SOURCE is in the Heart & Hand with half of British Sea Power and singer ‘Yan’ Scott Wilkinson is trying to debunk some of the myths that cling to the adopted Brighton band.
“I think once something’s been written down, people don’t take into account that it was 10 years ago. They’re not very accurate, music journalists”, he considers, with a glance at the Dictaphone.
“Yeah,” says guitarist Martin Noble backing him up. “In 2002 we wore the same jackets for about a year, and it just lasts. It’ll take a while for people to realise. It’s like you still get photos of just the four of us, or even with Eamon [Hamilton, now of Brakes] in the band.”
British Sea Power today, the line-up responsible for this year’s triumphant album ‘Valhalla Dancehall’ – and its predecessor, their imaginative soundtrack to Robert Flaherty’s semi-fictional 1934 documentary ‘Man Of Aran’ – is a six-piece, with keyboardist Phil Sumner and viola player Abi Fry brought into the fold as full band members.
Sitting in the pub this afternoon, Yan, Noble and Phil are drinking slowly (Noble: “I would’ve got you one, Phil, but I haven’t got any money. I’ve only got 50 pence.” Phil: “We need to sell some records, eh?”) but are in good spirits. The trio only aired their frustrations with their public image after SOURCE asked if this was the meaning behind the lyric ‘It’s militant, not military’ on ‘Valhalla Dancehall”s thundering opening track ‘Who’s In Control’.
“Sort of,” says Yan. “But it’s also saying that people should just pay a bit more attention to detail in general, really. And partly it’s a good rhyme.”
Many listeners have picked up on the prescience of the song’s hookline, ‘Sometimes I wish protesting was sexy on a Saturday night’ in the light of the last couple of months’ student protests.Phil’s noticed it: “I think there’s been a couple of reviews with people going, ‘Oh yeah…'”
“‘…Cashing in!'” finishes Yan. “They don’t realise how long it takes to record stuff. It was written like 18 months ago. It’s quite a soothsaying song that one, isn’t it? Like the whole library protest thing.”
The song also contains the entertaining lines, ‘I’m a big fan of the local library. I just read a book, but that’s another story’.
“I’m always ahead of the game,” Yan smiles. “That’s my science fiction interest, you see. They can tell you everything that’s going to happen.”
BSP have been with Rough Trade Records for a decade, and the label seems to give them a pretty free hand in organising their affairs. Noble has just finished booking a series of support acts for this month’s UK tour, including Bo Ningen, Teeth Of The Sea and Dutch Uncles. Such independence is rare, even in the indie scene, and the band is aware they wouldn’t receive the same amount of trust if they were starting out today.
“There’s so much riding on it, isn’t there?” says Phil. “If you’re a band now, you get signed, you cost a certain amount of money for a label, and they’re probably going to want to think twice before letting you go off and do what you want to do.”
“And [Rough Trade boss] Geoff Travis is no Alan Sugar,” adds Noble. “But this time round he trusted us to record ourselves. With our recording budget we bought a load of microphones and rented a farmhouse in Selmeston for 18 months. If we’d have turned up with a load of crap, we’d have spent all the money and that would have been it.”
Yan took up residence in the farmhouse for the duration of the recordings, blending so naturally with the Sussex countryside that he earned a new nickname – Stig Of The Dump. “Sometimes the doors would be locked and you’d have to wake him up by knocking and wait for him to come down,” says Noble. “Looking an absolute state with his hair all over. Abi and Neil [‘Hamilton’ Wilkinson, Yan’s bassist brother] lived there all the time they were down so he’d have some companions.”Hamilton and Abi have swapped Brighton life for the peace of the Scottish isles, but the miles separating the bandmates haven’t caused any problems. “Neil works on his songs up in Skye”, explains Phil. “He spends quite a lot of time up there doing that, then brings them down, and Woody will do the drums to them. It’s worked out fine really.”
Later this year BSP hope to start a Valhalla Dancehall club night in Brighton. “We’d have to commit to once a month for six months,” says Noble. “Maybe in summer when we’re doing festivals we could have a night in the week. We might play at one or two, but we might do something alternative to British Sea Power. Get all sorts of different things in, different DJs. M.I.A would be good! But we’re probably setting our sights a bit high.”Of course, BSP have been here before, with their legendary Club Sea Power shows a decade ago. “That was Jeff ‘Disastronaut’ Reed’s idea,” says Noble. “He said we could do our own club at The Lift [now The Hope], but we shouldn’t play any other shows. I think he turned down us supporting The Strokes at The Lift as well, because he only wanted us to play once a month. But it was good, it gave us a month to buy clothes, buy plastic owls and stuff like that, get all these branches, a month to dream before the actual shows.”
At that time the band issued their debut single ‘Fear Of Drowning’ on their own Golden Chariot label but, according to Noble, “didn’t have any aspirations” to be part of Brighton’s DIY scene. However, as they reminisce with SOURCE, it occurs to Noble that maybe the time is right to revive the label. “Rough Trade are letting us do our own CD to take on tour with us,” he says, indicating a CD-R he’s brought along. “It’s got alternative versions of album tracks, different mixes, demos and remixes. I guess it could be on Golden Chariot – our second release. That’d be good, wouldn’t it?”
DIY to BSP may just involve Harveys-fuelled debates about building a wardrobe as a stage set, but their banter reveals the natural independence that’s served them so well over the past 10 years.
“You can have a cigarette in the wardrobe onstage, Phil,” says Noble.”Now you’re interested, aren’t you?” laughs Yan. ‘It’s hard to find anywhere to smoke at gigs without going mad.””I don’t think it’s become more difficult,” says Phil. “Sometimes you just do it. Just break the rules.”
FYI
ALBUM: ‘Valhalla Dancehall’ out now on Rough Trade
LIVE: Komedia, Weds 23rd/Thurs 24th Feb
WEB: www.britishseapower.co.uk
WORDS BY STUART HUGGETT, PHOTOS BY JAMES KENDALL & MATT BARKER
