The Playlist
Sam Mctrusty of scottish rockers Twin Atlantic talks the tracks that made him into the player he is today
The first song I remember… Daddycool – Boney M “My grandpa used to only have two tapes in his car, – Boney M’s Greatest Hits and a Willie Nelson live album. I was just a kid at the time, so I found the Willie Nelson tape so boring. I’d ask for Boney M because the music was so upbeat and melodic! I guess it was the first time I was choosing something instead of just being spoon-fed music.”
The song that made me want to play guitar… Rapeme – Nirvana
“During my first year in high school, blink-182 were in the charts, Jackass was on TV and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was the number-one selling Playstation game. I was knee-deep into that Californian pop-punk lifestyle. It took me a few years to get into grunge bands like Nirvana. Everyone loves Smells Like Teen Spirit, but I always preferred Rape Me, which sounds like a Beatles song but blown out into something so dark.”
The song I test amps out with… Bullsonparade – Rage Against The Machine
“If I play anything at all, it would be something like Bulls On Parade because it’s fun and you can’t fuck it up. And even then, you’ll never sound as good as the original. I try to listen to the actual sound. The best piece of advice I was ever given was from a front of house guy we had, this insane player who was a million times better than us, and he told us when you’re testing out gear, just play one chord and let it ring out. So I play a full A-chord, position one on the second fret. That’s all I do. It really freaks people out, because they think I’m going to play one of my own riffs.”
The song I want to be remembered for… Free – Twin Atlantic
“It would be lazy to pick our most successful song! I think Free came at a nice point in our development. I’d levelled up my guitar playing and even though there’s nothing mad going on, it’s just chords, this one captured the mood and moment in time very well. This felt like I had turned a big corner.”
The greatest guitar tone ever recorded… Myblackass – Shellac
“I have tried to recreate this guitar sound so many times I’ve lost count… pretty much every song on every record. It’s on their Action Park record and sounds so visceral and exciting. Everything changed after hearing that tone. I’d use a JHS Colour Box to try and get that sound – it’s more of an overblown pre-amp on a Neve channel strip, that straight-in kind of sound.”
The one riff I wish I had written… Kashmir – Led Zeppelin
“It’s pretty hard to fuck with, right?! It’s cinematic and punk, before punk even knew what it was doing. So ahead of its time, yet so simple and so fucking raw. Whenever you watch footage of Jimmy Page playing the riff, it looks so easy – almost like he’s fucking playing a scale moving one note against all those Ds.”
The song that most informed my own techniques… Anthemparttwo – blink-182
“I learned so much from Tom Delonge’s palm-muting technique, especially from this track. I think he came from more of a hardcore punk background than the other guys in the band, so he was like the edgiest member. They were masters of reinvention, taking all that punk aggression and adding it to pop writing. Some blink-182 songs could easily have been Britney Spears songs, but the difference was Tom’s palm-muting, coming out of a Seymour Duncan Invader and straight into a Mesa head, no pedals!”