Action Painting! : Scatterflats EP

EP review

Action Painting! 

Scatterflats EP

Old Bad Habits

DL / Limited 10″ vinyl

Out 19 April 2025

Action Painting! (1989-95) were ‘the black sheep of Sarah Records’. The Emotional Response compilation Trial Cuts (released 2018) brings together their recorded works and sounds fresh and vital still. Thirty years on the Greek Old Bad Habits Label are proud to release brand new songs from the band who had the the same sort of air and potential as the Mary Chain or Manics says Ged Babey.

Sick of reformed bands undertaking reunion tours to cash-in on anniversaries of their decades old successes?  Some of us want new material by former contenders making better music than they did in their youth (see The Loft, Miki Berenyi Trio….)

The return of Action Painting! is no tired, cynical, nostalgic reunion. This is a proper artistic rebirth, with songs that need to be sung & heard that stand head and shoulders above most current releases as well as the bands back catalogue.

We are crime scene investigators we aren’t artists. We also are aware we are taking up cultural space, so make sure we are giving something different and of sufficient quality, because if not we are bed blocking younger groups and performers. We make an effort.

Andy Hitchcock talks the talk and Action Painting! can walk with a swagger once Scatterflats is released. It’s a great EP, each song different to the previous one in style:  from Northern Soul vibe, to bossa-nova lounge, then a storming riot-grrl punk groove, a classic Postcard sound and a haunting Gothic lament to close.

I missed out on Action Painting! completely in the 1990’s despite the fact they were from Portsmouth, just down the road from me (in Southampton).  I knew the name and the reputation, but never saw them. The thing is: Action Painting! didn’t fit what became the stereotype Sarah band.  They were gobby, political and naturally ‘punk rock’, without even trying. This LTW interview from 2018 covers their riotous past, fist-fights and all.

Having heard new tracks on a couple of 2024 compilations: There Is Something Wrong With That Boy (Raving Pop Blast) and  Under The Bridge 2 (Skep Wax) i started to regret missing out on the band.

Then I discovered I serve time in the  same workplace as Andy Hitchcock, the singer / guitarist and gobshite with the band. He is married to Mo Quinn, formerly of the legendary band Lungleg. He talked me through the songs:

Scatterflats is pure upbeat pop in a Young Sound of Scotland style. The shiny-happy music masking a lyrical darkness.

(AH) Scatterflats was the first demo recorded after I started making music again. A protest song, originally just raw guitars i but it would’ve been so obvious, too easy, making it an ‘angry guitar song’ so I channelled the Associates, Wake, Positive Touch era Undertones and even John Hughes movies to give it a strange 80s feeling it’s even a bit soapy. It’s about Scotland….and it’s continuing dirty little secret, it’s Anti Irish/catholic bigotry.

Where’s the Jazz Butcher?  Bossa-nova croon with backwards guitars.  Summery Astrud Gilberto type stuff and a catchy chorus. 

A tribute song in a way and a study in teenage romantic incompetence and cold war ADHD. It’s my first ever attempt at a guitar solo and I didn’t want it to be a rock solo. You can dance to this one, well I can. Coming after the first track you get the hint this EP is going to keep you on your toes. Plus I get to mention The Claim, always a bonus

False Flags A complete change in mood and style.  I love this. It’s minimalist, intelligent punk rock at it’s best to me.

Mo plays guitar on the LP version and gives it a very cool spectral rock and roll feel, this version is the bastard son of Upside down and Dragonaut.

I love the guitar tone, and is it a minimal upright drum kit like JAMC ?

Haha it’s not a guitar it’s my son’s miniature bass from when he was 12. I like playing on it and I found a cool tuning my midget hands can handle. John Callender from the Cranes played drums on it I got him to play on upright kit and we did 2 layers of drums glitter band style.

It also has a real Huggy Bear vibe about it to my ears.

Cool. Yeah I can sort of see that. Well John Slade from Huggy Bear was in Action Painting! for a while.

The Effortless Boredom of the Southern Modette

With the other songs being well under three minutes, this is an epic at nearly five and an unbeatable song title that Comet Gain would have killed for.  Piano-lead, a great vocal and lyric.  Nice to hear Hilsea (rail station) mentioned in a song. A classic song.

Recorded 3 days before my dads funeral. I think he would have liked it. A family affair my brother and Kevins daughter are on this. It’s about disenchantment. Being trapped in a situation and not having the answer or knowing it but not accepting it. I have some superficial involvement in the past with the mod scene, I hated the aping of American culture in the 90s as exemplified by white middle class hip hop boys and grungers so was attracted to it. Not from any sense of national identity but a hatred of the multiple layers of pretentiousness from copying American culture without adding to it. It could apply to any calcified UK youth tribe, of course in all these songs there is knowledge gained from viable personalities that you pass amongst, situations witnessed.

Magdalen    Almost Gothic.  Beautiful.  Sends a shiver down my spine.

Mo nailed the vocal in 2 takes. She also came up with the melodica lines as well that fitted perfectly. Her mission statement to us was she was not prepared to just do the “same old shite as she’d done before” . It’s a really dark enchanting end to an EP about disenchantment, with a bunch of songs that are accessible but will jolt you out of complacency. I think in a way it has a Velvets feel in the way the tracks contradict each other stylistically.

Hitchcock tends to come across as his own biggest fan, but it’s the rest of the band he’s talking about much of the time and it’s the creative input of all of them that give his ideas wings.

You could say, in a way he is the Mark E Smith of the Sarah Records Indie scene. A divisive figure who has always refused to conform to expectations.  The recording of a full album has been delayed by the ‘spectre of cancer hanging over his family’ but Scatterflats proves that he and Action Painting! have talent, ideas and vision and are as unpredictable and exciting a band as any new art riot acts about to kick off.

……………….

Buy Scatterflats from Bandcamp

Andrew Hitchcock – Vocals, Guitars, Fuzz Bass, Harpsichord, & Toy Piano
Kevin Amicable-House – Bass & Vocals
Iain Naylor – Drums, Percussion & Programming
Mo Quinn – Vocals & Melodica
Chris Harris – Drums & Percussion
Alice Amicable-House – Piano & Vocals
Jon Callender – Drums & Sound Engineering
Carl Hitchcock – Synthesizer

Those compilation releases:

All words  Ged Babey – with artist quotes in italics.