From the archives - an interview with Jason Lytle around the time he was releasing the final Grandaddy album “Whatever Happened to the Fambly Cat”. Most people agree it wasn't their best but I still think it has its moments. Now he's back touring again and is due to release new music under his own name shortly. Judging by his myspace page, which includes a bonkers tune called 'On a Piece of Wood I Go' and a cover of Queen's Bicycle Race, the new material promises to be gloriously eccentric.

For more info see www.jasonlytle.com

Grandaddy Q & A

Despite a sequence of great albums which began with both Under the Western Freeway and the Sophtware Slump in 2000, Grandaddy never seemed to reach their full potential or breakthrough to a larger audience, overshadowed by the success of their peers who shared the same aesthetic and thematic sensibilities, including Radiohead, Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips. Vocalist and songwriter Jason Lytle decided to split the band last year, but not before releasing one more epic album of sonic and melodic majesty, “Whatever Happened to the Fambly Cat”. Lytle spoke to the Skinny about the album and his reasons for ending the band, as he was preparing to leave his home town of Modesto, California, the inspiration behind many of the band’s songs.

The album marks the death of Grandaddy as a band, and the epic nature of many of the tracks seems to reflect this.

I wasn’t thinking too much about death, more like the end of a journey. There was so much going on related to that, in addition to the band - moving from this place that I’ve lived, Modesto California, for a long time that contributed to much of the material that people have come to know.

So have you left Modesto already?

I’m still here right now, the house is for sale; so it’s completely empty and I’m doing things like scrubbing floors, dusting countertops and clearing up the yard, shit like that. The studio was here and everything, but it’s all moved now. All my belongings are 12 hundred miles away, I was living out of a bag throughout this 3 week press trip I’ve just done, and I lost my luggage so I don’t even have that anymore!

You’re studio is in storage at the moment; will you be setting it up again when you’ve moved to Montana?

Yeah, that’s the plan. That part of it’s pretty exciting, it’s a complete change of environment. I’m not seeing it like “it’s all crashed and burned and I’m ready to throw in the towel”, I’m looking forward to working, and when I’m taking breaks being around good, healthy, inspirational stuff, not just fucking off.

The recent ‘Todzilla’ EP was a postcard of discontent with your hometown Modesto, was that your way of telling yourself you’ve had enough?

Yeah, it was like, this isn’t even funny anymore. It gets pretty ridiculous around here. Part of it is the fact that’s it home, but the other part is the fact that people just don’t know what to do with themselves so they decide to do the worst version of all the options. All I can do is cruise around and take it in, and just go man, “this place just sucks. At first it was funny, but It got to the point where it isn’t funny anymore, and then it just starts affecting you and then you’ve just got to do something about it and get out while you’re still alive!

You’ve said that when you’re not busy you have a “substance abuse problem”?

Yeah, I come from a long line of drinkers- it’s not like I’m cowering behind a dumpster in an alley, it usually starts off light hearted and social enough, but a part of it is not knowing when the party should end, an ability to know when to say when. I needed to rearrange my thought process.

It’s a stimulation thing too, I’ve always placed a pretty big importance on making sure I’m having fun and there’s a lot going on and I’m being excited by something, and when you’re in an environment where that’s just not happening you’ve got to create it artificially and it becomes a long running bad habit.

And I believe you quit drinking during the recording of the album?

Yeah. I was falling way short of where I should of been and I could see there was a good chance that the album was entirely going to suffer from my inability to juggle technical stuff and getting to the essence of where the songs needed to be. I had other shit going on, a big relationship that was on the out, and the uncertainty with the band was bringing me down.

So the split has been on the cards for a while?

Yes, a lot of it was because of the uncertainty and I was hoping and waiting, like we’ve always done- sometimes you’ve just got to wait things out but years were going by and there were no answers coming.

Do you have a Brian Wilson like attention to detail during the production process, because the way it’s mixed makes it seems that way, there’s so much going on and so much depth and warmth.

That’s where it gets down to the unspoken artistic part of it- knowing that you have this crossword puzzle, there’s a point when all these words and all of these pieces are going to fit together and it’s going to make sense- always being, for the most part, slightly out of reach of that can be pretty maddening, but the challenge and the payoff of finally getting it right is pretty immense.

I was hellbent throughout this album, definitely through the mixing part, of really getting it right. It was tough towards the end cos my back started going out on me, it was like everything was trying to prevent me from getting it right. I had way too much fun for a while on the painkillers, and finally I couldn’t do those anymore, and I was in such pain that just to sit for more than 20 minutes at a time was insane, it was like a big cruel joke to make sure that I didn’t get it right.

Were you addicted to the painkillers?

For a while there was a little problem and I kind of sorted that out. But then I got my doctor giving me these non-addictive muscle relaxers so towards the end it was like red wine and muscle relaxers just so I could sit for long periods of time! I was possessed, I had to finish the album. It’s funny to talk about it in a lighthearted way now but sometimes I forget what a chaotic time that was. The worst part of it was having to come back out of that world and be normal to other people, pay bills, be presentable, when a lot of times I just wasn’t. I had shut myself off entirely.

The final song “This is how it always starts” in particular seems to be coming from rock bottom, lyrically.

Yeah, as a matter of fact, there’s a point towards the end where the song is breaking down and there’s a little shaker percussion part; that’s actually a little container of prescription painkillers which and I’m using it as a percussion instrument. That was to the depths, there and back, and attempting to get it on tape.

You mentioned waiting, as a band for long periods. Were you waiting for some kind of breakthrough, for example to a larger audience?

It was more the financial strain; it had become a concern, then it became a problem, then there was the potential it could be fixed but it stayed in that mode for way too long, and there’s a sliding scale, the longer it goes on, the older the guys in the band are getting and the more concerned they are, there’s never been a solid sense of security for the members of the band, we’ve always been winging it, for years. It got to the point where I knew it wasn’t going to get any better. The label were petering out and were pulling back on support, it looked like it was going to get harder rather than more fruitful.

The band also knew that I didn’t want to go back on tour. I said I would consider it if there was a new way of doing it that was more efficient and more healthy.

Was it the sheer amount of touring?

partly, and it was the most foreign environment for me. The whole thing of being stripped of your independence, under someone else’s constant routine. If you’re granted 30 seconds of solitude at any point at all during a tour, you can think yourself lucky. I spend more time by myself than anyone else in the band, I live alone, I’m more of a solo guy than anybody else. some of the others didn’t mind that part, they loved standing around, smoking, talking shit, drinking and partying, playing shows..I loved the playing shows part, the excitement of playing in front of people and how exciting and frightening and invigorating it was,. but all the other stuff was just a waste of time, and the years were racking up, you know, I was like, wow, I’m wasting a lot of time in my life doing this thing I’m told I’m supposed to do, in order to pay a bunch of crew and have my band be miserable because we always ended up coming home broke.

Can you ever see yourself doing a solo show?

the fact that I’m afraid of it makes it kind of appealing, but I don’t want to do it for the sake of doing it, I want it to be special, more scaled down, more arty and not so macho like all the top rock shows.

I would love to think that I’ll be sitting round piecing something together and I’ll think that other people might get a kick out of it.

What was the story behind “the Animal World”, which seems to consign animals to the past?

The initial reason for the song was; my mum is a total antisocial, hermit person so I guess I got a lot of those qualities from her. She sent me a Christmas card one year and it had a picture, almost like a bible picture, of all the animals on earth, like a Noah’s Ark kind of thing, zebras, monkeys, horses, posing in a picture, and underneath it said “Joy to the World” and I thought how hilarious it was because there were no humans in the picture! The humour behind that combined with the fact that I love watching old movies and every now and then there’s a dog walking past or a cat on the fence or something!

To get back to the record, was there a specific story behind the mainly instrumental track “Skateboarding Saves My Life Twice”?

I skateboarded on a regular basis since I was 8 years old and totally grew up in the culture and I feel that it was responsible for dictating the direction of my life and turning me into who it is I am today. Thinking about who I could have turned into without it scares me, with all the other options that were out there. I did it for many years and amongst other injuries I had a really bad knee injury and I had to quit for four years. I eventually got surgery and all of a sudden there it was, back in my life, I started skating again, it was like an old girlfriend or a friend I hadn’t seen in years, I kind of had a new approach to it, it was a lot less strenuous, there was no pressure attached to it, it was totally enjoyable and therapeutic. It came around at a good time in my life.

Maybe that’ll happen with your music once you’ve had a break?

I’ve been thinking about this since and there might be something to that.

Originally published in The Skinny Magazine in 2006

At the end of January Edinburgh's indie music stalwarts SL Records are releasing an album called 'Releasing The Impossible' - one of the most bizarre, twisted pieces of audio you're ever likely to hear. Anyone who's encountered either Dawn of the Replicants or his work with The Leg won't be surprised to found out that Paul Vickers is one of the nutjobs involved and that it's inspired by Ivor Cutler. In an effort to recycle content in a timely fashion, here's an interview I did with him for one of the early issues of The Skinny Magazine.

As their dazzling new album ‘Fangs’ suggests, you’d be hard pressed to find a more entertaining interviewee than Dawn of the Replicant’s front man and lyricist Paul Vickers. The album, their fifth over a ten year career, is a voodoo New Orleans Jazz-rock-opera featuring a cast of boozed up lounge lizards, pterodactyl dinner guests, diminuitive brawlers, and surrealist Wild West imagery. Beautifully arranged and produced, musically it spans classic rock, Ennio Morricone, doo wop,  BB King style blues, Sinatra style crooning and consistently melodic yet inventive songwriting. 

The Replicants began when Vickers moved to the Scottish Borders town Galashiels to work on cult music magazine ‘Sun Zoom Spark’, having left a music course in Nottingham which geared its students towards “spending the rest of our lives doing background music for Czechoslovakian animation.” Disillusioned with their band Crunchy Joseph, Brothers Roger and Mike Simian had started Sun Zoom Spark and gained UK wide distribution. The first issue sold 15, 000 copies but sales began to drop off and when it folded prematurely, Roger and Paul’s new band The Dawn of the Replicants became their main concern. They used Roger’s student loan to press up a batch of their first single and the contacts they’d built up with the magazine to gain exposure. “We got over the fear of phoning people up and not knowing where to start as we’d been dealing with record companies for two years through the magazine”. 

The single instantly gained airplay from John Peel and Mark and Lard’s evening show, as well as support from the NME and Melody Maker. Record companies were soon on the phone demanding to see the Replicants live, but with the band not as yet properly formed they were forced to play showcase gigs in their living room, along to “backing tapes powered by an Atari”. In the end they decided to go a major label. “East west had Mick Hucknall and Tori Amos so wasn’t that cool but it was the right A&R man so we thought let’s go for it.” 

However after recording second album 'Wrong Town, Wrong Planet, Three Hours Late' the band were dropped, another casualty of a cruelly indifferent music industry. “What a lot of major record labels suffer from is no company loyalty. What happens is nobody’s safe in their jobs, and the turnover of jobs is so fast, that you have a lot of people who don’t really give a damn working for the company. I remember that they sacked the whole A&R department at East West, apart from the A&R man who signed us. Somehow he got away with it and is now working at EMI because he signed the Blazing Squad.”

Luckily, after a period of disbandment in which Vickers and Roger Simian went it alone as the electro duo Pluto Monkey (“It was a difficult time. We went for a sort of Soft Cell approach which didn’t really work”) they decided to reform the Replicants, albeit with a couple of new members, and have now hooked up with Edinburgh’s SL Records, home of Ballboy and Misty’s Big Adventure. Vickers is philosophical about the glitches in their career, regarding it with a characteristic sense of humour. 

“You can’t be in Dawn of the Replicants without having an element of humour - we’re underdogs. People have preconceptions and write us off as being a weird band without actually listening to our records. I think the problem was that we weren’t cool enough when we came out. We just looked like a bunch of farmers and were even described by one journalist as ‘four farmers and a freak’". 

Vickers believes that humour is essential in music as long as it’s combined with real feeling. “I suppose it seems like a strange thing to get upset about but snobbishness about humour really pisses me off. You can say a lot more with humour than anything else, and when something’s genuinely funny you feel every emotion- everyone can recognise that a real truth is being spoken."

John Peel was always a major supporter of the band, and one of their sessions for him was recently voted amongst the best of all time. Vickers regards the reaction to his death with bemusement. “It’s a weird thing because it went from nobody giving a shit to everyone really caring after he died. In a lot of ways Peel was just doing the right thing, he cared about music and he stuck by bands he really liked whether or not they were in fashion or not, as long as it was still good he’d still give Half Man Half Biscuit a session and it was the same with us.” 

Of course the loss of the band’s major champion was always going to be difficult.   “We went to the funeral and I cried my eyes out throughout the whole thing. Partly”, he jokes, “because I thought this is the end of my career! At the funeral there was Belle and Sebastian and the White Stripes in the row in front and behind us was Griff Rhys Jones of all people. There were really famous people there like Robert Plant and also a cement mixer from Hull, which you wouldn’t get in any other circumstances. We’ve lost one of the good guys.”

www.dawnofthereplicants.com

www.myspace.com/paulvickersandtheleg

www.myspace.com/recordingtheimpossible

From The Skinny Magazine, December 2008

Celebrating Orange Juice's recent reunion to collect a lifetime achievement award, Milo McLaughlin charts their legacy and speaks to frontman and solo artist Edwyn Collins.

Scottish music industry shindig The Tartan Clef Awards, held last month in Glasgow's Old Fruitmarket, was notable not only because of a brief on-stage appearance by rotund funnyman Peter Kay - it also marked the first time that the original members of Orange Juice had been together in the same room for 20 years. The seminal Scottish band put aside any lingering differences to receive the 'Glasgow: Scotland with Style Life Time Achievement Award', an event given added poignancy by the fact that frontman Edwyn Collins was able to attend at all. In 2005 he suffered a very serious cerebral haemorrhage/stroke, for which he underwent a brain operation and spent six months in hospital.

As a result of his ordeal Collins is no longer able to use his right hand and for a time couldn't speak or even walk, but has shown remarkable bravery in regaining his strength and abilities. This inspirational courage in the face of such adversity was evident in the moving BBC Scotland documentary which followed him and his wife (also his manager) as he took his first tentative steps to recovery and incredibly, towards playing music live again.

Speaking ahead of the awards ceremony, Collins relates: "I love my life, I love to work. It's fresh and new to me. I'm glad to be alive." He also talks about the personal importance of the charity which the ceremony was in aid of, Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy in Scotland: "Nordoff Robbins do great things, especially with children. I've been involved for a long time. But I actually received help from one of their therapists, Matthew, when I was in hospital." The awards raised £93,000 for the charity on the night.

Good cause aside, it might surprise some that a band considered to be one of the great post-punk acts of the 80s would choose to reunite at such a mainstream event, with tabloid-friendly fare like the Fratellis and Sharleen Spiteri also in attendance. But then Orange Juice and Collins himself have never had any problem with both courting and achieving mainstream popularity.

As documented in Simon Reynold's brilliant book on post-punk Rip it up and Start Again, which takes its title from the band's most famous and successful single, Orange Juice emerged at a time when the alternative music scene was still reeling from Ian Curtis' untimely death. But rather than attempting to fill that vacuum with the then fashionable trend for staring-into-the-abyss existential angst, Orange Juice were the perfect antidote, combining the jaunty pop sensibility of Talking Heads with danceable rhythms which owed as much to disco act Chic as the Velvet Underground.

They soon hooked up with ambitious hipster Alan Horne who became their manager and founded the hugely influential Postcard Records, through which the band released their debut single Falling and Laughing in 1980. Horne went on to sign the Go Betweens and Edinburgh's Josef K as well as Aztec Camera, who collectively became known as 'The Sound of Young Scotland'. Postcard's bands also earned themselves a reputation as 'New Puritans' as they had little interest in getting trashed or taking advantage of groupies, something else which set them apart from the pack.

Pop success was something that was high on the agenda for Orange Juice though. Despite gaining them critical acclaim, Postcard didn't have the financial clout to make it happen, so they signed to Polydor. The backing of a major label and a personnel shake-up led to the band finally gaining mainstream success with their signature song 'Rip it Up', which utilised the new technology of a Roland 303 and slicker production values to take the Orange Juice sound to the heights of the charts in 1983.

Collins was to replicate that success as a solo artist in 1995, a decade after the band split, with the irresistible Girl Like You. The success of this saw him make a surreal appearance on Vic and Bob's Shooting Stars performing his hit in the 'club singer' stylee - just in case anyone doubted that the writer of the self-deprecating classic Consolation Prize was in possession of a wry sense of humour.

Now - despite his current challenges - Collins is determined to continue with his career and maintain the connection with his fans (his son Will set up a MySpace page for this purpose). He cites this as an important part of his therapy: "It's very important to me. More than you can imagine. Before MySpace and my letters I couldn't read and write without a lot of help. Now I can do quite a bit myself."

After his stroke, Collins had to learn everything again from scratch: reading, writing, even drawing. But he persevered and having his drawings of bird life exhibited in London was a major step in his ongoing recovery process. "Drawing is another important thing for me. I draw with my left hand now. Crude at first, but I'm still improving. I'm going to have an exhibition in Glasgow next year." And as for the music? The first single released after his ordeal, though it was recorded beforehand, was the haunting and eerily appropriate Home Again. But as for any new material Collins simply says: "I've just started. A bit at a time."

Also published on www.theskinny.co.uk

illustration by Leigh Pearson

From small beginnings, Anstruther-based label Fence Records has deservedly grown in stature over the last decade or so, and now boasts a dedicated fanbase and an impressive roster of artists whilst very much retaining its down-to-earth DIY ethos. I caught up with label lynchpins Johnny Lynch and Kenny Anderson, otherwise known as The Pictish Trail and King Creosote for a chinwag just before they played a blinding gig as part of the Retreat! mini-festival in Edinburgh.

Given the shared ethos and sound of the artists involved Fence could almost be classed as a sub-genre in itself. For example, there's no doubt that Fence's success is to some extent down to the fact they are a collective as much as a record label and this extended family includes post-Beta Band acts The Aliens and Black Affair. The Beta Band connection is one that Kenny is justly proud of, especially as his brother Gordon, aka The Lone Pigeon, co-wrote some of their finest tunes. "This year at Homegame (annual Fence festival held in Anstruther) Steve Mason played and he had my brother Ian on the drumbox, and he did his solo thing but he did also lot of Beta Band songs, and for a lot of the guys that came to Fence from the Beta Band, so this is people that in 1999/2000 had tracked us down, and they were in tears at the door of that hall. It was like a complete circle."

Not everything has run smoothly however. Anderson's last two albums as King Creosote, KC Rules OK and Bombshell were released through Warners offshoot 679, allowing him to reach a much wider audience than ever before. But the record industry being what it is, he's back to releasing his latest album through Fence and perhaps not coincidentally it has a more experimental side, not least the title - 'They Flock Like Vulcans to See Old Jupiter Eyes on His Home Craters'. Being back in control must be something of a relief though, given the hoops that major labels expect their artists to jump through to justify their investment? Kenny: "Well it is a relief because we're at the helm so we're as busy as we make ourselves. The difference is when you're with another label and they make you busy with all sorts of things that you never expected to have to do, but you've signed up to do it - and they make it quite awkward for you if you don't do it. All these things are there to help promote your album, but it's just amazing all the weird and wonderful things you end up doing."

As well as interminable interviews that take up entire days (The Skinny not included, obviously), this involved some major support tours, for the likes of KT Tunstall and Squeeze. And despite Tunstall's early links with the Fence clan, it was playing with Squeeze which paid off. Kenny: "Actually Squeeze made more sense, in an appreciation kind of thing because it was an older audience and it was a music buying audience, and we did better from sales of albums. Whereas a lot of Kate's audience were younger and had only heard two or three songs on the radio; it was like a different gig. As soon as she played 'Suddenly I See', the place just went bananas - even though it's not a stand-out in the set at all, but it's just one that everybody knows. So for us as a support band, can you imagine? We don't have anything even approaching her least known songs." Johnny however is keen to stress the glass-half-full side of the arrangement.  "It doesn't mean it was worthless because the end product of that was that for other Fence shows that we've done since then, it's brought in a different audience and it's made the audience that was there think of us as a real band instead of just 'some guys from Fife'" Kenny agrees that there are benefits to such compromises. "That's true, and also playing with Kate did get us that Jools Holland thing  - without a doubt that was what swung it for the producers."

But despite the raised profile both are determined to avoid the label morphing Decepticon style into a monstrous corporate machine. Johnny: It's reflective of the audience that's there, if the audience that gets properly excited about it gets bigger then we want to accomodate that, because there's nothing worse than putting on something and people who really want to be at it can't get to it." Kenny: "But we're not in it just to make a quick buck and escape. the Homegame, for example, is different, oddly enough because it is different. We've made our own rules. Everybody expects you to want to be bigger and better, but we kind of don't. We want it to be manageable, and just to keep people happy." Johnny:  Because at the end of the day the Fence thing only has to supply a wage for two people." Kenny: "And a lot of kids.."

Fence Club #6 takes place on Wed, 17 Sep at The Caves, Edinburgh and will feature James Yorkston, Malcolm Middleton and The Pictish Trail. They Flock LIke Vulcans... is available now at King Creosote's live gigs and will be more widely available in November. King Creosote, The Pictish Trail and The Fence Collective play The Corn Exchange, Cupar on 25 Oct.

Regina Spektor speaks to Skinnyfest down the phone line from New York, where her family moved from Russia when she was a child due to the oppressive regime of the former Soviet Union. “It was almost government policy anti-Semitism. It’s on your passport that you’re a Jew and you have your opportunities accordingly. Practicing any kind of religion was illegal”.

I ask her if her adoptive home is really the glamorous place I have always imagined it to be. “It’s not at all glamorous when you’re broke and you’re going through the couch cushions to look for change to see if you can even get downtown to play at an open mic, then you wake up to do your day job that you hate.  And everyone’s been there - you won’t meet a single musician who’s not had their head smashed by New York City.

But at the same time, it’s a very generous place- you can spend the day walking round the city, which is free, and no matter how broke you are you can see a million movies happening right before your eyes. You have to be really open and let the city take you where it wants you, it’s almost like some sort of a weird pill, you just follow it”.

Her description of New York as an inspirational wonderland makes sense as Spektor’s songs are known for their inventive array of characters and stories such as those on the first collection of her songs officially available in the UK, Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers. That record was culled from her early self-produced records and 2004’s Soviet Kitsch, recorded with Strokes producer Gordon Raphael. “We made Soviet Kitsch in about 10-14 days, in New York and London.  With Gordon it was a very different experience to the new album because I was in a totally different headspace but it was still better than my previous record which was all recorded in one day!”

I suggest that new album Begin to Hope is a more commercial direction for her but she disagrees - “that’s kind of a gross thought! I’d never had any money or time or any of the fun stuff that makes studio recording exciting for musicians so I worked really, really hard for a couple of months. I really had the chance to fulfil my ideas and arrangements- things that I heard in my mind for a long time that I never had the chance to work on before.” 

Indeed, once you become accustomed to the higher production values the album reveals itself abundant with classic avant-garde pop songs - but then what else would you expect from a Russian born, Bronx raised classically trained pianist with a Beatles/Billie Holiday/Ella Fitzgerald/Bjork fixation who counts the anti-folk movement as her friends? Those attending Regina’s sold out T on the Fringe gig can expect a stunning, theatrical performance perfectly suited to August’s festivities, when Edinburgh comes closest to the vibrancy of the Big Apple. [Milo McLaughlin]

Published by (Skinny) Fest in August 2006

Note: this was before Mason returned with his Black Affair project.

Steve Mason aka King Biscuit Time has spoken openly of how he struggled with depression during the eight years the Beta Band were together. However, chatting to him prior to the release of his stunning new album Black Gold, it seemed as if his current situation was more conducive to a healthy state of mind; "Every now and then I have a bad week but other than that it's all good. I lived in London for about 10 years and a couple of years ago I moved back to Fife and have been living here ever since in a tiny village.

"Before I suffered from mental illness I used to spend a lot of time on my own so I needed to get away from everything and everybody and learn to deal with my own company again. But the problem with a tiny fishing village is that there's nothing here. You can go for two or three days without seeing anyone at all - there's no cinemas, decent food or women! So I'm going to move to Edinburgh as soon as I can 'cos I'm bored out of my mind."

The proximity of a certain diseased swan aside, it seemed that the Fife air was doing Mason a world of good. The album, on which he played and produced everything himself, is crisply modern but also has an organic, acoustic feel along with the jittering beats, and dubby synths and melodica you would expect from the main songwriter of the Beta Band. Below, he talked the Skinny through some of the key tracks on the album:

C I AM 15
The first single confounded some critics with its combination of Top Cat's overtly political closing rant and Mason's more obtuse lyrics. "I sometimes think my lyrics are a little bit too open to interpretation so with this album I've tried to make things a bit more obvious. But there's quite a childlike mentality with the general public, who are being pampered and treated like morons a lot of the time. Even on something like the 80s quiz show Bullseye, the questions were really fucking challenging compared to what you get now!"

IMPOSSIBLE RIDE
"This is about an eight year relationship I had with a girl that finally ended at almost exactly the same time as the Beta Band ended, around Dec 2004, and I started going out with her just before the band started so those two things were in total parallel the whole time."

KWANG CHO
"I wanted to make the chorus as uplifting as possible. It's about being up here in this tiny village on your own and realising that there's only so long you can sit around the place and feel sad about things, you eventually have to come alive again."

ALL OVER YOU
"This is about a girl I met after the eight year relationship who I had a two or three month relationship with and it was like falling in love again, but at the same time I knew it would be a short term thing so it was like we were packing a whole relationship into a very short time."

WHERE YOU WALK
"An out and out love song to the girl I had the eight year relationship with. It's about waking up and turning round to look at this girl and hoping every day that I'm going to wake up beside her, and when you open your eyes and she's there it's just an overwhelming sense of relief. At that time there was still a lot of darkness in my life and she was the constant light that I'd look for."

PAPERHEAD
The stand out track on the album which cheekily references 80s saxophone anthem Baker Street. "The predominant sound on this was made using an old cruddy keyboard, which I'm not into using for the hilarious lo-fi effect, but because I loved the sound. I can't remember what the setting was, probably vibraphone or something like that."

RISING SON
"There's a part of the film '1984' starring John Hurt where they get out of the city and go to the fields. Rising Son's about that, it's about the state of this country and the situation we're living in. I was imagining, as with '1984', when these things that are happening now reach their logical conclusion and we really do actually live in a police state, running off to the country and finding that little bit of space."

The Skinny also spoke briefly to Mason about the label he has set up with Alan McGee, No Style (of which he said "I haven't got a fucking clue about any of that") and his forthcoming tour which he seemed positive about, mentioning that this time round he would be joined by a live drummer.

However a couple of weeks after speaking to Mason he appears to have had a dramatic change of heart about returning to the music industry, posting the following message on his myspace page; "Peace to you all. I'm out of here. It's been amazing but I've had enough. The mountain beat me. and sadly you too/that don't mean you should give up. It just wasn't me. Over and out. Steve xxxx".

At the time of going to press, even his PR company are non the wiser as to his reasons for quitting, having been unable to contact him. His tour has now been cancelled and will not be rescheduled, although the album will still be released as planned. Perhaps Mason has sunk into depression again or has decided that touring posed too great a risk to his mental health. All we can hope for is that he's safe and well, and that one day we might hear from him again, because he and his sublimely original music will otherwise be sadly missed.

Published in The Skinny, May 2006

Malcolm Middleton is infamous for being a bit of a dour bugger. As if it wasn't enough being one half of the now defunct Arab Strap - perennially described by the media as Falkirk miserablists (despite being one of Scotland's most original and important contemporary bands) - his first two solo albums were full of heartbreaking songs of depression and self-loathing. Of course, as with Arab Strap, a dark, elegant humour courses through the veins of these records and the quality of his songwriting is up there with the likes of the similarly misunderstood Leonard Cohen. After the first album steadily built a reputation through word of mouth, the follow up, Into the Woods, was a far greater commercial success, giving a financial boost to Glasgow's Chemikal Underground records.

Now, with Arab Strap's recent farewell gigs behind him, Middleton is about to release his third solo album, A Brighter Beat, this time through Full Time Hobby. As well as a cover photo by his pal David Shrigley - of a balloon face smiling at us from under the bedcovers - it features his most uplifting and well crafted collection of songs yet, with the addition of beautifully arranged strings, horns, and synths to complement his already accomplished guitar and piano based songs. Lyrically too, although the same themes remain, there is a new sense of positivity. In fact, when The Skinny dug deep into our Smash Hits annual to come up with some classic posers for Malcy, he was only too happy to oblige.

Did you enjoy the final Arab Strap gigs?

"Yeah it was good, it was a long tour but it was a bit strange towards the end cos I was a bit unsure how I was going to be feeling when the last chords struck out - but we've done the right thing. With hindsight I would have left a bit more space between that and the new album - it's a bit weird finishing that tour and going straight into doing my own stuff."

Are you pleased with the new album?

"Yes I am. I finished it in October and for the first couple of weeks I couldn't decide if it was better than my last album or not but that was just because I'd spend so much time recording it. But I listened to the album again after Arab Strap finished and now I'm really proud of it. Tony Doogan was amazing, it was the first time I'd worked with a producer and it was good for me, he basically brought a lot to the overall production."

Did you have an aim in mind before you started recording?

"Musically I wanted it to sound bigger and better produced because although Into The Woods was a good, fun record, some of it was recorded in the house on a computer and then just mixed in a proper studio. This time I wanted to start off in a proper studio and song-wise I didn't want to be so miserable. At the same time I'm aware that the only stuff I write about is along those lines - depression, or anxiety about stuff, or just general day-to-day shite. But I wanted to make that a bit more palatable, and I think the record's got a lot more hope than the last album, it's not as self-flagellating."

Is it important for songwriters to acknowledge their darker sides?

"I'm not sure if it's important for a songwriter to acknowledge it, it's just something I seem to be drawn to when I'm writing about stuff. One of the elements of the last song on the album, 'Superhero Songwriters', is the fact that my favourite singers and songwriters go through those feelings and do the work so other people can listen to it and say "that's how I feel too" and be comforted by it."

Which songwriters are you referring to?

"In that song I was talking about Jackson C. Frank - then there's King Creosote, James Yorkston, people like that."

You've got a number of excellent Scottish musicians guesting on the album. Jenny Reeve (Reindeer Section) in particular, sounds fantastic on the song 'Fight Like The Night'.

"I'd worked with Jenny before in Arab Strap and stuff - we're mates - she came in and I hadn't really heard her sing for a couple of years but she's so confident now and her voice is so strong it was amazing to hear."

Where did Mogwai's Barry Burns come in?

"Most of the keyboard stuff is Barry, with the exception of a few bits I did myself, but any stuff that sounds good or complicated is Barry! It's great because I think I've finished a song and I'll get him in, he writes the hook on top of the one that I had, and it blows it away."

Songs like 'Up Late All Night Again' are surprisingly epic.

"That song's weird, it almost didn't make the album cos I thought it was a little too much like Keane. It's quite a soft song, it's quite romantic, and there's not the usual twist in it anywhere, but at the end of the day, the message I wanted to give to a certain person is in that song and so it went on - there's nothing wrong with being nice..."

Don't worry, it doesn't sound anything like Keane! Do you think you'll ever go back to more pared-back stuff like the brilliant 'Cold Winter' from the first album?

"I wouldn't want to go much further in terms of bigger production, with full-scale orchestras and stuff, but having listened to a lot of singer-songwriter stuff like Davy Graham and Jackson C. Frank, I would like at some point to do an album that's just voice and guitar. 'Somebody Loves You' is kind of going in that way but I'd need to write songs that hold up without any other instrumentation."

What are your plans for touring the album?

"I'm doing quite a bit; a couple of acoustic tours supporting a band called Sophia in Europe and Badly Drawn Boy in the UK next month, then in March I'm doing a UK tour with a full band. It's going to be pretty much everyone who was in Arab Strap's last line-up, and Jenny's going to be there as well."

How about the new song, 'Fuck It, I Love You' - were those words really sent on your mobile phone?

"It's something that happened."

Finally Malcolm, is it alright if I ask you some Smash Hits style questions?

"That's fine- I used to buy Smash Hits every week."

Which Pet Shop Boy do you prefer?

"The keyboard guy."

What would you do if you were Prime Minister?

"Get rid of the Government."

Have you ever belonged to a fanclub?

"No, but I almost joined the Frankie Goes to Hollywood one."

If there was a sandwich named after you, what would the filling be?

"I'm going to play you at your own game here; Brighter Beatroot and Cheddar."

Which celebrity/pop star do you fancy?

"Erm.. I don't read the tabloids or anything... I'm gonnae have to go on fucking Google here... no - just put Karen Carpenter."

Published by The Skinny Feb 2007

Barbarossa’s debut album Chemical Campfires is a deeply personal and honest collection of folk tinged songs, written and performed by London based songwriter James Mathe. His sincere vocals are underpinned by a subtle electro sheen that makes it sound refreshingly modern - the sonic equivalent of a glacial lake, its depths hidden by a pristine surface. This impeccable sound is thanks to Mathe’s choice of producer, Simon Lord, previously of Simian, as Mathe explained to The Skinny. “It was really exciting to have found someone who was realising the things I heard in my head. I wanted to keep it organic in the main, but introduce a bit of electronica without taking away the emotion of the songs. I didn’t want to do the whole retro thing because of the new folk revival that was happening around me - I was really flattered to be involved with that and play with some great, great musicians, like The Eighteenth Day of May & Alasdair Robert, who are pulling on the more traditional side of folk, but I was also aware that I wanted it to be a contemporary thing.”

Mathe found the surge of great new music we’ve enjoyed recently a major inspiration. “Although I was listening to things like Bert Jansch, and Fairport Convention, during the time of recording the album I was also listening to a lot of newer bands who were exciting me like Sigur Rós, Sufjan Stevens and Animal Collective.  In the last couple of years I’ve just been blown away by some of the music that’s out there.”

The name Barbarossa, meaning ‘Red Beard’ in Italian, came to Mathe while on holiday with his half-Italian girlfriend. “We were in Italy and we started to appreciate really good red wine. While we were over there we saw a particular bottle called Il Barbarossa, and it had a picture of this guy with a big red beard who looked a bit like my Grandad. My Grandad was a big character who has had a massive effect on me, so it all seemed to fit perfectly. Although we bought a bottle of the wine and it was fucking horrible!”

Prior to recording the new album with Lord, Mathe had already been lucky enough to know Adem, who produced his debut EP, which then, in another stroke of luck, or perhaps fate, made it’s way to the East Neuk of Fife and into the hands of the folks at Fence, through whom Chemical Campfires is being released this month. “A friend of mine sent it up to them; I got an e-mail saying we really love the EP and the homemade packaging - I think they were as excited about the packaging as with the recording! Then they invited me up for Homegame, and the rest is history really - it just clicked and I felt really at home up there - it was incredibly inspiring to be around those people.”

Mathe will be returning to Scotland in 2007 for more gigs with his Fence compadres, and is also releasing a track on the new offshoot label De-Fence which focuses on the more electronic aspects of the Fife based collective’s output, along the lines of this year’s sublime Electric Fence compilation. Meanwhile, his debut album has already been made Rough Trade’s album of the month when it received a limited release in December. But isn’t the bearded one worried that he has bared too much of his soul? “I think a lot of people are hiding all the time, and I’m sure I do as well, but I just wanted to put myself out there and be really honest. When I’m up there on stage or recording, to be able to get yourself in that place and remember exactly what you were going through, your performance becomes very honest as well." [Milo McLaughlin]

Published by The Skinny Jan 2007

If you want an insight into James Yorkston’s new album The Year of the Leopard, it’s perhaps best to start with the title track. “The line ‘It won’t be so easy, this year of the leopard’ was partly inspired by a book called The Leopard by Guiseppe Di Lampedusa.” Yorkston explains. “The main character is a guy who’s struggling to come to terms with the world as it changes around him. Then in my home village Kingsbarns, in Fife, somebody let a puma loose which reminded me of the book as I thought the puma must be feeling out of place as well, and that also inspired the song”.

Perhaps intent on recording a soothing antidote to such displaced feelings, Yorkston teamed up with producer Paul Webb (aka Rustin Man) after hearing his acclaimed collaboration with Beth Gibbons, Out of Season.  “I really liked that record, it wasn’t too new and spangly and shiny, or too old fashioned, so it was just what I was looking to do really. We used old valve microphones and recorded everything onto tape - some of it was bounced back & forth about four times just to get that warm feel.”

It is an enchantingly warm and intimate record, but Yorkston says it is less autobiographical than 2004’s Just Beyond the River. “The last record was really personal, I wanted to make this one more abstract and take a step back from that. There’s a song on the last album called Hermitage which people used to call out for at gigs, but I couldn’t play it live because the lyrics are way too raw. If you’re trying to do that within a relationship you just end up digging deeper into the angst which is a pretty miserable thing to do - and it could get you into a lot of trouble!”

Despite this, Yorkston’s lyrics are no less insightful or resonant.  Summer Song deals poetically with long-term commitment whilst As I Awoke, which features Fence songstress HMS Ginafore, is a heartbreaking take on infidelity. Although Yorkston is signed to Domino Records his Fife connections mean, like Ginafore, he remains an integral part of the Fence Collective. “It’s just like asking my mates. I also had King Creosote and the Lone Pigeon on my first record- I’d be foolish not to.”

Which brings us to Yorkston’s backing band the Athletes who aren’t credited this time round, although Athletes Reuben and Doogie (who have both also been absorbed into the Fence family) do play on some of the tracks.  “We didn’t fall out, we’re still good friends. When we finished touring the last album I had two new songs and I didn’t feel I could ask the band to go and rehearse just those songs, it would have just made it awkward, so they got involved later on.  This one is definitely a James Yorkston album- all the arrangements are mine, I did most of the work!” And who could begrudge him that, given the beguiling result, which offers some peaceful respite from that ferocious animal, the modern world.

Published in the Skinny Magazine, 2006

It’s a double-edged sword for The Aliens- on the one hand they have a ready made audience with passionate fans of both the Beta Band and Lone Pigeon eager to hear their new material, especially given the abrupt discontinuation of Steve Mason’s King Biscuit Time project (although he is currently trading in under-the-counter electro under the name of Black Affair). On the other hand, they have a hell of a lot to live up to, given the groundbreaking nature of their former incarnations. But as extraterrestrial lifeform John Maclean assured the Skinny, The group isn’t just a continuation of former glories. “It feels like a completely different band because it’s different personalities, it’s a different dynamic coming together and we really are starting from the beginning; we’re touring, roadying for ourselves again, not having any money to work with. But as far as what I do in the band it’s kind of a continuation, it would be pointless to start again and do something different when I learnt so much about either sampling or working with beats and live instruments, or making videos.”

Robin Jones and Gordon Anderson are the other identities that make up the three-headed alien beast. Anderson, who left the Beta Band just after they were signed due to recurring mental health problems, has since gained a near-mythical reputation as Fife’s answer to Brian Wilson and Daniel Johnston through his brilliant Lone Pigeon albums. “I’ve known Gordon since he was about 12 or 13" John says. "We were at school together and me and Gordon met Robin when we were about 17 at Edinburgh Art College, so we’ve never lost touch. There was always the possibility that we would get together if the situation was right, if we weren’t busy with the Beta Band and if he was well enough to work on stuff. So a couple of years ago when we started The Aliens it just seemed right.”

A real sense of fun and experimentation comes across on their epic, psychedelic new opus ‘Astronomy for Dogs’. “Yeah, because we’re old friends, we have the same sort of sense of humour so even if we’re not making music, even if we’re going to buy some fish and chips it usually ends up being a bit of a laugh.” With tracks such as ‘I Am The Unknown’, there’s also a mystical side to things, undoubtedly due to Gordon’s spiritual beliefs. “Gordon’s an extremely spiritual person. He’s got that ability to be uplifting; you can have happiness but tinged with melancholy. He’s not a dour person, he gets sad and depressed but he’s never miserable and I think that comes across in the music, you get the forlorn love but you also get the joyous celebration of life.”
In terms of recording the new album, the band applied similar cut-up techniques to those seen in John’s distinctive Beta Band cover artwork. “We start off with Gordon’s song, and he’ll have probably done a few versions by the time we even hear it. Every song is different but a song like ‘Only Waiting’ for instance, Gordon’s got a slow version, a fast version, an acoustic guitar version, a piano version. So Robin went away and worked on it and I went away and worked on it, so we had even more versions! Then the three of us tried to play it live so I had the bass, Robin had the drums and Gordon had the guitar and we just laid down a live tape, and then we do overdubs, so eventually you can kind of pick and choose between all the different bits and put them all together and choose the best parts of each version.” And what about the silly dancing in the videos John directed for Robot Man and The Happy Song? “formation dancing was a side we never really got to explore with the Beta Band, so it was nice to eventually do that with the Aliens!”

Written for the Skinny

Read my interview with Smiths bassist Andy Rourke (he DJed at an XFM Weekender at Ocean Terminal and this was published as part of the 'mini-Skinny' magazine published to promote the event).