Write About Love

Belle and Sebastian - Write About Love

released 11 October 2010 on Rough Trade

A decade ago, if you’d described Belle and Sebastian as “swaggering”, you’d have been laughed out of town, and rightly so. But since the turn of the century, things have changed for the Glaswegians. Firstly, in 2002, Isobel Campbell left the group and has since made a name for herself as both a solo artist and playing “Beauty” to Mark Lanegan’s “Beast“. Secondly, they roped in Trevor Horn to produce their 2003 album, Dear Catastrophe Waitress. Horn is a former member of musical pioneers, Buggles, as well as being known for his work with some leading lights of the 1980s pop scene, including Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

Dear Catastrophe Waitress heralded a marked change in sound for Belle and Sebastian. However, though it may have seemed like an anomaly at the time, in retrospect it was simply the beginning of a new chapter of their career. Follow-up, The Life Pursuit, built on this new-found approach and the trend has continued with Write About Love. Belle and Sebastian have certainly developed since they first appeared onto the scene almost fifteen years ago: the percussion is more dynamic, the basslines are funkier and more solid, the guitars are choppier and more prominent, and the lyrics… well, they’re the same as they've always been; what were you expecting?

Belle and Sebastian trade in the music of confounding expectations and the interplay of opposites. While the casual listener may dismiss their songs as throwaway, repeated listens reveal much more at work beneath the surface. Lead singer Stuart Murdoch is one of the best character creators in music today, with his tales of boys and girls in love, being thwarted and finding it hard to fit in. The music of Belle and Sebastian is witty, dark, engrossing and - whisper it quietly - sexy.

Write About Love opens confidently with a strong drum pattern, simple piano chords and Sarah Martin gently cooing, “Make me dance, I want to surrender”. That track is I Didn’t See It Coming, and it sets the tone for the first half of the record with its synths, wandering bassline, airy feel and careful layering. The tracks begin fairly sparsely, but build into something fully immersive and represent some of the most professional and well-crafted work the group have produced. Even songs that don’t immediately jump out on first listen have plenty to recommend them, like the gorgeous chord change to introduce the chorus of the languid ballad, Calculating Bimbo.

Side One (Belle and Sebastian consciously divide their records into two halves, so it seems to make sense to do the same) concludes with Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John; a track most notable for its guest vocalist: Norah Jones. It may be the result of the meeting of two strong-willed parties, but the track doesn’t particularly sound like the work of either artist, instead falling halfway between Belle and Sebastian’s indie stylings and Jones’s easy jazz. It’s difficult to tell if the experiment works, but it does enough to justify its presence on the album and be seen as more than simply a curio.

Almost as a response to the cautious, uncertain ending of Side One, Side Two really gets off to a flying start. Current single, Write About Love, is an irresistible slice of sunshine pop featuring vocals from BAFTA-winning actress, Carey Mulligan. In typical Belle and Sebastian style, everything is not quite as it first seems, and the track centres around a girl trapped in a dull office job who writes as a means to escape her dreary existence. This theme is further explored on next track and album highlight, I’m Not Living In The Real World. Over an abundance of drum fills and keyboards that sound like steel drums, Stevie Jackson sings of a boy who grows up on the periphery, never accepted by his peers and never really participating fully in everyday life. It may not seem the chirpiest subject matter for a song, but Belle and Sebastian pack so much joie de vivre into its three minutes, social alienation’s never sounded so fun. The track also features a brilliantly wrong-footing key change, and a repeated “ooh” melody so catchy you’ll need to be vaccinated to resist it.

Write About Love may not be a great leap forward for Belle and Sebastian, but it’s such an enjoyable record it’s difficult to hold it against them. Plus, there are signs they’re honing their craft and growing into the band they’ve always been capable of being. Trevor Horn may have produced perhaps the definitive pop record of the 1980s with ABC’s The Lexicon of Love, but on Write About Love, Belle and Sebastian display more than enough to suggest that one day they’ll be able to eclipse their former colleague, and they’ll do so with a swagger.

The Trip

Laetitia Sadier - The Trip

released 4 October 2010 on Drag City

If your career shows no sign of progression over time, is that necessarily a bad thing? If you’re in full-time employment, your boss will answer with a definite, “yes”, and haul you in for a review before you can say, “rhetorical question”. But in music, it’s not quite that black and white. For example, Status Quo have been writing the same song since 1967 and are regularly scoffed at by critics, but it’s apparently completely fine for AC/DC to have had the exact same shtick since they appeared on the scene.

Which brings us to Stereolab, the cult act who are praised by journalists and adored by hardcore fans. They’ve only got one trick too, but perhaps they’re immune to biting criticism because it’s a damn good trick, and one that no-one else seems capable of replicating. Between 1990 and 2009, Stereolab combined lounge pop, Krautrock, analogue electronica and avant-garde to create a sound quite unlike that of any other band. Like the best artists, they existed on the periphery in their own private world, penetrable only to those prepared to invest the necessary time. Their songs lasted anything from one minute to ten, were often built up carefully layer by layer, and their albums had brilliantly bonkers titles like Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements and, career-highlight, Emperor Tomato Ketchup.

Throughout much of Stereolab’s life, singer Laetitia Sadier has been part of side-project group, Monade, whose most recent album, Monstre Cosmic, was a superb exercise in lilting, restrained pop. Sadier has broken free from the shadow of both groups in releasing The Trip, her first solo album.

For someone so associated with formulaic music and repetition, The Trip was never going to be surprising, but it’s still hard not to see it as a let down. Say what you like about Stereolab, but there was always a playfulness and European glamour to their music which is sadly lacking here. What Sadier has left us with, is effectively an inferior version of a Monade record.

The Trip opens with the emotionally distant and hollow One Million Year Trip: a song built around a simple, grating bassline, and an odd selection to begin any record. The opening track is so important for any album, and The Trip immediately gets off on the wrong foot. It’s true the album vastly improves after the dull and metallic One Million Year Trip, but it’s difficult not to feel like the bulk of the damage has already been done.

Perhaps it’s ok to re-hash the same ideas when there’s some wit, panache or passion behind it, but Sadier seems genuinely disinterested throughout most of the record. Her vocals have always sailed dangerously close to the line that separates Gallic insouciance and boredom, but here she plants herself firmly the wrong side of that line. Dream-pop is often difficult to get excited about, but The Trip is ultimately unmemorable, bereft of any fills or flourishes as a respite.

There are glimmers of hope, however. Sadier’s cover of By The Sea is probably the only thing on show here to hold a candle to the glory days of The ‘Lab with its urgency, purpose and motorik beat. Statues Can Bend and Another Monster are all well and good, but sound passive, unfinished and in desperate need of another couple of elements to get going.

If you want to hear this sort of thing done properly, you’ll find happiness in the more sedate moments of the peerless Saint Etienne, but there’s little to recommend The Trip. It’s not much more than a Christmas bauble: shiny and polished on the surface, but with little of substance on the inside. The Trip finishes with a woeful cover of Gershwin’s Summertime, the unpalatable icing on the inedible cake that is this particularly disappointing record.

Penny Sparkle

Blonde Redhead - Penny Sparkle

released 13 September 2010 on 4AD

After some reading, a bit of research and lots of listening, it’s still near impossible to work out where exactly Blonde Redhead fit in. They seem to be on the margins of scenes or one of those bands that, because their music isn’t easily definable, crop up in new and obscure genres to which only about four other artists belong. “No-wave” and “dream-pop” are the two pigeonholes that get thrown around the most but it’s no easy task; Blonde Redhead are a little bit of lots of things all at once. The dream pop label is the easiest to comprehend: Blonde Redhead take many influences from the shoegaze movement of the early ‘90s and the marriage of these pockets of inspiration with the indecipherable lyrics/female voice as instrument ethos of the Cocteau Twins make Blonde Redhead a more intriguing proposition than they may seem in theory.

This characteristic of being hard to define probably suits Blonde Redhead down to the ground. Graduates of the New York underground, the band members’ history draws in places as diverse as Milan, Montréal, Boston and Japan. Listening to Penny Sparkle, the band’s eighth full-length album and third for 4AD, you do get the impression of a band without fixed roots. There’s a feeling of unease and restlessness, a brooding hard-to-define sensation, like a deeper, more intense version of the displacement and jetlag alluded to in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. Penny Sparkle straddles the line between comfort and tension, the woozy synths bleed into one another, the music is warm and enveloping but frequent, unexpected minor chords and bass rumbles mean you can never be as comfortable as you’d wish to be.

Penny Sparkle isn’t a particularly easy listen at first, but this needn’t be seen as disparaging. Blonde Redhead’s use of textures and layers is very subtle, and means that what could easily be dismissed as background music becomes more rewarding the more time and attention you give it. Think of yourself as a squirrel and Penny Sparkle as your store of acorns for the winter months. While most album’s charms are immediate and obvious, Penny Sparkle reveals its gifts gradually, meaning that there should be more the enough to keep you fulfilled during the hibernation period.

What’s most striking - and refreshing - about Penny Sparkle is that it’s more than the sum of its parts. It’s an album that works better as a whole, and moreover, a whole that’s listened to in sequence; each track is the natural choice to follow its predecessor.

The guitars, electronics and vocals Blonde Redhead employ melt into an embracing mélange of sound. Opener, Here Sometimes, is understated and gentle, and the keyboards have a human-like, analogue feel to them. The transition after the chorus isn’t smooth, and the wonkiness of it adds to the human aspect of the track. It feels like the more sedate moments of Portishead’s Third (most notably, The Rip) and is just as immersive.

Subsequent tracks mostly build on the theme established from the first moment. Not Getting There utilises a low-level buzzing to build a sense of growing urgency, an undercurrent of burbling synths transforms Love or Prison, and Everything is Wrong relates its feeling of yearning and desperation through heartbeat drums and 12/8 time.

While the high points of Penny Sparkle are numerous, the sparseness and the re-treading of familiar ground can become slightly wearing occasionally. On more than one occasion, songs are prone to extended periods of lulling, and only the curios of odd sound effects or a daring chord change sustain your interest.

To some extent, Penny Sparkle feels more like a novel than an album. The cinematic sound and creating of instability means that you genuinely want to find out what happens next. Throughout its ten tracks, the off-kilter anxiety is ratcheted up and truly deserves a fitting climax that resolves all that has gone before. However, it doesn’t get it, as final track Spain is just more of the same. Perhaps mindful of the role this track could play, Blonde Redhead try their damnedest: there’s more atmosphere, more drama, more dynamics, but unfortunately it’s just more of the same. Penny Sparkle is certainly an interesting album, but more an album to appreciate rather than enjoy. It’s just such a shame it promises so much before lamely petering out.

Why The Beatles aren't over-rated

The following was written for a No Ripcord debate piece on whether The Beatles are over-rated...

The combination of hyperbole and hindsight could very well be the music critic’s worst enemy. The desperation of wanting to be the person who spots the hip new thing coupled with the fear of missing the boat on the latest act to hit big means that, occasionally, reviews and features heap more praise on an artist than they really merit. Add to this cocktail the element of a fast-approaching deadline and before you know it, Oasis’ Be Here Now has been proclaimed a universal masterpiece. Then, it’s too late, and it’s only when the impossible to ignore poke of hindsight arrives that everyone acknowledges that it’s not a masterpiece, but an ego-laden, coked-up mess of a record that no-one wants to hear again. Of course, the words that were originally written can’t be taken back, and the history music journalism is full of effusive reviews for truly terrible albums.

Yet one of the acts that seems immune to these revisions of opinion are those lovable, Liverpudlian mop-tops, The Beatles. They’re hardly unique in this position; you won’t get many articles entitled, “Now I’ve had a while to think about it, Bob Dylan / Ray Charles / Miles Davis / Kraftwerk / Leonard Cohen was a bit rubbish”. However, The Beatles were the only band to combine lasting critical acclaim with such enormous popularity and influence, and that can’t be an accident.

If you’re a fan of popular music in any of its multiple forms, being a fan of The Beatles is practically a corollary. Between Please Please Me in 1963 and Abbey Road in 1969 (or Let It Be in 1970, if you’re so inclined), The Beatles redefined the popular landscape, introduced new concepts to a mass audience and developed their sound in a way no band ever has in such a short space of time.

It may help to look at The Beatles as two separate bands: the knock-out-songs-every-couple-of-minutes group and the sonic-adventurer group, with 1965’s Rubber Soul charting the time the former metamorphosed into the latter. So, now, a little music might help, so go and put one of those early Beatles albums on, whichever one you like. Have a listen - brilliant, isn’t it? They may sound slightly anachronistic and naïve compared to the music of today but with, for example, I Saw Her Standing There, I Wanna Be Your Man, Can’t Buy Me Love, Eight Days a Week and Ticket to Ride, the quality of the writing and melodies can’t help but shine through. What’s also striking about those early records is the sheer urgency of the delivery. It’s as if they’re trying to burst through your speakers and when you consider how many gigs they were playing, how many songs they were writing and how much they were travelling, it’s just exhausting. Think of your favourite band and work out how long they took between their last two albums. The Beatles were churning out gold-plated, enduring pop records almost at a rate of two a year in their early career.

During this prolific formative period, The Beatles went against the received wisdom that you couldn’t write all the songs on your own album whilst retaining popularity. It’s only when you put something like that into context you’re able to see what a feat that is. An appreciation of music and a curious sensibility meant that The Beatles were alchemist magpies; assimilating what they loved and what fascinated them into an irresistible package.

The vast majority of bands would have been content to rest on their laurels after such success but The Beatles were always wanting to push the boundaries of popular song and explore further possibilities. Neither of the key songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney were classically trained, meaning that they just made chords that sounded good to them and fitted in with what they were trying to express. From Rubber Soul onwards, you can hear a dissatisfaction with their previous achievements manifesting itself in a yearning for something outside of the constraints of the pop music of the day.

The argument against the above is that The Beatles weren’t the innovators; they weren’t the first to discover Eastern mysticism and sitars, incongruous sound effects or the approach of changing tack altogether mid-song (see A Day in the Life). Whilst it’s difficult to refute those claims - how do you prove who was the first person to do anything? - the real genius of The Beatles came in merging these ideas into their records, taking previously specialist concepts into the mainstream and creating their own private universe of which the listener could inhabit with just a 12” record.

Appealing to the mass-market and being commercial may be seen as going against the ethics of art and expression, and may even raise accusations of “selling out” (something which seems almost quaint these days) but it’s yet another reason why The Beatles are still so revered these days and why an enterprising writer like myself is spending a sunny Sunday afternoon indoors singing their praises. Their early incarnation may seem like something you’d now liken to a boy band: identical uniforms, hoards of screaming females and songs about unnamed girls in order to make the hysterical 1960's teenager feel that they could well be the subject. It was a tactical masterstroke and The Beatles didn’t lose their ability to market themselves. In fact, they got cleverer.

How do you be taken as a serious act and still try and appeal to millions? Keep the matching uniforms but make them grown-up (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), say you’re making a concept album (Sgt. Pepper… again), play on the roof of your record company headquarters, say something outrageous that will be quoted for years to come (“Ringo isn’t the best drummer”, “we’re bigger than Jesus”, and so on). All things that may not have been exactly new, but things that the biggest band around hadn’t done before.

All of the above reasons - and many more - tell the story of why The Beatles weren’t over-rated and fully deserve their place at the top of the popular music pantheon. It’s a subject that could stretch out over pages and pages (you may not be entirely unsurprised to hear that this isn’t exactly the first piece of music journalism to conclude The Beatles were a bit better than your average beat combo) and it’s wonderful to think that over 40 years since their last album, The Beatles are still one of the most popular groups around.

One last parting shot before you’re free to resume your busy life. As important as all these aforementioned reasons are, not enough has been made of the single most important factor: the quality of the songs. It was touched upon when discussing the raw energy of the early years, but The Beatles never lost sight of why they were so popular in the first place, and endeavoured to still write to the best of their abilities throughout their career. They were incredibly blessed in the writing department: the best groups rely on a songwriting partnership where the two members bring out the best in one another and are free to bounce ideas around. Well, The Beatles had the best partnership in the history of popular music, as well as George Harrison; himself an incredibly competent songsmith. Hey, even the unfairly derided Ringo wrote a handful of better-than-average numbers (admit it; Octopus’s Garden is great). So, if you only take one thing away with you, it’s that you can ignore any hyperbole and with hindsight, recognise that The Beatles had the best songs - it really is as simple as that.

33 1/3: OK Computer

Dai Griffiths - 33 1/3: OK Computer

published 9 September 2004 by Continuum

Type “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” into Google and you get well over 800000 results; not bad for a quote that’s patently untrue. It’s a sound bite that’s taken on a life of its own, principally due to its inflammatory nature and “quotability”, rather than anything remotely fact-based. At its finest, writing about music is a wonderful thing; a great review, article or opinion piece can be persuasive, invigorating, challenging and entertaining, much in the same way music itself can be. One of the great things about music is that it’s near-indefinable and certain tracks mean different things to different people. This means that music doesn’t lend itself too well to academic appraisal, yet that is what Oxford Brookes lecturer, Dr. Dai Griffiths, seeks to do in his book on Radiohead’s OK Computer.

This isn’t at all to suggest that academia and pop music can’t be bedfellows - for instance, analysing a particular album and its place in the canon of the history of recorded music would be a more than valid study. However, OK Computer was only released in 1997, and while Dr. Griffith’s thesis is as engagingly written as you’d expect, it’s debatable whether breaking down each song into its constituent parts with details on bars per section, tempo and key signature is going to advance anyone’s appreciation of the album.

The books in the 33 1/3 series examine “classic” albums in detail and tend to be written by journalists or musicians rather than academics. I find it difficult not to take issue with the style of the OK Computer book, as the music I love is all about the way it makes me feel, and while I’m keen to know more about the making of a record and the circumstances around it, dissecting it as if it were a scientific experiment seems impersonally anodyne and leaves me cold. The fact that the average song length on OK Computer is greater than that of The Bends is immaterial; the reasons I like OK Computer are likely to be different to the reasons you like (or dislike) OK Computer and grouping the lyrical themes into nine distinct headings isn’t going to alter that one jot.

That said, Dr. Griffiths’ prose is very readable, and the section on the difference between CD and vinyl albums is incredibly interesting. Unfortunately, the conclusion he draws is incredibly sweeping and rushed, and his over-confident tone can be grating and smug. It’s a decent enough book and worthy reading for OK Computer obsessives, but it ultimately comes across as the wrong approach to take. With a style like that, you may as well be dancing about architecture.

Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on her Magical Ukulele

Amanda Palmer - Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on her Magical Ukulele

released 20 July 2010 on 8ft Records

After a protracted and well-documented battle, Amanda Palmer is free from her recording contract. Is there any better way of giving the middle finger to your previous employers than a leftfield project no self-respecting record company would go near - an album of Radiohead covers, played on the ukulele, at a cut-down price? Not even ten days after its release, the limited edition vinyl release sold out and the vinyl/t-shirt/button bundle has sold out. Hell, even all six “I Painted This Fucking Ukulele Myself” bundles have sold out.

Unsurprisingly, however, upon listening to 'APPTPHOROHMU', it soon becomes clear that it’s little more than a stop-gap: something to stay in contact with her fanbase and make a statement with. It really is exactly what the title says; Radiohead songs played on the ukulele, and little else. The novelty of hearing these well-known songs on a relatively unusual instrument soon wears off and other than the contrast of having female vocals instead of Thom Yorke’s distinctive wail, there really is nothing added to the mix here.

Fake Plastic Trees and High and Dry are fairly dull when stripped down, and without percussion they struggle to reach the emotional peaks of the originals. Creep is performed in a lilting, Hawaiian style and, for no apparent reason, there are two near-identical live performances - one with audience, one without. Give Palmer her dues though, her attempt to recreate Jonny Greenwood’s primal guitar sturm und drang is admirable, even if it does lack the nihilistic effect on a ukulele.

Oddly enough, the least guitar-based song, Idioteque, is one of the highlights. Although it may lack the intensity and skittering beats of the Kid A version, it showcases what a melodious piece of work it actually is. The only track fit to hold a candle to the Oxford band, though, is OK Computer's Exit Music (for a Film). It features no ukulele and is probably the only non-obvious choice on the EP, but it retains the drama and tension which makes the original so compelling.

Other than to satisfy your curiosity, this EP really isn’t worth your time. A quick listen will just make you want to go and put your Radiohead albums on to hear it done properly. It’s hard not to admire her chutzpah though - to paraphrase words constantly misattributed to Voltaire: I may not agree with Amanda Palmer releasing an album of Radiohead covers played on the ukulele, but I’ll defend to the death her right to do so.

Tokyo Police Club Interview

Canadian post-punks Tokyo Police Club may have only formed five years ago, but they have an impressive CV for such a young band. Two well-received EPs in their formative years led to a deal with Conor Oberst’s Saddle Creek label to release their début album, 2008’s Elephant Shell. Unfortunately for TPC, Elephant Shell wasn’t quite the success they hoped for, but the band re-grouped and have returned with the critically acclaimed Champ. Early signs point towards the group fulfilling the potential they’ve always shown. Add this to a busy touring schedule and it seems that 2010 could truly be Tokyo Police Club’s year. In the middle of their busy summer, Greg from the band found time to email a response to No Ripcord’s questions.

How are you finding the reaction to your new album and what are your hopes for it?

The first reactions have been really positive so far. I haven't read a lot of the reviews, but we've been getting a great response from fans at our shows every night. It's really satisfying to go out on stage and break into a new song and have people start dancing and singing along to it. It's really the best reaction you can hope for.

General consensus on this record is that it’s a step forward and you’re making good on the promise shown earlier in your career - would you say that’s a fair assessment and do you feel you’re continuing to develop as a band?

Yeah, we are all definitely really happy with this album. I hope that if people in 2006 who liked our EP could listen forward to what we're doing now they'd be happy and not feel like we've veered off in some disappointing direction. I think we've learned to just trust our initial gut instincts more and not second guess what our first ideas are for a song. They're usually the right way to go, so it was a lot less of "start, stop, re-write, go back to what you had" process with this record and more of just a constant flow of ideas forward. It feels like a more natural progression for us, and I hope people can hear that.

What was the thinking behind setting up the Champ Championship and what’s the best challenge you’ve had so far? [The Champ Championship is a TPC invention where fans can challenge the band to a competition of their choosing with the chance to win prizes]

The Champ Champion contest is basically just a way to have some fun and meet new people in the cities we travel to on tour. It's really often that you get to a town in the mid-afternoon, setup, find some mediocre food in the area and then have a few hours to do absolutely nothing till the show begins. I think we all got tired of just having "laptop circle parties" in our dressing room, where everyone is just staring at their computers, surfing the internet, completely bored, and wanted to actually have a chance to do something in our time off before we play. With this contest, we get to pull into town and then ask the people there, "What do you guys do here for fun?" and instead of them just giving us an answer, "Oh, well there's the pencil museum and the miniature tea set collection in town square...", like you would get from a travel site, we get, "What do we do here? Effin’ Three-Legged Races! Backwards! And Blindfolded!" Done! Let's do that! In Baltimore we had a couple come out and just challenge us to clean and eat steamed blue crabs. What kind of amazing people offer that up as a challenge? And if you've ever seen The Wire, you'll know that was definitely the best way to spend an afternoon in Baltimore.

You have several special packages for fans available on your website. Why have you decided to do this and do you think it’s important for bands to try and connect with your fans in such a way?

I think it's important to give your fans a chance to connect with you in as complete a way as you're willing to offer. We're all huge fans of music and we love it when you get to see some behind the scenes shots or video of a favourite band of ours rehearsing, or just goofing around. I think that extends to the album and the music on it. Like, how with some of our CDs you get a collage that Dave made of all his lyrics and notes he made while writing them. It just gives an insight into our creative process and mechanics as a band that I know with bands I love, I'd be really interested in seeing.

You seem to have a pretty heavy tour schedule for the remainder of 2010 - what are you particularly looking forward to?

Honestly, right now we're all just excited to be playing live again. We stopped touring almost completely in early 2009 to start work on this album so we'd been off the stage for almost a year and a half before we began playing live again recently. You can get pretty exhausted by life on the road and there's definitely always a point on tour where you realize you just need to get home soon or you're going to go crazy. But being away from it for that long you really begin to miss just being on stage together and you remember why you started playing music in the first place. It's a real rush again for us to get on stage every night, so I think we're having more fun now than we've had since we started touring back in 2006. It's a blast to be a band again.

What bands and artists are your main inspiration when writing songs and looking for ideas?

We all love the Strokes and Radiohead, but I'm not sure if they'd be where we draw ideas from. Bands like that constantly remind us that we've still got so much room to grow as song-writers - it's always really humbling to put on a record like Is This It or Kid A and just be blown away every time. I think we draw a lot of inspiration from our contemporaries; bands that we know and love and play shows with who are growing up and developing their sound around us. I get really inspired by just hearing what new exciting music is coming out each month and then dissecting it and figuring out what they're doing and learning from it. It's really great to be able to just look around you for inspiration and find it everywhere. It's still a really exciting time for music and I'm glad to be a part of it.

What new bands coming through do you think are worth watching out for?

We just played at a few festivals with this band from Australia called The Middle East and I think they're amazing. I really loved their sets each night and everyone in the band is just really talented and puts out such an intense performance where they’re playing at peak level all the way to the end. If you get a chance to see them live soon, do it!

Finally, How did you end up appearing on Desperate Housewives and how did you find it?

Desperate Housewives was a fun experience. Our friend, Paul Bullock, is a writer on the show and it came up that they needed a band for a story arc they were working on and he suggested us. The only strange part is how, since the show exists in it's own "universe" apart from our reality, we couldn't be called Tokyo Police Club and they had to change our name to Cold Splash. So, now there might a large contingent of 40-something women out there who are Cold Splash's biggest fans.