The Conversation

2013 marks the 25th anniversary of a certain unknown band from Glasgow's first public concert. That night in March 1988, nobody looking towards the stage of Dundee University students' union would have been any the wiser about the unknown and unsigned vision before them. A female-fronted quartet with a twangy, gang-like swagger harking back to the pout and punch of Blondie and The Pretenders a decade earlier. The singer, a sultry, scarlet-lipped 20-year-old tomboy with an ink-black shake of hair, a telecaster at her hip like a gunslinger poised to draw. And the music itself. A modern sound sequined with vintage flashes of soul, country and 50s jukebox pop, as if blasted from some self-constructed fantasy city neither Glasgow nor Memphis but a rock'n'roll town planner's daydream in between. A sound which the world duly came to know as Texas.

A quarter century later, Texas carve their name with pride upon 2013 with an invigorating eighth album: to quite literally continue 'The Conversation' they started that night in Dundee. Those intervening 25 years chart one of the great success stories in modern British music, from the band's breakthrough 1989 top ten hit 'I Don't Want A Lover' to their eventual multi-platinum triptych of albums 'White On Blonde' (1997), 'The Hush' (1999) and their 2000 compilation of 'Greatest Hits'. An achievement neatly summed up by the memorably simple statistic that, worldwide, Texas have sold more albums than the circa-30 million population of the actual state of Texas.