Picturehouse preview

HMV Picturehouse, Edinburgh, Thu 12 Feb

First time around with their Mercury Prize short listed 2007 debut album Hats Off to the Buskers, young Dundonian rapscallions The View left a trail of drug busts, trashed hotel rooms and US Visa rejections in their wake. The quartet are back with their second album Which Bitch?, and apparently no better behaved.

Fanning the flames of indie rock anarchy during recording once more was Welsh producer Owen Morris (the man behind Oasis’s first three albums). He’s discovered kindred wild spirits in The View. ‘He’s out of his box, it’s good workin’ with him,’ says lead singer Kyle Falconer. ‘He’s on the same planet as us. He’s got a View tattoo now, he’s one of the boys.’

Understandably, The View’s bankrollers were unenthusiastic about turning the band loose in expensive studios while in Morris’s company. ‘The record company didn’t want us to go with Owen again,’ Falconer explains, ‘cause we always end up getting fined money when we’re with him. For damages and stuff.

‘There was a lot of fun goin’ on,’ the singer adds. ‘We got beers and stuff and went on a hot air balloon together. That was pretty good like. And we built rafts and went floatin’ down a river. And we shaved a Mohawk into his head.’

A 14-track sprawl of ballsy choruses, rickety orchestration and queasy sea shanties, Which Bitch? may lack the character of The View’s first record, but its spirit of no-holds barred mayhem is its strength. Fellow Scot and lover of a tipple Paolo Nutini lent guest vocals to ‘Covers’, in what ended up being a slightly less spontaneous contribution than intended. ‘Paolo happened to be in the studio next to us,’ explains Falconer. ‘It took us a few sessions to get it done though, ‘cause the first time Owen got him really drunk on tequila and it never happened.’

By Malcolm Jack, The List, 5th February 2009