Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Category: Music

Gratuitous Girls Aloud references

  • Bring the noise

    I don’t consider myself a pushy parent; I’m quite keen on finding out who my kids are rather than telling them who I expect them to be. But I think we all have ambitions for our kids, such as wanting them to be happy, and kind to others, and kind to themselves – and if they can also share some of our taste in music and books and comedy, that’s a bonus. So for example I love that both of my kids love The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and R.E.M., and the same sort of stupid humour that cracks me up too.

    I was also really pleased that both of my kids are interested in making music as well as listening to it. And that lasted right up until they started making music noisily and frequently in my house: guitar for my eldest and drums for my youngest. They’re getting very good, but it’s loud – and it’s loud in a house that’s usually silent, because I can’t work when there’s music playing or speech radio in the background.

    The noise is karma, cosmic payback for all the years I spent making a bleeding racket in my own family’s home, a racket so bad that I could make my mum wince three decades later by referencing one of the songs. I think mum would find that funny.

  • I’m book of the month

    The excellent literary magazine Gutter has made Small Town Joy its book of the month for March 2025, and given it a really nice review.

    “An absolute treat to read… This whole book feels like a mixtape lovingly assembled by a friend’s cool, knowledgeable older sister.”

  • Joy as an act of resistance

    The cover of the book Small Town Joy by Carrie Marshall

    I’m very pleased to reveal the cover of my new book, Small Town Joy, designed by Kara McHale. The book will be available in April and you can pre-order it from my publisher or local bookshop right now. Please do, pre-orders are a huge help for small publishing houses and indie bookshops alike.

    After writing and promoting Carrie Kills A Man I made a conscious decision to look for, and to write about, joy. And this book is the result: it’s a history of how queer music and musicians changed the sound of Scotland, and in its pages you’ll hear from some incredibly talented and interesting people.

    I’ll be talking much more about the book nearer the time but I had to share the cover. Isn’t it gorgeous?

  • “Where did all the rainbows go?”

    Despite public demand, our new EP is available now on Bandcamp (for free, or name your price) and will be coming to streaming next week. I’m very proud of it.

    The EP is called The Nest That You Have Flown. The title track is probably the most straightforwardly rock song here, a blast of guitars and driving bass, and it’s followed by a firm live favourite: Opera, the song I can never remember the lyrics to because of some bizarre mental block. David’s guitar is particularly great on this one.

    Next up is Closer To The End Than The Beginning, a song about cowardly corporations abandoning their public support for LGBTQ+ folks in which you can really hear my love of Talk Talk’s records (and which we debuted live last year; the cowardice has become even worse in 2025), and last but not least there’s the shimmering guitar pop of Red Carpet Blue.

    More music soon.

  • Boo!

    I’ve been doing a lot of writing this year and that hasn’t left a lot of time for music – or at least, for actually finishing music; I’ve been writing tons of songs that I’m going to hunker down, mix and release very shortly. Here’s a new tune that you can have for free. It’s more pop-y than the other songs we’re working on, I think: big anthemic guitar pop with a typically cheery lyric and one of our trademark huge choruses.

  • An announcement

    Bless my cotton socks, I’m in the news: the announcement of my new book is in today’s Bookseller. It’s been *so* hard to keep this quiet so I’m really delighted to say we’re putting the band back together for another 404ink book, this time celebrating Scots music of all kinds.

    The book is called Small Town Joy: From Glam Rock to Hyperpop, How Queer Music Changed The Sound of Scotland and it follows queer musicians and influences in Scots music from the 1970s to the present. I’m having tons of fun researching, interviewing for and writing it and I’m really looking forward to sharing it with you in March 2025.

    As I told the Bookseller:

    “I’m delighted to be getting the band back together again for my second 404 Ink book. Small Town Joy follows Scots musicians from bedrooms to the Barras and beyond, tracing the glittery threads that link punk and pop, folk and funk, rave and rock. It’s a provocation and a celebration, a mixtape dedicated to the tunes and talent that’s crossed genres, genders and generations to change the sound of Scotland.” 

  • Whispered words and power chords

    Somewhat later than planned, I’m delighted to tell you about the new HAVR EP: Love Will Save Us From Sadness. Which perhaps could have been called “Hey, do you guys ever think about dying?”

    It’s our best work yet, I think, and I’m particularly proud of the lyrics: these are songs from a sad place but there’s a lot of positivity and joy in them as well as meditations on grief and loss. Over the course of the EP you’ll find crashing waves of Fender strats, hazy pop, huge layers of distortion and, of course, some anthemic rock.

    As ever, we’ve got the music on bandcamp and you can have it for free; I’ll be putting them on the usual streaming services shortly.

  • Handsome devils

    I bought myself a coffee table book as a present. Marr’s Guitars by Johnny Marr is a lavishly photographed guide to some of Marr’s 132 guitars, including some very iconic instruments that played a key role in the sound of The Smiths.

    If you love guitars like I do, it’s absolute filth.

    Some of my favourite bits are the many close-ups of cracked paint, worn metal and chipped edges, the signs of a guitar well used rather than kept behind glass somewhere. And I love the way many of these guitars move: bought or gifted from the guitarists who influenced Marr or the musicians he played with in his long and varied career, or passed on to other musicians by Marr – a list that includes the likes of Noel Gallagher of Oasis and Bernard Butler.

    If you’re looking for a guide to Marr’s sounds you won’t find much here, although a photo of his Smiths-era pedals does give some pretty big hints. It’s a book to sit back and luxuriate with, not one to crib from, and it does that job very well. If like me you’re the kind of person who ooohs at a sparkly stratocaster or a resplendent Rickenbacker, it’s a very beautiful book.

  • Islands in the streams

    Most of my tech writing these days is news reporting, but from time to time I get to write something a little more reflective. Here’s a piece on how streaming services have persuaded me to get back into buying music I can touch.

    I think streaming is like a fast food drive-through, serving up cheeseburgers that are quick, cheap and convenient. And that’s great; it meets a need, satisfies a craving. It fills a hole. But food can be so much more than just fuel, and music can be so much more than Muzak. 

  • Dee eye ess see oh

    There’s a wonderful new documentary on BBC iPlayer (and on PBS in the US) called Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution. It traces disco from its origins in the basement bars and warehouses of 1970s New York to its eventual world domination, and it’s a fantastic programme with a celestial soundtrack.

    While the music is of course the focus, it’s also very good at putting that music in its wider context: disco was music by and for marginalised people from the Black, Latin and queer communities, and the backlash against it was often because of precisely that: the Disco Sucks protests, which the show covers and which included a “disco demolition night” in a Chicago stadium, were toddler tantrums by largely straight, cis, white men railing against music embraced by Black, Latin and queer people of all genders. As Mark Anderson would later write:

    The chance to yell “disco sucks” meant more than simply a musical style choice. It was a chance to push back on a whole set of social dynamics that lay just beneath the surface of a minor battle between a DJ and a radio station that decided to change formats. More importantly, it was a chance for a whole lot of people to say they didn’t like the way the world was changing around them, or who they saw as the potential victors in a cultural and demographic war.

    As one of the interviewees puts it in the first episode, disco was political because the dancers’ lives were political.