Vistas
January 24, O2 Academy, Glasgow
Representation is important. Often, to begin to entertain the idea that you can make headway in any field from politics to performance poetry, you have to see it to believe it.
For Vistas, three young men from Edinburgh making exuberant, catchier-than-the-common-cold pop, seeing the success of The View earlier this decade ignited a flame in their teenage bellies. Here were a bunch of ordinary lads from Dryburgh, a working-class area in Dundee, being lauded around the world for their scuffed, high energy sing-a-longs.
“That's what brought me and Jamie together, playing covers of The View, talking about their music,” says Vistas frontman Prentice Robertson of bass player Jamie Law. "They were a Scottish band who were playing music in a style that we liked, and they were successful. We thought that was pretty cool, that they could do that and that you didn't have to be from America to do those things. They were a really big factor for us."
At the time, Robertson was in another band with guitarist Dylan Rush.
“When we were playing at school we weren't taking it particularly seriously, we were doing it more for fun and I guess that's where our friendships grew a lot,” Robertson says. After school the three, encouraged by their burgeoning musicality, joined forces as Vistas.
Now, barely into their 20s, the outlook for 2019 looks set to be as bold and bright as their songs. In the past year especially, the band have been championed by Spotify, where Vistas currently have 350,000 monthly listeners and 15 million streams – an extraordinary sum for a young band with no major label backing.
The songs speak for themselves: from debut single Sign Language, released for stream little over two years ago to current EP hello[CORR], the trio – who are joined by drummer Graham McDonald – make brilliantly-structured pop songs so catchy, you're singing along at the first listen. A perfect choice of act then, to open Edinburgh's Hogmanay Street Party just a few weeks ago. That's not to say they're throwaway or middle-of-the-road; on the likes of Strong Swimmer and Hold Me – two typically strong tracks from 2017 with witty videos by Highland filmmaker Thomas Hogben – there's no trace of Fratellis-style lairiness or meat and potatoes mundanity.
More appropriate comparisons might be The 1975 or The Wombats, two bands proving popularity and interesting ideas is not a zero sum game.
Vistas support the latter this week at the O2 Academy in Glasgow, where their May 31 show at St Luke's is almost sold out already. In between is a tour with Circa Waves, another Liverpool outfit currently, in the words of one reviewer “ditching the lightweight indie for something meatier and more meaningful”.
Vistas have strong links with the city - they've been recording at Liverpool's Parr Street Studios since September 2018 with producer Rich Turvey. Robertson and crew are currently at the studio, which is the biggest in the UK outside of London and has played a significant part in albums by Coldplay, Stereophonics, Black Sabbath and Justin Bieber.
“The past year has been really productive,” says Robertson. “If we're not doing a gig, we're rehearsing or recording in the studio, and if we're not doing that, we're probably playing a gig.”
The frontman says Vistas will release an album when it's sure to make “the right impact at the right time”.
For now, there are further plans for the coming year.
“We've got lots of things that we can't announce yet,” says Robertson. “But basically, if you want to see us in 2019 at some point, we'll pretty much be everywhere.”
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