Za Za's Garden

THE PEARLFISHERS: "Za Za's Garden" (Iona Records)

SCOTLAND has, in the past ten or so years, mothered a generation of bands which can be roughly divided into two opposing contingents: the blatantly derivative yet hip and influential faction comprising the likes of the JAMC, Teenage Fanclub and Primal Scream (all of whom have - and this is no coincidence - buried any native influences and looked to the Velvets, Alex Chilton and the Stones, respectively, for inspiration), and the more expansive, mystical faction who have spent a little too long gazing meaningfully over the misty, rolling glens and whose combined credibility, were it measured in 50p pieces, wouldn't stretch to a pint of milk and a packet of fruit-flavoured Skittles. With or without 3p off.

The Pearlfishers, while not yet having achieved the 'stature' of Simple Minds or (avert your eyes, sensitive types) Big Country, are firmly grounded in the latter grouping. The fact that the Pearlfishers shop at Celtic Soul Brothers-R-Us is made obvious in the first four lines of the first song, the title track: "I'm standing alone/On a white foggy morning/Breathing the silence/Breathing the dawning". The admittedly large shadow of Van looms large over most of the lyrics and the vocals: 'Saint Francis Songs' is a shorter, less freeform, Glaswegian 'Madame George'.

And it's hard to listen to David Scott sing without the name Billy Joel springing to mind (of course, there is little he can do about this, barring laryngectomies; anyway, sounding like Billy Joel is a Good Thing. If only he had the innate grasp of melody which makes the Piano Man one of the only listenable decrepit pop singers, we'd be suckin' diesel. Well, that's not quite true, we'd still have to contend with the lyrics, which sometimes stray into the realms of the excessively wet and when not there, stay in the realms of the self-consciously esoteric).

Still, it does you good, naivete-preservingly speaking, to hear a grown man singing "I found love, I found love/I found love, I found love/But it seems, what I thought, I would find, was inside of me" (whatever that means) without smirking. And any band who can record a song called 'Russian Punks on Speed' - which unfortunately sounds as much like a paean to amphetamine-crazed green-haired Eastern Blocers as 'Sylvia's Mother' - has to have potential.

Converting that potential and not turning into Ricky Ross (who, ominously, is thanked in the credits) is the next step.

• Niall Crumlish