Director and writer Grant McPhee follows up his feature-length music documentaries, Big Gold Dream and Teenage Superstars, with this tome-like oral history on the same shambly subject. Postcards From Scotland: Scottish Independent Music 1983–1995 uses unexpurgated material collected for the films alongside new and archive eye-witness interviews with over 100 Scottish indie players, including ex-List contributor Ann Donald, who was briefly drummer with Shop Assistants. 

Donald is entertainingly candid about a lack of musical ability and her chancer attitude. She and others capture what it meant to be part of this spontaneous scene, which was founded on the DIY principles of punk without the year-zero purism and regimentation. This was a period when relatively generous government benefits meant that messing around making music for the hell of it was a reality rather than a luxury. 

Some bands split in disarray, some made it big (Primal Scream, The Soup Dragons, Teenage Fanclub). You get the sense that the more chaotic the band, the more fun was to be had. But here, you have to drill through a lot of material to get to the meat and the occasional juicy anecdote. McPhee provides some context throughout but, with perhaps misguided integrity, he mostly leaves it to his waffling interviewees, opting for unabridged fanzine-style transcriptions which retain every repetition, hesitation and diversion. On the other hand, it stays true to the ramshackle spirit of a time before music-business courses and arts funding were the norm. 

Grant McPhee: Postcards From Scotland is out now published by Omnibus Press; main picture: Laurence Verfaillie.