Snowgoose

Singles & EPs

About Snowgoose

While best known as part of the Scottish indie rock scene of the 1980s and '90s as a member of the Soup Dragons and the BMX Bandits, Jim McCulloch took a creative detour with his project Snowgoose. Also featuring vocalist Anna Sheard, Snowgoose makes music strongly informed by folk rock of the '60s and '70s, both the traditionally oriented British music in the manner of early Fairport Convention and the sunnier and more psychedelic-tinged sounds of the American West Coast. Featuring subtle, artful arrangements, evocative harmonies, and Sheard's clear lead vocals, Snowgoose earned critical acclaim for their 2012 debut album, Harmony Springs, and after the duo took time off to focus on their personal lives, they reconvened to record a 2020 follow-up, The Making of You. The Snowgoose story began when McCulloch was working with Belle & Sebastian singer Isobel Campbell and Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan on a pair of acoustic-oriented albums they recorded together, 2006's Ballad of the Broken Seas and 2008's Sunday at Devil Dirt. Inspired by his collaborations with Campbell and Lanegan, he launched a folk-psych group called Green Peppers, and McCulloch was looking for additional vocalists. McCulloch's friend Dave McGowan of Teenage Fanclub suggested he consider his friend and flatmate Anna Sheard, who had little performing experience but an impressive instrument. After Green Pepper ran their course, McCulloch chose to launch another folk-oriented group and approached Sheard to be his lead vocalist. They named the new collaboration Snowgoose, and for the recording of their first album, McCulloch brought in McGowan and his Teenage Fanclub bandmates Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley, as well as Stuart Kidd of BMX Bandits and Peter Dombernowsky of Giant Sand. The finished LP, 2012's Harmony Springs, earned enthusiastic reviews from critics, with more than one writer comparing Sheard to Fairport Convention's Sandy Denny. However, before long McCulloch opted to go back to school, earning a master's degree in music and songwriting at the University of the West of Scotland, while Sheard began a relationship and started a family. While McCulloch had been Snowgoose's sole songwriter for Harmony Springs, by the time he and Sheard began discussions of a second LP, she had taken up songwriting, and their 2020 album The Making of You, featuring many of the same guest musicians as the debut, was a fully collaborative effort. ~ Mark Deming

ORIGIN
Glasgow, Scotland
FORMED
2012
GENRE
Alternative

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