Author: Patrick Clarke

NME

Camera Obscura have released new single ‘We’re Gonna Make It In A Man’s World’. Check it out below, along with frontwoman Tracyanne Campbell telling us about what went into ‘Look To The East, Look To The West’ – the Scottish indie legends’ first new album in over a decade.

The group’s new single, which comes ahead of the album’s release on May 3 via Verge Records, began life as part of the soundtrack for Icarus (After Amelia), a visual study of women’s labour in Glasgow by Margaret Salmon. When asked to meet up with the filmmaker by a mutual friend, Campbell admitted she had her reservations. “I was terrified of this academic filmmaker!” she told NME. “But Margaret and I started going for walks in the countryside and I think we really clicked.”

Taking inspiration from the themes of the film, Campbell explained: “It’s not specifically about my experience as a woman in the music business, but it was a tongue in cheek approach to that kind of thing.

“I don’t live my life every day thinking ‘I’m so hard done by’, but I was thinking about who I am in the world. The film is about what women are and aren’t paid for, and I realised that as a woman of a certain age I was the one washing the dishes, making the dinner and being a mum, and looking after grandparents who need it. It spoke to me.”

Having released their last album ‘Desire Lines’ in 2013, the band went on hiatus two years later following the death of their keyboard player Carey Lander from osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. The album track ‘Sugar Almond’ is written directly about her. “I had a lot of trouble coming to terms with Carey’s death,” Campbell said. “Coming to terms with that affected my identity. The band had been everything to me. I was trying to figure out who I was without the band, and who I was without her. [The surviving band members] were still in touch with each other, but we weren’t really talking in a musical way.”

It was after a one-off show as part of long-term friends Belle & Sebastian’s Boaty Weekender cruise in 2019 (with two warm-up gigs that also served as fundraisers for the charity Sarcoma UK) that the band discussed making music together again. They enlisted Donna Maciocia, formerly of Amplifico, as Lander’s successor. “Obviously it was a sensitive thing, getting another player in,” Campbell said, “but we had it on good authority that she’s a great musician, a great team player, she’s sensitive, she can read a room. We just clicked straight away.”

Campbell continued: “Ultimately, it did make us feel quite fresh. Not quite starting again, but getting a new chance.”

This is reflected in the record’s cover, which features the same woman – Fiona Morrison – who appeared on Camera Obscura’s 2000 debut ‘Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi’. “It was Kenny [McKeeve, guitarist]’s idea. We thought of it as representing the band’s journey. And also, putting a woman who’s in her late 40s on the front cover of a record, I felt that was a good thing as well.”

The first single from the album was January’s country-inflected ‘Big Love’. Before its release, Campbell admitted that there were nerves in the group about returning after a decade, without their former bandmate: “I think we’ve probably had more radio play than with any other song. I can’t believe how well it’s been received,” Campbell said.

NME: Hello Tracyanne. Camera Obscura first returned from hiatus in 2019 with a couple of small fundraising shows ahead of Belle & Sebastian’s Boaty Weekender. Can you tell us about that time?

Tracyanne Campbell: “We hadn’t played in a long time. We’d all been very sensitive around the subject, but we started rehearsing and found we were really enjoying playing together again. We thought we’d better do some warm-ups, so we decided to do them for the charities that Carey was involved in. Those gigs were amazing. We were very, very nervous about getting back onstage, in front of Carey’s mum and dad, all our family and friends, but there was a real energy in the room. People had come from all over the world. It was a wee venue, but it felt quite international, as did getting on the boat and playing that show.”

It sounds like it was quite cathartic?

“Very. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy playing live before, I did have my moments, but it was one of those things where you’ve had something taken away from you and so you start to appreciate the things you forgot to appreciate along the way. It’s cheesy, but I really felt a connection with the audience on a level that I’d never experienced before, like we were all part of a gang, all on the same team.”

At what point did it become apparent that the shows were going to lead to a new album, too?

“I’d written dribs and drabs of songs before and hadn’t done anything with them, but I was really inspired by the freshness of going into the rehearsals and really enjoying it. The songs just started to pour out of me. I could feel that something was being churned up, things were starting to loosen up creatively. So we started talking about whether we were actually going to try and make a new record.

“It was a big risk; it was actually quite scary to start having those conversations. But I didn’t want to write songs in vain, for them to just be on a tape recorder on my phone with nobody listening to them. They needed a home, and the best home for them would be on a Camera Obscura record, because we’ve all been intertwined in each other’s lives for the past 30 years. Obviously, the experience of Carey’s death really had a massive impact on all of us. I feel like I had a sense of duty to allow those songs to live and breathe with those other members of the band.”

The band also includes a new member in Donna Maciocia, who’s taken over Carey’s role on keys since the 2019 gigs. How has her addition changed the band?

“She brought a freshness musically. The rest of the band are people that happen to write and play songs, but she’s a proper musician. She brought a professionalism, but she also made it fun. I think we had a tendency to be a bit uptight in the past, we weren’t great at being open and communicative in our rehearsal space, and she managed to lighten everything up a bit. She asked me to mentor her own songwriting, so we started doing this tit for tat thing where she’d send me a song and I’d be blown away by it, thinking ‘I need to up my game!’ And then I’d try and write a song and bring it back to her. She helped me find my confidence again.”

How does that increased confidence manifest itself in the new album?

“It makes it bolder, but it’s also allowed me to be less of a control freak. A lot of our vibe [in the past] was caught up in my anxieties, and with anxiety you have a desire to control things because you need to feel safe. Now I’ve learned to loosen up a bit, and not feel like I have to be so much in control. In the past I was all over the record and wanted to get my way, but I’ve learned that maybe it’s alright that I’m good at writing the basic song, with a lyric and a melody and a structure, then other musicians can come to the forefront too and do their thing. Confidence allows you to take a step back sometimes, and to have trust in people and yourself.”

Can we hear that emphasis on others’ contributions on the record?

“I hope so! I think the musicianship is a step up for us, and obviously we’ve got a new player in Donna. It was important for us that if we had a new member that we didn’t have her in a corner telling her what to do. Jari [Haapalainen, producer] had a lot of freedom to do what he wanted as well. He really does produce; it’s not just twiddling knobs.”

How does Jari’s creativity come through?

“I really felt that I needed my hand held a bit with this record. I’ve always felt that a little bit, to be honest. It was scary to get back in the room and I was still finding my confidence again with writing songs, thinking ‘Is this shit? Has it got legs?’ and not always knowing the answer. We had him in from the very beginning of the songwriting process. He’d push a bit, like ‘I don’t think that’s so good,’ or ‘the chorus is a bit weak’. He really got involved.”

You’ve worked with him before on ‘Let’s Get Out of This Country’and ‘My Maudlin Career’ – were you seeking a sense of familiarity?

“Yes. But we did have a bit of a dilemma, because we were kind of thinking, ‘Is that too easy?’ But it was more about him understanding the sensitivity of our situation. Making a record without Carey, understanding the loss of that, managing a new member and making everybody feel like it’s their record. He’s a really good manager of a space.”

Do you see this return from hiatus as a long-term thing? Are you looking beyond this album with Camera Obscura?

“I would like to think so. Logistically it’s a struggle because people are working other jobs and all that, but I feel that if I’m writing songs and they’re coming from real places and it’s not laborious, then I want to continue. What I was asking myself with this record is, ‘Who am I?’ And I guess who I am is somebody who wants to make records.”

Camera Obscura release ‘Look To The East Look To The West’ on May 3 via Verge Records

The post Camera Obscura share new single and talk “not quite starting again, but getting a new chance” appeared first on NME.

NME

Gina Birch of post-punk pioneers The Raincoats has spoken to NME about the release of her long-awaited debut solo album ‘I Play My Bass Loud’, and what to expect from her upcoming live shows.

The musician, visual artist and filmmaker released her solo debut last month via Third Man Records and is set to kick off some UK live dates later this month. “It’s thrilling – it’s nothing I thought I’d be doing this time last year,” Birch told NME of going it alone.

She compared the feeling to a point in the early 1990s, when she had thought she had turned her back on performing in order to focus on her work directing music videos for other bands (she would go on to work with The Libertines, New Order, Beth Orton and more).

“I was in the edit suite, I think I was working on a video for The Pogues, and the phone rang,” she recalled. “It was [music agent] Russell Warby, who asked, ‘Would The Raincoats like to go on tour with Nirvana?’ It seemed mad, like ‘I’m making films, what the fuck?’ But it also seemed mad not to do it. In a way I feel a bit like this with the album. I’ve got a fantastic painting studio that I haven’t been to for about three months!”

Although he died before the tour could take place, Kurt Cobain was one of the most notable fans of Birch’s now-legendary trio, and wrote about his love for them on the sleeve notes of 1992’s ‘Incesticide’ compilation.

Though she had been writing and home recording the material that would become her new album for some time, it would be another encounter with a high-profile fan – this time David Buick of Jack White’s Third Man Records – that led to her return to music.

“I was making songs on my computer, and every now and then it would cross my mind that it would be nice to do something with them, but it was a chance meeting with Dave that prompted it,” she said. Third Man Records were looking to release a one-off seven inch release, “and I was like ‘yeah, I’ve got this material, let’s do it!’ Then we talked about doing more stuff, and Bob’s your uncle!”

That single, the meditative ‘Feminist Song’, appears on the album, and reflects one of the enduring themes not only of the record, but Birch’s career. Across tracks like ‘I Am Rage’ and ‘Pussy Riot’ – written in tribute to the Russian punk collective – gender politics are also highly prevalent.

“There’s a level of defiance [on the album], about what [women] have to wear, or how we have to be,” Birch said. “For young women, particularly when I was growing up, there was this idea that you had to keep your mouth shut, not upset the apple cart. Obviously there’s a lot going on in different parts of the world, and my concerns seem very small by comparison, but small things can be interesting too.”

Birch enlisted five different female bassists to perform on the record’s title track, including Jane Crockford of post-punk band The Mo-dettes, and Angel Olsen band member Emily Elhaj. “So much of their personalities came out on that song.” Birch explained that the song is not only intended to platform her fellow musicians, but also as a comment on the relationship between women and the bass guitar.

“I feel like at first I played bass in The Raincoats because it meant I wouldn’t have to be the central focus, but then I in fact realised that I loved playing melody, not just the anchoring notes,” she said. “I think for a lot of women, there may be a slight self esteem issue there. So for [the lyrics] of that song, I imagined myself playing my bass loud, raising the window high and yelling across the street.”

Mutual support among female musicians is important to Birch. In the 1990s, The Raincoats were often cited as an influence for riot grrrl bands like Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill – artists who have inspired Birch again in turn.

“Young women musicians, if they went back to 1977, might be surprised at how odd people would find them if they wanted to play guitar,” said Birch. “That’s why The Raincoats was great for us, because we were part of little tribes of women who understood each other.

“We weren’t the best musicians, but we were going to do it our own way, and that was really powerful for us. In a way that’s what’s enabled us to have this kind of longevity, because what we made was a bit off the beaten track.”

The album also delves into personal territory. On ‘Wish I Was You,’ for instance, Birch writes about imposter syndrome, while on ‘And Then It Happened’, she addresses feelings of almost losing purpose following recent brushes with cancer, and then finding it again through her art.

In general, she said that she finds the best way to react creatively is with a sense of playfulness. “That’s kind of my personality,” admitted Birch. “Often I’m quite motivated by humour and silliness. The last painting I did was about this melanoma I had removed from my right leg. When the surgeon said I was going to have a big scar, I laughed because it was going to match the scar I had on the left that I got when I was a baby. I think humour can be a catalyst for bigger or more serious things.”

The album’s sense of fun manifests itself in a playful disregard for genre, jumping from dub reggae to punk and electronica. This was partly thanks to the production work of Martin Glover, aka Youth, who also co-wrote some of the album’s instrumentals. “Youth really encouraged me to be me,”  Birch said. “He’s a very enthusiastic person about other people’s creativity, and he boosted me up to feel that what I was doing was valuable.”

She continued: “He always said he liked my bad guitar playing, and I’m very fond of imperfections myself, but at first it was daunting. We recorded in one room with the microphone in the middle, stood and played guitar and sang. I was like, ‘Oh my god, can I do this? Can I sing In tune? Why have I got five sausages on my hand instead of nimble fingers?’ But as we progressed I got more and more comfortable. It was good having Youth there, because if I’d been doing it on my own I’d have filled my head with too many choices.

“We were just moving forward all the time. We made the record quite quickly because we weren’t clutching and wondering what to do. But then, I’ve learned from many years of experience, that sometimes you’ve got to just get over yourself to jump off the cliff and see what happens.”

Earlier this year, Birch contributed illustrations to a book of lyrics by Sharon Van Etten, while last October she held her first solo painting show at South London’s Gallery 46. Following her forthcoming run of live shows, she said she hopes to return to other art forms. “I’m doing a bit of something with film, and I’ve got a few paintings to do.”

She added: “I’ve also got half a dozen other pieces of music. A lot of them are about moments in time, I’ve got a brilliant epic about the Occupy movement, so there’s a little bit of me that would like to do a ‘slices of history’ style album. What’s great is I’ve got all these different things, and as long as I stay healthy and I’ve got a bit of energy, there’s no rush.”

‘I Play My Bass Loud’ is out now via Third Man Records. Birch’s upcoming run of solo tour dates begins on March 21. See dates below and get tickets here.

MARCH
21 – Brighton – The Hope & Ruin
22 – London – Oslo
24 – Glasgow – The Hug And Pint
25 – Dublin – Whelan’s
27 – Leeds – Brudenell Social Club

The post The Raincoats’ Gina Birch: “Sometimes you’ve got to jump off the cliff and see what happens” appeared first on NME.

NME

The New Pornographers have shared punchy new track ‘Angelcover’ and spoken to NME about their upcoming ninth album, ‘Continue As A Guest’. Check it out below along with our interview with frontman Carl Newman.

‘Angelcover’ marks the second taste the new album – their first for Merge Records – and follows on from January’s lead single ‘Really Really Light’.

Speaking to NME, the band’s leader Newman said the song directly addresses his growing interest in the capabilities of his voice that defines the album as a whole.

“The chorus is: ‘Melody, melody / Ain’t got nothing on delivery’,” he said. “I wrote that because I was thinking about the way people listen to music. Have you ever listened to music and thought, ‘This is the worst fucking song, but it’s sung so beautifully’? I think there’s a lot of music out there that’s just highly polished turds, no song, but so beautifully produced and so beautifully sung that people just don’t care. So that song is a little bit meta, singing about the process as I was doing it.

He continued: “I was obsessed with the vocals on this record, I wanted to sing in a different way. I think that when you’ve been playing music a long time, you’re always trying to find that balance where it sounds like you but you’re not repeating yourself.”

Newman took the newfound time afforded by the coronavirus lockdown to teach himself home production. The fact he was learning as he went along also helped keep things fresh as The New Pornographers enter their 25th year as a band, as he explained.

“I think everybody who’s been doing music for a long time is trying to figure out a new way to approach it,” he said. “I remember there was an album where The Walkmen switched instruments just to change things up.

“In this case, me becoming the producer/engineer was exciting, I was learning things I should already have known. Also, for whatever reason I found it changing the way I was writing songs. Lyrically I think I’ve always written weird, outsider lyrics like David Byrne or Eno or someone like that. I was never very concerned with narratives, I never wanted to be Bruce Springsteen, but I started thinking, ‘Maybe it would be fun to try and write songs that make sense!’”

For the album’s lead single ‘Really Really Light’, meanwhile, Newman revisited an unused recording with The New Pornographers’ former member Dan Bejar, aka Destroyer. “It’s the chorus from a song we didn’t use on [2014 album] ‘Bill Bruisers’. I thought, ‘I’m going to take this chorus and write a whole new song around it. I’d been listening to that song ‘I’m The Man’ by Aloe Blacc where he interpolates Elton John’s ‘Your Song’, and so I thought ‘I’m going to interpolate a Dan song that no one else has ever heard!’”

Newman added: “Speaking of trying to figure out ways to keep doing things that are new, it was a fun challenge trying to make it all fit together, it took quite a while. I wanted it to sound like it was all written by the same person, even though it’s verse by Newman, chorus by Bejar. It was pretty high concept.”

The record also features a collaboration with Speedy Ortiz frontwoman Sadie Dupuis, ‘Firework In The Falling Snow’, which also took an unconventional form.

“It’s funny, I’ve still never met her!” Newman said. “I’m a fan, I had the music, so I just cold-called her and said ‘Hey, would you be willing to write some lyrics?’ Then within a couple of days she sent me back a song with her singing along. She had all these lyrics that I thought were really great, especially the line ‘Firework In The Falling Snow’. I started cutting bits out, cutting up her lyrics and adding my own, but I felt like I needed somebody to come in and show me what the centre of the song was.

“Collaboration can be tough. I’ve tried doing it with various people who are incredibly talented, and sometimes it’s not what you want. It’s not a New Pornographers song.”

His most unusual collaboration, he recalled, was for an abandoned Broadway musical project based on the Archie Comics universe. “That’s the weird life of a musician. Weird things dangle in front of you and then they just go away.”

The title of the new album, ‘Continue As A Guest’, reflects a sense of alienation that Newman sources from a number of different places. “There’s a lot of levels to it,” he said. “Everybody who’s spent some time buying something online sees that phrase, ‘Would you like to continue as a guest’? and I’m constantly clicking on it like ‘Yes, yes, I’ll continue as a guest!’ The world was such an ugly place [when the album was being made]. Trump was president, the far right was taking over. I felt like I was trying to figure out a way to be in the world, but not of the world.

“It brings you back to the reason you became an artist or a musician too. Because you felt like an outsider, outside of the mainstream, and how you carry that with you through life. I hope, when I say ‘I think I want to continue as a guest’, that it doesn’t come off as negative. Sometimes I read the lyrics of [the title track] and I worry it reads like a suicide note!”

While Newman’s enthusiasm for his craft has not dimmed since he began his career with alternative rock outfit Superconductor in the early ’90s, he admitted that “I’m kind of jaded by a lot of the music business”.

“I hate selling myself, I was never the kid who wanted to get up on stage and perform for people, I was always the kid who loved music,” he said. “I think there’s always that element that will remain pure to me. That’s why you surround yourself with likeminded people.”

The band’s recent signing to Merge reflects this desire. “They approach music from a pure and honourable place,” said Newman. “I’ve known these people for a long time because Destroyer has been on the label for 20 years. They’ve had bands like Arcade Fire so they’ve had records that went to Number One, but they’re also OK with putting out records that only sell 1,000 copies.

“To them, that can coexist. That’s why I was so happy to sign with Merge, because they seem like people who are just in it for the love of it, and they’re in it for life. Hopefully it can be a long relationship.”

Newman revealed that The New Pornographers are already making good progress on the follow-up to ‘Continue As A Guest’. “I feel a certain pride in our stubbornness,” he added. “We don’t give a fuck, we’re staying. You don’t like this one, well we’re gonna make another one, and we’re gonna keep doing this until we die. It’s what we do!”

‘Continue As A Guest’ will be released on March 31. Check out the full tracklist below.

1. ‘Really Really Light’
2. ‘Pontious Pilate’s Home Movies’
3. ‘Cat And Mouse With The Light’
4. ‘Last And Beautiful’
5. ‘Continue As A Guest’
6. ‘Bottle Episodes’
7. ‘Marie And The Undersea’
8. ‘Angelcover’
9. ‘Firework In The Falling Snow’
10. ‘Wish Automatic Suite’

The post The New Pornographers talk new album ‘Continue As A Guest’ and “vocals-obsessed” single ‘Angelcover’ appeared first on NME.