No punk pressure - Gordon Scott on the return of The Valves

Punk’s not dead’ goes the old cliche, and The Valves are the latest act to be resurrected.

However, as Gordon Scott points out, the Edinburgh quartet weren’t really part of that snotty, safety-pinned movement from the late 1970s.

“We played kind of fast R&B, which is where a lot of punk rock came from," the bassist recalls, “but we were never hard core punks.”

Indeed, the album’s cover pictures four young men on Portobello beach, devoid of the spiky hair or ripped T-shirts that seemed mandatory back in the day.

“We never got into the fashion,” Scott – aka ‘Pada’ – admits. “It was more an ethos, about not taking four years to make a record, like Pink Floyd.

“The Skids were starting, Johnny and the Self Abusers (who would become Simple Minds)... the sheer fun of playing music without going to music school or spending on studio recordings. It was the DIY that made the music work.”

However, attitude aside, one thing bands of that era shared was a youthful exuberance.

“We were sifting through stuff to put on the album and we found a few live tapes and the speed was quite terrifying,” Scott recalls. “We couldn’t do it like that now!

“And that was without any kind of illegal ‘stuff’ – just sugar, adrenaline and alcohol, I guess.

“The Ramones cut through everything those days… their three-minute songs and three chords was wonderful, but we got bored with less good bands just thrashing their way through – we always tried to put some more songwriting into it and I think that comes through in the album.”