"So do you like the new album then mate?"
Well, yes...
"Oh. Do you think we've gone a different way and perhaps you're not sure about some of the newer things?”
Er, no.
“You're not allowed to give one-word answers. Come on, you've got to type this up later.”
Honestly, we really like the album.
“You looked away AGAIN!”
Disorder is suffering interrogation by having it's own embarrassingly cheap and barely functional recording device thrust in our face by Rich Cash and Anthony Silvester. Attempting to make ourselves heard above the perpetual chatter of the after-workers in a London boozer, they don't seem convinced that the press actually like them at all.
"The results from the focus groups are very positive though,” they smirk.
The debut XX Teens album arrives fourteen months since they last (dis)graced our pages. Then, a rather unnerved, ashen-faced scribe reported back on the necessity of Ryan from The Cribs to rub ice cubes over his nipples, babbled something about dogs on skateboards performing dance routines to covers of 'Cotton Eye Joe', and was repeatedly played mega-mixes of Winston Churchill’s speeches.
“Oh my god, we felt really bad about that," recoils Anthony. "I had to go to confession afterwards.”
“We were drunken, laddish fools,” agrees Rich. “She phoned at 11 o’clock at night or something. I think she was quite young as well. She was under the quilt going ‘Keep the noise down. Don’t swear, my Dad will hear,’ ha-ha.”
Anthony: “We weren’t very nice to her. Do you know her? We should write a letter of apology. We did write a song about her.”
Rich: “Yes. It’s an instrumental though.”
At our first encounter we knew they had scant regard for conventional song structures or production quality, had adopted amusing monikers like ‘Rich Cash’ and ‘Danny Fancy’, and tended to restrict themselves to just the one riff per song. Frankly, they weren’t taking this music business very seriously at all. Since their debut Disorder appearance they’ve changed the band line-up twice, made some absurdly surreal videos, and performed to a handful of early arrivals on the recent Long Blondes tour.
“I made the effort,” Rich claims, undeterred by the often-indifferent response. “I even put on a beret to try to reach their target audience.”
As a live entity, XX Teens are generally known for discarding clichéd rock-star gestures for barely acknowledging the audience, rolling up their sleeves and just getting on with it. Perhaps a reluctant frontman, Rich often positions himself behind the drum kit, hidden behind black shades, and adopts a suitably muted expression.
Anthony: “I think that all-in-a-straight-line thing was a mixture of...”
Rich: “…Maybe some sort of equality issues where it’s a case of well, who’s going to step forward?”
Anthony: “A bit, yes. I think we also liked the idea of being a bit like a boy band.”
Rich: “Yeah, to begin with we all had stools. Not just the drummer.”
Perhaps there are now a few more kindred spirits around (they cite Ipso Facto as particular favourites), but they still feel isolated from much of what’s going on.
Anthony: “We never really fitted in with anyone. We’re not in a gang or anything really. It’s always a very attractive exercise for certain people to draw links between people who are doing certain things at the same time, but they’re usually very tenuous.”
Rich: “Like 'The-Bands-Who-Come-From-A-Seaside-Town-Scene'. Or bands who all wear a certain hat or something.”
Lest they threaten the global economy by causing a detrimental impact on the sales of photocopying machinery, they’ve also had to change their name since our last encounter. Obviously there are legal requirements which prevent them from discussing this enforced arrangement in detail… but what the hell?
“We exchanged a few angry letters with them,” Anthony explains, prior to Xerox issuing their ultimatum.
“It’s called a Cease And Desist order,” continues Rich. “It’s a letter that says you can’t afford to fight so just stop it.”
So why XX Teens?
Rich: “It was a happy coincidence because we could be a bit juvenile about it…”
Anthony: “In a perverse way it does reflect the change of the band as well. You know, the two are different bands.”
Rich: “There’s still a sort of mock hysteria (surrounding porn). Privately no one’s offended in the slightest but publicly we have to abide by a sort of mob rule. If it might offend one person out of a hundred then it should be covered up. It leaves us with an unhealthy obsession with youth and perfection and purity. So we chose XX Teens because it sums up… the idea of youth being something both alluring and forbidden.”
Anthony: “If Xerox Teens was about kids blindly buying into styles and adopting attitudes, then XX Teens is about youth itself being a commodity.
Rich: “It’s streamlining. We cut out all those extra letters. It’s more to the point. And that’s what we’ve done with the band.”
Ah, the rumoured internal conflicts which resulted in a personnel re-shuffle…
“We can’t really talk too much about it because I think it’s a bit unfair,” says Anthony, uncomfortably. “I wouldn’t want to read of someone speaking ill of me.”
Rich: “So these are the things you can’t put in,” grins Rich, eyeing up Disorder’s thoroughly researched and carefully prepared list of questions. “So what have you got so far?”
‘Welcome To Goon Island’ is the title of the debut album and it’s a rollicking ride; from full-on balls-out guitar assaults to “big psychedelic mash-ups”, and the moving speech from Parliament Square’s permanent anti-war hero Brian Haw towards the end. The Teens still bark out ‘Darlin’ like they’re in some seedy Shoreditch dive which has suddenly re-surfaced in the middle of a set by some steel band at the Notting Hill Carnival. The sinister swagger of ‘My Favourite Hat’ could be The Birthday Party doing ‘Summertime Blues’ over the top of ‘The Man Whose Head Expanded’ by The Fall. Well, perhaps.
Originally the name of an aborted project with artists and video directors, Goon Island became “…like a magical holiday destination to keep thinking about. And then with everything that’s happened it all felt fantastic, so I guess we’d arrived.”
We thought that perhaps it could be interpreted as a metaphor for England as well?
Anthony: “There are definitely elements of the album which are actually documenting the time right now and so therefore it does work in that respect.”
So who exactly have they made this record for?
Rich: “We had our own label so we could put things out into the world that we really wanted to make, and that was always our attitude rather than worrying about who was going to buy it. Luckily Mute have been quite receptive to that. If people don’t buy it then, er… they’ll melt them all down and make them into Nick Cave CD’s I suppose. Or Depeche Mode’s.”
Anthony: “We’ve been told by our manager that absolutely no-one will. I think it’s because a journalist - probably you - is going to upload it onto the Internet this week and everyone will have it by next week.”
What? We’re a respectable publication. We wouldn’t stoop to such corrupt practices.
Anthony: “You say that now but you look shifty to me.”
Harrumph.
“I think you can only make something that you’re proud of,” he concludes as we’re packing away. “And then that’s it isn’t it?”
No comments:
Post a Comment