Great Scot!

Cinematics frontman Scott Rinning hasn’t had a day off since his Glasgow-based band arrived in the U.S. to promote its debut CD, A Strange Education. He finally has 24 hours to kill in New York, and he’s fighting a cold. Plus, he can’t find a working cell phone anywhere. Other than those temporary setbacks, the tour has been going well for the quartet<\!s>.<\!s>.<\!s>. so far. “We’re in the States for three months,” says Rinning, who quickly runs down a series of horrible hometown gigs from the band’s past. “I’m sure something will go wrong at some point.”

Hailing from the same Scottish scene as Franz Ferdinand and the Fratellis, the Cinematics fuel A Strange Education with spastic, danceable modern rock. But there’s also a Cure-worthy moodiness to the music that generally bypasses their contemporaries’. “We play whatever we feel comfortable doing,” says Rinning. “It doesn’t require too much effort.” Still, there’s something resolutely homegrown about the Cinematics -- maybe it’s their post-punk blasts of classic Britpop or the way they invoke the lush, green countryside during the CD’s more ambitious moments. “Scotland’s a weird melting pot,” says Rinning. “But it’s not like the Manchester or Seattle scenes, where all of the bands sounded the same. We have similar backgrounds, but there’s such a variety of music.”
Thu., March 29, 9 p.m.