Those familiar with the music of Matthew Houck, aka Phosphorescent, won’t be surprised by the title of his first batch of original songs since 2007’s exemplary Pride. They may, however, be thrown slightly off guard by the opening track; a rollicking, horn-led ode to Alabama. But Houck hasn’t completely forsaken the lazy, introspective Americana that earned him comparisons to Will Oldham and Neil Young. It’s more like he’s got half a cheek slouched on the couch, the other attempting a drunken waltz on his porch – case in point: penultimate track, Heaven Sitting Down.
Here's To Taking It Easy is more buoyant than almost anything Houck’s released before, but the highlights occur when he reverts to type, like on the meditative Hej, Me I’m Light and album highlight and closer, Los Angeles. Ultimately, Here's to Taking it Easy struggles for an identity: unsure whether it should embrace the light or slump down into the melodious murk once again.
Though they're often lumped in with the freak-folk movement, there is something decidedly proggier about San Francisco’s Citay than, say, Devendra Banhart. With their third album the nebulous sextet take their cosmic noodling to another level. Before coming home to roost with an excellent, elongated take on Broadcast’s Tugboat, Dream Get Together is a trippy, riff heavy leviathan. The songs, though peppered with snippets of subtle harmonies, generally gravitate towards extended jams. Occasionally, they draw from Frisco contemporaries (see the perfectly chilled Mirror Kisses), but the balance is tilted towards the giants of 70s prog (Careful With That Hat and Hunter). Most tracks, no matter how gently they enter, don’t exit before packing in a wailing solo or two, but still there’s little self indulgence. No track outstays its welcome and the excellently deployed soft-loud dynamics help soften the progressive edges, lending Dream Get Together an accessibility not normally associated with the genre.
From George Formby to Mariachi horns, this month's Dozen is as weird as that time Steve Coogan dated Courtney Love. Finbarr Bermingham casts a scrutinous eyeball over January's singles.
If, like us, you intend 2010 to be soundtracked by only the finest sonic arrangements, then the lower echelons of the Dirty Dozen should be avoided at all costs. London quartet Jarmean? manage to grate on levels previously unthinkable with Mind the Gap (*, 18 Jan). It sounds a bit like the One Foot in the Grave theme tune, as sung by George Formby. Jarmean? Um, no ta. Welsh emo-mongers Lostprophets fare little better. Where We Belong (*, 4 Jan) is billed as a “return to their roots”. Which is all well and good, but most of us are savvy enough to realise that their roots were steeped in pish. Downpatrick rockers Ash, on the other hand, have a much more illustrious history, but their decline has been marked. The trio's much vaunted disownment of what they did rather well – making albums – has resulted in a series of substandard singles. The Neon Neon aping Space Shot (**, 18 Jan), all laser-effects and tinny production, fails to raise the bar.
Equally, Mixtapes and Cellmates’ Soon (**, 25 Jan) offers little in the way of innovation. Sure, the singer’s got a tasty falsetto and some decent guitar work makes it mildly enjoyable, but even after five consecutive plays, it’s difficult to remember anything about it. Self-professed “online hip-hop phenomenon” Charlie Sloth fails to fulfil his own hype(rbole) with One More Drink (**, 18 Jan). A lightweight tale of drinking, girls and fighting is utter humdrum. We’re sure we’ve heard this all before, and it’s been a while since Ice Cube showed us the way. Speaking of déjà vu, that Biffy Clyro’s latest effort, Many of Horror (**, 18 Jan), complete with OTT strings and anthemic, melodramatic chorus, sounds vaguely like every other stadium rocker they’ve churned out of late. We would say “can do better” but at this stage it's uncertain whether they're of the mind to try.
Perhaps the baton can be passed to The King Hats. The Glaswegians’ debut single I Was The Riot at the Art School Last Night (***, 4 Jan) is an altogether more refreshing prospect. It pairs the vibrancy of a ‘Jetpacks track with the edge you once expected from Biffy, and helps rescue the Dozen from abomination. Paolo Nutini seems to be suffering from an identity crisis. Having toyed with the idea of becoming Cat Stevens, he’s now decided he’s a seasoned reggae virtuoso. The thing is, on the entertaining 10/10 (***, 11 Jan), he’s pretty convincing. Whatever next, Paolo? A hair metal number? Doubt (***, 4 Jan) by Delphic brings an interesting, if not wholly entrancing twist to proceedings. An excellent, broken-vocal intro leads into what, but for synth overkill and an overwrought chorus, would’ve been a Hot Chip-esque electro-stomper.
Continuing the electro theme, singer-songwriter Ben Dalby’s Doctor Can (****, 18 Jan) has a deliciously 80s feel about it; the chorus wouldn’t sound out of place on a Soft Cell record. We’re not sure when the wheels will fall off that particular revival, but if they keep ‘em coming like this, we’ll keep welcoming them with open arms. Yeasayer’s return is one of the most heralded of 2010. Ambling Alp (****, 4 Jan) maintains the kitchen-sink style production of yore, but it’s more dancefloor-friendly than anything on All Hour Cymbals. Chris Keating’s vocals are higher in the mix and the chorus is positively rousing. Could this be the Brooklyn band’s first proper hit?
They are trumped, however, by the quietly unassuming musings of Woodenbox With a Fistful of Fivers, whose superb Draw a Line (****, 4 Jan) is the pick of this month’s batch. The irresistible horn section, in the ilk of Calexico, perfect harmonies and gruff vocals of Ali Downer are more akin to the dustbowls of Arizona than the damp streets of Glasgow. An inspired track.
E marks his divorce with another unflinchingly honest album
Eels’ last outing, Hombre Lobo, was a concept album centred on a werewolf. Having exposed so much of himself in the years previous, Mark 'E' Everett tried to shelter his personal life from the limelight. Just six months on, though, he’s stepped back into the glare. End Times is a break-up album which reverts to his trademark autobiographical style. Sometimes, like on Gone Man, E’s defiant – ready to face the world alone. Mostly, though, proceedings take a turn for the melancholic; and few do melancholy quite like this protagonist. Litanies for those long gone (I Need a Mother) are found amongst the lonely - but lovely - tales of heartache. E’s hermetic lifestyle is addressed on Little Bird, and album highlight A Line in the Dirt revisits the lush brass and ivory instrumentation of his Blinking Lights era. Although such lofty heights aren’t sustained throughout, End Times is a satisfying return to E’s beautiful blues, and it’s good to have him back.
Just a couple more of these to come now, and this one is from Dave Kerr, Music and Online Editor of The Skinny and Commandant of the checked shirt brigade. Despite being the busiest man in the Northern Hemisphere, Dave occasionally finds the time to squeeze out some words for Drowned in Sound, The List and The Big Issue. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas.
At the Drive-In - Relationship of Command (2000)
When I first heard it
September 2000. I bought the One Armed Scissor single after hearing it in the old Virgin in Dundee and – judging by the state of the songs they dared to call b-sides – it was obvious an exceptional album was in the post. Britpop was over and nu-metal had become depressingly dominant in its wake. Rage Against the Machine had just called it quits, but here was this punk band with a similar energy on this crusade to stop circle pits. My mate Brian brought the album over to my house with a few cans the week it came out; he was well acquainted with it by Friday and played Rolodex Propaganda all night (the tune with Iggy Pop ghosting Cedric Bixler and Jim Ward over the chorus).
Why I love it
With the exception of The Doors, Cream, Hendrix and James Brown, this album opened my eyes to music that was much older than I was. I enjoyed a lot of grunge as a teenager, but most of its proto-punk influences left me cold until these guys came along. Bands like MC5 and The Stooges somehow made more sense once I’d taken in ATD-I’s back catalogue, it was all in the attitude.
What it reminds me of
The worst post-gig tinnitus I’ve ever had – The Arches, Glasgow, December 2000.
Standout track
Quarantined.
Deftones – White Pony (2000)
When I first heard it
Utterly steaming, some time in late 2000. An old girlfriend had gotten me into Deftones a few years before and although I was blown away by Around the Fur in its day I just didn’t enjoy much metal at the time -- ‘nu’ or otherwise. But a good friend and accomplished musician who exclusively listened to the Beatles up until that point came rolling in the door clutching this new piece of plastic one day, professing White Pony to be “the next level.” How could I not listen to the album that single-handedly jolted this man out of the 60s?
Why I love it
Forget King Diamond’s kick-in-the-balls falsetto, this is the closest thing to a heavy metal opera I’ve ever heard. Terry Date’s production is characteristically clean, which helps project these profound impressions of terror, violence, tragedy and euphoria. Chino Moreno’s basically chasing you down with a scalpel for 53 minutes and you live to tell the tale, soundtracking that ordeal is a band making progress on its own terms; hiding the ball and distancing itself from the other players. Their drummer Abe Cunningham once told me they were in the business of “making hits for another time”, as though they were only presently misunderstood. Their debut might not have aged well, but White Pony still feels like a thing of the future.
What it reminds me of
American Psycho. Also, seeing them play Edinburgh Corn Exchange a few months after the album came out. The band walked on to Laura Palmer’s Theme and it’s the only time I’ve felt as though the clinical ambience of the venue somehow lent itself to the occasion -- chills for weeks.
Standout track
Knife Prty.
DJ Shadow – The Private Press (2002)
When I first heard it
June 2002, I recall buying it from the old Dundee FOPP the day before buggering off to work in Arizona for the summer. I’d converted every penny I had into dollars but wasn’t sure I’d find many decent record shops out in the desert, thus parted with 13 of my last 20 British pounds.
I was pensive on first listen. Having spent so much time hammering Endtroducing, UNKLE, the Cut Chemist collaborations and anything I could find by Quannum, Shadow was up on a pedestal in my book. The late 90s were a bit light on great music but this guy had a palette that could soundtrack any aspect of your life, so expectations were weighty. At the same time, I couldn’t quite see how Shadow would find a way to stay relevant in 2002 because so many copyists had come and gone since ‘96. Before warming to it (considerably), first impressions were – in all my hip-hop purist snobbery – that Josh Davis was making a play for Moby’s king of the coffee table anthem status. The 02 advert didn’t help.
Why I love it
Of course, I look like an arsehole saying that now; I’m listening to the album for the first time in a few years as I write this and still hear fresh nuances dripping from every cut. Anyone who can evoke the energy of Run DMC (Walkie Talkie) with John Carpenter (Mongrel… / …Meets His Maker) in quick succession deserves a platinum medal. The Private Press opened up a new world of found sounds to explore, in the same way a few fragmented samples from Endtroducing made me want to hear more from Kurtis Blow or watch Prince of Darkness. Sample-rich albums like these say a lot about the obsessive nature of crate digging and remind me that I’d do well to even scratch the surface of what’s out there in a lifetime.
What it reminds me of
Studying. The Private Press stayed with me through third year and made a comeback during fourth year uni finals. Nothing brings the skull back to its centre quite like a bit of You Can’t Go Home Again.
Standout track
Blood on the Motorway.
Anything else?
I wonder how much he’d charge to do a funeral.
Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf (2002)
When I first heard it
Circumstances of my first encounter with this album couldn’t have been more appropriate, save for a naked Indian on peyote stepping out from behind a cactus and handing me a copy. I bought Songs for the Deaf one night in August 2002 while making the long drive back to Tucson from Scottsdale – proper desert terrain – with my friend Glover (sadly, no relation to Danny). The album wasn’t due out until the next day, but it was past midnight and we imagined some eager retailer would be stocking. So we stopped by almost every garage with a CD stand for 130 miles until arriving at the unlikely site of a 24 hour Borders (RIP). Glover ran around the shop like Anneka Rice until he found the only copy they’d ordered in. The remainder of the trip home was bittersweet – we had the album on the car stereo but it wasn’t yet mine, goddammit.
Why I love it
Rated R (2000) is a disheveled beauty and it’s difficult to rate this above it. I do so because a) I Think I Lost My Headache ends R on an endurance test and b) Songs for the Deaf is undisputable proof that supergroups can be far greater than the sum of their egos. At risk of sounding pretty auld, there’s a danger to this album that I’ve rarely heard in a band since. I’m sure they were blissfully unaware at the time, but this incarnation of the Queens smells like four remarkable talents (Homme, Oliveri, Grohl and Lanegan) finding a way to reach their collective zenith in an awesome moment they couldn’t possibly sustain.
What it reminds me of
Climbing the walls after a troublesome encounter with the philosopher’s blend.
Standout track
The Sky is Fallin’.
Johnny Cash – IV: The Man Comes Around (2002)
When I first heard it
I was cold (knackered central heating) and skint in late 2002. The album came out not long after I finished reading his autobiography; though it was the first full Cash LP I’d spent any real time with and was worth the £15.99 import price HMV sold it for. Once I learned about the fascinating life the man had lead and read about the optimism that the second wind he’d found in his elderly years gave him it made me want to hear much more.
Why I love it
When I first heard Johnny Cash covering Beck and Soundgarden in the mid-90s I put it down to a bizarre novelty and have since heard people criticise the American series as Rick Rubin’s tasteless document of the man in black’s slow decline. But somewhere in-between, I’ve yet to see a more poignant music video than Mark Romanek’s treatment for Cash’s rendition of Hurt. In the context of American IV – alongside the glorious second coming implied by the title track’s biblical references and the inherently optimistic war time classic We’ll Meet Again – the effect is an uplifting counter-balance.
What it reminds me of
Trying to come to terms with the death of my good friend Brian Robertson.
This is a wee interview I did for The Skinny a few weeks back. "Wee" being the operative word. I was on the phone to Alison Mosshart, of The Kills and The Dead Weather, for ten minutes before being interrupted by a PR woman, telling me to hurry myself up. Anyway, the results are below.
This time last year, Alison Mosshart had every reason to be happy with her lot. Midnight Boom, The Kills' third album, had been sighted near the summit of numerous end-of-year lists. Having toured incessantly since the age of 14, her profile was elevated to that of “rock glamour-puss” (so said, eh, JustinTimberlake.com). She couldn’t have possibly imagined, then, that a year later, she would be standing on the cusp of even greater things. But as front woman of The Dead Weather, a bonafide supergroup boasting members of Queens of the Stone Age, The White Stripes and The Raconteurs, it would appear her star is still on the ascent. Superstardom beckons, and she’s got the column inches to prove it.
On getting together with Jack White:
The Kills toured America with The Raconteurs and towards the end Jack got sick. He needed some help singing some of his songs, so I sung them. Jack asked me to get on the bus from Atlanta to Nashville with him and record in his studio, which he’d just finished building.
He’d had this record label for a long time, through which he wanted to put out 7" recordings of everyone who came to town. So the four of us were the first to experiment in that studio: just testing it out and writing in it. It was a great experience and we just kept writing. It was weird - something was working way too well, and we didn’t stop. When I came back a few months later, after I finished Kills touring, we carried on writing.
On dealing with the UK media:
I think Jamie (Hince – The Kills, boyfriend of Kate Moss) and I escape everything we want to by working so hard. You don’t read the papers when you’re in your house working, and you don’t want to leave to get it. There’s a real element to living in a bubble that I’ve always liked. You’re more liable to hear about something that’s been written from your mom calling you to tell you than you are by reading it. Ninety per cent of media attention in general isn’t positive or creative, so it doesn’t really matter.
On the road:
The difference from what it was like when I was 14 is that you learn how to cope with it. You really learn how to live on the road. It’s like self preservation: you can get stuff done anywhere. There isn’t anywhere that I haven’t been any more. Different things take priority and doing an incredible show every night is what it’s based on. It’s not that it stops being fun; it just starts being something more rewarding. It’s a different, twisted adventure now.
On life with The Dead Weather:
“We’re not a band that parties a lot at all. There has to be something to celebrate and there’s so much to be done everyday. Sleeping is the most wonderful thing on earth. Maybe I’m getting old, but the last two years of my life have been like that. If I want to get something done or have anything else in my life – even painting a room… those things have to come before getting smashed. Working is more rewarding for me. I’m horrified that I might be a severe workaholic, and sometimes I think I maybe need to have a little more fun.”
(Note, this is my number one album, but was number four on The Skinny's list, for whom I wrote the piece)
On the face of it, their product is hardly revolutionary. Yet, for the past year and a half, The Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit has been the album that simply keeps on giving. Potty-mouthed songwriter Scott Hutchison’s dog-on-heat tales of drunken love and lust could, in less capable hands, have manifested themselves as self-indulgent lad rock. But the awesome visceral force that ensured these songs came to fruition helps make them some of the best of the decade.
Hutchison’s couplets are whisky-tipped arrows to the ticker. Struggling to pull himself from the mire of a failed relationship, he veers from self-pity (Modern Leper) to denial (I Feel Better), from bitterness (Keep Your Self Warm) to lugubrious, wide-eyed misery (Poke, Floating Down The Forth). Somehow, though, the album emerges with a sense of triumph. The pessimism is overridden by an animalistic salubriousness and an unmistakably Scottish sense of gallows humour, all propelled forward by the ferocious tub-thumping of Scott’s brother, Grant.
Trying to pick an album highlight has been an exercise in futility. Over the course of 18 months, any one of ten tracks has suggested itself as a contender. The song-writing here is accumulative: borrowing from a range of styles to create a near perfect whole; a flawless indie-pop record. The dustbowl-tinged slide guitar on Good Arms Vs Bad; the unforeseen, exhilarating solo on Fast Blood; the swirling, chimerical instrumentation of Floating down the Forth; the plinking piano intro to The Twist and the overwhelmingly lovely, reverb-touched balladry of Poke are all marks of massive progression from the promising debut set, Sing The Greys.
Now, as they prepare to unleash album number three, the weight of anticipation has been increased immeasurably. But Frightened Rabbit can rest assured that The Midnight Organ Fight deserves its place amongst Scotland’s finest.
As they prepare to unleash album number three, Finbarr Bermingham spoke to Frightened Rabbit to find out what 2010 holds in store.
Scott Hutchison is in Bath. Today should have been his day off. But instead, Frightened Rabbit’s lead singer and songwriter has found himself cooped up in a Somerset studio by day and answering his phone to journalists by night. The never-ending spiral of production and promotion has laid claim to the spirits of many musicians. Hutchison, though, is more philosophical than most.
“There are days when it’s awful,” he tells me as he checks into his hotel room. “But you have to catch yourself and transfer your body into an office, wearing a suit. Then you think: ‘Fuck it, I’m alright.’ Even on the worst days of touring, to me it’s preferable to any other job, so I’m not going to complain at all.”
Frightened Rabbit have been recording the B-sides for their forthcoming single, Swim Until You Can’t See Land. It precedes the March 2010 release of album number three, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, which Hutchison says is “more of a storytelling record” than anything they’ve put out before. It will be speckled with autobiographical musings, but nothing to match the heart-on-sleeve opus that was Midnight Organ Fight. “In other words,” he assures us, “I didn’t spend all of winter getting pissed!”
“At its core,” Scott continues, “it’s still full of songs and for me, that’s the point of putting an album together. The way we’ve treated them is sonically quite different. It’s much more layered, but I don’t want to say grand, because the obvious mistake to make is to start going over the top. But I don’t think we have – in many ways it’s a much more restrained and confident record. I don’t think it’s grasping for your attention as much as the last record and the difference in confidence is probably why.”
The runaway success of Midnight Organ Fight was largely unforeseen and it’s a measure of the band’s progress that The Winter of Mixed Drinks is one of the most anticipated albums of 2010. For many, expectation like that is liable to breed pressure. For Hutchison, though, it all comes from within. “I just want to better myself,” he says. “When you’re demoing, writing and recording you’re away from outside influence. It’s nice forgetting about the fact that anyone’s going to hear the songs and remembering how to write to please yourself again.”
If the new songs were written to please Hutchison, then surely previous tracks were written to help him. Painfully personal accounts of a failed relationship formed the basis of Midnight Organ Fight and the album charts Scott’s progress as he attempts to get his life back on track. Frequently it’s stirring. Sometimes it’s lewd and at others it’s funny. But the only track his mother struggles to listen to is Floating Down The Forth, during which Hutchinson contemplates suicide.
“I can see why a mum might not want to hear about her son having those thoughts. But she’s extremely supportive of the rest of it. I’m sure I’ve said ‘cunt’ in front of my mum once or twice, so the language isn’t much of an issue.”
The subject of the songs, too, has been for the most part encouraging. “I know the girl in question has heard it,” explains Scott. “She told me that some days she’d enjoy it and others she just couldn’t bear listening to it at all. I understand that, she’s good enough to not complain about it and even though we don’t keep in touch anymore, for the small amount of time that we did, she was pretty supportive.”
In less than a month, Frightened Rabbit will play one of their biggest shows to date, when they take to the stage at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay Street Party. New Year has, in the past, brought contrasting fortunes for the Selkirk band. Scott describes last year’s performance in Sydney as “bloody excellent” and one of the highlights of his short career. Its grandiosity is only magnified when it’s considered alongside some of their humbler experiences. Scott takes up the story:
“A couple of years before that, we played at Barfly. It was the year the George Square celebration got cancelled because of the gales and the rain, so it was bad enough trying to even get there. At the time, we were doing all our own driving and I had to wait until we got all the way home to have a drink. So, that was shit. I think we got paid something like fifty quid for our trouble.”
He admits that sometimes it’s good to reflect on dark nights like those. “We’ve done okay,” is his modest assessment of the subsequent couple of years. The twelve months ahead, though, promise to be some of the busiest of their lives, but Hutchison is anything but daunted. “There are always people to be played to, there’s always a new town to go to so we’re going to treat it like that and tour the arse off it!”
Scott contemplates the rigours ahead, before saying, “It could be worse.”
They read Stephen Hawking, question the laws of physics and still find a minute to make a wave on the local circuit. There's only one Trapped in Kansas.
When a group of university students decide to combine forces and make music, the move is quite often inspired by cheap booze and the need for an alternative to daytime television. Not so, it appears, in the case of Ayr's Trapped In Kansas. Guitarist Gregor Fair explains that the quartet's intricate, tuneful brand of indie rock was borne out of inter-band conversations on space, time travel, the Hadron Collider and other assorted quandaries of physics. “We genuinely have some intense scientific brain meltdowns whilst traversing the M8 in Chris [Ward]’s trusty Citroen Picasso.”
Ward, the band’s bass player and vocalist elaborates: “I would certainly say our biggest influence is science. We get into crazy chats about dark matter, parallel universes and Stephen Hawking."
It's a refreshing approach to songwriting, and one which has paid dividends this year. Though only formed in June 2008, Trapped in Kansas already have debut performances at RockNess and a headlining set in the T Break tent at T in the Park under their belt, having also featured in a filmed session for The Skinny and Off The Beaten Tracks at the latter.
Whilst Fair is loathe to define the band’s sound, he describes its intricacies as “thoughtful and sometimes challenging, without being complicated for the sake of it.” He is sure, however, that Trapped in Kansas have found a distinct identity. “I think we're instantly recognisable against other Scottish bands. Finn [Le Marinel]'s vocals are very unique which helps us stand out. The rhythms and tempos are constantly shifting in our songs, which keeps people interested.”
It's a reasonable summation, according to the few tracks the band have released. There’s a palpable element of math-rock, but the tracks are consistently melodic. Their palette owes much to the wildly varied tastes of the band’s members: drummer Iain Symes enjoys dubstep and drum & bass, whereas Le Marinel is, according to Fair, "a purveyor of anything devoid of time signatures.” Fair's own background is playing in punk bands, whilst Ward mainly follows indie bands like Belle & Sebastian, Stapleton and The Smiths. Collectively, the band enjoy more than the mere mysteries of the universe, sharing a love of Frightened Rabbit and American Football.
Having just completed a tour of Scotland with Bronto Skylift and Lions.Chase.Tigers., Ward is confident that another EP release from the band is forthcoming in the near future, though the process of formalising an agreement with the right label hasn't been without its complications. “We've had chats with some Scottish labels about doing a single deal, though thus far nothing has been right for us. But we're excited about the EP, it will be like the end of our first chapter and we can move away from those tracks and onto new material."
With another round of Scottish gigs scheduled between now and the festive season, the opportunities to catch the dextrously talented Trapped In Kansas are plentiful. Be sure and see them now before they turn the page.
After all the column inches dedicated to them, it’s easy to forget that Broken Records are a relatively new band. A single album into their careers, and they’ve already been consecrated and desecrated a dozen times over. What this EP of demos and B-sides, recorded prior to their debut, serves to remind us is that there’s still a hell of a lot of potential to be mined within the talented Edinburgh outfit. Yes, they sometimes have a tendency to overdo things – a sense of melodrama creeps into Jamie Sutherland’s voice more than once – but here are five mostly excellent songs, peaking with Sutherland’s falsetto on Lessons Never Learnt and the superb instrumental outro of All So Tired. The question is: where to next?
This space-rocking, be-bopping, genre-hopping Edinburgh trio’s debut EP is an ambitious affair. With two originals, a cover and a remix (courtesy of Kscope label mates Engineers), it may not sound substantial, but stylistically there’s a lot going on. Opening track, Cell Count is a joyously cosmic electronic cut – equal parts Flaming Lips and FOUND – which has just enough hook to prevent it from floating away on the breeze. It makes way for Ceiling Poem, which despite being a meatier, more frenzied effort, doesn’t quite match the heights of its predecessor. NAO’s cover version of choice speaks volumes about their promise; their take on ‘50s doo-wop number I Only Have Eyes For You by The Flamingos is tuneful, experimental and a lush show-stopper.
This interview took place in April 2008, right about the time The Boggs' excellent Forts had recently been subject to a glowing review courtesy of myself...
Jason Friedman is, to all intents and purposes, The Boggs. He writes the songs, he designs the artwork and he oversees the recruitment of whomever the hell he wants to work with on any given day. With the stonking post-punk of Friedman's latest release Forts still ringing joyously in his ears, Finbarr Bermingham expected an impious Stalinist control freak on the other end of the ether when he caught up with the multi-talented Brooklyn based musician recently. Friedman's gracious, informed response suggested such misgivings were slightly off the mark, but we were by no means disappointed...
Your new album, Forts, is extremely difficult to classify. Where do you place it and how did you progress to a point so far away from your debut (2002's We Are The Boggs We Are, which was a reworking of Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music 1927-1932)?
Jason Friedman: "I think the thing that excites me the most about making art is looking for the connections in seemingly disparate things. When I started The Boggs, I wanted to discover for myself the ways in which all the music I listened to overlapped and I wanted to do so in a way that skipped past the automatic associations one might have for the specifics of genre.
"I have always thought the idea of there actually being something fundamentally 'rock and roll' or 'punk' or 'blues' or whatever was really kind of false. Fundamentally, it really just didn't ring true that the differences were real. To me, the only differences seemed to be surface ones; ones more about fashion, technology or the way records are marketed.
"It's all fundamentally the same thing to me; whether it was the disenfranchised in America thrashing away on brittle guitars in some late-night shebeen, skinny working class teenagers in postwar England finding their own fierce way through those same songs in a sweaty Cavern or a bunch of kids cutting up the records themselves in a local rec-center in the Bronx - wasn't it all just DIY party music?
"It's like a telephone-game of culture in which these party anthems have been passed around from generation to generation, mutating for over a hundred years."
Is there any reason why you are the only constant member of The Boggs? Do you find it easier to collaborate rather than operate in a fixed unit?
"Well, I'd say it comes from necessity more than anything. I've always had a very specific sense of how I wanted things to develop and a lot of that development has occurred late at night when my OCD tendencies can sort of switch on and take over the process. In that way, it's been a kind of insular route so it has at times been really rewarding to open it up and have the fresh ideas of someone new to play off of.
"In essence, The Boggs is really a recording project and most of the work is done over extended periods of time and the songs built up in an almost painterly manner.
"Where not having a fixed unit has been an issue, it's in performing live. It's hard to grow as a performer when, in reality, things are starting over again every several months.
"Sometimes I get very jealous when I look at friends of mine like The Rapture and I see the ways in which they continue to improve on stage. That comes from their ability to build on each performance and that is something I have never been able to really do in The Boggs."
Is it important for you to be the controlling force when writing/recording, or are there any democratic aspects to the process?
"Yes, I'd say it's important for me to think of myself as in control of the band. I don't want that to sound arrogant. It's not the only way I could ever work and in no way are my ideas in anyway superior to all the incredibly talented people who have at different times called themselves a part of the group. It's just that the thoughts behind what has motivated me with The Boggs have been so specific that it's been easier to assume the role of captain. It's also a role that has intensified over the years. I think there is something very specific about what the Boggs are and even I would be a different sort of writer and performer if I were in another band.
"In the Boggs, I mostly work as musical director. I set up the parameters and the direction and then whomever I'm working with act in response to my initiative and we move the track along together.
"I think one of the ways in which I have improved over the years is knowing when to trust the people I'm working with. Trying to recognize when it's appropriate to step back is important. Most of the time, the engineer or musician is more likely to go where you want them to if you leave them alone."
The list of musicians who have contributed to The Boggs over the years makes for impressive reading (Friedman has counted Enon, Au Revoir Simone and Liars alumni as part of the band at one point or another). How do you get involved with these people and what artists would you like to collaborate with, in an ideal world?
"Oh I don't know. I'm not sure I could really answer that. Maybe a filmmaker? I'd like to try scoring a film; that would be fun. And I could certainly learn a lot by watching a great director in action. I've definitely been extremely privileged to work with so many amazing people. In some cases they've sought me out, in some cases I've asked people to fill very specific rolls and sometimes it just kind of happened."
Like some other notable New Yorkers (Lou Reed, Liars), you've spent a lot of time in Berlin. What is so attractive about the city; how does it differ from New York and influence your work?
"I went to Berlin at a time when I really needed to step a way from things. I went there and basically disappeared into the creative process for a year and a half. If you know what you want to work on, Berlin is great for that. There is a feeling of being very far away from the world there. It's slow and it's quiet: I think that was what I needed at the time.
"It also seems to be a somewhat lawless or apocalyptic place. Just about every major event in the 20th century happened in one way or another in Berlin. Those stains are still all over the city and in a lot of ways it still feels like a post-war environment. Creatively, all that darkness and space really had an impact on me. It helped guide a number of the themes. Not in a literally historical manner, but in its mood and temperament it had a tremendous effect."
Thematically, what is Forts about?
"It's about the kinds of figurative and literal things people make for themselves to both deal with and avoid ordinary life. It's about routines and habits and the rooms, cities and imaginary spaces where these habits and routines take place. It's about compulsion, restlessness, isolation and people who should know themselves and each other much better than they do."
What are the main influences on your music, both musical and others?
"While I was making Forts I was listening to a lot of early hip-hop, Afro-Beat, funk, ska and soul.
"I watch a lot of movies. I end up spending all day watching things if I'm not careful. And I'll watch all kinds of films really, from snooty seven-hours-plus Hungarian films to teen comedies. You can't miss with a good rom-com. Nor can you with the Marx Brothers or something like It Happened One Night.
"I look at art. Paintings and drawings mostly but I also I borrow from a good many of the 70's conceptual artists and people like Joseph Beuys.
I hope this doesn't look ridiculous but, a lot of my notions about this kind of non-linear history of rock and the kind of de-compartmentalised anti-genreism I go on about were shaped by reading Gilles Deleuze."
The cover of We Are The Boggs We Are features a music magazine with The Strokes on the cover. What was the thinking behind that? Do you think The Boggs fitted in with the early 2000's New York band scene?
"I think we fit in more than The Strokes did to be honest. By that I mean that those guys were never really a part of the scene. You'd see them bobbing up here and there, but really they weren't really a part of things. To me the New York scene was something that really grew in the late 90's. There were a few really great rock and soul dance parties around town and there was a gang of kids who all hung out together and ended up in all these bands in the 00's.
"The Strokes sounded the part, but they didn't have much to do with anything else. They might as well have been from L.A.
"I always like to fill album covers with details and inside-jokes. So much of the first album to me was about re-thinking assumptions and I new most people would automatically associate our sound with cliché images of sharecroppers and miners. None of that had any relevance to me since I discovered that music in record stores. That was my context for it and I wanted to display it that way as if to say, 'This music is not what you think, it is not something from long ago, it is now.'
"The cover was based on the Faces' First Step LP as kind of an answer to any criticism that we might just be a novelty 1920's revivalist act. The Faces reworked folk and blues in their way, The Velvet Underground did it their way, Wire did it their way etc. I wanted to say we are no different and that this is what the process is: everyone stealing from each other and in the process, rediscovering it. The England scarf was another clue. This music doesn't just come from America and Africa it comes from everywhere and its mutations are infinite. And all of this was done in the summer before the Strokes debut when every magazine had them on the cover when everyone was wondering if they were the next great leap forward. I was pointing the finger and saying they are nothing new."
How do you like to spend your time away from music? Do you have any interesting pastimes?
"I draw a lot. That's my stuff all over the new album. I also make films and videos; although I don't do that so much anymore. And I write. I watch a lot of football which, because of the time difference between England and America, means getting up at the crack of dawn and getting my weary bones to a pub in the city. Ridiculous."
What is your favourite music of the past year?
"The new Hot Chip LP."
Interview written for The Skinny Video: The Boggs - Remember The Orphans
Finbarr Bermingham waxes with head Mountain Goat John Darnielle to talk ambition, God and Santa Claus
There are few bands that combine durability with innovation like John Darnielle's Mountain Goats. Almost twenty years into their celebrated career, with a prolific turnaround rate of nigh on an album per year, the concepts seem to be growing more and more interesting. Darnielle's recent EP with John Vanderslice was based around an organ harvesting farm on the moon (think Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, gone lunar). But nothing could have prepared us for the challenges presented by their new album, The Life of the World to Come.
Each track is named after a biblical passage, each of which has resonated with Darnielle in some shape or form through his life. He has applied each one to an issue close to his heart, some personal, some global. Matthew 25:21, for instance, recalls the death of his mother-in-law, and is truly heartbreaking. "When you're in a room with someone dying of cancer, it's hard," says Darnielle when told how touching the song is. "I had some trouble getting through that one."
Another track was inspired by his diagnosis with a chronic illness last year, which led to the cancellation of an Australian tour and comes with the defiant chorus: "I won't get better, but someday I'll be free. I am not this body that imprisons me." John, a former nurse, explains that he tried to write the song from both patient and carer's perspective. "I've spent a lot of time in hospitals as a worker and clinics as a patient. It's a place and role that's been under examined by songwriters. I wanted to broaden it and give it a third dimension." And it works.
Listening to The Life of the World to Come is like cracking a code and its depth and quality combine to make it one of the Mountain Goats' finest releases to date. But when I put it to Darnielle that his religious zeal may alienate some of his fanbase, he laughs. "Believe it or not, I don't have any faith. I think that this, the guy talking to you today, is it. After I die, that's it. But I'm sort of the opposite of most people who don't have faith in that I think it would be awesome to have it. You have people like Christopher Hitchens who are happy to share his atheism, and that's cool for him. But I remember the morning that kids came into my Catholic school telling me that they'd figured out that there was no Santa Claus. I knew, but didn't wanna know. I was like: "Guys, it's way more fun if there is a Santa!"
Despite not possessing faith, Darnielle is a spiritual person. He attends church and prays, because for him, "there's a great deal of pleasure to be had in it". I suggest to him that in pursuing such activities he is merely hedging his bets. "No!" is the quick response. "If the great God the Christians talk about is real then there won't be any bet hedging. You can't say: 'Well, I showed up at church'. You really have to either take the leap or not. Americans really like to think, well, hey I did this and I did that, so he'll let me in, I'm cool. Of all the possible escapologies, that one's not right."
But Darnielle's seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of the scriptures is enough to put the most devout Christian to shame. For a confessed atheist, it's a peculiar specialist subject to have. John, however, refutes that claim. "I have a selective knowledge of the parts that resonated with me. If you were to quote to me a verse that I hadn't been using, I wouldn't know where it came from, unless it was pretty clear. I have a working knowledge of the scriptures."
As we approach the end of the decade, Darnielle is thankful for the fortune that has come his way. "Man, ten years ago, I never would have thought the Mountain Goats could have been full time thing. Well, certainly not at this level. I still don't expect much, though. I grew up with not so much money so my general hope each year is that by the end of that year I will have a roof over my head and a stove to cook food on. That really is as high as I set my goals." But when it is put to him that his ideas and songwriting ability should be enough to ensure continued trajectory, he is equally modest. "I feel as though all of my ideas have to be coming from somewhere outside of me. I don't really believe in invention, everything is probably a perversion of something I've heard somewhere."
Something suggests that the man described by the New Yorker as "America's best non hip-hop lyricist” is selling himself short.
This interview took place in June 2007, when I spoke to Matt Tong before Bloc Party's show at the Carling Academy in Glasgow. After being initially annoyed at being fobbed off with the drummer, I was pleasantly surprised by Tong's opinionated, honest and forthright conversation, all delivered with a prominent stammer...
Who the fuck wants to know what I think? I'm only the bloody drummer in Bloc Party for God's sake!
Probably not the most solid foundation to base an interview on, but as it turns out, Matt Tong has an awful lot to say. An unlikely spokesman for the band, Tong has assumed much of their media activity for their latest album, an interesting tactic considering the outspoken nature of frontman Kele Okereke. But after half an hour spent with The Skinny, Tong's strangely endearing stammer and refreshingly honest persona suggests it's a prudent decision.
With an industry driven bandwagon of political and socially "aware" artists in full motion, it's sometimes difficult to ascertain whether there is any substance behind it. Bloc Party are one such group, and few take themselves more seriously.
"The undercurrent of violence and racism in the UK," and in particular the troubled climes in the capital are unsurprisingly "worrying" for Londoner Tong. His views on the root of the problem, however, are slightly more forthright. "It's symptomatic of the English embrace of American culture. The media have taken a lot of US values and made them normal. So now it seems commonplace that gang culture is rife in London."
Ask him about the stereotypical English view of the Scottish, and he lets fly with another tirade. "Red headed, angry and alcoholic. I don't subscribe to it though, the English have used that for years to cover up their own frailties. You just have to look at the hooligans flying English flags all over the world. And then the Americans slag off the English in turn, to disguise their problems."
Tong's reluctance to embrace patriotism extends to a disdain for facets of the British music industry. "People think you have to be pretty shameless when it comes to getting attention and success." He assures us that as a band, Bloc Party are "cynical of what the industry has to offer."
However, with the levels of attention given to all the next brightest hopes by the likes of NME, who championed Bloc Party, it must be hard to ignore. Tong brands such overexposure "harmful" but explains that sometimes, it's just better to smile and nod. "We knew it was going to happen. But you can't assume you're above it, even if it can be a hindrance. I think we give our fans some credit though, quality prevails."
Those guilty of wrapping their arms around celebrity culture are dismissed by Tong as "puppets," and he has no qualms in giving his views on some of the more notorious pawns.
"Johnny Borrell is an arse. Write that down. And Pete Doherty too. I have my opinions and sometimes I'm wary of them being misconstrued. But they're just fucking arses."
Seemingly under no illusions as to what this industry offers, Bloc Party could be in for a long and illustrious career. So, in this age of frequent reformation, what does the long term future hold? "We're gonna split up after the third record," he asserts with his tongue boring a hole in his cheek. "We'll develop a Pixies-esque cult following that explodes into something far and above what we experienced in our original lifetimes and come back for a multi-million pound tour. That's the plan." Not a huge Police fan then? "Sting can fuck right off!"
As known associates of Franz Ferdinand and confessed lovers of contemporary Scottish music, Matt also proves somewhat of a historian, suggesting the successful Scottish underground scene can be traced back to the Act of Union. "The richer scene stems from a perpetration of trust by the English. Scotland had to maintain a sense of identity which results in the whole thing being more interesting than the English. I'm not a massive fan of bagpipes though!"
One would be forgiven then, for thinking there was little about Tong's native green fields that gives him pleasure. Au contraire...
"Well there's something bloody marvellous about Morris Dancing, if you're talking about traditionally English things then that's it. There's something so intrinsically silly about it that makes it fantastic. Nigel Mansell as well." Is it for his charisma? "No it's his moustache, I think for the same reasons I like Morris Dancing."
Few albums will send you rifling through a 2,400 page tome. But such is the gravity, beauty and heartbreaking sentiment within The Life Of The World To Come – a trip to the Bible seems obligatory. Each song is named after a biblical passage, the relevance more obvious in some than others. Occasionally, John Darnielle adopts a persona (a prisoner on 1 John 4:16), but it mostly seems unflinchingly autobiographical with consistently breathtaking results. Matthew 25:21 is a harrowing account of rushing to someone’s bedside to watch them die: “the last of something bright burning, still burning; beyond the cancer and the chemotherapy.” Darnielle's voice comes as close as it ever will to wobbling on a track that will well up the eyes of the most secular listener. Whether you agree with the author's piousness – affected or genuine – shouldn’t stop you from hearing this. Christian rock this is not, but it's one of the best records of 2009.
The second thing you notice about Liam Finn is his shy, unassuming manner. The first? Well, it’s his beard of course. At just a little over 5 feet 5, and sporting a gnarly, grizzly number that makes him look like he can sprout forth folliclely at will, Finn shares passing resemblance to Gennaro Gattuso, the former Rangers midfielder known for his snarling tenacity. Except, in Finn’s conversation, that’s a quality that’s absolutely lacking.
It’s all quite surprising, because since birth, Finn Junior has been as good as royalty in New Zealand. Son of Neil, nephew of Tim, sometime affiliate of Crowded House and a rolling member of the Seven Worlds Collide collective, one might have half expected to be confronted by an indignant victim of rockstar excess. But no, politeness is his thang: “Are you sure I can’t get you a bottle of water? I’m afraid we don’t have much of a rider, but…”
With the release of his debut album I’ll Be Lightning last year, Liam Finn proved that the family gene pool has yet to be spoilt. It’s as enjoyable as anything his elders have churned out and given that he played every instrument himself, an arguably more accomplished record all round. But did he feel a pressure to step out of his family’s shadow?
“Not really. I know it probably seems that way, and it might seem like the right thing to say, but they’ve been very supportive. Plus I’m very proud of what they’ve all done. I don’t think I should be trying to shun that side of things, but I’m very independent. I’ve been doing my own thing for a long time now, and it’s just good to see the fruits of all the hard work. I was determined to do things my way and I think I could’ve chosen to do things much more easily than I have.”
As if to hammer home his last point, Finn explains how he made his way to Auld Reekie for this particular evening’s gig. “We’ve just come up from Whitley Bay today. We had a few beers, but I wouldn’t recommend it, but it was cheaper for us to get some hotel rooms there and travel to Edinburgh this morning. Gotta keep an eye on these things!”
Given his lineage, one would surely think that his future had been set out in the stars even before Finn first lifted a guitar. But he had other plans. “I really wanted to be a professional basketball player,” he says. His poker-face suggests laughter wouldn’t be a viable option, but he goes on to explain. “I know what you’re thinking… short-arse Kiwi, and I don’t look the part, but I was pretty serious about it for a while. I just love playing basketball and when I had it in my head that I wanted to do it, I was convinced.”
Alas, the NBA never beckoned and with such an obvious musical talent at his disposal, we should be appreciative of his diminutive physical stature. His self-effacing demeanour disappears when he hits the stage. With the exception of long-term musical partner EJ, his is an exhausting solo show: wired, charging from instrument to instrument, bellowing out his back catalogue spliced with vitriolic crashes of hi-hats. I wonder what has happened to the nice young New Zealander I encountered earlier. A humble bow après show, though, and a shy look returns to his face.
“I just love playing live. It’s what it’s all about, being a musician. The recording part can be okay, even fun sometimes. But if you’re a serious musician, if that’s what you class yourself as, then that’s where you should be able to come into your own. It’s liberating. You’re on the stage, in front of all these people who have come to see you sing your songs. What more could you ask for?”
Sometimes an album is beatified by a dominant sense of isolation. It happened with Bon Iver’s debut LP, and Nancy Elizabeth has hit on comparably secluded gold dust on her second effort. But whilst For Emma… was cast with anguish, Elizabeth seems blissfully removed from reality and its tribulations on Wrought Iron. Written between the peripheries of the Faroe Islands, a derelict Spanish school and the Lake District, this is a sparse album, dusted with piano, breathy vocals and harmonies, and touches of acoustic guitar, horns and accordion. Opening track, Cairns, recalls the sumptuous instrumental intro on Tindersticks’ The Hungry Saw and sets the tone for eleven tracks of crystalline splendour. The album peaks with Lay Low, but there are highlights throughout. “I need no-one to tread the water with me”, sings Elizabeth on Feet of Courage, and judging by the brilliant fruits of her labour, we have no reason to doubt her.
Inconsistency plagues a tribute album that really should have been something special.
There are few rock and roll stories as tragic and downright fucked up as that of Judee Sill. She fled home as a teen, having lost her brother and father in separate accidents and wound up on the streets, carrying out armed robberies to feed a heroin habit. She learned to play the church organ in a correction clinic, hit the big-time on Sunset Boulevard but following latter-day relative commercial failure, relapsed and died from "acute cocaine and codeine intoxication" in 1979.
Her work was hugely personal, with heavy religious overtones and although celebrated and influential, has been arguably overshadowed by peers like Joni Mitchell and Carole King. So whilst it’s pleasing to see illustrious names like Daniel Rossen (Grizzly Bear), Beth Orton, Bill Callahan (Smog) and Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) turn up on this tribute, the hodgepodge selection lacks balance and coherence. With a little extra due dilligence, the compilation, tracklisting and artist selection could have been much more sharper.
Sill’s breakthrough song, Jesus Was A Cross Maker, sounds gloriously rejuvenated by the silver tongued Frida Hyvonen, whilst fellow Scandinavian Nicolai Dunger’s take on Soldier Of The Heart sounds overwrought and self-indulgent. Of the star turns, Orton’s rendition of the previously unreleased Reach for the Sky may well have met with Sill’s approval, as would Smog’s typically pensive For a Rainbow. Final Fantasy takes a reasonably successful idiosyncratic stab at The Donor but conversely, The Colossal Yes’ version of The Phoenix is barely listenable.
When songs are so intimately penned, they should be handled with reverence, and whilst this album will hopefully gain Sill worthy recognition, the choice of artist is clumsy. As tributes go, Crayon Angel could have been much more fitting than this.
The seismic effect bands like The Kinks have had on contemporary music can’t be overstated, to the point where one wonders just when it starts to become a negative. That idiosyncratic, quintessentially English sound is a noose round the neck of dozens of up-and-coming bands; for every Libertines, there are twenty Don’t Moves. The New Found Pop Sound Of… is not a wholly dreadful album: it just doesn’t warrant such a weighty adjective. However, it's mundane, it’s formulaic, it’s trite and, at 13 tracks, it’s ten songs too long. While the band try to mix things up from time to time (the sitar-like sounds on She Only Went To Hang The Washing Out, the organ on Don't Tell, the occasional burst of accordion) this is as bog-standard a pub rock record you’ll ever encounter. Even in the purposely grey days of The Smiths, the soundscapes of Albion rarely sounded so depressing.
Remember when the Kings of Leon were good? Well, with the help of The Skinny, I got to speak to Caleb just before the U2 years. I'm unsure how I managed to get so much information from him, considering most of the conversation was centered around our mutual love for beards and barbeques. Alas, this comes from The Skinny's November 2007 edition.
The Kings of Leon’s schedule is incessant and gruelling. “It’s the never ending tour,” frontman Caleb Followill tells me. He sounds knackered yet acceptant; even humbled by the opportunity. “This is the greatest life,” he proclaims in his lazy Southern drawl,“ and we are so blessed to be able to do what we love everyday.” It may well be “the greatest life”, but touring seems to be the only life the quartet know, in between their odd pitstops at home in Nashville.
The three siblings in the band spent their early years on the road with their father Leon (hence Kings Of...), a United Pentecostal Church Preacher, a restless and nomadic existence. When asked how he remembers his childhood, Caleb is open and honest. “It was normal to us. We didn’t know anything different. Of course you want certain things, we all wanted to have nice things when we were kids and we didn’t get the opportunity. We couldn’t afford things the other kids had. And you know we wanted to go to school, we wanted to have some friends. We didn’t always wanna be together.”
Their rags to riches story may not yet have reached its fairytale ending, but their experiences to date certainly seem to have given the Followills some measure of control over their future. When speaking of his formative years, Caleb’s voice is loaded with emotion but void of resentment. “Looking back now,” he reflects, “it moulded us for this life. A lot of bands can’t survive cos they can’t take the constant moving around and the instability of this lifestyle. But for us, in a weird way, it was preparing us for what we’ve got now.” The dynamics of a successful band are always intriguing, but the relationships within Kings of Leon make them a particularly fascinating study.
Followill concedes it’s inevitable that they get at each other’s throats but is quick to point out “it’s okay though, we can get in fights and speak our minds but at the end of the day we’re family and that’s what families do.” It is this familiarity that will give the band longevity he feels; the sparks will only serve to bring them closer. But the dynamics weren’t quite so fluid back when their artistic career first came to gain some recognition.
Having announced their arrival on the scene with Youth and Young Manhood at a relatively young age (Jared was only 17), it was perhaps inevitable that they would indulge slightly. Caleb, though, believes they were out of control. “We did so much partying at the beginning and we ended up missing so many opportunities as a band; we were either too wasted or too tired. For a while it looked like it was almost the end of it.”
Video: Kings Of Leon - Four Kicks
Now, he claims, the band has matured and it was a logical choice to make. “You’ve got to choose your battles.” An inquiry into their relationship with current tour partners Black Rebel Motorcycle Club however, results in a mischievous chuckle, suggesting their wild days are not dead and buried just yet. “I thought they’d be wild! But they got their heads screwed on pretty good. We’ve been playing a bunch of casinos and once I start-drinking whiskey I can get ugly and nasty. Especially when someone’s taking my money. Man I gotta watch myself around those boys; I don’t think they appreciate that kind of behaviour much.”
If their proclivity for a dram was a feature of the ‘old days’ they were unwilling to shed completely, other characteristics did not prove so auspicious. The disappearance of Kings of Leon’s trademark flowing beards earlier this year was an arresting development in itself. Was the image change timed to coincide with their considerable progression of sound from their country roots? Well, yes and no, it would seem. “We wanted to see if people would have anything to talk about after they were gone. In the beginning, with all the bands coming out, they wanted to have something to attach them with. Luckily for the press and everyone, not only was our music sounding like we were some scruffy country band, you looked at us and that’s what you got.”
If anything, since the shearing their popularity has soared. Followill coyly concurs. A gamble paid off then, and evidently in more ways than one. “I got laid more after losing the beard,” he laughs. Surely, The Skinny put it to him, being the lead singer of the Kings of Leon is enough by itself?
“It’s just everyone thought I was a lot older. A lot of older women were going for my little brother and I was like “Hey, don’t forget about me. I’m still young!” His long laugh betrays any perceived modesty, “Beard’s back now though, getting cold. Guess it’s a lonely Winter for me!”
Video: Kings of Leon - Milk (Live at Lollapalooza)
