Sluts of Trust - History - Singles and Debut Album

Singles and Debut Album

Sluts of Trust released their debut single "Piece O' You" on 21 November 2003, on limited edition 7-inch red vinyl. Llimited to 1000 pressings, the single sold out in a week. The b-side featured live favourite "Meanwhile In Rocksville". The single was championed by BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel and would feature at #16 in the end of year chart the Festive Fifty, voted for by listeners to his show. The Evening Times called the single "an intense, uncompromising, blistering, screaming, passionate, furious sweat-drenched full-frontal aural assault". A low-budget video was made to accompany the release and was conceived and directed by actor Johnny Austin and filmmaker Gregor Mackay, both friends of the band from Scottish Youth Theatre. A pastiche of Brian De Palma's Carrie, it conveyed much of the theatre of early Sluts of Trust gigs, and alongside other members of the Scottish Youth Theatre it starred Sean Biggerstaff and Paul Kelly of The Martial Arts. The video was premiered at the launch of the single in Glasgow's Barfly, and projected onto McFarlane's own bed-sheet before the band played that night. The video was later screened on MTV2.

With their debut album nearing completion, in early 2004 Sluts of Trust travelled to the BBC's Maida Vale Studios in London to record a live session for John Peel's show on BBC Radio 1. Peel had become a huge fan of the group since hearing their debut single and some early demo recordings for their album and continued to champion the duo until his untimely death later that year. The band chose to record previously unreleased material from their forthcoming album. The session comprised original McFarlane compositions "The Greatest Gift", "That's Right, That Cat's Right" and "Tighter Than The Night". They also recorded a cover version of Talking Heads' "Psycho-Killer". The session was broadcast on 17 February 2004.

Sluts of Trust played their first gig on American soil in March 2004 at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, signing a US management deal with Management Music Division while they were there, before embarking on a full-scale US tour with The Delgados and Malcolm Middleton. The band returned to tour the US again within months.

Second single "Leave You Wanting More" was released in April 2004 to great acclaim, with British broadsheet The Independent making it their Single of the Week, and describing it as "a sexed-up blast of pounding riffs and art-punk breaks with an amazing amount of textures involved considering they're a mere two- piece". It was described in The Scotsman as "sounding simultaneously crazed and precision controlled". The CD single also included a new McFarlane composition "Crowd Pleaser" along with "Psycho-Killer" from the Peel session. Again an accompanying video was conceived and directed by Johnny Austin and Gregor Mackay. Seen as a companion piece to the "Piece O' You" video, this was filmed with the RAF veterans of Glasgow's Royal Air Force Association club and at Glasgow's Museum of Transport, and was again shown on MTV2. The single would be placed at #5 in John Peel's posthumous final Festive Fifty.

Sluts of Trust released their debut album We Are All Sluts of Trust in Europe on April 26 and the US in May 2004 on Chemikal Underground Records, to positive reviews, but modest sales, selling up to 10,000 copies worldwide. The album was produced by Paul Savage of The Delgados (already known for producing albums by Mogwai and Aereogramme and later for producing Franz Ferdinand's third album). In addition to the material the band had been playing live, the album contained a new song titled "Pirate Weekend". Something of a departure from the band's sleazy garage rock, the song featured lush and haunting overdubbed harmonies and would become a fan favourite. To support the album's release the duo quickly embarked on another UK tour.

Following a UK tour, the band returned to the United States to promote the album there. The band had been invited to tour with burlesque dance group Suicide Girls and played to large audiences across the USA. The NME published an extensive feature on the tour along with pictures from an exclusive photo-shoot of the band with members of Suicide Girls. During a break in the tour Sluts of Trust travelled to Los Angeles to play their own gigs at Amoeba Records, L.A Spaceland, and nightclub The Viper Room.