gordon mCINTYRE / ballboy

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Favourites of the late John Peel, who invited them to perform five sessions for his BBC Radio 1 show 2000-2004 as well as featured them many times in his Festive Fifty chart, ballboy are a cult indie-pop band from Edinburgh whose warm, whimsical and savagely witty speak-sung songs about bored sex, DIY drugs, civic shame and polar bears helped to define a generation of fiercely independent Scottish music around the turn of the millennium. 

Much of ballboy’s most evocative and enduring work was captured on a trio of EPs – Silver Suits for Astronauts (1999), I Hate Scotland (2000) and Girls Are Better Than Boys (2001) – later collected on the 2001 compilation album Club Anthems 2001. Lost Map Records are excited to work with ballboy on a reissue of Club Anthems 2001, which will see the album released on vinyl for the very first time. The official album release date is January 13, 2023, with vinyl pre-orders shipping before Christmas.

As singer and songwriter with Edinburgh indie-pop band Ballboy – Gordon McIntyre released four full length albums and a string of singles and EPs, as well as a solo album under the name Money Can’t Buy Music in 2008. That same year, he co-created the Traverse Theatre Company production Midsummer [a play with songs] together with David Greig. Following a critically acclaimed run in Edinburgh, it has since gone on to be performed around the world.

His debut solo album under his own name, Even With The Support Of Others, came out on Lost Map in 2022. The album grew out of a commission from Elizabeth Newman, artistic director of the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, after she asked Gordon to write some songs for their lockdown project Shades of Tay. “More specifically,” says Gordon, “it grew out of the conversation around this where we talked for a couple of hours about the natural world, natural landscapes, and internal landscapes. We talked about cities and countrysides and bridges and rivers. She asked for ‘as many songs as you see fit’ and so I sent her four and then continued to build the album around them.”

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