "I slept with them all".

Her elfin features contort with laughter at the thought, but she carries on. "No, Marie slept with them all." Then: "No, no. Brian slept with them all". McEwan nods, mildly flummoxed, but then such is the group dynamic within Suckle - Frances, songwriter and head honcho, cracks the funnies, at her own expense as well as her colleagues.

This is a band with a history, or more specifically, Frances is a woman with a history. During the late 1980s, she was in a group called The Vaselines. Their album Dum Dum, in McKee's words, "sank deeper than the Titanic" on its release and the group split up. It was only when Kurt Cobain picked up on their records and covered Son Of A Gun and Molly's Lips for a Peel session that interest in the Vaselines picked up again.

"My first question was 'Who are Nirvana?'," says Frances. "They hadn't really done that much at this point. We reformed to support them at a gig in Edinburgh and they were really nice folks." This was the tour for Nevermind, which saw Nirvana make the jump to superstardom. Suitably non-plussed, sister Marie's enduring memory of the band was that Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic looked like actor Chevy Chase.

The embryonic Suckle line up formed in the mid-1990s and put out a couple of singles to little success. Soon flautist Elanor Taylor, drummer Kenny McEwan and bassist Vicky Morton were drafted into the fold. It took Kenny's brother, Brian to complete the sextet. And despite Frances McKee's previous adventures with the Vaselines, Suckle have an air of enthusiasm and optimism rarely seen outside the realms of manufactured boybands and wet-behind-the-ears indie kids. Perhaps it's because they are people more interested in enjoying making music than seeing it as a career or a God given.

Suckle's disregard for fashion and fad sees them create an almost ageless sound, the tracks on their debut album Against Nurture bringing to mind Nick Cave's Bad Seeds fronted by the vocal duo from Stereolab.

And despite being firmly tied to Glasgow for the moment, they are keen to get their music out to the masses. "We just want to rock," declares Frances. "We're just up for getting our own musicality together." They're still babes in arms as far as a rock'n'roll goes, but one day we'll be proud to say we knew when they were just nippers.

Against Nurture is released on Chemikal Underground tomorrow www.chemikal.co.uk/suckle.html

Copyright 2000
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.