'Thrilling and exhilarating': Scottish debut album from 1990 sparkles

The Herald Scotland

12 hours ago

It disclosed that a new remaster of The Same Sky, the much-lauded 1990 debut album by the band to which she gave her name, was in the hands of Seabass Vinyl, a vinyl pressing plant in East Lothian. Horse hopes to have copies by June 21, ahead of the launch that night of The Same Sky 35 tour, which kicks off at Paisley Arts Centre.
The Same Sky, which was released on EMI/Capitol in June 1990, just as Glasgow's reign as City of Culture was coming to an end, is widely seen as one of the most assured, and soulful, Scottish debuts of recent decades. With lyrics written by the guitarist Angela McAlinden and sung by the powerfully expressive vocalist that is Horse, it reached number 44 in the UK charts. One un-named American journalist is said to have described it as 'the best debut album for years'.
Horse, as a solo artist, has since gone on to release, on her own Randan label, several solo albums, the most recent of which is The Road Less Travelled. She was first to bring an orchestra to the Barrowland venue in 1995 – the Scottish Chamber Orchestra – and has collaborated with Lynn Ferguson to turn her true-life stories into Careful, a well-received, one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe, which was named after one of the stand-out tracks on The Same Sky.
In 2016, interviewed by the Australian magazine, LOTL, Horse was asked for the secret of her longevity. Her answer was revealing. 'Making The Same Sky was thrilling and exhilarating — a real life-changer', she said. 'I've never, ever lost that sense when making music. It brings me great joy. I understand, with hindsight, that from teenage years to now, my music has developed from within me by way of osmosis and absolute heart, not head. It has quite literally saved me. It has been my solace and comfort, a companion and a great healer.
'My idea of success and longevity has completely and utterly changed over the years that I have been making music', she added. 'Because I put so much of myself into my music, it's obvious why I would take it personally when commercial 'success', or rather, the widely held view of what success is, may have eluded me. However, I reached a place personally and professionally, long ago of being happy with my success. The great sense of achievement and pleasure from still making music and having a true and positive impact on people is incredible. I feel very lucky'.
Horse was born in Newport on Tay, in Fife, and grew up in Lanark. She once explained to the Los Angeles Times, 'I hated my birth name, don't ask me what it is. I grew up thinking it was a punishment, so when I was about 14, I changed it to Horse. Almost overnight I became a new person'.
In interviews she spoke of having a terrible time growing up, being attacked and bullied because she was gay in a small town, and, eventually, forcing her to leave. Music, and writing her own stories, proved to be her salvation.
'Writing songs in my little back bedroom was a way to close the door on all of that and escape to another world,' Horse told Billy Sloan a few years ago. 'It became a means of taking care of myself and also releasing lots of unhappiness, anger and tension. What began to happen was a kind of osmosis, almost. My emotions became the root of the songs, which makes them all quite heartfelt.'
In the Eighties, she met Angela McAlinden, and they began working on songs together, and over the years other musicians joined them. Horse, who wrote the melodies, and Angela, who composed the lyrics, made a formidable team.
A tape made by the band came to the attention of the producers on The Tube, a wildly popular TV music show at the time. 'We were really just thrown on', Horse told The National, the Herald's sister paper, in 2022. The band guested on the show in March 1987. 'The soundcheck was the camera check – and there were cameras everywhere! My mouth was so dry and I could hardly sing. However, in those days there was no social media or way of contacting the show other than phoning in and they told us that the switchboard had been jammed with people asking about 'that' band.
"At that point we had no management, and we really weren't equipped to 'go'. It was such a lost opportunity but what a great experience for us. A mass audience of over five million meant when we were back in Scotland people did start to look and point at me in the street. Not for bad reasons either'.
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After more demo tapes being sent to publishers and labels a publishing deal was finally secured with the giant EMI. Sally Perryman organised a showcase in Glasgow for the top record labels at what was then the Third Eye Centre (now the CCA), and from this they signed to Capitol.
The two women began crafting the 10 songs that would appear on the album. The production was in the hands of Pete Smith, for whom the band first showcased the album's songs in a gig at Paisley Arts Centre – the very place where the Same Sky 35 tour begins in a fortnight's time.
The recording of the album was, however, interrupted by an unforeseeable development; realising that something was amiss with her voice, Horse consulted a doctor, then a specialist, who told that she had a node on her left vocal cord. The singer wanted to delay an operation until after the album was finished, but the specialist recommended otherwise. The operation took place, and she had to remain silent for 10 days. The recording of her vocals was put back for two months; in the meantime, the band continued to put down the tracks.
The 10 songs on The Same Sky have so many highlights, as signalled by the opening, soaring one-two of …And She Smiled, and The Speed of the Beat of My Heart. Careful, the poignant closing track, was recorded with a 12-piece string section and arranged by Audrey Riley. It was the ultimate single from the album, it would later be covered, solo and with an acoustic guitar, by Will Young. Horse is in superb voice throughout, and the emotional impact of Angela's lyrics can't be overstated.
One track, Sweet Thing, expresses a sense of longing, and also gives rise to the album title: 'Can our hearts synchronise, my baby? / Miles of distance come between us like years/ Covered by the same sky but so separately…'
It also happens to be Pete Smith's favourite track on the record. He's especially proud of the build-up into the chorus, as he told Davie Scott on the latter's BBC Radio Scotland Classic Scottish Albums series in 2022. 'Sometimes you get something eighty per cent right, sometimes you get things fifty per cent right. I got that a hundred per cent right'.
Horse, in subsequent interviews, spoke of her lasting pride in the record, noting with pride that a lot of people had said it remained their favourite albums of the Nineties. But there is perhaps a sense that greater success might have been yielded by The Same Sky.
There were several time-consuming issues with the record label, Capitol UK, and frustrations with the way that Horse herself was marketed.
'We were never part of any clique', she reflected as she discussed the album with Davie Scott. 'We were never part of the Glasgow crowd, like Postcard [Records], but we were around at the same time as Hue and Cry, Deacon Blue, [the Pearlfishers], H20 – a really successful seam of Scottish artists – but we always just never seemed to pass Go and collect £200.
'For me, with hindsight, some of it was to do with two women being at the front of the band – particularly myself, being gay, being lesbian, and very obviously lesbian, because I was very androgynous … so I think we didn't tick the boxes that lots of other people ticked, and something that could have been incredibly powerful in terms of media, or just a real marketable brand thing, was Marmite. Ultimately, I just wanted our music to be heard".
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It took another three years before the follow-up album, the equally fine God's Home Movie was released on MCA/Universal, in November 1993, and peaked at 42 in the British charts.
Speaking to the Evening Times in August 1993, Horse said: 'We've always been very optimistic about our music and knew that sooner or later we'd be able to put problems into the past. Playing live during the last couple of years has been great for us. Despite the fact that we couldn't solve the record-company hassles, we knew there were a lot of fans out there who hadn't forgotten about us. They really kept us going and made us doubly determined to succeed.''
The Herald's David Belcher predicted at the time: 'It would seem that Horse McDonald, the woman, and Horse, the band, are on the verge of becoming Horse, the big-time pop phenomenon'.
It didn't quite work out like that, unfortunately, and the band eventually broke up. But Horse has continued to successfully release her own music since 1999. The most recent album was The Road Less Travelled in 2024. The Same Sky 35 anniversary tour, and the 2025 remaster, will add lustre to the reputation of an excellent debut album.
* For full dates of the Same Sky 35 tour, see horsemcdonald.com