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Interview
by SaschaS
17-1-2005
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| The Music: still grim up North, for sure |
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A Northern re-vision
The Music: allotting a lateral reprise
The Music are releasing a special edition of their second album ‘Welcome To The North’ on Monday (17 January); the disc was originally released in September and hit the Top Five. The re-release will feature new artwork, an additional disc featuring extra live tracks and the means to access live footage of the bonus tracks online.
The new version of the LP follows the band’s new single ‘Breakin’’ released this week (10 January). Recorded live at the Liverpool Academy, the extra tracks are: ‘Welcome To The North’, ‘The People’, ‘Freedom Fighters’, ‘I Need Love’, ‘Bleed From Within’ and ‘Take The Long Road and Walk It’.
The bonus disc also carries fingerprinting technology allowing fans to access live footage of the songs via the band’s official website.
The Music played a trio of Christmas shows at London [21 December - Forum, Kentish Town], Manchester [22 December - Carling Apollo] and Glasgow [23 December - Barrowlands] but there is no news of any further UK dates.
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Two years after The Music lads’ eponymous debut album caught the attention of public, vocalist Rob Harvey supplants the presiding interviewee, guitarist Adam Nutter, talking about the album number two, ‘Welcome To The North’. The then 18-year-olds Yorkshire men [bassist Stuart Coleman and drummer Phil Jordan provide the rhythm to the Leeds quartet] have grown in public with planetary touring and the ‘… North’ LP certainly reflects.
It not only presents Harvey as a new songwriting force but also that the North of this island continues to produced seriously good bands and not the gimmicky little money-grabbers the South keeps inflicting upon us. To that end, in May 2004 the band decamped to a studio in Atlanta, Georgia, and spent seven weeks recording with Brendan O’Brien, whose productions credits include such bands as Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.
“A lot of people ask about ‘Welcome To The North’ being recording in the Deep South,” Nutter explains patiently and, probably, for the day’s umpteenth time, “but to us, it could have been anywhere; the main reason for going there was to work with Brendan. No, we weren’t keen on the idea [of recording in Georgia] but it was the only way, the only reason.”
“Majority of the songs were written, rehearsed and demoed beforehand,” guitarist continues, “but we still wrote three or four tunes while over there. We wrote ‘Open Your Mind’, ‘Breakin’ and a couple of B-sides. Whether it’s influenced the music… We are affected by wherever we are, by whatever we do.”
“The way we wrote ‘Open Your Mind’ was different,” Harvey decides to join in in his quiet manner, “we did it backwards. Instead of recording the drums and getting that right, the drums were the final thing. It was the vocal the song was based on and we jammed the basic idea which was interesting.”
Afflicting vistas
“Starting out early,” Nutter muses, “and having certain amount of success, it did put certain pressure on us. It was personal pressure because no one wants to make a better record than us. It had to be better, the best it could be and if it weren’t we wouldn’t have released it. It is the same old story - you have your whole life to write your first album and we took about two years to come up with the songs that were on it. We then had to do all these touring, promoting and that interfered with song writing. The record company was getting itchy.”
Lack of time is usually counterbalanced with the new, a global wealth of experiences; it is directly opposite to the volume and locality of one’s regional beginnings.
“Hope Rob agrees because I found that aspect much easier,” Nutter is quick of the mark, “and we had to get a lot of out of us. We didn’t play for a long time and we were starved for creativity… So, once we got going - it was just rolling out.”
What was the obstacle to road writing - too much Rock’n’Roll lifestyle?
“No; we tried setting up a little studio in the back of the bus,” Harvey defends the band, “but playing in such a small environment without proper drum kit… Also, it is very difficult to do much when the thing is moving!”
“We react to our environment,” Nutter proves rather reasonable, “and we couldn’t react to that environment; it wasn’t an environment we wanted to react to.”
Deviant aspirants
“I personally feel strongly about the record,” Nutter confesses, “I think it is the dog’s bollocks but, at the same time, none of us thinks it is perfect; it is a massive leap, a huge progression… We were also very much helped by Brendan’s attitude - just do it. We were really paranoid about things, there is so much s**t music out there and we didn’t want to be accused of being s**t by others. There is a lot of quality control in our case.”
The album is not what the market apparently demands at the moment; is it worse than two years ago or…?
“I think it’s become more stale,” Harvey states coolly, “because of the way the media presents the whole thing, by grouping everyone together. They defined genres in the past but are now at the loss because they have to create new names for categories that have created themselves. Even if the music is at its lowest point, the media would never say so…”
… But continue to hype to sell the papers as well as records by artists who are reason they exist for?
“Vicious circle,” Harvey agrees, “but it is hard to tell…”
“There is a lot of interesting stuff out there,” Nutter’s away, “and there is some interesting stuff coming up; I’m really looking forward to Interpol’s second album [‘Antics’]… The Streets should have won the Mercury Music Prize this year, as far as I‘m concerned, and I am not really into his music. But, he is rapping about real life, about the real people, about British reality. You can always feel his rhyming reality…”
“But, awards are not relevant,” Harvey concludes, “as this is not a race [of equal athletes?] and it all ties in into this celebrity culture I talk about that makes people look like super-human when they are not.”
“We are not celebrity,” Nutter opines, “and we don’t wanna play that game but do it our own way which’s always been - playing live. Also, we don’t pretend to be pretty and don’t want to be made up, airbrushed… That’s why people are not inclined to put us on the covers, in magazines, because we look like s**t… We are normal people and most of the time we are really tired after flying for 12 hours or touring… While everyone’s doing their 9-to-5 cushy posing…”
“A lack of honesty really upsets me,” Harvey states as the parting shot, sporting his favourite T-shirt that spells NATO as ‘Now A Terrorist Organisation’.
With such attitude and music to back it up, the rock Apocalypse appears contained in The Music’s hands.
~ ~ ~ [Originally published on 19 Sept. 2004]
SaschaS
17-1-2005
The Music album ‘Welcome To The North’ is re-released 24 January 2005 by Virgin
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