The Bravery interview

My interview with The Bravery recently ran in NSW and Victoria. Here is the extended version which appeared in Melbourne's Inpress:






















AS THE BRAVERY RETURN TO AUSTRALIA, KEYBOARDIST JOHN CONWAY RECALLS HAPPY MEMORIES OF STRANGERS LENDING HIM SURFBOARDS. ROB TOWNSEND FINDS OUT MORE

The Bravery’s John Conway is excited. “I love it,” he enthuses. “The people are great, the weather is great; it’s just like a giant California.” As the New York electro/indie rockers tour Australia for the second time, the keyboardist reveals that this will actually be his third visit. A keen surfer, he ventured this way before his band arrived for their debut tour in 2005. It was then that he fell in love with the fine people of this country. “I wanted to go surfing and was just able to borrow surfboards everywhere I went. I was in a sandwich shop and I asked if there was somewhere I could maybe rent a board and they said: ‘Oh, take mine mate. I’ve got one out the back. Go out and have fun and just bring it back here in a couple of hours.’ That was amazing.”

While catching some more waves will certainly be on the agenda, the real reason the band is heading this way is to tour in support of its second album, The Sun and The Moon. A group’s sophomore long-player is often a tricky one to create, especially following a debut recording as successful as The Bravery’s was, but Conway says tackling the notorious Difficult Second Album didn’t actually pose too many problems. “They say you have your whole life to make your first record and you have to make the second one when you’re touring. I think there is some truth to that, and it’s hard because bands don’t know whether to do the same thing or to get really experimental. In the end we settled on doing both, but we took our time with it and made the record that we really wanted to make, so we didn’t feel too much pressure.”
















The album was recorded in a novel way, with two different versions of the same songs available in a double-disk package - The Sun side and The Moon side. “We did The Sun side first, and that was more experimental for us, even though it is probably closer to how most bands make records,” Conway explains. “We went into a real recording studio and worked with a producer for the first time and had access to instruments that we’d never used. We did a lot more acoustic, organic stuff with a lot of vocals and harmonies. We had string players and other musicians. It was really different for us.” The quintet, who recorded their first album in Conway’s apartment, worked with producer Brendan O’Brien this time round. O’Brien has an impressive resume which includes working with Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine and Neil Young. “We had a shortlist of producers that we thought would be fun to work with and when we met him, it was just an obvious choice. We were really glad that he wanted to do it. First off, he’s just an amazing musician. I think it helps that he can play every instrument, so he can communicate really well as a musician and get great performances out of us.”

The other disk in the reissued album, The Moon side, was put together by the band in a much more DIY way - using laptops and synthesisers. “It was really lo-fi and basically done for free. It’s kind of grittier and darker and I guess a little more electronic and dancier.” This version of the album was created much closer to how their debut record was made, and Conway explains how the band came about their sound in the first place. “I think when we started we were influenced by the electroclash movement and by DJs who would play electronic music and mix it up with rock.” I ask what the thinking behind releasing alternate recordings of the same album was. “We were just kinda into the juxtaposition. That was the concept of the album; you know, the sun and the moon. It’s cool to put both those sides out.”

Having been forever on tour since the release of the first long-player, the band is excited to finally have some new tunes to showcase, especially because the formatting of The Sun and The Moon means they have two versions of all of their latest tracks at their disposal. “It’s like doubling your repertoire so it’s much easier to break it up and keep it interesting for us and for our fans as well.” But what about the songs from The Sun side of the album? Surely playing some of them involves bringing extra musicians and more instruments on tour? “No, we just arrange them a different way. In the studio it’s easy to go for all these nuances, subtleties and soft atmospheres but when we play live we just want it to rock. We just turn everything up and make it all a little more brutal.”

As well as being on display at their upcoming show at The Corner Hotel, The Bravery’s brand of synth-fused indie is perfectly suited to an appearance at the We Love Sounds festival. “Festivals are really cool because you get to play in front of a lot of people that maybe don’t know who you are. It can be an interesting challenge to pick up new fans.” But as well as being an opportunity to get their music to a different audience, the New Yorkers have always been known to party pretty hard, and will be taking the opportunity to spend the day sinking a few beverages. “It’s nice to have a good time, have some drinks and make some friends. We’ve probably slowed down from our early days though. I think we got a bad reputation for that at the beginning, but it’s hard to keep that up when you tour ten or eleven months of the year like we do.” He pauses for a second, before mischievously adding: “But, yeah, you get chances to go off at the deep end and you still take them. We definitely plan on living it up down there.”

During a previous festival appearance at Glastonbury, such indulgences resulted in bassist Mike Hindert performing stark naked. This is not something that you can expect to be subjected to at We Love Sounds. “I don’t know if he’s gotten naked since then,” Conway laughs. “Nearly naked, but not naked.”

Bell X1 - Flock

BELL X1
Flock

In case your finger isn’t as firmly on the pulse of the Irish music scene as it might be, allow me to bring you up to speed with Bell X1. Hugely popular in their native country, the band rose from the flames of a quintet called Juniper after some bloke called Damien Rice departed to go it alone. While the loss of such a talent might have spelt the end for many groups, the quartet is now doing rather well, thanks in no small part to having songs used on The O.C. and Grey’s Anatomy.

Flock, their third record, is a fairly standard indie rock outing which offers plenty of reference points. The upbeat moments, while at times feeling a little anachronistic, are still pleasing enough within their genre and point in the direction of Snow Patrol. A good example of this is the driving guitars of the intriguingly-titled Reacharound or the pretty Rocky Took a Lover. Elsewhere, the more experimental Flame goes a bit Talking Heads, while, very occasionally, singer Paul Noonan’s voice soars with the beautiful ethereality of Thom Yorke. Elsewhere though, Noonan’s vocal does tend to get a little grating.

Flock isn’t especially ground-breaking and at times it feels a little bland, but there are certainly some nice moments, the best of which is delicate album-closer Lamposts. If intelligent, middle of the road indie is your thing and you simply can’t wait for the next Coldplay album to drop, then you’ll find enough here to appease your appetite.

Newton Faulkner - Hand Built By Robots

NEWTON FAULKNER
Hand Built By Robots

When English singer/songwriter Newton Faulkner toured Australia a couple of months ago he proved himself to be a likeable, entertaining and funny character. With dreadlocks flowing and an unquestionable ability with a guitar, he punctuated his set of stripped back, acoustic and emotive folk with charming quirkiness and general silliness. It was a lovely mix.

However, while his onstage kookiness was appealing, the highlights on his debut album are exclusively the more ruminative moments. The best of these comes when he puts down the guitar for the touching piano ballad, Straight Towards The Sun; its pretty, understated nature suiting the ever so slightly gravely, Eddie Vedder-esque texture to his vocal. Similarly, Aging Superhero and his cover of Massive Attack’s Teardrop are beautiful, while the chorus of Dream Catch Me is rousing enough to explain why the song got such heavy radio play upon its release as a single.

Elsewhere though, the quality dips. The affected vocal during parts of Gone in the Morning is painful, while the sentimentality of People Should Smile More borders on sickly. Also, a plethora of very short tracks make the album feel fragmented. These include the self-explanatory and pointless Sitar-Y Thing, She’s Got The Time and Face (Her). The sitar makes another appearance on UFO, which aims for quirkiness but lands closer to being utterly inane.

While there are pleasing moments, Faulkner’s debut would have certainly benefited from leaving a handful of its 17 tracks on the studio floor. As it stands, Hand Built By Robots is the epitome of hit-and-miss.

Stereophonics at The Metro

Following my interview with Stereophonics, I took in one of their gigs in Sydney:













STEREOPHONICS
BRITISH INDIA
The Metro, Sydney
05/05/08

It was a case of trying to spot the Australian in the crowd for the first of two sold-out shows at The Metro, as it seemed the overwhelming majority of people that descended on George Street were British [including this reviewer]. Due to early doors, many punters were either still on their way to the venue or clambering for booze at the bar while Melbourne lads British India played, which was a shame because their short set was powerful and impressive.

While travelling half way round the globe to play to a room filled with people from your homeland seems like defeating the point, Stereophonics revelled in the rapturous reception they received as they sauntered onto stage. With singer Kelly Jones looking quite the clichéd rock frontman in a leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, the Welshmen punctuated what was essentially a greatest hits set with a handful of tracks from their new long-player, Pull The Pin.

With six big selling albums to select tunes from, their performance was always going to provoke something of a singalong, with second track A Thousand Trees sparking the first major audience participation of the night. The first low point though came with the arrival of the rather sour Mr Writer, with Jones grumbling: “Why don’t you tell it like it really is?” Well, okay - while upbeat numbers like The Bartender and the Thief perfectly suit his distinctive sandpaper vocal, slower songs such as this turn it into a horrible, lifeless drone. Other weak moments included the limp You Could Have It All, and even the most enthusiastic fan must have struggled to remain engaged during Hurry Up and Wait which, fittingly, seemed to last forever.












Conversely, More Life in a Tramp’s Vest and Local Boy in the Photograph were riotous romps that proved Stereophonics’ real strength lies in their punchy, aggressive rock tunes. While one might expect such energy from tracks written when the band were young whippersnappers, pleasingly, offerings from their new album displayed similar urgency and vibrancy.

Ending the night with the delicious Dakota [which meant we were thankfully spared their painfully lacklustre cover version of Handbags and Gladrags] the Brits left the stage to a massive ovation, suggesting that the many backpackers in the crowd were happy with their decision to spend about three weeks’worth of food budget on a ticket.

The Raconteurs - Consolors of the Lonely

THE RACONTEURS
Consolers Of The Lonely
The reason the rushed release of The Raconteurs’ second album may have snuck under your radar is because, unannounced, it went on sale the very same day it landed on reviewers’ desks. According to the accompanying press release, this was to prevent anyone having the “upper hand” over its reception or perception. Music hacks be damned.

Amongst the familiar rock and blues reminiscence and the big hooks, the major difference between this album and the last seems to be that Brendan Benson has taken a back seat this time round. While the pretty You Don’t Understand Me illustrates his knack of penning a lovely pop melody, much of the album lands closer to Jack White’s other band, most notably Salute Your Solution and The Switch and the Spur, which has horns seemingly lifted straight from Icky Thump.

Although slightly overblown, Consolers… is generally a good album; certainly better than the largely forgettable Broken Boy Soldiers anyway. However, even in its exciting moments it never manages to shift the feeling that this band amounts to less than the sum of its parts. It’s hard to think of The Raconteurs as anything other than Jack White’s bit on the side and, ultimately, this album will do little more than leave his fans longing for him to focus less on side-projects and more on recording with his sister/wife. After all, nothing either of his bands has released over the past couple of years comes close to the White Stripes’ thrilling, minimalist and visceral first few records.

Stereophonics interview

I interviewed Stereophonics before they arrived in Australia. Here is the version that appeared in Melbourne's Inpress:






















STEREOPHONICS bassist Richard Jones talks to ROB TOWNSEND about the past, the present and the future

Because they slipped off the radar for a couple of years, it’s easy to forget just how popular Stereophonics are. Their last five albums have entered the British charts at number one, they’ve headlined Glastonbury and played huge shows all around the world. So it is little wonder that tickets for their upcoming shows at The Forum have been selling like particularly hot cakes. “It’s really good yeah,” bassist Richard Jones beams about the band’s popularity over here. “It’s always really good whenever we’ve been to Australia, and we’ve always wanted to tour as extensively as possible, but for one reason or another we haven’t been able to. So it is nice to know that, six albums in, we can still sell tickets.”

As seems to be the case with so many British bands, the Welshmen love heading over this way, and have fond memories of previous trips to this side of the planet. “I think we were there for about four weeks the first time we were out there and it was really cool,” Jones reminisces. “You know, women are crazy, men are crazy, booze is really good and everybody likes to get entertained. They’re all good ingredients for a band touring.”

The tour comes on the back of recent release Pull The Pin, meaning there will be plenty of new tunes on display. Yet, with such an extensive back-catalogue, there are bound to be a few oldies as well. When Jones talks about how much fun it is to throw in some older tracks, I ask him whether there are any songs the band is bored of having to wheel out at every single gig. “I suppose you get tired of playing the ones you get more known for, like Handbags and Gladrags, Have a Nice Day and to some extent Dakota. It’s such a popular song that everybody wants to hear it every time we do a gig. Sometimes you do want to be selfish and say: ‘Fuck it, we’re not gonna play that tonight.’” But a band doesn’t reach such a level of success without knowing how to please a crowd, so chances are that these live favourites will end up on the set-list. “At the end of the day it could be an audience that has never seen us before, so you’ve got to give them what they want.”














As Jones casually chats down a phone-line from his home in Wales about everything from the weather [“It was dry today, for a change,”] to the McCartney divorce case [“Who gives a flying fuck?”] it’s hard to believe this is a band that had a painfully tumultuous relationship with the press for so many years. “I just think it was our time to have that slating. You know what happens in the UK; they build someone up and put them on a pedestal and then try to take pot-shots at them to knock them off. That was just our time.” Their fractured relationship with the media wasn’t helped by their song, Mr. Writer, which many journalists saw as a personal attack from frontman Kelly Jones. “For us it was just a song, a moment in time, and after it was written and recorded we forgot about it. We only had to sing it every once in a while but a lot of journalists took it to heart, which says it all. If you think it is about you then I suppose it is about you. Everybody is over it. We just get on with doing what we do.”

The positive reviews that Pull The Pin has received suggest that journalists have indeed got over their animosity towards Stereophonics. The strength of the long-player seems to come from the fact that it plays like an amalgamation of all that was good about their previous recordings and is equally rocky, melodic, upbeat and contemplative. “That’s what we felt when we were recording it. We had the punk rock elements and the really dark elements which we took from bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana and then country elements as well. I think we’ve got to that place where we’re really comfortable with doing all those types of music and if they do fit on the same album then we might as well just put them on there.”

It seems like it’s been ages since the release of their previous album, Language, Sex, Violence, Other? but Jones is keen to dispel any suggestions that the band spent a couple of years just chilling out with their feet up. While they may have been out of the public’s consciousness, they were busy times for Stereophonics. “I suppose from an outside point of view it must have seemed like we were away for a couple of years, but myself and Kelly made a documentary from 10 years worth of footage, we released a live album and we recorded Pull The Pin all in the time we were away from the public eye and then started releasing things the following year. So we were busy, but I suppose from a fan’s point of view it did look like we were doing nothing for two years,” he chuckles.


















As well as keeping him busy, trawling through countless hours of footage for the documentary certainly brought back some happy memories for the Jones. “Just to actually watch yourselves play to 100,000 people at Glastonbury, you could tell that the band really did explode at that time. To watch it all back, it was a good laugh.”

With over ten years worth of releases under their belts, a greatest hits compilation is surely only a matter of time away and Jones admits that their record label is keen on the idea. Such a release often signals the end of the road for a group, so I ask whether his band have ever discussed their future in these terms. “Whenever we take any time off it always feels like I’m unemployed,” he laughs. “So for the band it’s whatever fits. Kelly and I are always telling each other that if one of us doesn’t want to do it or if it doesn’t feel good anymore then we shouldn’t really be doing it. We’ll do it as long as it feels good.”

With albums still hitting the top of the charts and fans still clambering for tickets all over the globe, one guesses that it will continue to feel good for quite some time.