THE LIST: 25 YEARS T H E L I S T 2 5 Y E A R S T H E A R C H E S , G L A S G O W F R I 2 2 O C T
GREATEST MISTAKES
With a celebrated new album, a UK tour with The Twilight Sad and now a headline slot at The List’s 25th birthday event, the future looks bright for Errors. They might even have a go at singing, as David Pollock discovers 12 THE LIST 7–21 Oct 2010
‘W hen a taxi driver asks us what kind of music we play,’ says Errors’ Stephen ‘Steev’ Livingstone, ‘it’s pretty hard to describe.’ The instrumental Glasgow quartet are certainly versatile, having been talked up in Mixmag for their dancefloor-friendly beats, given kudos by NME for their guitar-pop savvy and adopted not long after they formed in 2004 by Rock Action, the label belonging to those fellow explorers of the sonically literate instrumental Mogwai.
Their second album Come Down With Me (after 2008’s It’s Not Something But it is Like Whatever and the 2006 mini-album How Clean is Your Acid House?) came out earlier this year, and the band consider it their best work yet. ‘If you’re in a studio where you’re spending a fortune a day, you rush things,’ says the band’s Simon Ward, ‘and I don’t think you’d ever come out of that situation totally happy. But we like to be totally involved in our own recording and production, and having our own studio for this album meant we were able to take a lot more time over it.’
Although demo sessions for the next album are already underway, the band don’t have much free time right now. Keyboard player Livingstone, laptop operator Ward, guitarist Greg Paterson and drummer James Hamilton (who all ‘swap round and play each other’s instruments badly’ during shows) will be midway through a tour with fellow Scots The Twilight Sad at time of going to press, their headline appearance at The List’s 25th Birthday Party will be their only Glasgow date for the remainder of the year and the triumphantly named remix album Celebrity Come Down With Me will be released shortly after. ‘We were really pleased with the response from the artists we asked to contribute to it,’ says Livingstone of CCDWM, citing people like Dam