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Interview
by SaschaS
2-4-2004
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| Haven: on their own mission to the place |
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In their own Haven
Haven - good, generous, free… music
The first taste of Haven’s new album ‘All For A Reason’ has been made all the sweeter because it’s free. The band are offering the record’s closing track, ‘Getaway’ - and possibly the best on the platter - as a completely free download to get your hands on it.
‘All For A Reason’ follows in the footsteps of the band’s lauded debut ‘Between The Senses’ but it avoids repeating the tonal formula. Former Smiths-man, Johnny Marr has returned to helm the production of the new album which was launched with a one-off gig at the Virgin Megastore, Manchester on the day of release.
The band will also play a number of exclusive free acoustic launches with limited invites available via local record stores on a first-come/first-grab basis. After Manchester and Brighton (30 March - Sussex Arts Club), there at dates at Porthtowan, Cornwall (31 March - Blue Bar), Newcastle (02 April - Arts Centre) and Preston (03 April - The Mill).
Marr also co-wrote two songs with singer Gary Briggs, which further re-enforces comparisons with The Smiths and yet, Haven haven’t been asked to contribute to a new Smiths tribute album, ‘How Soon is Now?’, due out this Spring.
Haven’s ‘difficult’ second album is entitled thus for reasons that become clear as soon as we hand the mike to the band members, from right to left: Briggs (vocal/guitar), Iwan Gronow (bass), Jack Mitchell (drums) and Nat Wason (guitars). The band was planning to have this album released last Autumn but strange things started happening: homicidal bouncer in New Orleans, serious medi-complaint and emergency dental surgery all marred the US tour that was othwerise, in singer’s words, “a turning point for us all, we realised we can take the f**king world on.”
Gary Briggs: “True, the album was ready for last September release but for Nat’s contracting, supposedly stress/induced, Bell’s Palsy. He couldn’t move his facial muscles and we decided to put everything on hold until he got better.”
Nat Wason: “No cause has been found but I believe that it has to do with me getting beat up on the first date of our American tour, in Atlanta, by a bouncer. It was really serious although there was no justification for it, he just bounced on me and started kicking the daylight out of me. He’s known for violent behaviour, his nickname is ‘Trauma’, and weeks later he blinded another English guy; he is in prison now but that is no compensation.”
NW: “This guy has wasted so much of my time and still am not cured. There is actually no cure, apart from steroids but there is no evidence they help, and you just let the damage repair itself, for nerve endings to grow back. It can take up to a year and it looks like I caught the 12-month doze.”
GB: “All this has informed and inspired newer songs on the album, but still the main theme remains - change, movement, hope. I think it all comes from my childhood, that impressionable period when I moved through 15 different schools, many different cities and towns… So, songs are journeys for me and I feel like a musical journeyman. Travelling, chicks, booze…”
GB: “Our music is pilgrimage to our love and we find disappointing how illiterate today’s musicians are. Not knowing music is like not known alphabet. The scene has changed over the past couple of years and I don’t know if we fit in [have they ever?] but let’s hope that some of the people who bought our debut [150,000 Britons] still remember us and go back to record shops.”
GB: “Speaking commercially, this record has to sell more than the first one or we are out of the contract. But, we’ve always made sure to have a backdoor, we have publishing money stashed away because we thought it would be better than wasting it on Ferraris or excessive gear… So, we can be independent if need be and will never be in a position when we can’t make our next album. It is a position of power the label actually hate.”
GB: “The current state of music makes me more determined to be more supportive of student radio, grassroots-fans who set-up sites to promote you… That’s where is the power and not with the major labels.”
Indie-minded, fiscally free and musically dexterous…
A little ‘we-couldn’t resist’ comment: how just is to expect/demand Haven to sell more units in the marketplace where the record sales are generally falling? A Catch 22, boys?
SaschaS
2-4-2004
Haven's album 'All For A Reason' is released 29 March by Radiate
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