Andy Gonzales
(Marshmallow Coast)
interview by Ged M 

Andy Gonzales is the driving force behind Marshmallow Coast.  Another Athens resident, transplanted from Denver, he’s also guitarist with Of Montreal and was part of Music Tapes.  His own music is perhaps more reflective and introspective than Of Montreal but it’s a similarly literate take on music that’s inspired by the rich back catalogue of pop music in all its forms.  It’s melodic and emotional, with nods to everything from psychedelic to jazz.  His latest album, ‘Ride the Lightning’ is available on Pickled Egg in the UK and Mira in the US.  We interviewed Andy just after he’d returned home after the Of Montreal European tour.   More info. 

SXP: How do you balance the demands of Marshmallow Coast and Of Montreal?  

Andy: Funny you should ask.  I was just thinking the same thing.  I have slightly neglected M. Coast this past year, but it is my first priority.  Of Montreal is just rocking out.  There is little room within the structure for my personal creativity.  And I am about to make some changes......

SXP: What differences do you see between Of Montreal and Marshmallow Coast? And how is your contribution different in the two bands?  

Andy: I firstly want to dispel any notion that mine is but a side project, anyone who mentions this will be plagued.  I love all the musicians involved, so naturally I want them to contribute to my material, but now I am realizing it is at the cost of stupid critics viewing me as being in Of Montreal's shadow, because that band has had more visibility.

SXP: Dottie [Alexander] said that Of Montreal “stole” you from Music Tapes!  Is that how you remember it?  

Andy: Maybe, but I still would gladly play with Julian if he were around, especially now.  At the time when I moved to Athens everyone was involved with everyone else, there were no hard feelings.

SXP: How did you meet Kevin Barnes?  Do you think you’re similar songwriters? 

Andy: Firstly if you interview Kevin and make no mention of me or M. Coast I am going to hate you!  Kevin contacted me ‘cause he liked a tape I was circulating around.  He thought we could be a classic songwriting team, and I still like the idea, but we have our own outlets that are chugging along quite successfully.  I guess our similarity depends on your definition of similar.  Neither of us plays heavy metal, rap, soul, etc...  We do pop songs with a love of the classic writers and performers.  I think Kevin is more sixties influenced and I am more 30s-70s influenced.  We both like unusual lyrics, which I feel he has championed.

SXP: What is the membership of Marshmallow Coast – is it always your Of Montreal colleagues as on the recent UK tour?  

Andy: I sometimes play solo, sometimes we have a different drummer.  It changes.  Derek contributed a great deal on the last record.  On that record we only listed the two of us as official members.  Like I said before I love playing with everyone.

SXP: How, in your view, has your music developed over your 4 albums?  

Andy: I have improved as a producer I think.  Maybe a slightly better guitarist.  But, for instance the last song on ‘Ride the Lightning’, Jebodiah's Restraints, I wrote when I was 17, ten years ago.  So in some ways little has changed.

SXP: Yours is quite an intricate and melancholy pop music.  A fair assessment?  And do you ever just want to turn your amp to 11 and rock out?  

Andy: That suits me.  I wrote a Jimi Hendrix style song recently but I don't think it will fit in the context of my next record.  I feel that to write rock songs you need to fool around with a bassist and a drummer in a live setting.  I don't get that opportunity much.  So I just write diddy's on me acoustic.  

SXP: The artwork on your site and albums is naïve and striking.  Who’s responsible? 

Andy: Me and my girlfriend with my brother managing it all.  We were just goofing around.  I need to revamp the whole thing.  I paint also, and most of it is pretty simple.

SXP: Your website includes an offer to write a song for $1million.  Have you had much response?  

Andy: I had this business for a while where I was writing songs for people for $150 dollars and I did about 8 or 9 and realized it was a pain in the ass, so I just changed the price amount.

SXP: On your website, you talk about collecting comic books and playing X-Box.  Does that ‘fantasy’ approach influence your writing?  

Andy: Yeah it does, I am a big kid at heart.  Whereas others like to go out and get drunk, I don't do any of that crap.  I like to read stuff or be distracted, or write, or draw.

SXP: What are your musical/literary influences? 

Andy: I like Satie, Nat King Cole, Django Reinhardt, Mussorgsky, Los Panchos, Rachel's.  I read a large number of classics as a young teenager, Dostoevsky, Hesse, Kafka, Tennessee Williams, Homer, but lately I am reading kids books like Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

SXP: On your website, you mentioned taking up golf.  Is golf the new rock’n’roll? 

Andy: Well.... officially..... yes, yes it is.  You heard it here first folks!

SXP: What next for Andy Gonzales and The Coast? 

Andy: A new record next fall, possible titles include ‘A Fond F’, ‘Color Me Psyched’, ‘The Erotic Awakening of Greg’, ‘Last Trip to a Strange Place’.  Hello everyone!  Thanks for reading and thank you for interviewing moi!  In the immortal words of Leon, "Keep taking your pants off till you find yourself".

 

The Raveonettes
interview by Tony S 

The Raveonettes are Sune Rose Wagner on guitar and vocals and Sharin Foo on bass guitar and vocals.  (Outside the interview they tell me they both have non-traditional Danish names.  Sharin’s grandfather is Chinese, which is why her surname is Foo.)  They have to date released one single Attack Of The Ghost Riders which also opens their mini-album ‘Whip It On’ and is out via Columbia though it was originally released on Denmark’s Crunchy Frog label.  They also released a two-track single to their email list, which sold out last November.  I caught up with my favourite new band in a tavern off Oxford Street, prior to their sold out show at The 100 Club.  For more information on the band, go to www.raveonettes.com.

SXP: The first I read about you was the Time Out preview of the Water Rats show, which compared you to Mr Bloody Valentine and Ride.  My friend was at the show and said “they sound like The Jesus and Mary Chain and they open with a feedback-drenched Every Day by Buddy Holly.  You’ll like them.”  Then I heard the first notes of screaming guitar on Attack of the Ghost Riders and I was in love.  How did you get together and how long have you been going? 

Sune: It started, I guess, back in January 1999.  I was living in LA at the time and I started writing songs.  Then I moved to New York and I tried to find musicians to start the band with and I just couldn’t find any.  I met tons of people and they were all giving me the wrong attitude so I thought of Sharin because I knew her from back home from a couple of years prior to that. 

SXP: Back in Copenhagen? 

Sune: From Copenhagen, yeah.  I heard she was starting to play the bass and it was looking good and I knew she’d been singing pretty much her whole life.  And I wanted to do the twin vocal thing.  I came back to Copenhagen and I called her up and I played her the songs that I’d written while I was over there and she liked it.  That’s really how we started. 

Sharin:  We did a bit of touring together, just the two of us around Denmark, to try it out and see if it clicked and it did. It just came so natural for us to sing together and the vocals just blended in an interesting way and it was instant, it sounded great. 

SXP: Were you in any bands prior to writing these songs? 

Sune: Yeah.  I’ve been in various bands since I was 16-17 or something – stuff around Denmark. [I later bump into Dave Bedford of This Way Up Records (Tindersticks, Ian McNabb, Warm Jets) who tells me that Sune was in a band called Psyched Up Janus, one of This Way Up’s less popular bands.  They released at least one album called ‘Swell’.] 

SXP: Is there a healthy music scene in Denmark, like in Sweden?

Sune: Sweden has always been really good but in Denmark people are a little lazy because no one has ever broken out of Denmark in the rock tradition.  So I think people have that attitude that it’s not possible, so they get a little lazy and they just book tours of Denmark.  We always thought right from the beginning that we weren’t satisfied with that.  We had a feeling that people in Denmark wouldn’t appreciate this kind of music.

Sharin: Which they didn’t!

Sune: Which they didn’t!  *all laugh* You have never seen so many terrible reviews!  We always felt that this music was meant for London, we always had it in mind.  I don’t know why.  And the States.  That’s what we aimed for really.

SXP: Why The Raveonettes?  I assume with the “Rave On” and the fact you open with a cover of Every Day, there’s a Buddy Holly connection? 

Sune: Absolutely.  It’s very simple.  It’s The Rave On, Buddy Holly.  We are huge Buddy Holly fans and the –ettes is definitely a tribute to all the girl groups from the early 60s.

Sharin: It’s quite simple, actually. 

SXP: Musically, it’s The Velvet Underground and Jesus and Mary Chain but the thing that did it for me was that it’s very much schlock 50s sci-fi and horror films.  Was that your passion and did you want to bring it into your music?

Sune: Yes, we wanted to have the music be very cinematic, we wanted it to be like small stories, small movies that people could put their own pictures to.  Each track, you would just have different pictures in your head about what is going on and you could make up your own movie set.  A lot of the sounds and stuff are B-movie-ish because it’s so simple, it’s almost humourous.  If you see any of those movies, then…*all laugh*  They’re so simple, so striking.  I think we got fed up of music being so serious and so…

Sharin: So pretentious.

Sune: Yeah, so pretentious, and we just wanted to make it just really simple.  We’ll tell a story but you put your own pictures to it and you have your own funny little movie right there.

Sharin: And the atmospherics of the 40s and 50s, it looks great. 

SXP: Are the Mary Chain and the Velvets an influence? 

Sune.  We have a lot of great bands that we use for inspiration.  Those are definitely two of them, The Cramps are another, The Everly Brothers, just their singing. 

Sharin: Buddy Holly.

Sune: Ritchie Valens.  There’s loads of them.  They’re basically classic songwriters.  We just wanted to do something that was very simple, back to basics, three chords type of deal, and then add our element to it.  We did all the beats, we didn’t use live drums on the records, it was all sampled drums.

SXP: The album’s recorded in B Minor?

Sharin: B Flat.

SXP: Why B Flat?  Do you think that’s a dirty sounding chord?

Sune: It’s actually just a guitar thing really, it just happened that way.  It could have been in any key I guess. 

SXP: And the next one is in the next key?

Sune: In Major, yeah, B Major.  We did that because our intention was to do two mini albums, one in B Flat Minor, one in B Flat Major, but after we did the Minor one, things started to happen to us so quickly so we didn’t have the time to do anything about it.  We had already written the songs for the next album but then the ball started to roll. 

SXP: And you haven’t had time to record it yet?

Sune: Yeah, we’ve now finished it, last month.

SXP: That’s the one inside the cover of Whip It On, with the white cover? 

Sharin: Yeah.  It’s actually not going to be that now.

Sune: That was meant to be an EP but now we have turned it into a full length album with 13 tracks on it, all in B Flat Major, and it’s a totally different vibe in a way because it’s a major, it’s a lot more accessible I think.  More melodic.

SXP: But it’s basically what you do now?

Sharin: Yeah, it still has that Raveonettes sound, but it’s different, it has more space and it’s an album full of hit songs and it’s good.

SXP: You put out an internet single with two tracks on it, for people joining the email list.  Are those going to be on the next album? 

Sune: No, we don’t like to recycle! *both laugh*

SXP: What’s the reaction to the band so far?

Sune: Great here, almost selling out apart from Denmark.  We have stopped playing in Denmark.  The tour now has been almost sold out every day.  Quite amazing.  We haven’t really toured that much in the States yet.  We have played New York many times and a couple of other cities like LA.  The vibe over there is very strong right now, they’re really pulling us to go back to the States. The next album, the full length one, we’ve finished that in New York and we mixed that in London with Alan Moulder.

Sharin: The overall reaction has been really good and it’s quite exciting for us too. 

SXP: And you’ve played Wembley, which must have been nerve wracking?

Sune: That was great actually.  It wasn’t till afterwards that we sat there and drank champagne and as we got drunk it was like: what just happened?  Oh shit, we played Wembley!

SXP: You’re on Columbia, which is part of Sony.  How different is it to Crunchy Frog? 

Sune: It’s a lot different.  We put out the ‘Whip It On’ mini album on Crunchy in Denmark first.  Sharin and I wanted to move on so we bought back the rights for ‘Whip It On’ and Columbia picked it up. 

SXP: You’re touring with Interpol in the States.  Should be a great double bill.  Have you met them yet?

Sune: We met them at the NME show.  They seemed really nice, they really liked our music.  I haven’t heard their music yet but I hear it’s good and I’m looking forward to it. 

SXP: Anything else you’d like to add?

Sune: I’m hungry.  It’s St Valentine’s Day, what can you do?  How are people here because we don’t have it in Denmark?

SXP: Well, basically, you ask someone out that you fancy, for them to reject you and then you can write an album about it.

Sharin: So it’s a sad day of rejections.

Sune: yeah, but is it a big party day?

SXP: (to Sharin) I believe you’ve become a bit of a heartthrob?

Sharin: *look confused* What’s that?

Sune: It’s like a pin up. *he explains this to Sharin in Danish and it clicks*

Sharin: Did you read that horrible interview in NME?

SXP: Yeah, that was bad.

Sharin: They didn’t tell me what it was all about.  I’m a bit disappointed with them. 

Sune: How To Shag A Rock Star! *laughs*

Sharin: Yeah, whatever.

Sune: Well, publicity is good for us. 

SXP: I’ve only seen you as a support act.  Is your headlining set much longer?

Sune: Not much longer.  We like to do a shorter set but, because we’re headlining, we have to do a bit more otherwise people will be disappointed.  We’ll do 35-40 minutes. 

Sharin: Also, all the songs are in the same key so it seems to be a bit of a challenge for people to listen to it if it was, like, one and a half hours.

Sune: And it’s not like all our songs are so short that we have to play 60 songs.  We don’t want to do that.

SXP: Thanks!

  

Andy Ward: Homescience
interview by Kev O and Ged M 

Homescience is Andy Ward (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Tina Muat (drums) and Steve Hartley (bass).  They’ve released two albums: ‘Main Sprit Weind’ (Damaged Goods, 2001) and ‘Songs For Sick Days’ (Track and Field, 2002).  In addition, they’re produced a number of EPs, the most recent of which is Small Music on Fortuna Pop! (2003).   While the music is American inspired, it’s not constrained by the titles “Americana” or “alt.country”.  Instead it’s music that builds from classic pop like the Beach Boys, as interpreted by people who haven’t seen much of the sun.  Consequently there’s a darker lyrical edge, reflecting their roots in Northern Britain.   We spoke to Andy before their gig with Of Montreal at the Spitz on 31 January 2003.    

SXP: You’re Andy Ward, right? 

Andy: Yeah.  I get called Andy Walker all the time for some reason.  It was in a review once and I constantly get called Andy Walker now.

SXP: Is it just the three of you?

Andy: There used to be six of us when we first started and then bit-by-bit people dropped out.  Edinburgh’s a strange place to have a band.  There are some good bands there but either everyone’s in a band or they want to be in a hobby kind of band on Sunday afternoons. 

SXP: Which Edinburgh bands do you rate?

Andy: From Edinburgh? There’s us and Ballboy. I’m just trying to think of who else is around in Edinburgh.  I don’t know really!  

SXP: Why live in Edinburgh?

Andy: We just got bored and moved there one day.  Just one of those things where you go for a weekend and end up staying there.

SXP: What’s the Leeds connection? 

Andy: Me and Steve grew up in Leeds, well Wakefield.  Tina’s from Liverpool. 

SXP: Were you into music before you went to Edinburgh?

Andy: Me and Steve used to be in a band called Good Morning Canada but that’s quite a few years ago now.  That was quite good fun.  This guy The Wandering Step was the other guy in the band.  We used to play shows with Mogwai, we did a few gigs with the Pastels, Goldblade, Damon and Naomi, Jad Fair, anyone who was around at the time. 

SXP: How does your music compare now? Has Homescience changed direction? 

Andy: It’s not a million miles away.  It was a lot more teen pop in those days, it’s a lot more low-fi now.  We split the band between myself and the guy who’s in The Wandering Step now.  My stuff was a bit poppier and his stuff was a bit weirder.  The music we make is a lot more thoughtful these days, it’s not so teen-based.  

SXP: Is that The Wandering Step who released ‘I Want To Go To Reykjavik’ on Deltasonic?   

Andy: Yeah.  It’s not a million miles away from what he did then. 

SXP: There are lots of comparisons made in your publicity to Sparklehorse, etc.  Are these valid?   

Andy: I guess so.  Sparklehorse certainly.  I used to be a big Flaming Lips fan, anything from between ‘Priest Driven Ambulance’ to ‘Clouds Taste Metallic’, especially ‘Transmissions From A Satellite Heart’.  Grandaddy and people like that are OK but I don’t think we’re really…there’s a fine line between us: those bands and the other, quirkier side.  I think we’re edging towards the quirkier!  The kind of stuff we listen to is The Beach Boys, The Kinks, a lot of older bands mainly.  That’s where we get things from.  There are a lot of interesting things going off on the records. 

A lot of things I enjoy with the band are the production on the records and things like that.  We did the first album in a studio which was OK at the time but it was a little bit overproduced and it didn’t really sound like what we wanted it to sound.  We demo’d the album on 8 track and it sounded like what we sound like.  But when we went into the studio something happened.  It all went a bit pear shaped!  For us, it [producing ourselves] seems to work very well. It’s weird because we always seem to get a different sound with each batch of recordings we do.  So I like the way you can capture time in recordings.   And even though we probably do the same things it always has a different edge.  And things usually tend to work in batches.

SXP: There is a lot more space on ‘Songs For Sick Days’ in the music compared to the first album. 

Andy: It’s not a million miles away.  The demos are very us but the album just didn’t turn out that way.   It just became a bit of a monster! 

SXP: You recorded in McNamara Studios.

Andy: It’s Grant McNamara who recorded it for us and we produced it.  We never did a lot of studio recording so when you get into the studio it’s all very exciting and things happen and all of a sudden you come away saying: oh! We should have done it like that really!

SXP: It’s on Damaged Goods.  How did that come about?

Andy: We sent two or three tapes off and we got the Pickled Egg single that we did first of all and then we got the Damaged Goods thing.  It worked out really well: we only sent two or three tapes off and we got two replies.   We weren’t actually gigging at all at that time.  We were just recording things at home.   The Damaged Goods thing is pretty cool.  We were the only kind of quirky pop band on the label so we really didn’t fit in too well! 

SXP: Now you’re released ‘Songs For Sick Days’ on Track and Field.  Is that a one off?

Andy: No.  We’ve got plans at the moment to do another album with Track & Field and a single.  There are bits and pieces going on.  We’ve already recorded the next album.  And we’ve got plans for the next one as well!  We’re a very busy band really: we’ve got a lot of ideas.  The next album’s not a million miles away from ‘Songs For Sick Days’.  It’s more textured.  It’s got a lot more things going on.  It’s not quite as sparse sounding.  It’s a bit weirder, it’s a bit more cut-up.  It’s not quite the epic 22 track special, you know!   We just wanted to make a straightforward, 60s-y, 33-34 minute album, with 12 songs.  It would be very easy to do another ‘Songs For Sick Days’ and bang lots of the songs on there that we’re working on.  I just like doing different things every time.   I’m really happy with ‘Songs For Sick Days’ but obviously I don’t want to do the same thing again.   So that’s why I did the next album in a different way. 

SXP: When are the albums likely to come out?

Andy: I think we’re planning on a summer release for the next album, which is called ‘Jungle’.   It’s got a bit of a jungle theme – not jungle music – with lots of huge monkeys and rats.

SXP: Not a drum and bass thing then?

Andy: No, it’s more of a kids’ book kind of thing.  I guess we kind of make kids’ music anyway.  So lots of pixiephones and keyboard noises and things. 

SXP: It makes it interesting but does it make it kiddy if you’re using all those kinds of sounds?

Andy: No, it’s just the fact we’re using toy instruments and things like that.  It’s the standard to make albums with just guitars and drums and bass. I don’t find any enjoyment in that really.  I like different sounds and you can use these instruments in very different ways.  ‘Songs For Sick Days’ is quite a guitar-y album.  It’s got louder sections and it’s got contrasts; it’s not very cutting edge but I think the thing about ‘Songs For Sick Days’ is that it works as a whole piece: the sum of the parts is greater than the whole, or whatever. 

SXP: You’re credited as key songwriter?

Andy: I do write most of the songs but a lot of the songs are primarily my ideas that are messed around with by everyone.  I do a lot of the stuff in recordings, but slowly everyone else is coming more into it.  Things are becoming a bit more interesting and varied. Everyone writes songs in the band.  It’s just that so far it’s just been mine that are being used!

SXP: There’s not a lot of information on your records and on your second one there’s practically none.   It’s all pink and purple – someone who’s colour blind wouldn’t see anything at all!  

Andy: Just because there are so many songs on there, we keep it simple because there’s enough going on elsewhere!  I hate thank you lists and things like that.   I don’t mind words but it’s not something I’m particularly interested in.  Tina does all the artwork and she has ideas and because she’s in music it makes it a lot easier.  I like everything to be kept quite central to the band.

SXP: On a few songs, the music is uptempo and poppy while the lyrics say something else. It’s a bit like the Delgados and some of Alun’s songs. 

Andy: The music is quite upbeat and cheery mostly.  I love things that are slightly sinister, the darker and the depressing.  It’s a nice clash against the cheerful.  We’re quite anarchic people as well, so…

SXP: There’s a great opening line to the album: “If you cut off my head/ I won’t be dead/ ‘cos little wings will sprout from my shoulders”.

Andy: I actually dreamed the song.  I woke up doing the classic rock thing of dreaming a song and struggling out of bed and finding a guitar. 

SXP: Did you dream the image?

Andy: No, I dreamed that I had to actually sing it but it was going on at the time.  It was like a narration through the dream.  It was a bit weird.  But the wings were very small!

SXP: Why 22 songs on ‘Songs For Sick Days’?

Andy: Just because we’ve got a lot of songs and I was very excited about recording.  Things just kept going and going.  I didn’t intend it to be 22 songs but I did want to make a big record.  I wanted to make – I know it’s not really like that – ‘The White Album’.  It’s more of a journey or a road album, an adventure that you sit through.  It’s quite a long process.  Again, it’s the thing about the sum of the parts.

SXP: Is that all the stuff you recorded or was there stuff held back?

Andy: Yeah, there were other songs that will appear as b-sides or something.

SXP: Have you done any singles?

Andy: We just tend to do EPs.  We’ve got an EP coming out at the moment, called Small Music.  Again, that’s quite different.  It’s band-ish but it’s got a lot of loops and I recorded things by using sequencing, just recording verses and cutting thing up and pasting them. 

SXP: You said that all the bands you listen to are from the 60s - The Kinks, The Beach Boys - and at same time you’re talking about using modern technology and modern influences as well. 

Andy: Yeah.  You don’t want to do just 60s rip offs. There’s got to be a bit more to it really to make it a bit more contemporary.  And I just get bored really quickly.  I like to work very quickly and I like happy accidents and spontaneity, things falling to pieces.  I like the way that it doesn’t sound professional.  I like flaws in music and a lot of Homescience is based on flaws!  

A lot of the songs are written while I’m actually messing about recording and getting ideas from that. I live with my eight track so I just put lots of things down and mess around with them later.  That’s how I wrote ‘Songs For Sick Days’.  There’s always some kind of a problem with it – well, not a problem, there’s always some sort of flaw but that’s part of the charm.  It’s not often that I like to hear records that are perfectly played.  I just think it loses a lot of the feeling of what’s actually being played.  Obviously not if it’s really messy or there’s something really wrong with it!   But I think a lot of the charm of what we do is seeing the gaps and it’s just human. 

SXP: Is recording a quick process or do you lay down lots of tracks – are you a closet Brian Wilson?

Andy: Getting more so that way!  ‘Songs For Sick Days’ started where I did pretty much a song a day when I was in the mood to do it.  It did end up taking quite a long time to make and mixing took quite a while, although you wouldn’t guess!  It took about a year to make probably.  There were times when we’d do two or three songs a day and then wouldn’t do anything for a week or two.  Pretty much everything we recorded is there.  There are moments where everything crashes in and guitars are way too loud and drums are crashing through everything. 

SXP: Was it recorded on 8 or 24 track?

Andy: Digital 8 track.  But I work at a blind school but they had a big clearout and we found all these old microphones.  They used to do audio recordings there so I got all these 60s mikes that they were throwing out.  They had such a nice quality to the mikes so I started using those.  I get really excited about recording!  

SXP: You mixed it down as well? 

Andy: Just did it at home.  I do like recording at home. The point about the first album is that we recorded it in about a week.  We did all the drums in one day, we did all the bass, the guitars.  And I think it really does sound like that.  Whereas for ‘Songs For Sick Days’, we just did a song at a time and you can tell it’s not all just done in one setting.  If you need another guitar on something you do it at the time, you get each song finished.  Instead of going through with a marker saying “I did the guitar wrong on song 1 so I’m going to put another guitar on”, it’s a lot more stale.  

SXP: So digital 8 track is the thing of the future?

Andy: Yeah it’s great!  It’s the best thing I’ve ever had in my life!  It’s got so many different sides to it, you can use it as a sequencer, you can record, it’s got effects, you can do everything.  And the mixing’s made easy with it so you can sit with that all day and come up with something!  

SXP: Heroes and villains? I guess Brian Wilson.

Andy: Beach Boys, ELO…

SXP: No way!

Andy: Yeah, I love ELO.  They did a lot of good records, especially when they first started.  They went off on a tangent after that!  ‘On The Third Day’ is probably my favourite album and ‘Eldorado’ is a great album as well.  But the Beach Boys, Beatles, just all the typical kind of stuff.  A lot of terrible bands who have great ideas like Supertramp and things like that!   But they’re a bit muso-ish.  The Kinks, The Zombies, all the kind of things you’d expect already. 

SXP: What about the “new rock revolution”?

Andy: That’s the villain.  I know we’re not exactly doing something brand new, it’s quite derivative but I just think it’s far to easy just to pick out people. 

SXP: It’s not derivative.  Unless you’re an originator, everything’s influenced by someone. 

Andy: Yeah, there’s being influenced by… and basing your career on it!  But there’s a lot of things to be influenced by.  Why bother with just two bands!  Just listen to ELO’s early records, they’re fantastic!   They did some awful stuff later on but the first things are great!  And then all the indie bands that were around when we formed, like Guided By Voices, They Might Be Giants, a lot of American indie, the quirky side of things.  All that kind of low-fi stuff, Flaming Lips, early Mercury Rev.  The first couple of Mercury Rev albums are fantastic.  Can’t think who else.  It’s like going into a record shop and thinking “who do I usually like again?”! 

SXP: You’ve played with a lot of American bands.  Have you had much interest from American audiences? 

Andy: We’ve not been over there yet.  It’s starting to build here so it’s kind of early days really.  But people are interested.  It’s taken off in Spain and Europe, which is quite nice.  But it’s early days.  

SXP: How is the record doing?

Andy: Still early days.  We got great reviews everywhere.  We didn’t particularly get any bad reviews.   Some less good than others but no really bad ones.  It’s just a growing process really.