Lord Cut-Glass

Lord Cut-Glass, the solo incarnation of ex-Delgado Alun Woodward, takes his maiden album bow for Chemikal Underground on June 22nd.… Sometimes bashful, occasionally imbued with curmudgeonly bluster, and yet always lifted by humorous life learned truisms, Lord Cut-Glass strikes a dashing figure of musically inventive bravado. Galloping percussion, waltzes and marches, promenades of male and female harmony, delicate and serene creations punctuated by casual profanity and shot through with brazenly hilarious words-to-the-wise. It is an album comprising one man’s refined grasp of the musical form, an idiosyncratic pursuit that’s unmistakably in the lineage of independent Scottish music. With its beguiling application of eclectic even anachronistic styles, sharply recalled sense and scene, it is the product of a febrile mind… “At the start of recording I got Scarlet Fever and stayed in bed for ages, reading my girlfriends books.” Explains Woodward of Lord Cut-Glass’ creation, “I read Under Milk Wood in a feverish state and decided I would call myself after one of the characters”. Woodward’s solo project has grown incrementally over the 4 years since The Delgados disbanded. In between “non rock n roll” spots of gardening on his allotment, doses of scarlet fever and work on Chemikal Underground releases – including those of Aidan Moffat and The Phantom Band – the moniker ‘Lord Cut-Glass’ has made fleeting appearances on Chemikal’s own Ballads Of The Book project and the compilation Worried Noodles. “Musically I started writing songs with the idea of being in a band with a couple of other people. I asked them and they said they didn't want to, so I thought fuck it I'll do it all myself.” And so with typically casual defiance Lord Cut-Glass’ debut was recorded at the label’s own studio Chem 19 with former Delgados drummer Paul Savage on the skins, and Woodward himself writing and arranging the parts for an integral band of classical musicians from across Glasgow. “If Lord Cut-Glass was a political leader he’d be more dictator than democrat: more Charlemagne than Chirac” explains Woodward.