as much as going home is my holiday, the fact that it is home after all, for someone who left home for uni and hasn’t really been back much since (not bc I don’t love my family, I miss them terribly but that city is not really for me), feels almost like the end of a holiday. It feels like I’m going back to something I’d been on a long, fever-dreamed, endlessly long holiday from.

I go about my day to day life, charmed by the world around me. I immerse myself in music, in art; people say I have endless energy for all those gigs I go to and have admired my enthusiasm for music, but I sometimes catch glimpses of the gaping-mouthed fool being exposed to something they could never have for years: I’m hungry, I’m making up for lost time, I have to see all those shows that never came by mine before. I’m light-headed from possibility. I’m drunk on the power of accessibility, the way things are in reach, the yeses I hear, the ability to be an insider in places that were always shut out to us, that we were seemingly invisible to. I pace myself but I find myself making up for lost teens: all those ‘world tours’ that would skip an entire continent. All those searches for something local that was happening and was truly ours, not propped up by a film industry, not bowing to the political opinions of a ruling party in fear of being mobbed, something that was by us, about us and for us, uncensored. The joys of community.

I immerse myself in people I would never have talked to before, in all those places I was either afraid to or told not to reach for (safety reasons). I am a child inserting my fingers into a socket. Now, that has happened to me when I was a kid and I got shocked so bad that I had to have electrical tape wrapped on my burned fingers for a bit and had to lie down flat on the floor (earthing) for a few minutes. I am a child plugging my fingers in a feverish dream where nothing goes wrong. Somehow, I have wandered and wandered and I am alive. I don’t always know what’s going on, but somehow, I am on the road. I am on some path. To somewhere.

And now I’m going home. It’s been ages since I’ve been, and I feel like I’ll have my feet grounded again. It feels like a punctuation mark, more of a comma, some sort of pause. It’s not a full stop. I have my whole life ahead of me. I’m sure I’m not alone, I’m sure there’s a whole world of people out there that have similarly mixed feelings about going home. You go to visit, but you can never truly return. Some people get homesick and realise they really do belong where they come from, some others have always known they were meant to leave and never come back. These sentiments are not something you can ever explain to an immigration officer, but they are unspoken truth that so many must feel in their very bodies, in their expression, in the way they carry themselves, their outlooks on life, the way they dress, the way they speak (oh, how much of a world is contained within how much you hide and how much you let on! How much you retain and how much you let go.)

I am who I am because of where I come from. I will always carry that with me, and with pride too. I don’t hide it (unless I’m tired and making a quick, anonymous trip to the grocery store in which case yeah, sometimes I do have a generic grocery store pleasantries accent for when I don’t want to explain my entire background, or give it away in my speech and accent. Yes this applies to taxis too, call it the cab pleasantries accent if you like).

But I am also who I am because I left, because there are certain things I cannot take for granted, because there are things I know are different in different parts of the world. You need both those things to make a whole me, and as much as sometimes I do wish I didn’t have to carry two halves on my back, two disjointed halves that could almost never be glued together, I also know I wouldn’t be me without them both.

And so, going back to the first is an interesting moment to look back, for sure. Do people expect you to have changed? Many people don’t get to see the second half of you, and it surprises them. You feel the need to be cautious about showing too much of your change: not yet, watch out. Don’t betray your roots. They feel strong to point out your bends and turns: I am an unbroken bone. You are healing. You will never be as strong as a bone that has never broken. But we are not bones. They too have these pieces they carry on their back that have been glued together. No one ever has a straight path in life. If there was ever a bone analogy, they have patellas (kneecaps, as I now will remember until the end of my life because of the first search result from having googled the band many times). These bones that join other bones. Covered in muscle and ligaments and stuff. Joints that bend and carry (some) weight and move. To have joints is not to be broken. But who is to explain that to someone who will never see you as theirs again. Neither here, neither there.

Anyway, it’s been an interesting six years, and now I’m going home. Tomorrow’s the last day. I vaguely remember writing a shitty poem on the toilet the night before I got on a plane to leave home the first time, it was probably bad and I don’t remember the contents anymore, but it kept coming back to the line ‘last night on earth’. I can’t remember if for better or worse. This time, I’m writing a shitty emo essay that is going to cause a lot of people mild scrolling annoyance (sorry). Which is still more of an impact than writing in a notebook on the toilet ever had. Guess these are just moments that cause you to sit back and think about what you’ve done for a little bit.

This post wasn’t meant to get this long. This was just meant to be a little observation on the fact that you have the luxury of space at home, and that means I’m probably going to be reading paperback books again. I’ve just bought Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop, Bad Pop for my flight. I’m probably going to luxuriously buy myself a few paperback poetry anthologies. What a life. I’m obviously looking forward to seeing mum and dad and my sister again.

Should the poetry books not fit in my suitcase, I can always leave them at home. Motorcycle Boy*, maybe my sister might even read them. I don’t have to worry about donating them or binning them, or feeling guilty as people look at me exasperatedly while helping me move into my next independent apartment (modest, naturally…): why do you make your own life so hard?? Why did you need to carry so many books when you know you’re going to move?? But those are the small indulgences of going home. Also (and this one’s v specific to my situation) books are so much cheaper at mine. Holy fuck, I’d be out of money instantly if I was spending $24 per book I bought, that is absolutely insane.

*Motorcycle Boy is a song by Fontaines D.C., where singer Grian Chatten is sort of indirectly talking to his little brother who was nowhere near as into literature and poetry as Grian, but after Grian left home, his brother was left to discover it on his own, and Grian sees his brother’s growing connection with literature as almost his way of connecting with his older brother in his absence.

Was anyone else's mum just weirdly particular about giving long and emphatic lectures about how bad drugs are, and how they ruin lives and all, and how you've got to avoid certain industries, types of work/lifestyles and certain people because she just automatically associates them with drugs? (What am I saying 'was' for, my mum brought it up literally two weeks ago...)

Thinking of it now, I find it almost absurd, the association of certain fields with illicit and life-altering drugs. Because I'm someone who currently works in music and entertainment, my mum has been bringing this up nearly bi-weekly since I accidentally mentioned to her once that I felt a bit embarrassed at how I didn't really know how to order a drink, nor had a drink of preference because I just hadn't really done that very often, and whenever I had I was super awkward, because through a mixture of growing up in a very bar-free environment and lockdown hitting around the time I came legal, I just didn't have a drink order ready at the top of my head the way my housemates (way heavier drinkers) did the second they'd locked our front door to step out.

To me, knowing what you wanted when you stepped up to the bar was a slight power play thing, if I was interviewing a group backstage at a venue or whatever, and people are looking to me to lead the way on things because 'it's your show, we'll do whatever you want', then I feel like you've at least got to look like you're comfortable in your environment and don't look out of your element or like you've never been to a bar before. And it's just such a common thing for people to be all, oh yeah, let's get a drink to break the ice and then we'll settle into a nice chat, hopefully a little looser and more comfortable chatting than when you'd first met. The last thing you'd want to do then is make things awkward in the moment that's supposed to loosen things up.

My mum took that as all the possible warning bells that I was on the verge of becoming an alcoholic, because 'that's how it begins, just take an orange juice' (I had one (1) drink). It's completely not about the drink at all to me, it's about not seeming like I'm 12 and flummoxed at a place where I've technically invited someone. I've sort of dragged myself into this one: I got right annoyed at the writers at our campus newspaper's arts and culture sections, because they write like absolute idiots. I've had at them before, I think their music writers have written some of the worst pieces of music journalism I've had the misfortune to lay my eyes on. Sure, the pieces get worse as you read further down, but right from their opening sentences, they sound like they've never been to a musical event that hasn't been musical chairs at an 8 year old's party, and there and then I lose all respect for them.

This writer was at a gig and had requested an interview with a huge artist (you know how Foo Fighters are widely known and pretty much decorated with at least three Grammys every year that they release music? This artist was like that, but for my country, and my country's equivalent of the Grammys. To me, they're the Coldplay of our country and I think they're a bit naff, but whatever, people really like them).

Requesting an interview with an artist is fine, shoot your shot, I repeatedly do, but you have to understand when people turn you down, and you also know that the bigger the artist, the earlier you've got to reach out, because the layers of bureaucracy and email chains only get bigger as you go up in stature and to bigger record labels. Their writer reached out to a band that's been nominated for 15 [our Grammys] in about as many years, 5 hours before the gig, was unsurprisingly turned down, and then was in a huff about it the entire show. Complained about the venue staff being 'hostile' towards them for... informing them that their request, which had been passed on to the band's management, had been turned down after being asked the day of the gig. Months babe, you've got to reach out months in advance! When we reached out to a significantly smaller group than this one, who were on BMG Records, a Sony subsidiary and so by proxy a major label, it took us 3 months and the reason we ultimately got it was because the guitarist in the band liked us. The label said no, he said yes and so we could tell the label to suck eggs. You can't reach out on the morning of, or even the week of, and then throw a tantrum in print because you didn't get the interview. First time?

This writer then went on to complain about health and safety when caught in a moshpit of 17 year-olds, then complained when they went to venue security about it and were offered to be moved further back in the audience, saying how were they supposed to do their reporting job if they couldn't be in the front, where the pit typically is, but while also not taking part in the pit. If the 17 year-olds who've been locked indoors throughout lockdown for 3 years and are now attending their first-ever concerts can know this, why don't you? First time?

This writer also went on to say some fairly questionable stuff about the opening acts and the crowds, talking pretty exclusively about the opener's sex appeal and subsequently describing the excited 17 year-olds as groupies, which is always a fun accusation to be throwing at minors about a band of twenty-something year-olds. Got all your band info from movies and AO3? Have you been to a gig before??

And so I lost all respect for that writer and the entire paper, I do not fucking understand how they ended up as arts and culture editor of the student newspaper, they'd have got fired as a contributor from like, Melody Maker back in the day for less, and let me tell you some of those 90s and 00s British print publications let them write some pretty indulgent stuff. They spent the whole entire article moaning woe-is-me, I learned nothing about the gig they meant to review from the article.

And I never want to be like that, I won't let anyone think that of me. You've got to come across as comfortable in your surroundings. This is your place! You're the music journalist, you are expected to have been in a bar or a pub before. I was reading the recent long feature interview NME did with Fontaines D.C., they talked separately to Grian and Carlos, and the entirety of the interview with Grian takes place in a London pub, and that's necessary because it adds to the character. Grian, with some good descriptions courtesy of an astute writer, can completely believably inhabit the character of the pub poet, the people's poet, the punk poet and spiritual successor to John Cooper Clarke, and to do that, it is necessary to sit him down in a London pub on a hazy afternoon, let his character take its time to really come through in its natural home. Here, the focus isn't on you, you can't really disrupt that flow with a fucking orange juice. You aren't on the same wavelength, I think, if he's talking about his Guinness and you're sitting there, having fumbled at the bar because you don't have a made up mind about a drink, and are clearly out of your depth in the company of someone that can contemplatively nurse a pint while reflecting on when to let go of the ordinary lad in a loose tee, incognito in a pub, and embrace the weirdness.

Now I could be being extra harsh here, after all the very same NME have interviewed Grian previously on a walk in the countryside. I suppose everyone has something new to bring to the table, and that's what makes things interesting. And if you're a good enough writer, you can place your subject onto any sort of backdrop and find them either right at home, or at odds with their surroundings in ways that allow you to highlight their interesting qualities. Writing is fun. But I do think being able to order a drink is 1) a good confidence skill to have 2) something you probably should be able to do once you're inching towards your mid-twenties 3) does not fucking mean you're becoming an alcoholic, my god. I don't even like a drink, I just think I should 1) be allowed to push and discover what my limits are rather than not know it when I need to know it 2) be allowed to be drunk like once ever properly without it being considered a moral failure on my part 3) be able to hold myself up in the second home of the music scene: the venue with a bar, a pub, a nightclub.

But the reason why I find my mum's association of music/nightlife and the direct pipeline to hardline addiction absurd is that she thinks getting into other fields somehow makes it safer. Some of the worst stoners I've known have not necessarily been actors or musicians, though that could just be because I know more people who aren't actors or musicians. And my god, I'm in the tech sector (outside of music journalism, because as we all know, none of the things in the music industry except accountant, lawyer or exec's son, have been actual jobs for the last 20 years and the rest of us are really just wasting our time chasing sweet nothings. We make nothing from what we do, so we also have other jobs and degrees). It's basically an open secret that tech sector folks are at this point abusing ritalin/ADHD medication for the productivity and often are also booze abusers. My sister is a business student. The 'London bankers doing cocaine on the clock' stereotype doesn't come from nowhere. These are brushed aside as unfortunate realities of a dark industry that you should strive to avoid, but for some reason the entertainment industry is a no-go for these specific reasons. (Although tbf the fact that I don't get paid to do a lot of the stuff I do above is also a pretty massive problem in my mum's mind, which is fair.)

It frustrates me that you can 'corporate-wash' all bad habits away. If it's happening in an office, then it's acceptable, a sad reality but what to do. If you're a coked up banker, you're a respectable and ultimately wealthy dog of a human being, if you're a musician smoking weed, you're the dregs of society. If you're a crazed developer driven to exhaustion by a gaming corporation with unrealistic deadlines, being asked to work 24 hours with no overtime pay during the 'crunch period' that seems to come every year and for every single game the company launches, then you're just doing what you have to do to stay alive in an industry where you should remember that there will be ten more people eager to replace your lucky punk ass if you pass out from exhaustion, but an artist on drugs is better off dead. Baffling to me.

Is this just my mum though?

Thinking about Fontaines D.C. again. They’re quite different from any other band of the 2020s that I can think of, somehow they’re simultaneously both completely of this decade in their themes, context and sound, and still have something almost old-fashioned, maybe even timeless about them.

Like they’ve got that sound, depth and emotional complexity that makes people believe there’s something more to them, they’re no flash in the pan, they aren’t chasing any trends or whatever. And still, their post punk sound was so placeably 2018-2022 that you’d listen to it and you have to say yep, these lads came up in the wake of bands like IDLES at the same time as bands like Shame, very 2019.

And you never think, ‘oh I wonder what happened to them, I haven’t heard from them in a while,’ despite the fact that they are basically not active at all on social media. They have the band IG and each member too, but half of them last posted in like 2022 once. They aren’t doing any ‘trends’ or challenges or too many behind the scenes stuff— nothing. It feels almost like a classic band, like someone from the 90s or for the last time, the 00s.

And yet they feel modern, maybe it’s just that they speak to pretty modern fears and anxieties. I don’t know. But then, they’re also still doing the band grind. They’re not famous for anything except their music. No gimmicks, no collabs, they’ve never had a viral hit. People buy their whole albums because nothing they do misses. They sell more on vinyl than some of artists who are much bigger than them and monopolise the record pressing plants (coughs and dies).

Their best known songs are widely known because of fantastic televised festival performances in 2019 and 2022 (Boys In The Better Land, R+L 2019, R+L 2022 when they had that 18 y/o fan join them on guitar; Big Shot with the strings and piano and I Love You, Glasto 2022). Nothing about that is modern, and yet here they are. I couldn’t really see them coming up in another age, not because of the music but the context and themes.

I know, some of their songs sound like they could’ve been observational poems by Keats, Yeats, modern ones like MacGowan. Grian has said he’s still drawn to nature poetry despite being a city boy, but you listen to something like Oh Such A Spring and tell me he couldn’t write an ode to a landscape. Songs like I Love You, the album Skinty Fia in it’s whole. I personally nearly cried hearing it the first time, because as much as musicians have often written about being misfits, about not fitting in, it wasn’t very often that you’d hear someone explicitly framing that from the theme of an immigrant, of someone away from home, neither any longer a part of their home place but noticeably a stranger in the new. About having his Irishness almost heightened by not being in Ireland anymore. All of that. Oddly for the times, and very relevant. Songs like Bloomsday as well. Going back home and realising why you left in the first place. In some ways, Fontaines could only be a band of the now. And yet, there’s been something so traditional about their ascent.

Got big off the back of solid songwriting, they come off as clear-eyed romantics, still with a bit of the mystery and distance afforded to a rockstar of the past, yet not rockstars because they’re such ordinary people. The everyday poets, with a bit of mysticism about them. Amongst many of the bands that have got big in the last four years, they’re the only ones who are still truly independent, all the rest are on Island (UMG subsidiary). They have, if anything, gone more independent now: they’ve moved from Partisan to XL Recordings, both independent labels, and XL is part of the Beggars Group, perhaps one of the largest to still remain completely independent. At this stage in their career: chart topping albums, huge physical sales, a Grammy nomination, Irish Choice Prize nom and a BRIT win, surely if they wanted to, they could easily get on any of the majors. They could bypass the subs and go directly to like, Warner. They’d definitely get signed if they wanted. They’ve chosen to remain independent, admirably.

In some way, it adds to the appeal of the band. There’s a bit of the old band charm to them. I want to be careful not to over-romanticise or turn to folklore a group of very real human beings who have indicated at times that they are perhaps not very comfortable being put up on a pedestal (they are right), and I respect and honour that notion. But there’s certainly something special about this band. And perhaps Starburster has only reignited my admiration for this band, man they’re good.

GRUFF RHYS (SUPER FURRY ANIMALS) - September 25/07

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2007 AT 04:53PM in Soundscapes.

Welsh songwriter Gruff Rhys has something of a Cheshire cat quality about him. It's not just the wide, generous grin—which he brandishes eagerly and often—but rather it's the way he manages to be two things at once. Like a Lewis Carroll creation who just missed the Wonderland cut, he's simultaneously an outlandish caricature and real flesh and blood. So much of the reputation of both himself and his group, Super Furry Animals, is based on contradictory mixes: rock culture/rave culture, saturated noise/restrained calm, atonal dissonance/harmonic marriage, cold electronics/warm acoustics, giddy humour/political commentary.

It's this last juxtaposition that perhaps underscores what's so special about his band; they're one of the few acts to nail the kind of social satire mixed with a highly marketable image (at least in the UK) that is normally the domain of cartoons like the Simpsons. Whether it's been showing up at the Glastonbury festival in a tank(!), releasing their albums in 5.1 surround sound with DVD films for each song, or singing songs on stage through a giant Power Rangers helmet, no idea is too surreal or excessive for the band. And yet, despite these excesses, their heartfelt songs are able to address issues of not only love and loss, but colonial imperialism, global warming, war, and politics in ways that avoid the heavy-handed, preachy tone for which so many of us have long lost a taste.

In person, Rhys happily continues the contradiction. His speech can be slow to the point of paralysis, but just when you wonder if you've lost him, his comments reveal themselves to be quite economical and insightful. His social graces echo that of a Victorian gentleman. He stands when people arrive and leave, looks you in the eye, inquires as to how you are, gives you his full respect and attention. But, as he pauses in the midst of answer, there's that mischievous grin again...

More than anything Rhys is a very educated, highly talented musician who knows that all of the issues about which he sings mean everything and nothing all at once. We discussed politics in their songs; his new solo disc, Candylion; working on SFA's latest, Hey Venus!, with Toronto producer Dave Newfeld; and the group's "horrid" new musical experiment.

Soundscapes: I've noticed that Super Furry Animals don't really have political songs, as much as politics and social commentary are naturally part of the tunes. I want to know if that's somewhat accurate, and how you feel about addressing politics within the songs?

Gruff Rhys: Yeah, we didn't form the group because of politics. Y'know? Our instincts are musical, and our reason for being together is our love of records and to play music. I think that we grew up in a period of political activism and a lot of our friends' families have been politically active. So, it's part of our upbringing. But we come from a generation from after punk rock...

SS: Yeah.

GR: ...which was full of political sloganeering. So we're kind of turned off rhetoric and sloganeering. So we decide, um, it's rare that we're inspired by an event to write a song in a kinda protest singer way.

SS: Right.

GR: There's lyrics and they're very, y'know, it's inevitable that it will be part of our lyrics in the end in some way.

SS: Well, there's a sense that that kind of sloganeering, people are sort of dead to it now. It doesn't resonate in the same way, it's not the same "call to arms". There's a sense that it should be casual dialogue amongst people (when discussing politics now). That puts people at ease.

GR: Yeah, and I suppose there's less, people are less ideological than they used to be. And don't necessarily follow one doctrine. So in that sense, maybe in the 1980s, you had bands that rigorously followed Marxist doctrines...

SS: Mm-hmm.

GR: ...something which would be really difficult to apply today.

SS: Do you think it's good that it's become a little more personal? That it's not so easy to just be left or right anymore?

GR: Yeah, and also people are naturally so hypocritical, that it's often difficult for a rock band to have any kind of credibility if they start making political statements. It's just sometimes so obviously contradictory to what they do.

SS: Mm-hmm. Well, I thought about that a little when I was listening to "Neo Consumer" (a tune about mass consumer confusion off Hey Venus!), just because at home I have a Phantom Power mug and a Rings Around The World uh, little dish...

GR: Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah! (smiling)

SS: (laughs) ...I mean, I understand what you're getting at (in the song), but I also understand that it seems to be a part of the band that you're kind of, well, there's no way to separate yourself from this kind of vortex. You can observe it, but you're still...

GR: ...in it, yeah yeah. I mean, it's observations from within it.

SS: I was reading in a interview that when you were working on Hey Venus!, that a lot of it came from wanting to make some songs that were a little more upbeat to play live. Was it frustrating at all that a record like Love Kraft didn't come across the way you'd like live? Because I felt like that record was a little misunderstood.

GR: Uh, I mean, we're not really worried about... (pauses) I mean, we're pretty happy with (Love Kraft), but it's quite a symphonic record, y'know? And the only frustration was that it was just difficult to play. (laughs)

SS: Yeah.

GR: And any frustrations are purely with ourselves. You know, it's a very long, beautiful record, but it requires a lot of patience to listen to and to play.

SS: Well, certainly on a song like "Zoom!" the crescendos in there, with all the choirs and strings, would be extremely difficult to pull off live with just five people.

GR: Yeah.

SS: So, is there that too? Not just the energy level, but with Hey Venus! you really get the sense of the five of you playing in a room together.

GR: Yeah, obviously on the arrangements it's pretty, umm, it's a very simple record. I suppose the emphasis was more on songs than the arrangement. I think we've made records that are more adventurous sonically, but I think we always react to the last record that we did.

SS: I often felt, especially when watching you guys play live, that for a long time you were trying to merge dance culture with rock culture. Is that still a big part of what you're doing or has that evolved live?

GR: Yeah, I don't know. Our decision making is pretty chaotic and anything goes and everybody pushes and pulls the band in different directions. On this record, nobody brought samplers into the studio, so there's far less electronics than on a lot of our records. I think, and in a way it's difficult for anyone to speak on behalf of the band (laughs), but I think what we were trying to do is, we're making...(pauses) Well, you see, a lot of electronic music is quite a solitary pursuit. You sit at your computer or sampler and sometimes it's more of an individual kind of thing. Whereas with this record, we were trying to play as a band: a five people at once kind of record.

SS: Yeah.

GR: But, but, sometimes we...(looks up smiling) ...I think. (laughs)

SS: I certainly remember seeing you guys play for Rings, when you released the DVD (with a video for each song), and you guys were starting to play with a lot of videos and sequencers.

GR: Yeah.

SS: The first time I saw you guys on that tour, I felt like the energy level was a little lacking because the rhythm section felt like it was learning how to play with a click track for pretty much the whole night.

GR: Right, yeah, yeah.

SS: And then later, on the second leg of Rings and for Phantom, it felt like you had it nailed. What you're saying about electronic music being an individual pursuit, there's that sense of rigidity. It's difficult to be loose.

GR: Yeah.

SS: You've already got a script.

GR: Yeah, absolutely. That can be very frustrating, and in a way, the purer and more electronic it is, the better it sounds. I mean, when we take it to extremes, it's usually more convincing then. We often use a lot of click tracks and it's very difficult to get right. We're still trying to learn that, and I think energetic music, if it sounds energetic then you can get away with it. But with a record like Love Kraft, there's a lot of click tracks in order to orchestrate the show live, and it's very slow music. (laughs)

SS: Yeah.

GR: Whereas on this tour we've got rid of all the video and we've still got a computer on stage which we're using on some songs, but it seems a bit more energetic.

SS: There's a sense to me that on Hey Venus! the layers are still there, it's just a little more purely integrated. It's almost as though now that you're learned another language, the band is a little more multilingual. I don't know if you know what I mean, but instead of just speaking rock, or speaking electronic, now that you know how to speak both of them, there's not the same need to speak one of them exclusively at certain times.

GR: OK, yeah, yeah.

SS: Because parts of Hey Venus! remind me of Fuzzy Logic.

GR: Yeah, yeah.

SS: But then there are bits where the orchestration reminds me of stuff on Phantom Power or even Love Kraft. Like "Carbon Dating" sounds like a Love Kraft song to me, or even "Battersea Odyssey".

GR: Yeah, yeah.

SS: But then, I know I just picked the two songs you didn't write.

GR: No, no. (both laugh)

SS: But it feels like you have more of a command of musical languages now. Does it feel that way to you?

GR: Yeah, I think it's real interesting if you listen to "Carbon Dating", which is a song by Cian (Ciaran, keyboardist and electronic whiz), most of his, because he's developed a lot as a writer and his background is electronic, and he put out a record as Acid Casuals (Omni) a couple years ago, and that record is almost like a greatest hits of the past ten years of his stuff. 'Cause he was making all this music, and he put out some 12"s which we're like minimal techno, kind of newer dance floor things, but he was making all this other stuff and he's very much a perfectionist, so he wasn't releasing it even, but he was giving it to friends.

SS: Yeah.

GR: And some of it would end as Furry songs. We'd all jam, like on "Slow Life" (from Phantom Power). We'd kind of sing on top of it and try to bring it in the group. But, with the Acid Casuals album, by the end he's singing a song. I think the last song on the record is lyrics, and you can see how he's changed his position. So, when he brings things to the band now, he's often reluctant to play them from the computer, but he'll try and get us to play his tunes live.

SS: Right, like he doesn't want to dictate the format to you. He'd rather it came out, give you all the chance to imprint yourself a little bit more on the song from the start.

GR: Yeah, well, I think, although nobody's particularly pushy in the band--it's not a part of our culture--I think he's just really keen that way. For us to take his ideas and play them rather than just keeping an electronic demo and then stick it into the record. Thought we'd rehearse his ideas. Y'know, the stuff he writes is very beautiful, melodic. Hopefully, this makes it quite original. Hopefully, we start to belong to our own sound. Our ultimate goal would be to lose a lot of our influences and make something original. I think we're still quite far away though. (laughs) But that's what we're trying to do.

SS: Well, the influences tend to be evolving constantly at least.

GR: Yeah.

SS: It certainly always comes out sounding like you guys. And that is one other thing too. Now that you guys have been a band as long as you have, your mark on the landscape is little bit different now. You're not a band that has just begun.

GR: Oh no, yeah, yeah.

SS: You have a real history, a huge amount of time and lots of side projects. And some influence, too. What was that collection you did, Under the Influence (a UK compilation series)?

GR: Oh yeah.

SS: And Guto (Pryce, bassist) just did the Trojan Furry Selector (reggae) compilation.

GR: Oh, yeah, yeah.

SS: And there was a quote of yours on the front of the Selda record (cult Turkish psych singer), at least over here. You know the one I'm talking about from Finders Keepers?

GR: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SS: So, I mean, it's different now. You've reached the point where you guys are recognized as having varied tastes. That there's something that can be learned from where your ears lead.

GR: Yeah, I mean, we formed because we didn't come out of a... I don't know, we've all got quite varied tastes, but I think that's what we were interested in when we all came together. Try to see what we could do. (laughs)

SS: Well, there's a sense of a common language that gets brought out—and I don't mean in the 'music is a universal language sense'—but the fact that when you integrate psychedelia, Beach Boys pop stuff, electronic music, dub or whatever, I find that you guys are able to draw a lot of the same things from them. The qualities that address the dreamier part of the mind, or the more euphoric part of the mind. It seems like you're drawn to the same things about them: their sense of exploration and of melody, regardless of the style of music.

GR: Yeah, I think we've got a sweet tooth, you know, melodically. And sometimes we shy from using it, and sometimes we gorge too much on it. (smiles) Sometimes we just embrace it. And y'know, we formed during the sort of electronic boom in Britain. We used to go to a lot of raves and stay up all night and come home the next day and listen to Surf's Up on ecstasy. (laughs)

SS: Yeah, yeah.

GR: So, that's basically the kind of soundtrack when we formed.

SS: In a lot ways, that's how it sounds to me!

GR: Sort of. (laughs) Yeah!

SS: Particularly Rings, there is that real collision of kind of a 60s pop culture meeting this electronic boom culture and that notion of gorging and excess, there are elements of that. But also something like your first solo record (the all-Welsh Yr Atal Genhedlaeth), which seems like a real purifying moment. Everything is very minimal, the way it's written. There's a lot of repetition of phrases. Even without knowing the language, it seems like some songs only had a couple of lines to them.

GR: Yeah.

SS: What was your aim with that first album?

GR: Well, the first record, was, um, our friend Gorwel Owen has a studio in his house, and that's where we've done, where we recorded a lot of our earlier music. Albums like Radiator and most of Mwng. So, we've been going there to record really for the past twenty years. So he's a real close friend, so I went to his house. I often go there to do demos as well. Just go there for a day so I can reel off fifteen songs every couple of years.

SS: Right, yeah.

GR: So, I'd been going there. I went there for a couple of days and made some kind of demos and I liked the sort of feel of them. So I ended up going back for another few days and did some more. And then, I took another couple of days and mixed them. So, when I made that record, for the first couple of days I did them, I wasn't really aware that I was making a record as such. I just having a laugh and just messing around and having a good time. Just creating. And y'know, Furry records had become, especially at that time just after Rings Around The World and Phantom Power, where the albums had become huge undertakings. Because they both came out on DVD and we mixed them in 5.1 surround sound...

SS: Yeah.

GR: ...as well as stereo, so the record took twice as much time to mix.

SS: They were like big movies.

GR: And we had to try and collect films for each song...

SS: Yeah.

GR: ...so that was quite an undertaking, just keeping all that together. And then, there's a remix for every song as well on both those records.

SS: Yeah, yeah! (laughs)

GR: You know, it was just kind of mind-boggling. But, y'know, fantastic thing to try out. So, making a record in seven days flat is just great, y'know? (laughs)

SS: Yeah, yeah. So how did that lead to Candylion? This seems to be less of a surprise solo record.

GR: Yeah, yeah.

SS: Things are much more richly worked out.

GR: Yeah, I thought I'd make an acoustic record. So the initial idea is that. I had a self-conscious decision to make a record. So, I had all these songs on acoustic guitars and they sort of coincided with, after Love Kraft, we (SFA) were kind of thinking of making a loud record. So, I had a lot of quiet songs, so I thought maybe I'd go to Gorwel's house and record them quickly. I took two weeks to make it. I wanted it to have a sense of spontaneity, but I didn't keep the mistakes. If there was a mistake, I'd try and do it again.

SS: Mm-hmm.

GR: On the first record, I just left it how it was and kept all the imperfections.

SS: Right, right.

GR: So, it was more refined. But I got excited and threw in drums, got a double bass player down. So, it wasn't as, I thought it was going to be more minimal, more based around a single guitar, but, maybe another time. (laughs)

SS: Well, some of my favourite moments come from how the percussion works, especially on "Lonesome Words", so I wouldn't say it's a mistake. (laughs)

GR: Yeah. (smiles)

SS: What led to you guys working with (Broken Social Scene producer) David Newfeld? I mean, we're pretty familiar with him here...

GR: Yeah, yeah.

SS: ...but it was pretty excited to see what would come of you guys working with him. So what led to that?

GR: Well, we were looking for a kind of, coach-style figure stroke referee.

SS: (laughs)

GR: Because we wanted to make quite a live record and we didn't wanna repeat the past two records either. So, we were looking for someone new to work with. So we were racking our brains trying to think of whose records we actually liked the sound of. And our recording sessions are usually very creative but they're like quite fracturous as well. They're very tense. So you're looking for an outsider that could be objective and help out.

SS: Mm-hmm.

GR: And I was having a conversation with our friend, and listening to his records. I think we were listening to a Broken Social Scene record and we all kind of, "Oh fuck, y'know, it must be nuts making those records because there's so many of them. Wow, maybe this is the one!" (both laugh)

SS: If he can rein in 13 people, then he can probably rein in five.

GR: So, I mean, obviously, I only knew his records, I didn't know anything about him. So, it was real interesting making that kind of, we wanted to make a pop record as well. We wanted to make a rowdy pop record. And he revealed to us early on that he had a background as a wedding DJ...

SS: Yes!

GR: ...and that he'd done 500 weddings at least? Or something, it's a big statistic.

SS: Yeah, I've been to one of them. He's done a lot.

GR: So, he's perfect! He's got such a knowledge of pop and what makes people react. What gets the whole family to the dance floor. And so, he, I think we were with him for maybe three weeks? And most of the time he just stood there by the desk. We had a bit of an adventure, because went to France, and we haven't spent that much time in France. We found a studio that was one big room where we could all sit in and I don't think that he'd (Newfeld) been to France either and we had the studio guys who were forcing wine and cheese on us all the time. It was a bit of an adventure. And then, he wouldn't accept a take until he was physically moved by it, in a wedding kind of way.

SS: (laughs) Yeah.

GR: You know?

SS: Yeah.

GR: It was great, you know. He could reel off all the songs that he was reminded of, if you were doing a song like "Run-Away".

SS: Well, for sure, there's a load of pop references all over Venus. It's funny too because, Dave seems to have a really distinct sound (as a producer), but sometimes I think that's only because so much of what people know of him is Broken Social Scene where you do have a ton of instruments coming at you at once.

GR: Yeah, yeah.

SS: I was talking to Kevin (Drew, BSS) a little while ago about speaking to you, and he asked about Hey Venus!, "Does it sound like a Newf record?" And I said that it didn't sound like a Newf record BSS has done, but it sounds like a record Newf would be a part of because there is so much classic pop reference it in. It's that other part of his language.

GR: Yeah.

SS: It seemed like a good fit.

GR: And it's something that he completely grasps, y'know, and understands. He really pushed some songs. Because you listen to the demos, and there were songs that we were gonna leave off, like "Suckers" for example.

SS: Mm-hmm.

GR: Which is quite a kind of obvious song, melodically. You know, it's like, that was his favourite. So, he had the power in kind of shaping the record, in terms of what songs we ended up recording. We had so many of them that, I mean, we recorded maybe twenty songs.

SS: Yeah, really?

GR: We demoed much more. So he listened to demos of kinda live versions of the record.

SS: It's almost funny to hear you say that, just because it is such a short record. It's interesting to know that it came from such a large pool.

GR: Yeah, we were quite brutal, and the record could have been very different as well. Some of the songs we left off were really heavy and raw, you know? So initially, at the time of recording, we thought we were making a heavy record. What we ended up with is more consistent with our back catalogue.

SS: Mm-hmm.

GR: But we almost made a really radical record, (both laugh) but we didn't manage it.

SS: But is it not true that you also have been working on more than just, you were working on a couple records?

GR: Yeah, we've been working on a, we're working with a conductor. (laughs) We've been making an instrumental record, with a guy called Charles Hazelwood as a kind of coach figure. He comes from an academic musical background, which is kind of the opposite of our musical background. It's been real interesting, and we've been working with a notater as well, who can actually orchestrate our ideas.

SS: Right, he helps, writes them out?

GR: Yeah, and the conductor has been giving us advice on what orchestras can do and what they can't do, which we usually ignore. (smiles)

SS: Do you mean in general, or just for this project? (laughs)

GR: Well, no, y'know, he's been encouraging us to try things that maybe, y'know, saying, "Well, that's not orthodox, but you should try it anyway. See what happens." Because, we don't want to make a kind of 'rock band meets an orchestra' record, which is a horrid thing. So we've been jamming with the kind of core members of this orchestra. So we've got about, I think we've got about twenty hours of music so far recorded.

SS: And is the idea for this to be an album at some point?

GR: Yeah, it's probably going to take years, because we've got hours and hours already, some of which sounds pretty good, but not very focused, and then we'll probably listen back to them, arrange the whole thing, and then maybe record it live with an orchestra.

SS: Right, and this would be the five of you playing along.

GR: Yeah, I mean, maybe not strictly an orchestra, but a lot of orchestral musicians and a conductor. (pauses and laughs) It's sounds awful, but...

SS: No, (laughs) I mean, it sounds totally plausible to me. I wouldn't bet against you guys doing anything at this point.

GR: The stuff that we've recorded so far sounds like goblin records, it's almost like an Italian horror soundtrack.

SS: Right. Yeah, like some Argento movie or something.

GR: Yeah.

SS: Yeah.

GR: But I think it sometimes sounds awful, y'know?

SS: (laughs)

GR: But, when it's good, it sounds like a horror soundtrack.

SS: Well, you've got twenty hours to pull from. Can't be all bad.

GR: Yeah... (drifting, smiling) There's still songs left over from Hey Venus!, which we'll either make that into a record or do it all again, not sure. We're starting to tour, so we'll all be together for six months. We'll formulate a plan. Or, probably do something completely different. (smiling)

Is Old Music Killing New Music?

Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market. Even worse: The new-music market is actually shrinking.

By Ted Gioia, Jan 2022

Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market, according to the latest numbers from MRC Data, a music-analytics firm. Those who make a living from new music—especially that endangered species known as the working musician—should look at these figures with fear and trembling. But the news gets worse: The new-music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs.

The 200 most popular new tracks now regularly account for less than 5 percent of total streams. That rate was twice as high just three years ago. The mix of songs actually purchased by consumers is even more tilted toward older music. The current list of most-downloaded tracks on iTunes is filled with the names of bands from the previous century, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Police.

I encountered this phenomenon myself recently at a retail store, where the youngster at the cash register was singing along with Sting on “Message in a Bottle” (a hit from 1979) as it blasted on the radio. A few days earlier, I had a similar experience at a local diner, where the entire staff was under 30 but every song was more than 40 years old. I asked my server: “Why are you playing this old music?” She looked at me in surprise before answering: “Oh, I like these songs.”

Never before in history have new tracks attained hit status while generating so little cultural impact. In fact, the audience seems to be embracing the hits of decades past instead. Success was always short-lived in the music business, but now even new songs that become bona fide hits can pass unnoticed by much of the population.

Only songs released in the past 18 months get classified as “new” in the MRC database, so people could conceivably be listening to a lot of two-year-old songs, rather than 60-year-old ones. But I doubt these old playlists consist of songs from the year before last. Even if they did, that fact would still represent a repudiation of the pop-culture industry, which is almost entirely focused on what’s happening right now.

Every week I hear from hundreds of publicists, record labels, band managers, and other professionals who want to hype the newest new thing. Their livelihoods depend on it. The entire business model of the music industry is built on promoting new songs. As a music writer, I’m expected to do the same, as are radio stations, retailers, DJs, nightclub owners, editors, playlist curators, and everyone else with skin in the game. Yet all the evidence indicates that few listeners are paying attention.

Consider the recent reaction when the Grammy Awards were postponed. Perhaps I should say the lack of reaction, because the cultural response was little more than a yawn. I follow thousands of music professionals on social media, and I didn’t encounter a single expression of annoyance or regret that the biggest annual event in new music had been put on hold. That’s ominous.

Can you imagine how angry fans would be if the Super Bowl or NBA Finals were delayed? People would riot in the streets. But the Grammy Awards go missing in action, and hardly anyone notices.

The declining TV audience for the Grammy show underscores this shift. In 2021, viewership for the ceremony collapsed 53 percent from the previous year—from 18.7 million to 8.8 million. It was the least-watched Grammy broadcast of all time. Even the core audience for new music couldn’t be bothered—about 98 percent of people ages 18 to 49 had something better to do than watch the biggest music celebration of the year.

A decade ago, 40 million people watched the Grammy Awards. That’s a meaningful audience, but now the devoted fans of this event are starting to resemble a tiny subculture. More people pay attention to streams of video games on Twitch (which now gets 30 million daily visitors) or the latest reality-TV show. In fact, musicians would probably do better getting placement in Fortnite than signing a record deal in 2022. At least they would have access to a growing demographic.

Some would like to believe that this trend is just a short-term blip, perhaps caused by the pandemic. When clubs open up again, and DJs start spinning new records at parties, the world will return to normal, or so we’re told. The hottest songs will again be the newest songs. I’m not so optimistic.

A series of unfortunate events are conspiring to marginalize new music. The pandemic is one of these ugly facts, but hardly the only contributor to the growing crisis.

Consider these other trends:

As record labels lose interest in new music, emerging performers desperately search for other ways to get exposure. They hope to place their self-produced tracks on a curated streaming playlist, or license their songs for use in advertising or the closing credits of a TV show. Those options might generate some royalty income, but they do little to build name recognition. You might hear a cool song on a TV commercial, but do you even know the name of the artist? You love your workout playlist at the health club, but how many song titles and band names do you remember? You stream a Spotify new-music playlist in the background while you work, but did you bother to learn who’s singing the songs?

Decades ago, the composer Erik Satie announced the arrival of “furniture music,” a kind of song that would blend seamlessly into the background of our lives. His vision seems closer to reality than ever.

Some people—especially Baby Boomers—tell me that this decline in the popularity of new music is simply the result of lousy new songs. Music used to be better, or so they say. The old songs had better melodies, more interesting harmonies, and demonstrated genuine musicianship, not just software loops, Auto-Tuned vocals, and regurgitated samples.

There will never be another Sondheim, they tell me. Or Joni Mitchell. Or Bob Dylan. Or Cole Porter. Or Brian Wilson. I almost expect these doomsayers to break out in a stirring rendition of “Old Time Rock and Roll,” much like Tom Cruise in his underpants.

Just take those old records off the shelf

I’ll sit and listen to ’em by myself …

I can understand the frustrations of music lovers who get no satisfaction from current mainstream songs, though they try and they try. I also lament the lack of imagination on many modern hits. But I disagree with my Boomer friends’ larger verdict. I listen to two to three hours of new music every day, and I know that plenty of exceptional young musicians are out there trying to make it. They exist. But the music industry has lost its ability to discover and nurture their talents.

Music-industry bigwigs have plenty of excuses for their inability to discover and adequately promote great new artists. The fear of copyright lawsuits has made many in the industry deathly afraid of listening to unsolicited demo recordings. If you hear a demo today, you might get sued for stealing its melody—or maybe just its rhythmic groove—five years from now. Try mailing a demo to a label or producer, and watch it return unopened.

The people whose livelihood depends on discovering new musical talent face legal risks if they take their job seriously. That’s only one of the deleterious results of the music industry’s overreliance on lawyers and litigation, a hard-ass approach they once hoped would cure all their problems, but now does more harm than good. Everybody suffers in this litigious environment except for the partners at the entertainment-law firms, who enjoy the abundant fruits of all these lawsuits and legal threats.

The problem goes deeper than just copyright concerns. The people running the music industry have lost confidence in new music. They won’t admit it publicly—that would be like the priests of Jupiter and Apollo in ancient Rome admitting that their gods are dead. Even if they know it’s true, their job titles won’t allow such a humble and abject confession. Yet that is exactly what’s happening. The moguls have lost their faith in the redemptive and life-changing power of new music. How sad is that? Of course, the decision makers need to pretend that they still believe in the future of their business, and want to discover the next revolutionary talent. But that’s not what they really think. Their actions speak much louder than their empty words.

In fact, nothing is less interesting to music executives than a completely radical new kind of music. Who can blame them for feeling this way? The radio stations will play only songs that fit the dominant formulas, which haven’t changed much in decades. The algorithms curating so much of our new music are even worse. Music algorithms are designed to be feedback loops, ensuring that the promoted new songs are virtually identical to your favorite old songs. Anything that genuinely breaks the mold is excluded from consideration almost as a rule. That’s actually how the current system has been designed to work.

Even the music genres famous for shaking up the world—rock or jazz or hip-hop—face this same deadening industry mindset. I love jazz, but many of the radio stations focused on that genre play songs that sound almost the same as what they featured 10 or 20 years ago. In many instances, they actually are the same songs.

This state of affairs is not inevitable. A lot of musicians around the world—especially in Los Angeles and London—are conducting a bold dialogue between jazz and other contemporary styles. They are even bringing jazz back as dance music. But the songs they release sound dangerously different from older jazz, and are thus excluded from many radio stations for that same reason. The very boldness with which they embrace the future becomes the reason they get rejected by the gatekeepers.

A country record needs to sound a certain way to get played on most country radio stations or playlists, and the sound those DJs and algorithms are looking for dates back to the prior century. And don’t even get me started on the classical-music industry, which works hard to avoid showcasing the creativity of the current generation. We are living in an amazing era of classical composition, with one tiny problem: The institutions controlling the genre don’t want you to hear it.

The problem isn’t a lack of good new music. It’s an institutional failure to discover and nurture it.

I learned the danger of excessive caution long ago, when I consulted for huge Fortune 500 companies. The single biggest problem I encountered—shared by virtually every large company I analyzed—was investing too much of their time and money into defending old ways of doing business, rather than building new ones. We even had a proprietary tool for quantifying this misallocation of resources that spelled out the mistakes in precise dollars and cents.

Senior management hated hearing this, and always insisted that defending the old business units was their safest bet. After I encountered this embedded mindset again and again and saw its consequences, I reached the painful conclusion that the safest path is usually the most dangerous. If you pursue a strategy—whether in business or your personal life—that avoids all risk, you might flourish in the short run, but you flounder over the long term. That’s what is now happening in the music business.

Even so, I refuse to accept that we are in some grim endgame, witnessing the death throes of new music. And I say that because I know how much people crave something that sounds fresh and exciting and different. If they don’t find it from a major record label or algorithm-driven playlist, they will find it somewhere else. Songs can go viral nowadays without the entertainment industry even noticing until it has already happened. That will be how this story ends: not with the marginalization of new music, but with something radical emerging from an unexpected place.

The apparent dead ends of the past were circumvented the same way. Music-company execs in 1955 had no idea that rock and roll would soon sweep away everything in its path. When Elvis took over the culture—coming from the poorest state in America, lowly Mississippi—they were more shocked than anybody. It happened again the following decade, with the arrival of the British Invasion from lowly Liverpool (again, a working-class place, unnoticed by the entertainment industry). And it happened again when hip-hop, a true grassroots movement that didn’t give a damn how the close-minded CEOs of Sony or Universal viewed the marketplace, emerged from the Bronx and South Central and other impoverished neighbourhoods.

If we had the time, I would tell you more about how the same thing has always happened. The troubadours of the 11th century, Sappho, the lyric singers of ancient Greece, and the artisan performers of the Middle Kingdom in ancient Egypt transformed their own cultures in a similar way. Musical revolutions come from the bottom up, not the top down. The CEOs are the last to know. That’s what gives me solace. New music always arises in the least expected place, and when the power brokers aren’t even paying attention. It will happen again. It certainly needs to. The decision makers controlling our music institutions have lost the thread. We’re lucky that the music is too powerful for them to kill.

So, odd news for today, but my faith in humanity has been restored by... Twitter.

It started like this. You may have heard of former Stone Rose Ian Brown’s infamous all-caps no-mask-no-vacc-no-trace-no-lockdown bollocks by now. After days of doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on his original tweet, Brown released a demo today :))))

While I had dismissed Brown’s Twitter comments section as a godforsaken echo chamber, turns out, most of Twitter was not having any of it.

This guy, parodying a tweet that actually has good copypasta potential, hmm...

Then there was this,

and this cracking one,

There was some feedback,

and some music magazine-worthy criticism

It wasn’t all doom and gloom for Brown (of course it wasn’t; he doesn’t even have to read the comments!). But his track did generate some requests,

Requests to form a potential rock super(spreader)group. They could call themselves the Non Believers or some shit.

It also spawned copycats!

But in all fairness, there were some highlights here. Someone, afterall, got to the very heart of the biggest problem I see here:

And all in all, my faith in humanity has been restored, on twitter of all places?!

In conclusion, this really isn’t a post about Ian Brown. It’s just my general thesis on how people can be fucking decent sometimes? Thanks for coming to my virtual TED talk