Neither Is, Nor Ever Was, the debut full-length from Glasgow‘s Constant Follower, emerged from a decade of slow pain and recuperation on the West Coast of Scotland. A serious head injury on the night of his seventeenth birthday left lead Stephen McAll semi-paralysed and without any memory of his life before that moment. The years which followed forced him not only to relearn skills like writing and playing guitar but also grapple with a past he no longer knew. Inspired by the poetry of Norman MacCaig and the surrounding coastal wilderness, McAll eventually began writing songs which interrogated the strange situation in which he existed. How do you understand yourself when your childhood consists only of second-hand accounts? What fills the gaps between these stories? And what of us exists beyond that which we have done and had done to us?
Released via Shimmy-Disc in 2021, the album answers these questions in an imagination and oblique manner, not only delving deep into McAll’s personal circumstances but questioning ordinary ideas of memory. A record free from the past but never really, its airy tones always pulling inward as though destined to orbit the negative space of what was lost. The contours of this experience are mapped with a careful hand, leading to something at once peaceful and profoundly challenging. A calm wisdom which nevertheless upends notions around who a person is and what forces might shape them.
For an album which deals with such profound themes, it sounds disarmingly tranquil. A folk record built around McAll’s baritone vocals, its arrangements of synths, keys, bass and guitars conjure the space and detail of the landscape which inspired it. But head more than an inch below the surface and darker waters lie. Because within the humble rhythm pull a variety of currents, conflicting forces which culminate in a sense of tension. A struggle between calmness and distress, between the real and imaginary, and indeed between the desire for and fear of such clear boundaries. But Constant Follower embraces this turmoil, and in doing so offers a fundamental reimagining of memory, of the past and future, the real and not.
Thanks to support from the PRS Foundation and Creative Scotland, Constant Follower recently recorded a session atop The National Wallace Monument in Stirling, a fitting setting not only for its unique beauty but the way both history and mythology are folded into its story. The site held personal meaning to McAll too, having visited in his now forgotten past. “I don’t remember my childhood, but my mum took lots of photographs,” he explains, “I look so happy in the pictures of us at the Wallace Monument.” Returning with his own kids allowed a new view into the quasi-memory of the photographs. As he continues:
I see how magical it is for my own children—the building, the mythology, the huge sword—and can only think it must have been the same for me. I see it every day when I open my curtains and wondered what it would be like to play up in the crown overlooking the city, and why no one had done it already. So it was a great surprise and an honour when Stirling Council made it happen. To be able to play while stretching our eyes over this beautiful landscape… sometimes it was hard to sing for the lump in my throat.
The session was filmed and directed by Martin J. Pickering, with drone footage by Jakub Jozwiak and 2nd Camera by Lily Hayes, as well as help from runners Danny Urquhart and Owen Edwards who faced the unenviable task of getting the gear to the top of the monument. “It was a physical and brutal shoot because it was freezing and extremely windy,” Pickering says, “but that all lent itself to an amazing end result on camera. I cried when I watched my edit back.” You can find the set in full below:
Neither Is, Nor Ever Was is out now via Shimmy-Disc and you can get it from the Constant Follower Bandcamp page.
