From the exalted city of Edinburgh come Lainie and the Crows and, as everyone knows, Edinburgh is a wholesome city full of high fibre bands guaranteed to improve your general health and welfare. Lainie and the Crows certainly have the appearance of a band that might well have benefits to your wellbeing but is all as it seems?
Certainly, “Mr Right Now” seems a song driven by intentions pure as the driven snow and with motivations as old as amplification. However, there is an underlying passion that suggests something sweatier is providing the actual lyrical motivation. Lainie Urquhart’s voice, although afflicted by an accent derived more from the depths of Americana than the holiday resort that will always be West Pilton, would corrupt a minister of the church while the straight down the line Nashville guitar riffs are, in this context, nothing less than sarcastic. “Biding My Time”, on the other hand, is close to parody in its duplication of the sound of the city’s foremost brown bread pop harmonisers Dropkick but the love is nonetheless there for all to see.
However, as the darkness falls over the sweet harmonies of “Dream Away”, the band show their true colours. Ostensibly, this song is a historical reflection upon the discovery of anaesthetics but a metaphor is a metaphor and few will miss the righteous irony of referencing recreational drug use by the educated middle classes. My hat is duly doffed to Lainie and the Crows. They are one Edinburgh band that should be allowed to move to Glasgow.