Thursday 10 - Thursday 24 May 2007, the List, by Camilla Pia (4 out of 5)

You won't read about them in hype-hungry magazines or find them bomarding MySpace profiles with friend requests, and as a result Butcher Boy may well be one of the most exciting discoveries you'll find this year. This debut album from the Glasgow seven-piece boasts ten melancholy-tinged tracks of swoonsome guitar pop and pretty ditties complete with distorted riffs, warm string sections, rumbling drums and poetic lyrics which will worm their way under your skin after just one listen. Best of all though, Profit In Your Poetry is a genuine and utterly heartfelt listen which will soothe those sick to the back teeth of disposable fashion-fuelled music scenes.

*

April 2007, Uncut, by Chris Roberts (4 out of 5)

Arch indie miserablism. From Glasgow, inevitably.

John Blain Hunt is best known to Glaswegian indie-scensters as a club-runner. But his band's debut, inspired by monochrome movies and bleak winters, walks the walk, and these cello-and-viola-flecked songs transcend their Smiths, Tindersticks and Felt influences. I Could Be In Love With Anyone aches with yearning, while girls Make Me Sick out-Morrisseys the man himself: "A little pressure on my neck was all I ever wanted."

Regret, giro-funded couplets, sensual ambiguity - it's all here, resurrecting a great British genre.

*

Sunday 25 March 2007, the Mail on Sunday, Bohemian Butcher Boy Cuts It, by David Bennun (3 out of 5)

John Blain Hunt's National Pop League club is a hub of the Glasgow indie scene. Now Hunt has assembled about him a band, Butcher Boy. You might expect echoes of Belle and Sebastian and Arab Strap and you'd be right to; but mercifully the tendency towards arch tweeness in those acts is missing from Profit In Your Poetry.

Butcher Boy operate not so much, as has been suggested, in the shadow of the Smiths as in the company of Tindersticks, Pulp and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.

Theirs is a literate, bohemian music nourished by the darker strains of Sixties chart pop and distinguished by Hunt's poise and nicely turned songs.

*

Wednesday 14 March 2007, Yahoo! Music, by Julian Marszalek (8 out of 10)

Scottish music seems to have been on the receiving of a bum rap of late. Thanks to the boiled meat 'n' two veg stompings of the Fratellis and the View's terrace chant plagiarism, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the spiritual home of indie-pop had shut up shop and called it day. And the less said about Sandi Thom the better.

And yet through this morass of turgid musical hooliganism comes a beacon of hope as Butcher Boy - the brainchild of Glaswegian scenester John Blain Hunt - arrives with all the gusto of the cavalry to save a scene encircled by high profile dross. Such has been Hunt's passion in keeping the flame of perfect pop burning with his legendary club the National Pop League, that Camera Obscura were moved to pen the tribute Knee Deep At The NPL while kindred spirits Belle and Sebastian elected to launch Dear Catastrophe Waitress with a music quiz at the club.

Butcher Boy's real genius lies in confidently picking up the baton passed on by their hometown's aural forebears. Sweetening bitter lyrical melancholia with tunes and arrangements that are as fragile as they are beautiful, Butcher Boy strikes a precise balance between heartache and bliss. The pain of Girls Make Me Sick is tempered by a driving bass line recalling '60s soul at its best, while elsewhere, the twanging guitars of Profit In Your Poetry illustrates the many joys that await throughout this debut.

The delicate, brushed strokes and gentle strums of opener Trouble And Desire evoke the ghost of Tindersticks, but this is no mere pastiche, rather a heartfelt gesture that sings in its own voice. Indeed, the sprightly bounce of There Is No-One Who Can Tell You Where You've Been is enough confirmation that we're dealing with something quite special here. The achingly gorgeous Days Like These Will Be The Death Of Me brings the album to a stunning close. Treading the fine line between collapse and inner strength, it dares to face up to life's myriad hopes and fears and all points in between.

A stunning debut album that fulfils the promise suggested by the band's appearance on last year's The Kids At The Club compilation, Butcher Boy's sensitivities and indie-pop aesthetic ensure there is indeed profit to be gained from their poetry.

*

Monday 12 March 2007, the Metro, by Nadine McBay (4 out of 5)

There's a reason for that title: Butcher Boy is the pseudonym under which frontman John Blain Hunt used to send poetry to newspapers. And throughout these ten slices of classic baroque-pop, it is Hunt's kitchen-sink couplets and unshowy sensuality that elevates this debut from the pack. His airy, seemingly innocent vocals, can charm and devastate: often at the same time. Alternating pithy girl group stomps such as Girls Make Me Sick with atmospheric pot-boilers such as Trouble And Desire, the septet's peppy rhythms and filigrees of chiming guitars and stately strings have precendents in the likes of Love, the Chameleons and Felt. Immediate and rich, sharp and endearing, this Boy will become a long-term companion.

*

Monday 12 March 2009, the Skinny, by Jon Seller (5 out of 5)

Butcher Boy are built around underground cult hero and Glasgow pop guru, John Blain Hunt. They are purveyors of fine British indie pop, along similar lines to fellow Glaswegians Belle and Sebastian and most notably the Smiths. It is to their huge credit then, that Hunt and Co. have managed to fuse the heavy influence of these bands to create something which sounds completely their own, whilst capturing an instant and addictive charm that even Mozza would be proud of.

Profit In Your Poetry, their debut album, occupies this tricky middle ground between being influenced by and blatantly copying your musical predecessors. Hunt's emotive and hauntingly melodic vocals, accompanied by delicate strings, carry the listener away on tales of cruel love, eloquently told and with consummate ease. The album comprises ten standout songs but the title track, There Is No-One Who Can Tell You Where You've Been and I Know Who You Could Be are flawless - disappointing only in that they have to end. Truly Beautiful.

*

Friday 9 March 2007, the Guardian, by Ian Gittins (3 out of 5)

Butcher Boy are a winsome seven-piece fronted by Glasgow DJ and scenester John Blain Hunt, a man steeped in that city's tradition of indie musical melancholy. Their minor-chord laments, beefed up by viola, piano and cello, recall Belle and Sebastian, though some tracks - most notably opener Trouble And Desire - veer into the Albert Camus-via-Adrian Mole lyrical territory once inhabited by Lloyd Cole. Yet the shadow of the Smiths looms largest over Butcher Boy, with the tremulous I Could Be in Love With Anyone echoing the perfect despair of Morrissey heartaches such as Reel Around the Fountain. Hunt's wordy self-regard can sometimes grate, but when he's not being annoyingly wet, this is a promising debut.

*

Friday 9 March 2007, Drowned In Sound, by Robb Webb (9 out of 10)

"I have a vision and a whole philosophy on how things ought to be."

Butcher Boy - I Know Who You Could Be

Now here's something interesting, and in what promises to be another superb year for independent Scottish music, it's coming at you straight out of Glasgow. The city that gave the world Belle and Sebastian and Camera Obscura now has another miserabilist pop ensemble to (dis)content itself with, and its chief architect John Blain Hunt proves himself to be a songwriter of enviable skill on this, Butcher Boy's maiden long player.

It's an album of immense subtlety and depth, the kind of record you can listen to fifty times and still discover hidden treasures on that fifty-first spin. Being slowly seduced by an artist is always a joy, and that was very much the case with this album for this writer.

Not that happiness seems to be an emotion with thich Hunt is particularly au fait, at least not in his songwriting persona. Girls Make Me Sick is an oblique reference to the root vause of this discontent - gallows humour, then, for him to release it as a single 48 hours before the dawning of Valentine's Day. It's also the song most likely to draw in new listeners, reminiscent as it is of latter day B&S, complete with a jaunty boogie piano line.

Delve a little deeper, though, and the more bountiful treats reveal themselves. The brisk title track, opening with a sea-shanty guitar riff before stopping altogether to let Hunt deliver the payoff ("I can see... the profit in your poetry"), sounds like a fantastic, undiscovered Smiths composition, but it's to the song containing the lyrics that open this review I'd like to draw attention. Here, on I Know Who You could Be, Hunt's ethereal lyrics skirt around an insistent bass line, casting him as a troubled Glaswigian preacher leading the darkest of Highland orchestras - rarely has gravitas sounded this convincing.

If you think Scottish music begins and ends with the View and the Fratellis, you might want to look elsewhere but for the rest of us, this is a compelling record documenting those thousand-odd shades of grey that exist between the blacks and the whites of life.

*