While Dundee’s threatened Keiller Centre lives on borrowed time, it can now count an outspoken Brighton musician among the ranks of its supporters.
The city centre shopping precinct continues to host a variety of pop-up shops and art projects among its remaining outlets, even as developers promote plans to pull down the site to make way for student accommodation.
Elliot Hall – frontman of Britpop-inspired outfit ‘Welly’ – got to know the centre when the band filmed the promo video for their lead single, Shopping, there in 2024.
And when I speak to him ahead of his return to Dundee, he’s distressed to hear it’s under threat.
On a call from his East Sussex home, Elliot happily reminisces about his memorable Dundee visit, when he and his bandmates ran riot around the Keiller Centre’s (mainly shuttered) units.
Keiller Centre fate is ‘typical Britain’
“We recorded most of it while the shops were open, although God bless it, there weren’t many people around,” he says.
“Then for the last couple of hours, they shut it for us.”
Listening to Shopping, one particular sardonic couplet stands out as especially pertinent to the Keiller’s predicament: “I want my free parking/And my water sparkling”.
Elliot readily admits to being suspicious of the drive to mundane conformity on Britain’s High Streets – or what the potential Keiller Centre developers vaguely describe as a “high-end public realm”.
“The Keiller was exactly what we needed for Shopping,” he says.
“I mean, it’s just typical Britain, isn’t it, what’s happening to the Keiller – turning it all into flats?
“And that’s what the whole album and that single’s about. It’s the loss of community in a capitalist world.”
DCA director pointed the way for Welly
Taking over the Keiller Centre came about thanks to Elliot’s dad, who now stays in the City of Discovery.
He already knew DCA director Beth Bate who suggested the Keiller Centre as a possible back drop for the Shopping video and introduced him to its guiding hand Kathryn Rattray, who was, in Elliot’s words, “well up for it”.
Released last March, Shopping provided an early pointer to Welly’s ethos.
“Some of these songs have been kicking around for five or six years and we’ve been gigging for nearly that long,” Elliot says.
“We’ve had no money, been the dole and played charity-shop instruments, but we’ve managed to replicate how we play live.
“It’s a bit rough around the edges, but I hope people listen to it and go, I look forward to seeing what this band does next.”
Dundee has ‘favourite record shop in the world’
This month, Welly are set to return to Dundee for their debut gig there, a date that for Elliot is long-awaited after previous experiences north of the border.
“I’ll be going to Bayne’s, the bakers, I think they’re fantastic,” he says.
“Dundee is really cool, it’s got great galleries and Thirteen Records is my favourite record shop in the world.
“But Scottish crowds are always the best. They’re just really up for it.”
Welly’s album Big In The Suburbs is out now. They play Beat Generator, Dundee, April 23.
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