In Mark Oliver Everett’s autobiography “Things The Grandchildren Should Know”, the author, otherwise known as E, the frontman and band leader of Eels, wrote of Bob Dylan’s self-proclaimed destiny as a musician:

“I wish I had something like that, but I didn’t. At all. All I had was an aching sense of desperation. I didn’t have any idea what the hell I was doing and was only doing it out of not knowing what else to do”.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, E simply continued to keep on keeping on with music, leaving his home in Virginia to seek his ‘lack of destiny’ in Los Angeles. Low and behold, he wound up being signed to a major label - not once but twice - and at the second bite of the cherry, found significant and lasting success.

No wonder then, E suggests we rename this particular episode as “The Unconscious Art of Longevity”.

Some 23 years after signing his first solo record deal, E has found his way to a 15th Eels studio L.P., the aptly named Eels Time! Recorded in Los Feliz, Los Angeles and Dublin, Ireland, the album was made by the current line-up of E himself, Little Joe (Drums), Koool G Murder (bass) and The Chet (guitar), featuring Irish folk musician Sean Coleman and new collaborator Tyson Ritter (on five songs). Ritter is the lead vocalist, bassist, pianist, and songwriter of the rock band The All-American Rejects but is better known these days as an actor. In a twist typical of the Eels story however, Ritter - who on this occasion was connected to E by his manager - turned out to live close by. But The All-American Rejects shared the same label as Eels (Dreamworks) back in the early 90s. Almost two decades on, Ritter was finally reeled into Eels orbit.

It’s a microcosmic example of Eels' career story - a series of unplanned events driven by E’s whims - whatever he felt like doing at the time - a series of creative zigzag turns that often turned out for the best through luck or dare I suggest…a more similar destiny to Bobby Dylan’s than he once believed.

“I’ve been doing it so long now that everyone pretty much leaves me alone. I don’t tell the label I’ve made a record until after it's mastered and finished. I pay for the whole thing myself to have the freedom of nobody putting their two cents in”.

So in some ways yes, E’s career has been “The Unconscious Art of Longevity”. But look deeper and all the signs are there - the self-belief, single-mindedness and willingness to follow his own instincts and obsessions - these factors have underpinned Eels’ journey and kept the wheels connected to the rails. And each and every one of those 15 albums has a lot to offer

“It’s all a miracle to me that I still get to make music as my job. I’m lucky, but you have to get yourself in the best position to receive it when luck strikes”. 

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Marika Hackman's Big Sigh is everything a 4th album should be. Really good songs, good scheduling, sophisticated arrangements (brass and strings accompany many tracks). The album has variety - from the mysterious instrumental interludes of The Ground and The Lonely House (opening sides A and B of my/your bottle green vinyl copy) to stand out singles (Slime, No Caffeine) to epic album tracks (Hanging, The Yellow Mile). It has an impressive musicality and most of all, it has real depth. A truly great album is one you can climb into. Every listen reveals something new. Keep listening and your favourite songs will shuffle around changing places like a game of musical chairs. That’s Big Sigh.

A record such as this, in 2024, can reach a fleeting and lofty height of number 67 on the UK chart. So what’s wrong with the system here?

“Everything gets put on the little guy. Why has it become about artists and fans rather than labels driving the commerce? There should be a mutual respect between artist and fan, do they really want to see me on a selfie cam sending out a faceless message?”

But for an artist like Hackman, such frustration fights it out with gratitude on a daily basis. After all, she can make (expensive) records, get paid advances and take a full band on tour. Many ‘middle class’ artists operating in the same commercial layer as Marika cannot quite make it there.

What qualifies as the next level in this weird reality video game we call a career in music?

“It’s hard to break that ceiling to that next level - where it can run by itself - you need people to invest in you over the longer term, not just for one tour.  As artists we need to value ourselves more. We need to stop showing the industry that we are worthless. There can’t be an industry without us”. 

We need this to change. Because we deserve another four Marika Hackman albums, at least. Critically revered from her debut, the consensus (I read every review I can set eyes on) is that Hackman’s 4th studio album Big Sigh is her best work to date.

“Whenever I sit down to do a new record, it’s always about being better than the last one. To hear people say that my music has progressed to a new phase is like fuel to my fire. It’s lonely making records on your own, you can easily lose perspective”. 

As for the masterpiece, that is still to come. What happens after that is down to us. 

“I feel like I’ve got songs that are more classic that are yet to come. I used to dream about making a record that would transcend a generation, but now I just want to make a record that sounds like a classic record to me”. 

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In the 70s, the teenage years of Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, one would have heard new music by word of mouth, from the music papers, and DJs like John Peel, and it is one of these channels that would have led the young Andy McCluskey in September 1975 to see Kraftwerk play at the Liverpool Empire.

 It's lazy to suggest that Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were entirely influenced by Kraftwerk – both founder members were keen music lovers and had performed together in a band called The Id – but their debut single Electricity wears that influence  on its sleeve.

There were some classic synthpop albums released in in 1980 and 1981 but in terms of maturity and sophistication, none came close to ‘Architecture and Morality’, OMD’s third album.

McCluskey & Humphreys always did things there own way:

"We kind of did songwriting in reverse. A lot of songwriters sit at the piano and hash out a melody and the chords first. With us, we start with a soundscape and crazy noises and quite often the song will land on top. We then realised we had a knack for a catchy tune". 
 
OMD arguably took a wrong turn with their fourth album 'Dazzle Ships', released in 1983.

"We forgot to sugar coat the experiment. The album shipped Gold and returned Platinum, more copies were sent back than sold. It did scare us that it wasn't commercially successful. Even though our songs always start as experiments, we were conscious to keep it more commercial in order to rescue our career". 

But even that record became a classic, eventually. Some 33 years on, in 2016, OMD played a triumphant show at London's Royal Albert Hall performing both Architecture and Morality and then Dazzle Ships back-to-back. That experience gave the band a new lease of life. 2017’s ‘The Punishment Of Luxury’ can arguably be confidently placed in the top three albums OMD had released to date. Almost forty years after they first got together, a band that was still adding to its finest work.

The band's forthcoming album, ‘Bauhaus Staircase’ bodes well for their late blooming fifth decade and extended longevity. This, despite McCluskey's wisdom suggesting otherwise. 

"It's usually dangerous and stupid to make a new album unless you are really going to invest in it. People tell us we're iconic and influential, so we don't want to fuck it up by making a shit album".

The band can rest easy. After 45 years working in their own unique way, they and their fans find OMD on a roll. 

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So many bands have a complex relationship with their biggest songs (probably because they essentially set a one dimensional benchmark - that of popularity) but dealing with that and playing those songs like it’s the last time you ever will, is part of doing the work. The Doll’s most biggest song and most recent tour are no exception:

“Robby convinced me, play Iris last. But that’s what bands do when they only have one big song! So everyone has to stick around and hear all the other songs before you get to the hit”. But you know what, it works, so we play Iris last”.

Well when you have one of the biggest indie songs ever, that’s a good attitude to have.

While to my mind, The Goo Goo Dolls are a classic album band, it is their chart-topping singles, including of course  "Iris," but also giants like "Name," "Slide," and "Black Balloon." These songs have helped define their legacy and will grow in perpetuity when it comes to streaming count.

The Goo Goo Dolls' music is marked by catchy melodies, emotional lyrics, Rezeznik’s distinctive vocals, and a balance of acoustic and electric feel. Their ability to create relatable and timeless songs has contributed to their enduring popularity in the world of rock music. The band has developed nicely through the mists of time.

When I ask Rezeznik how he would approach making a career in today’s industry, he gives me the same bemused answer as many guests do on The Art of Longevity: “I don’t think I would”. But he and his band have crossed the Rubicon and so his anxiety is instead projected onto the next generation of musicians forged from the same stuff i.e. focused on the music:

“How much amazing music is not being heard because [TikTok] is the metric you have to use, to decide if an artist is viable or not. Through Tik Tok? Gimme a break”.

“But that’s what worries me about the next generation of musicians - are they gonna be able to do that”? Being poor and famous, I’m not sure that’s gonna work”.

That’s exactly what the “music business” is trying to figure out. 

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What better guest for this 50th episode of The Art of Longevity than metal’s renaissance man Corey Taylor? A modern legend of the heavy metal genre, Corey has no less than three successful music projects. He is probably best known as Slipknot’s #9 (lead vocals) but before he joined Slipknot, Taylor already had another established hard rock band, Stone Sour. I met Corey as he was about to release his second solo record CMF2.

This multiple persona artist is a sort-of blueprint for music creators in this day & age. After all, to put all your creative eggs in one basket is not enough to succeed in today’s hyper-fragmented, super-saturated, ultra-competitive music market.

No problem at all for Corey. The man has too many ideas and too much restless energy to fit into just one band, even if that happens to be one of the world’s biggest and most successful metal bands.

So how does he do it?

“I’m able to prioritise and focus to get the best out of me creatively. My appetite for art and creating is insatiable though - I’ve got so many things I want to do, it keeps me sane and grounded. I’m hyper-focused but I do things bit by bit. But maybe I’m also just a psycho”.

One thing that struck me about Corey too, is his advocacy for metal - which comes within the broader context for his advocacy for music itself. Known in the past for “not being stingy with his opinions”, Taylor is deeply knowledgeable about his genre, as well as the wider industry in which metal is sometimes treated like Cinderella.

“Some people would love to keep us [metal musicians] in boxes, and yet, if you are a pop star, you’re encouraged to hop from genre to genre like fuckin’ hopscotch. You can’t keep us back while pushing people into places we have every right to go as well. But we scare people too, the movers and shakers are intimidated by the level of talent in our genre. Metal musicians could wipe the floor with a lot of today’s pop stars”.

It brings us back to CMF2, an album as eclectic (and also excellent) as you’ll find. Across its 13 tracks cover country, radio-friendly rock, brooding Bowie-esque ballads and hardcore punk throwback. And yes, some pretty exemplary songs from his metal heartland. The thread that runs through the eclectic collection is simple enough: 

“I wanted to honour the songwriters who made me what I am”. 

Job done, onto the next one...

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Following the highly accomplished 2012 album Heaven, cult American indie band The Walkmen went on hiatus. But now they have reformed. In a recent interview with the band’s frontman Hamilton Leithauser, Vulture magazine referred to the now infamously long career break as “a particularly noticeable void”. 

I would go a lot further than that. I (and a million other fans) grieved the loss of The Walkmen, because in the indie landscape they offered something unique. The ramshackle but classic rock sound (could any band sound more analogue?). The authenticity of those songs. Hamilton Leithauser’s signature voice. Most bands have a manifesto to stand out from the rest, but The Walkmen didn’t need to say it - they were truly el differente. 

Hamilton didn’t know if anyone would remember or care much but he turned out to be wrong about that of course. The Walkmen’s legend has matured nicely in the intervening 10 years that they have been away. 

But the interesting thing is that culturally, the band never really went away. Their songs and fandom lived on through the extended break - even grew in their absence. This is perhaps the true miracle of music in the streaming era. Hamilton and the others were surprised and delighted to return to playing shows to loyal audiences both old and new, the younger fans among them singing every word of those old songs. 

In the modern music biz, when the talk is of “always-on” creation, 24/7 content and acute FOMO, maybe the most valuable move a band can make is to not succumb to any of that, but to instead have the nerve and the confidence to do what’s necessary - even if that is nothing. Hamilton puts the stresses of modern day bands into perspective though:

“It’s exhausting physically and mentally - in the long run. After you’ve done a bunch of records you think “do I really wanna do another rock & roll record, no I don’t think I do”, then it becomes about what you really want to do next”. 

With six albums and some older EPs to perform, there is no need - not yet - for any meaningful discussion about new material by The Walkmen. But it is reassuring and exciting to know that Hamilton and bandmates haven’t ruled it out. For now we can be happy enough that a particularly noticeable void has been filled. 

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After he “couldn’t get arrested” in the 80s, post-grunge opened a window through which a then 30-year old Ron Sexsmith could climb. With his sincere, low-key ballads and simple songs straight from the heart, as was his 1995 self-titled debut. Produced by legend Mitchell Froom, it was a stripped back affair but also with the signature sounds of Froom and his engineer collaborator Tchad Blake (favourites of the crew here at The Art of Longevity). Those songs came as an antidote to the loudness of grunge and the hubris of Britpop. Sexsmith was a pioneer of a style that paved the way for a wave of troubadours including Teddy Thompson, Josh Ritter, Rufus Wainwright and many more. Of all places he was signed to Interscope - then one of the world’s biggest major labels.

“They didn't really know what to do with me. They called me a ‘cred artist’. Someone who had good good reviews and they could point to and say - 'we’re not just pop' - so they could attract other real artists.”

“I coasted on that for a while, but then around my third album (Whereabouts, 1999) I saw that it didn’t mean anything to them any more. To have an artist that was just good to have around”.

And so that early run came to an inevitable end as Ron was slammed into the wall of the ‘dropped artist’. By then though, he was into stride as a songwriter. No longer an apprentice to those amazing producers he has worked with, he was on his way to mastering the craft. Indeed, these days he describes himself as more of a problem solver than a songwriter.

This songcraft is what connects Sexsmith to the greats. When I mention to him that Spotify pays him a compliment when its continuously play/radio function will follow one of his songs with Nick Lowe, Nick Drake or some other legend, his response is modest yet enlightening.

“Well I didn’t know that but one of the nicest things anyone ever said about me was what Randy Newman told Mitchell (Froom) that “I like Ron because he does the work”. And I thought, yeah that’s true, I do do the work. That’s what I try to do and for the most part. There’s not a song I could play you where I’d think the song is terrible”.

That's because none of them are. May I strongly suggest you sit back and enjoy the fruits of Ron Sexsmith’s labour.

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For Ben Folds, coming back on the scene with a new studio album feels like a breeze, literally:

“I Feel like the expectations are lowered but I have the wind on my back”.

In June 2023 Ben releases What Matters Most, his fifth studio album and his first in over six years, almost an ice age in today’s breathless music biz. But part of the reason and the joy it has taken him so damn long to make, is a focus on the craft that is part of Folds’ raison d'être as a musician some three decades into a professional career.

“I have carried a tradition of craft, that is not easily come by, in an era when it was always going away, until now” It might sound cocky to say that this is a lesson in songwriting but I dunno, it is.”

This is coming from someone who in the past decade has committed part of his career to promoting and campaigning for better music education. Come to think of it, a conversation with Ben Folds is a music education class in itself. His role as music scholar and teacher is now part of his legacy but his contribution to music is easily underestimated.

For starters he sandblasted a music scene that in the mid-90s was dominated by grunge, Britpop and pretty soulless boy & girl band pop. And he did it with a fucking piano. Aided and abetted of course by belting bass (Robert Sledge) and drums (Darren Jessee) combo that made up Ben Folds Five - a refreshingly guitar-free rock band.

After the trio disbanded following the usual music industry roller coaster ride (a familiar story beautifully told in Fold’s 2019 book A Dream About Lightning Bugs) Folds went solo - sometimes quite literally.

He made ‘sustainable touring’ a thing, by going on the road with himself and a piano. That’s something now essential for bands in the mid-tier - the so called “working class musician” - to tour with a minimalist set up. Fold’s truly took to it - improvising and bantering with the audience - even creating a song (Bitches Ain’t Shit) that became a sort of regrettable classic. He found the experience scary but took his inspiration from James Booker. “I was playing standing places - rock venues. I was shaking in my boots the first time I went out on tour like that, but I felt the need to do it”.

Folds is a pioneering independent artist. He called the creative shots even when first signed to a major label imprint with Ben Folds Five. He paid for vinyl masters to some of his albums knowing full well it would come out of his royalty account. He was an early adopter of the direct to fan model with his Patreon site, recently expanded to include a private Discord channel. It’s very much the modern fan-centred business model for up & coming artists these days.

Through it all, Folds is one of those artists that can always rely on the ability to write a song. It’s something that has seen him through the thick & thin years as he transitioned from a band to a solo career and then later as he expanded into soundtracks and orchestral works.

That songcraft is firmly intact on What Matters Most on songs such as Back To Anonymous, Winslow Gardens and Kristine From the 7th Grade. But Folds can strategize the biz side too these days, and his plan is to make this new album an event.

“I know we’re making movies in a way when we make records but I wanted to make a record that you could date on all counts. The event is powerful, because you are either expressing an ideal, a design - or you are expressing an event”. 

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Asking John Grant to describe the essence of the record he is working on now, elicits a response that fascinates from the get go. 

“I’m trying to marry the vibe of Blade Runner with - wait a minute - let me go and get this movie [shows me Tetsu The Iron Man]. I want to blend Sonic Youth with Blade Runner, Evil Dead and Halloween 3”. 

John was struggling to articulate a few things on the day we met, including the one word essence of this new album project, but I’m going to guess the word that he was looking for was cyberpunk. 

If you don’t know it, Tetsuo: The Iron Man is a 1989 Japanese tokusatsu cyberpunk body horror film created (as in written, produced, edited, and directed) by Shinya Tsukamoto. It’s insane and unlike any other movie made then or now. It’s an auteur’s project and that sums up John Grant better than anything else. The man has a singular vision and for that we can be grateful. We do not want John Grant by way of compromise! 

And then there is Blade Runner, which I’m guessing you are more familiar with. Ridley Scott’s 1982 cult classic is an anchor point for Grant, who is influenced by those sweeping, cosmic valve-synth Vangelis soundscapes that cropped up so fully formed on his last album Boy From Michigan - a high watermark record that John feels is only just finished, yet is already almost two years old. In today’s music biz, two years is an awfully long time. 

But then, making the follow-up to Boy From Michigan is not a trivial undertaking. Creativity in John Grant’s particular zone of avant garde pop is not an environment in which you can simply turn up at the office and turn on the tap. His world is not always a well-oiled machine. 

“Guy Garvey told me that creativity is like a pipeline that you have to keep flowing, even if it’s just to flush the shit out before you can get to the good stuff”.

I do love it when artists listen to artists. Thing is, it doesn’t happen enough.

For the time being however, if you cannot wait too long for more from John - good news. Grant’s alternative supergroup Creep Show brings a welcome escape from the weight of the world - for him and for us. New album Yawning Abyss is due for release June 2023. 

Creep Show is a wonderful collaboration. With a name inspired by George A. Romero and Stephen King’s 1982 film and novel, Creep Show brings together John Grant with the dark analogue-electro of Wrangler (Stephen Mallinder / Phil Winter  and Benge, the latter producing Grant’s 2018 album Love Is Magic). The Creep Show project deserves every bit the success achieved by Gorillaz, in a parallel universe in which all music is judged on listenability. 

Who could not listen to this man's voice?

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What’s more important in securing a band’s longevity - hit songs or a classic album? I put this question to Meegan and Allison Closner (the twin sisters that make up two-thirds of Joseph along with their sister Natalie Closner Schepman). Their answer seemed clear enough. For Joseph, it’s all about the album. 

So, is the band’s new album The Sun a classic?

Only time will tell. Personally, I resisted any notion of hearing the record before its release. My orange ‘sun’ vinyl is in the post and I will listen to it just as one should, as the needle drops on side one track one (Waves Crash). I do have faith that Joseph can make a classic however - because they have already done it once before.

I first discovered Joseph’s music by way of a complete and very happy accident. I had sat down briefly with the head of an indie label, and as I often do, I asked the question “who should I be listening to?”. His reply was both immediate and singular: “Joseph”.

Okay then - easy to remember at least. I later fired up Spotify and typed the word Joseph into the search bar and there they were. Joseph - an Americana band of three sisters from Joseph, Oregon.

I’m always surprised when I don’t know a band in this genre - and Joseph had just released their third L.P. Good Luck Kid. And the album is a belter. Just fantastic Americana-country-pop. Wholly accessible but ambitious and expansive. It’s everything an Americana album should be - if not a concept album, then a start-to-finish cohesive piece of work. Good Luck Kid ended up as my favourite album from 2019 and so the band’s fourth album The Sun comes with a sense of high anticipation.

Then, Allison & Meegan told me about working with Tucker Martine and recording The Sun in his Flora studios in Portland, which ups the stakes about as high as they can get for a new record to my ears.

But, what does it mean to make a classic album in 2023?

Rick Rubin is keen to point out that the creation of a record is not a competition, and who are we to argue with the master builder of records? And yet, how can it not be a competitive situation in some ways, with scores of albums - really good ones - released week-in, week-out. The obvious answer is to compete with yourself and let others in as inspiration.

As Meegan says:

“We’ve taken in the classic bands we’ve come across in our adulthood, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac - who would not be influenced by those”. “But [with this album] we keep asking ourselves the question, do we like this? This has to be us. “I hope that we’ve made an album that lasts through time.”

Joseph have already done it once, so what’s stopping them doing it again? Every band aspiring to be the real deal deserves their moment in the sun, maybe The Sun will be Joseph’s time. 

(an extended write-up appears on songsommelier.com)

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In this episode of the Art of Longevity, we have the pleasure of chatting with Stuart Braithwaite, a member of the internationally renowned post-rock band Mogwai. Known for their masterful use of crescendos, Mogwai have been making music since 1995, with 11 studio albums that have gained increasing popularity over time, with their latest 'As The Love Continues' reaching the lofty milestone of #1 in the UK album chart.

Stuart's recently published autobiography, 'Spaceships Over Glasgow,' offers an insightful exploration of the band's progression and key periods of their journey. Though they never consciously planned for their success, Stuart shares some valuable insights into how artists can remain relevant and popular over a long period of time. 

“I can’t see any of this as conscious…’ We weren't expecting to be making 5/ 6 albums, never mind 10/11”.

Despite the resolute lack of long-term planning, Stuart and his merry band have become masters of the music long game. One key takeaway is the importance of confident incremental steps and staying true to the original values that inspired them to pursue music. Stuart notes that some bands lose their edge by changing their sound to fit a particular trend, while Mogwai remained steadfast in their approach.

Maybe they are simply building to the crescendo that destroys all crescendos!

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Being a longevous, ‘real deal’ music artist requires many things, but being pure in heart is certainly one. And there are few people on this earth as pure in heart as Rickie Lee Jones. 

With the completion of Last Chance Texaco in 2019 (her brilliantly evocative and critically revered addition to the vast ‘rock memoir’ library) Rickie Lee permitted herself to look back to those early days and draw new inspiration from them. 

“Before I finished that book, I was burdened, but when it was done I began to shed my fears. I am 68 years old and you cannot scare me any more”.

The resulting first studio album release since then is Pieces Of Treasure, Rickie Lee’s versions of a selection of American songbook classics including Nature Boy, September Song, Sunny Side of the Street and no less than two iconic Sinatra numbers. The success of this album is in the way Rickie Lee finds her way to occupy these well-travelled songs.

But, this being The Art of Longevity, I want to know about the bad times as well as the good. And Rickie Lee Jones has had more than her fair share of years in the wilderness. By her 90s records (Pop Pop, Traffic From Paradise and Ghostyhead ) Rickie Lee’s career showed the classic curve for established artists, of high critical acclaim but steadily reduced commercial success. 

Even after a minor resurgence in the 2000s (beginning with the superb Evening Of My Best Day), a further decade of being largely forgotten left Rickie Lee broke and unable to find a record label to release new music. How did she get through that time?

“I thought, maybe this was payment for having so much success so fast. It’s a kids game and there are many many new young artists coming up at any time. The thing is to teach the audience that you are not just a pop artist but that you are a real musician”.

We listeners, have a lot to learn!

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Fran Healy and his band Travis have this longevity thing down. Firstly, you must have a love and addiction to music, as something magical. Secondly, that magic is for you to create - making music to nobody’s expectations but your own. But thirdly, you get lucky. As Fran says in episode 3, Season 9:

“The chances of a shit kicker from Glasgow going on to win the best band in the world is a billion to one. How can you be proud to be lucky?”

Well okay, but as all bands that ever got a break know, you have to be in it to win it. And for 35 years now, Fran has been in it - always mining for that song gold.

“Most songwriting is digging, until you find that nugget, and you extract it from the rock. You keep digging because you know you will find something”.

New song Gaslight is one such nugget - a fabulous pop-rock stomp, with a brass arrangement and burst of dirty guitar to boot. It feels confident. And, Travis has a new album - L.A. Times - written by Fran Healy from his studio on the edge of Skid Row, Los Angeles, where he has lived for 10 years. He describes L.A. Times as Travis’ “most personal album since The Man Who”. That album went 9X Platinum in the UK alone and shot the band into superstardom, and while no such expectations exist for L.A. Times, that’s just as it should be. The band that rose to fame during the peak CD era in the 90s is releasing their 10th album into a world where vinyl sells more than CDs, but streaming still rules. Does Travis have a place in this space?

It’s just not something that will concern Healy or his bandmates that much.

“The problem is when you think you are the shit, you are the diamond. But I’m still a lowly miner, and always will be. Joy and success you can define any way you want, but it’s about you, the person, not outside things”.

The writer of a song called Gaslight will never be gaslighted it seems. 

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It has taken Dave Rowntree ages to make his first non-soundtrack body of work outside of Blur, especially when you consider their last album Magic Whip, is almost a decade old. Then again, perhaps it explains why Radio Songs has come out very well indeed - better than the public might have a right to expect, given the track record of drummers stepping out from behind the kit. 

The album’s electrosonic palette is drawn from all Rowntree's influences, including Air and Talk Talk, with - as we discuss, hints of Robert Wyatt and Thomas Dolby. And more predictably perhaps, Blur. It is surprising just how much Rowntree’s vocal style is reminiscent of his bandmate Damon Albarn, who collaborated on the record only from a distance, giving Rowntree feedback in the form of one page of notes. 

Now he’s gotten round to it, Rowntree has caught the bug for making solo records, he plans two more over the next two years, provided he doesn’t get too distracted by Blur. His plans to tour Radio Songs this year have been somewhat derailed by what he calls “Blur’s megapolis summer”. 

And so inevitably then, to Blur. Where does it fit in his schedule and his headspace?

“Fundamentally I’m still the drummer in Blur, that’s how I see myself, but if you plot Blur activity on a graph, it’s tapering away to zero, so it’s not going to last forever”. 

So, how does he feel about stepping out to perform live as frontman after all those years behind the kit? Undaunted is the answer:

“It has felt surprisingly natural really. The music starts and you get swept along in it. I’m happiest out on the road, gig every night, different town every day - there’s something seductive about that”. 

Whether or not the Blur bandwagon keeps rolling, Dave Rowntree looks like he has found himself a second longevous career in music. 

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Gavin Rossdale doesn’t think that Bush's longevity story in the music business as high drama - even though they have had their share of industry shenanigans, let-downs and, for nearly eight years, a split, until the band reformed in 2010. 

“It's the inevitability - bands might choose to settle for where they’re at. It might be difficult to go from arenas to clubs, but bands have to follow their hearts. And if you don’t, what else are you gonna do anyway”.

He hasn't settled for anything like that for Bush, a band that was back at number 1 of the Billboard rock charts as we spoke. Of course, the band’s career is unusual in that this is a British band that made it big in America - but never found anything like as much success in their native UK. Funny when you think about the history of UK bands that have tried to break America - and almost broken themselves in doing so.

As the band is about to embark on a major US tour we talk about what happens in preparation, which is a lot more than meets the eye. Getting in the right headspace is vital, and not always easy. To say that Gavin manages his own contradictions is an understatement. On the one hand, Bush and Rossdale's longevity has brought with it a clarity and confidence. On the other hand, all the insecurities of the classic creative mind remain at work.

"I don’t have regrets but I reflect on those moments to sharpen my mind going forward. The later part of my career, the youthful ignorance has gone and the horizon is perfectly visible, therefore it hones and sharpens my resolve”.

“I’m never content with what I do. I have a very strange process of self doubt and imposter syndrome until something good breaks through - and then I think, “for fucks sake shut-up”, and then I break through it”.

Long and successful careers in rock bands are not linear processes, nor are they straightforward to handle, psychologically. But Gavin Rossdale has this longevity thing sorted.

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The egoless band can go a lot further than most bands. A strong element of that is embracing creative changes of direction - agreeing on it and being brave about it. Let’s face it, something we know about longevity is that taking creative risks is not an option - at some stage every band must do it. As fans, we all have a favourite Bowie album and a least favourite one. The same goes for every band, and that includes English indie-rockers Editors. 

Impressive then, that Editors have forged a new creative direction not once, but twice. The latest incarnation is hardly as an indie-rock band at all, but as an electronic outfit that has dived wholly into the musical scene that is electronic body music - so much so, they even named their new album (their 7th), EBM.

Less a genre and more a philosophy, this certainly makes good copy for the new Editors record. Indeed, keyboard player and backing vocalist Elliott Williams even suggested it could have been on the album’s cover sleeve.

They’ve pulled it off with aplomb, with an album that has a motor on it, and absolutely no filler whatsoever. And when you think about it, the move - as radical as it seems - is more an organic evolution of where the band has been going since 2010’s ‘In This Light And On This Evening’. But then, Editors’ career has been an ongoing exercise in managing expectations. As Tom Smith puts it:

“We were this deeply alternative band that were there by accident really. We’ve always found inspiration in the shadows, it suits us. It’s why we’re still here”. 

Editors have navigated a path to longevity that covers the bases: creative shifts, changes of line-up and not getting attached to the trappings of fame. However in the end, for all the drama in their music, this is a band that has survived through pragmatism, friendship and staying grounded. It’s been a Karma Climb of sorts, and long may they go on. 

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Let’s face it, there is a patchy record for solo artists that began in popular 90s bands. Some crossed the rubicon to a credible solo career and some didn’t. While Gaz Coombes enjoyed the full glare of the spotlight of the second half of the 90s with Supergrass, his solo work has surpassed those years in many ways. 2018’s World’s Strongest Man felt like a step forward in this third phase of Coombe’s music career (he has been making music in commercial bands since the age of 15, so let’s call Supergrass his second phase).

Gaz hasn’t felt the need to rush things. Since Supergrass split in 2010 (they came together for a resplendent but brief reunion live tour in 2022) he has released four solo albums, each one a steady progression on the one before. But none of his solo work sounds like the band that first made him a famous face and voice.

What’s been cool about doing these last few solo records is building up this entirely new fan base, not just expecting people to have come over from Supergrass”.

The path to a viable, successful solo career is a pretty precarious one, but it feels like Gaz has found his way on that path. His new album Turn The Car Around continues in the same vein as World’s Strongest Man, showcasing the variety of tricks Coombe’s has in the bag, from classic melancholic songs to nagging grooves and dirty guitar sounds. From this point onwards, he’s pushing himself further. 

“I’ve called this album the last one of a trilogy, just to force myself to look at my career in a different way from now on. I’ve known where I wanted to take it before but this time I’m not sure. I want to do something different, so it’ll be jazz metal”. 

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Rumer’s arrival struck a similar chord to that of Norah Jones some six years earlier i.e. refreshingly out of time. Those singles Slow, Aretha and their host album Seasons of My Soul arrived so fully formed although (as with Norah Jones) Rumer was another case of ‘overnight success 10 years in the making’.

“It was planes, trains and automobiles, that was my journey to getting a record deal and in those days you had to have a record deal. I couldn’t imagine doing a self-release – I didn’t have the knowhow, team or energy. But getting a record deal seemed to be as likely as winning the lottery. I was just a girl working three jobs and trying to survive”.

 This went on for years and years – almost a decade – of doing low-key circuits, song-writing between jobs and with very little hope of ever getting a music career off the ground - even with that voice. After all, we don’t live in a world where talent rises naturally to the top. Then all of a sudden, at the last roll of the dice, everything happened all at once. Signed by Atlantic Records, Rumer was thrust to the top of the pedestal - signing dinners, showcases, chart success, radio play, then mixing with pop royalty and even invitations to the White House.

 What followed was an all too familiar tale, a most typical music industry story. Rumer became an exemplar of everything the music industry machine can do. As she puts it on The Art of Longevity:

I was like a rabbit in the headlights, just spinning. I didn’t really enjoy it but I was shaming myself for not enjoying it because it was what I had wanted”. Everything goes so fast, you can’t think – you need other people to think for you – and at that point you become vulnerable. Your energy, magic and sparkle is drained from you”.

Yet perhaps, she played the right card at the right time. To follow-up her phenomenal debut Rumer released a covers album Boys Don’t Cry, in 2014. She encountered some resistance to that, but she stuck to her guns and got her way. And that album was also a major success. She became something of an expert at interpretation of others’ songs, some of them long forgotten gems. 

One of the secrets to longevity we’ve discovered on The Art of Longevity is “have the confidence to disrupt yourself before the industry disrupts you”.

Rumer did just that and survived to tell the tale.  It's a fascinating journey. 

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The Delines’ world is a sprawling, blue collar soap opera. Flawed characters, aimless drifters, chancers and grifters, barroom fights, beat-up cars, parking lots, convenience store robberies, messed up relationships and broken dreams…the characters are never far off disaster - indeed they are predestined. It’s so romantic, it is magnificent.

As a recording band, The Delines are meticulous in rendering that world so perfectly. Their three full-length studio albums are full of the stories that make up this wider soap opera, and with 2022’s The Sea Drift, there is the added context of these stories based in the state of Texas and the Gulf Coast of Mexico. As a concept album you’ll be hard pushed to find anything as immersive. Visual, novelistic writing, music economically played purely as a vessel for the songs, each musician plays with an exquisite restraint. Leading all this is Amy Boone’s voice, so occupying its subjects as to put you the listener into each and every tragic scene. 

As Vlautin admits The Delines are “a small time band”, just like a music industry equivalent of the small time characters they write, sing and play about. Yet, as we discuss on the Art of Longevity - they are really occupying the same space, metaphorically and musically speaking - as Springsteen or Lana Del Rey. I wouldn’t say either of those artists aren’t the real deal, everyone knows they are. Yet if it’s real music you want, then may we humbly introduce you to what might become your favourite new band. 

The Delines really are as real as the characters they sing about. 

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In this episode, Fenner Pearson chats to Neil Arthur about his writing process and how he works on the Blancmange albums, with Benge acting as his foil and producer, and his collaborations with Fader and Near Future. Arthur touches on the number of ideas “buzzing and fizzing” around his head that has led to him recording sixteen albums in eight years. This in turn provides an interesting insight into the whole process of releasing an album in 2022 compared with 1982!

Perhaps what comes across most clearly is Arthur’s creative energy, from the studio where he records and develops his ideas, through the time spent working with Benge in the latter’s studio, right up to his enduring enjoyment of playing live, including his current tour where he performs with the enthusiasm and energy of someone who obviously relishes performing their music to an audience. 

And there is no sense that Neil is slowing down: he is in the process of mixing completed albums with Near Future and a covers album with Vince Clarke, as well a new collaboration with Liam Hutton and Finlay Shakespeare as The Remainder, and a new Fader album. On top of that, he will be performing at a number of festivals next year. 

It’s an inspirational interview, in which Neil Arthur illustrates and exemplifies how a passion for music and a relentless creative energy has directly resulted in his artistic longevity and joyous cascade of albums from Blancmange and his many other projects.

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After fading from view in the UK after "Strange And Beautiful" (a top 10 hit in 2002), Aqualung was hardly consigned to the legend of the one hit wonder. Instead Matt Hales went to make his name and build his career in the USA - much of it through hard, steady touring - the opposite of his “instant success” in the UK. Aqualung bucked the trend for under-achieving British acts through the naughties, selling several hundred thousand albums and becoming darlings of the cool celebrity crowd, from appearances on Jay Leno's Tonight show to Grammy nominations and cool celebrities attending his shows. Matt Hales became what he calls “inadvertently cool”. How did that happen? By not compromising for one thing.

“I tried compromising at one stage, by writing hits and giving the A&R guy what he wanted, but it made me unhappy. So I made the quietest music I could, my Idagio, my quieter version of Pet Sounds. That turned out to be successful anyway!”

Hales also established a parallel music career by becoming a successful, sought after writer-producer: collaborating with Lianne La Havas (he produced her superb debut album), Bat for Lashes, Tom Chaplin, Mika, Paloma Faith, Disclosure and many others. This has set Matt free from the curse of every commercial musician out there i.e. not attached to having a hit. 

Still, despite being a collaborator for hire, Hales has released no less than seven albums as Aqualung. The most recent, Dead Letters, is something truly special. When I heard it I immediately invited Matt on the show to get the inside story on his rather unusual career journey. 

Hales is often compared with the great & the good, from Radiohead & Coldplay, to Elton John and Talk Talk. It makes sense when you listen to Dead Letters, an album in which he has let all of these influences come to the surface:

“This is a record where I am paying homage to the record collection that I was raised on. There is Elton, Stevie Wonder, Bread, Toto - Pet Sounds of course, that’s the muesli I was raised on”. 

And if you thought the key change is dead in pop music, then Matt Hales is out to prove you wrong on Dead Letters. As he mentions in our conversation, he can literally “do anything he wants”.

Perhaps that’s the very definition of musical longevity.

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Suede (or, The London Suede for our friends in the USA) has reached 30 years in the business (well, minus the seven years the band was officially split in 2003). As singer Brett Anderson hits mid-50s, you cannot accuse him, or the band, of being boring. The energy and vitality of Suede’s 9th studio album Autofiction is striking, as are the band's recent live performances. More than that however, the album is Suede’s strongest batch of rock songs since, well, perhaps since ever. 

This is all the more remarkable in a sense, coming off the back of The Blue Hour (2018), which was also a superb record, albeit very different to Autofiction, with lush production, strings and field recordings. It suggests Suede is a band reborn, on top of their game. 

I spoke to Brett on the eve of the release of Autofiction and found him in fine fettle, excited at the prospect of promoting the record (how refreshing is that!) and discovering how it would land with both critics and fans. Not least because in a sense, it is a full-circle record that harks back to Suede’s beginnings 30 years ago (that first EP The Drowners in 1992) but at the same time comes across fresh, confident and modern.

This isn’t just another episode of The Art of Longevity but one in which Brett and I discuss the whole concept of the show (which he inspired) - the career arc of rock & pop bands - a process that has "all the inevitability of the lifecycle of a frog”. 

The way Brett put it himself in the second part of his autobiography, Afternoons With The Blinds Drawn, is thus:

“Every band follows the same sort of career arc with the same points plotted grimly along the way like the Stations of the Cross: struggle, success, success, excess, disintegration and if you’re lucky - enlightenment”. 

Having assessed the careers of many other artists that have guested on the show using ‘Brett’s Curve’ (sic) as a benchmark, how would Brett reflect on Suede’s career with hindsight and the objectivity of wisdom along with freedom from the attachments of the bands earlier career?

The answer might surprise you...

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How to characterise an American indie band over almost three decades and 10 albums, each with a subtly different flavour? One recent review I read described Death Cab For Cutie as “masters of dreamy, emo-tinged Americana” and while that’s rather simplistic, their previous two albums have had a ‘dreamy’ feel, a softer production and reflective almost gentle character (or as Ben Gibbard described one of their earlier records, “Prozac happiness”). 

The band's new LP Asphalt Meadows has something more vital and varied going for it however, with the band capturing a combination of post-pandemic zest for life with a state of self-reflection. There’s a depth and a mystery to the record that somehow seems fitting with the band’s current standing – one of a handful of longevous indie Americana bands that can make exactly the music they want to make with no interference. Not even from a major label such as Atlantic Records. Ben Gibbard confirms:

“Atlantic Records have never once stepped in to change something or baulked at a creative decision we’ve made. It’s been the exact opposite of the horror story narrative that you hear about all the time”.

Indeed. The music industry’s elephant’s graveyard of indie bands that signed to major labels but could not make it work may be large, but it does not and will not see the likes of Death Cab For Cutie. Over almost 18 years with Atlantic Records, you’ve made things work - what has been the secret to that?

Nick Harmer:

“It is a symbiotic relationship. Atlantic has brought stability and worked steadily and have become a dependable band from their perspective. There have been so many elements of luck to it but we’ve both worked really hard on every record”.

While Nick is impressed at how many new bands seen to arrive 'fully formed', like all bands of longevity, Ben Gibbard struggles with the idea of being in a position to advise bands now as to how to forge that path, especially in today’s more competitive and less forgiving circumstances. 

“The stakes for saying something uncouth in an interview or having a bad show, for fucking up – are so much higher now than when we started. It’s important to remember to have fun. We’ve always gone in with the singular focus of making music that we’re proud of and that says something about our lives”.

Death Cab are not always immediately associated with fun, the abstract themes in their songs often coming across more thoughtful and cerebral. But they have arrived in a place where they can enjoy their longevity and let the music go where they want it. Something tells me their fans will be equally happy with the place they are in today. 

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After 25 years in the music business, both as a major label priority artist and as a jobbing musician, Ed Harcourt still has big ambitions. 

“My greatest achievement would be to write a song I would never get bored of singing”.

Cards on the table, Ed Harcourt’s two instrumental albums made between 2018 and 2020 (Beyond the End and Monochrome to Colour) got me through the pandemic. Well, they certainly helped. But Ed didn’t sing on either, so it comes as something of a relief to have Ed Harcourt back in the world of songs. Not only that, but his best batch of songs for a while - held together on a cracker of a new album El Magnifico. It is quite possibly the best album he has ever made. The question is, will enough people get to hear it?

Harcourt was first signed to Heavenly Records, which was subsumed into the EMI empire of old, where he was a priority UK artist for a while - thrust into the eye of the needle. But the chart positions never came, the pressure mounted, and, inevitably, Harcourt moved on into the second phase of his career as an independent artist. These days, his view of ‘the industry’ is understandably jaded.

“I went a bit mad. I had been institutionalised. I felt done. It still feels like a rollercoaster, but I can’t do anything else”.

His solo albums as an independent artist have impressed critics and fans - especially Furnaces (2016) - but commercial success has been elusive, and Furnaces left him burnt out and in need of a change (hence the ‘neo classical phase’ that followed).

Harcourt remains an active collaborator, however, producing albums for Kathryn Williams and Sophie Ellis Bexter, whom with Ed co-wrote on her last three albums. He is now working with emerging artist Roxanne De Bastion. In many ways, it is surprising he is not more in demand as a producer, although by his own admission, he will never be motivated to do anything within a million miles of what you might call a trend. Meanwhile, he tours with cult Ohio indie band The Afghan Whigs and is waiting for some film score projects to drop. But, for an ambitious artist, is that success?

“Success is working. Just making music all the time. I am proud but dismissive. Something will come, but I just don’t know what, yet…”

Harcourt now makes music with the battle scars of an artist who has been through the mangle. He rode the hype cycle - signing a five album deal to a major, experiencing the fallout from that, and steadily rebuilding to a place where he can always make music for himself.  

In particular on El Magnifico, there is a bouncy, upbeat ‘single’ in Strange Beauty, while Deathless is a throwback to the classic days of album songs - a centrepiece if you will. Broken Keys is reminiscent of Elvis Costello during his 70s heyday, while Into The Loving Arms Of Your Enemy may well be Harcourt’s best song so far. 

In fact, it might be the song Ed Harcourt never gets bored of singing. 

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Before I spoke with Danny McNamara, he’d emailed me to say how much he loved Brett Anderson’s quote - the one we’ve set out to make famous on The Art of Longevity. Not only did he recognise it as capturing the band’s career but Embrace have been through the cycle at least twice - the struggle (1990-’96), stratospheric rise (their debut The Good Will Out), the crash to the bottom (that first time dropped by their label) and enlightenment (Out Of Nothing). And then all over again.

Consider - the band had been on a three year break from 2007-2010 and then holed up creating a new record for all of four years - setting out nobly to better their debut. Meanwhile, the music industry changed beyond all recognition. Spotify had launched, and was into hyper-growth by 2014 - destroying the CD and threatening to make the album concept redundant. As such, the band’s most experimental and sonically ambitious record (and my personal favourite), the self-titled Embrace, was a commercial disappointment at a time when it became difficult to even assess what commercial success was for any album.

Still, Embrace served its purpose, setting the band on course for a creative renaissance after they had been burnt out by album number five This New Day in 2006). We spoke as the band released album number eight, the outstanding and humbly titled How To Be A Person Like Other People. 

As a recently self-diagnosed introvert and medically diagnosed as OCD, McNamara has ridden the music industry rollercoaster and done rather well to stay sane. In recent times, marriage and fatherhood have further set Danny and his bandmates on a stable course, to not only carry on making music for as long as they want to (nobody can drop them or stop them) but to make their music. Embrace’s brand of emotionally charged and sometimes swaggering pop-rock is a humanistic joy - if you simply surrender to it. A sort of pop music version of freediving. 

There’s a good heart within Embrace and the ambition to keep getting better still beats strongly. 

"What Embrace are, is really special and what we should be doing with our energy is mining that, not ploughing the field wide but digging down and see what there is in the ground. Then we will be honouring what we’ve been given as a group and that way, we can get better". 

Danny's take on the band's longevity is reflective, funny and contains more humility than you'll get from those 'hedge fund gangsters' and tech billionaires that run the business he and his band have survived for 32 years. They should mark his words!

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Having helped pave the way, Alela remains at the heart of a very strong current movement for female troubadours - a scene driven by the success of the likes of Sharon Van Etten, Angel Oslen, Julien Baker and even Phoebe Bridgers - but harking back to Joni Mitchell. It was Cat Power that proved an inspiration to Alela herself when she first started out making The Pirate’s Gospel, then aged 19. 

It’s taken almost five years for Alela to create another record since Cusp. Between raising her two young daughters (making a lot of snacks), renovating her Portland home and like all of us - getting through the global pandemic - it has taken time, graft and discipline to craft songs to a standard she has set for herself. But once she got into the studio (not just any studio but Tucker Martine’s ‘Flora’ in Northeast Portland, Oregon) the songs were recorded quickly. The new album Looking Glass processes the themes of domesticity, love & loss and how to face these dark times. In Alela’s words the record is about:

“Feeling the lightness and the darkness of the world at large. How do you get through your day-to-day life? How do we create a sweet, peaceful world for your children when there’s a lot of chaos out there”.

No doubt the record will act as a tonic to the blurry gloom outside your window. I would highly recommend you drink it down. 

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Interpol have honed their craft over 20 years since they ‘blasted’ onto the scene in 2002 with Turn On The Bright Lights - another one of those infamous overnight successes (actually the culmination of five years of hard graft). The album received a 9.5 Pitchfork review, with music journalist Eric Carr expressing unobjective fandom with some pretty colourful adjectives:

“Interpol's debut full-length is wrought with emotional disconnection and faded glory, epic sweep and intimate catharsis.”

Indeed. Yet this band, somewhat badged over the years as art-rock, gloom-rock and what have you - has changed over 25 years - to the extent that The Other Side Of Make Believe surprised their immediate circle of friends, management, label, publishers. 

Interpol has seen almost every longevity trend this podcast has discovered: the much hyped yet long-in-coming debut, the adventure with major labels and global stardom (and then being dropped), the madness of the rock & roll lifestyle, the loss of a founding member (bassist Carlos Dengler left in 2009) and the realisation that the industry they are part of isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Since Interpol came on the scene, everything about the music industry has changed, yet Interpol has built on a distinctive and sturdy brand.  There is a sense of the collective unit about everything they do. As Daniel puts it: 

“I would bet on Paul and Sam as creative forces every time.”

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“I’ve recognised that music is sort of like an inner voice that is telling me what to do. When I was younger it was telling me what to sound like. As I became more sophisticated as a writer and performer, the instruction became more original. I just learned to be receptive to that. I’ve chosen to make my life like that”. 

By listening to that inner voice, Mike Scott has given the world a lot of pleasure. From celebs to fellow musicians to fans of all generations, The Waterboys have written a whole bunch of those songs one might describe as “life affirming”. Love songs, folk songs, protest songs and brilliant pop songs have come through Mike Scott with remarkable (and if you’re another songwriter, enviable) consistency. 

In recent times, Scott has been nothing if not prolific. Recent album All Souls Hill came off the back of a trilogy of albums: 2017’s Out of All This Blue, 2019’s Where the Action Is, and 2020’s Good Luck, Seeker. The Waterboys had their fans wondering what direction they would go this time, musically speaking, but it looks like they will be left waiting another year or so before the next true phase of the band is revealed.

“I want to wait a bit longer before we release this next album. There’s a strong theme to it, and some interesting collaborators. It even opens with a song not sung by me”.

I noticed in listening to these later records that spoken-word numbers have become more of a thing for Mike Scott, and that many of his songs are also increasingly biographical - essentially documenting the life & times of Mike Scott (check out London Mick, Ladbroke Grove, In My Dreams and even recent single Glastonbury Fayre, wrote in celebration of the band’s recent 11th appearance at Glastonbury 2022). 

Both these song styles are bang on trend, not that Scott has noticed. How would he? One simple secret to The Waterboys’ longevity is having no distractions. Mike doesn’t have a TV, never listens to the radio and uses socials in a pretty pointed, functional way. It’s a lifestyle that has given him the space to not just be productive, but prolific in recent years. 

"Artists need space, not just to listen to what’s going on in your head, but also to feel what’s in your gut. If the idea in my head isn’t confirmed by my gut I don’t do it. But I need quiet to hear that”.

Maybe it’s having that sense of perspective. And no distractions. Whatever it is that makes the miracle happen. The Waterboys seem as fresh and relevant as ever. 

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The music journalist Paul Lester described Everything Everything as “a riot in a melody factory”, a perfect description for a band positively clattering with ideas, yet on the new album Raw Data Feel, I get the sense that the band has learned the craft of what to leave out. Judge for yourself but do apply the usual rule - listen three times first!

On longevity, singer and co-writer Jonathan Higgs felt that Everything Everything crossed the rubicon on the band’s third album Get To Heaven (2015) after which “we can probably stop worrying about being in a band as a job, that we’ve woken enough people up to us that we could probably sustain. We always approached the band as a long-term thing but we see our longevity as a lasting cult rather than a big band that once had a few big hits”.

Indeed, Everything Everything is one of those bands that have carved out a fruitful, lasting existence without ever having ‘a hit’. The band's following is diverse, from ‘prog dads’ to teenage girls to electronic music fans. With four top five albums and two Mercury Prize nominations, the band has earned its place on the cultural landscape. However, it was telling that the day after my conversation with Jonathan, the Everything Everything was due to sit down with their management for a ‘brand strategy meeting’ in which the main topic on the agenda was “how are we doing as a band, because it’s really difficult to tell”. 

Somehow, I feel like Raw Data Feel has the potential to move the band up a notch or two, even if it is hard to know exactly what that means these days. 

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After her second album Fires (2005) Nerina Pallot was hot property. She kissed the frog that is ‘fame’ in the music industry, with a BRIT nomination, Ivors nomination and even an appearance on Top Of The Pops. Never quite comfortable with that, her third album The Graduate (2009) was an uneven affair that failed to keep the spotlight shining Nerina’s way. That turned out for the better…

When I heard her new record, the ironically titled I Don’t Know What I’m Doing, I found myself instantly liking it but sensing that the record would grow on me as well - an album that will keep on revealing new depths. In that respect, I wasn’t surprised to hear that the inspiration behind it was the ‘proper pop’ tunes of the 70s: Kate Bush, Stevie Wonder, ABBA, Barry Gibb, Judie Tzuke, Leo Sayer, Carole King and Elkie Brooks! The album is awash in 70s style keyboards and real tunes. If only that Late Night Taxi Ride radio show of mine would ever get off the ground, Nerina’s brand of grown-up pop would feature rather more prominently than it currently does on the UK radio! Or even USA radio for that matter. 

“I got flown out tons of times by American labels who thought that Everybody’s Gone To War would be a big radio record, but how do you sell an album that is nothing like the single? I’m not a straightforward sell. I never have been. But that’s where I’m happy”. 

Her relatively low profile these days is more a frustration for her fans than Nerina herself, however. Like so many other artists of longevity, Pallot has long since eschewed the attachment to such industry accolades, but her connection to the fan base seems unbreakable:

“I have a strong contract with my audience. The fans are a big part of my records - I want them to feel like at least 3 or 4 songs connect with them - the rest is gravy”. It’s been a circuitous route each time to get my records made, so I don’t want to let them down”. 

That frame of mind is what  makes a Nerina Pallot album such a treat, and her live shows the best kept secret in town. Good for those lucky, loyal fans. 

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Inspired by recent collaborations with some of America's coolest indie A-listers (Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig, Danielle Haim, Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver, James Mercer, Jamila Woods) Bruce Hornsby has been prolific in recent times, making a trilogy of albums beginning with the ‘return-to-form album’ Absolute Zero (2019). This trilogy is a real display of Hornsby’s musical prowess and curiosity – a mix of progressive, avant garde pop and contemporary classical works. Completing the trio of albums, Flicted, Hornsby’s 23rd studio record, is a collection of songs built from ‘cues’ for his music to Spike Lee’s films (Bruce and Spike have been collaborating since the early 90s).

The album features some phenomenal side players including the producer Blake Mills (on guitar) and yMusic, a Brooklyn-based chamber sextet that lends lush arrangements throughout. Indeed as Bruce hints during our conversation, more is to come from his sessions with yMusic.

“I’m a lifelong student and I’m way more interested in getting better as a musician, a vocalist and especially as a writer. I’ve been getting nasty letters ever since my second record saying “how dare you change”, but my silent response is “you haven’t heard anything yet.”

Perhaps all ‘pop’ musicians of longevity should aspire to Bruce Hornsby’s musically borderless, ‘post-genre’ way of working.

“My art of longevity is not giving a rat's ass about what’s popular, or whether I’m popular but to please myself and to grow, evolve, change and expand…on and on”.

When it comes to music, and Bruce Hornsby, whatever you do, don’t call it a comeback. 

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We spoke to Joey Burns on the eve of Calexico's recent European shows in Brussels and London. Calexico play bigger venues in Europe than they do on their home turf, despite inventing a sound that conveys that land so evocatively. Indeed, it was music journalist Fred Mills who captured the band’s sound so perfectly with just two words: “desert noir”.  What a cool subgenre to have invented. Since most music writers lazily throw in all the various tex mex music flavours in describing Calexico’s sound, Joey is happy to clarify:

“We are connected more with mariachi and cumbia than say tex mex or tejano or norteño which has a different connection to a different tradition. For the most part we are mariachi, cumbia. I’ve never felt like I’ve mastered anything, but I’m lucky enough to play with some of those that have”. 

Calexico is touring as a septet, with Burns and partner/drummer John Convertino accompanied by Sergio Mendoza, MARIACHI LUZ DE LUNA, upright bass virtuoso Scott Colberg and the brilliant guitar player and singer Brian Lopez. The set combines magical mariachi of the highest possible standard, yet when the band chooses to (as on the thrilling Then You Might See) they jam out extended plays of true sonic power in the style of Radiohead or James. In combining those elements the band’s singularity is astonishing. 

I can usually pinpoint exactly how I discovered a new band of longevity and for Calexico it was a recommendation from the late, erudite Robert Sandall, BBC Radio 3 presenter of Late Junction and one time Head of PR for Virgin Records. He told me I must listen to Feast of Wire three times. He was very specific about it. I remain entirely grateful to Robert. There is nothing quite like a recommendation that sticks. Not only did that one tether me to Calexico for life, but the ‘listen three times’ rule is something I have adopted as a tactic in my own recommendations. I implore you, thrice discerning listeners. It is well-known that beautiful things often come in threes. 

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When your host purchased The Divine Comedy's Fin De Siècle in 1998, I couldn’t quite penetrate it at the time. Listening again to the record in preparation for this conversation with Neil Hannon  I have to say, I missed out. As Hannon describes himself, the album was “a musical hallucinogen". Essentially a sombre affair in which Hannon exercises all his fascinations with troubadour influences, Scott Walker, Jacques Brel, even Charles Aznavour. Oh, and Faith No More. And why not? Despite its rather avant garde nature, the album plays host to The Divine Comedy’s biggest hit and probably best known song, The National Express. Why, I wondered, would a pop star like Neil Hannon possibly be travelling around the country by coach? (you’ll have to listen in for the answer). 

The Divine Comedy perhaps never made the ‘A List’ of the 1990s British music boom. Hannon’s journey was not that of Oasis, The Stone Roses or Blur, or even more kindred spirits, Pulp. But, Hannon still had three solid years of full-on fame. As he describes it:

“The heights and the valleys are shallower in my experience than Suede or others. But, I looked through my old diaries recently and the difference between one year and the next - suddenly I didn’t have a day to myself for the next three years. It drove me mad, but I came out the other side”. 

With that quote, Neil Hannon captures his very own successful recipe for longevity - namely don’t get too carried away. However, that gentle roller coaster ride has rolled on, largely down to Hannon’s ability to write very good songs. Those songs and Hannon’s independent, self-reliance has seen The Divine Comedy mature very nicely indeed. Despite the industry’s ebbs and flows since his debut album Fanfare for the Comic Muse in 1990, Hannon still gets asked to do interesting projects (writing the music for a Willie Wonka prequel), still goes on successful tours (pandemic permitting) and still gets played on the radio (now & again). 

I asked Neil if that really is the secret to longevity in pop music - on top of everything else - to be able to knock out great songs?

“I feel like it might be. You never quite know. I sat in the control room in Abbey Road while the orchestra played their part on Our Mutual Friend. I remember thinking well, that’s the best thing I’ve ever done. “After Regeneration [2001] I knew I had to change things or I’m doomed. I have to make the record that makes me happy. I went back to the source - pure 60s orchestral pop with layers of golden age British pop. It got me back on course. It was easier after that. To know you don’t have to go looking - just do what you do - and an audience will come”. 

The amazing thing about bands of longevity is how new audiences keep on coming. No doubt a benefit of the streaming era, always on music, playlists and discovery algorithms. But good songs are the essential ingredient and Hannon has a bounty of them.  As a "musical entity, a singer-songwriter", Hannon is a rather distant pop star.

“I’m not sure I was ever really a pop star, though at one point I did read the manual, so I knew what I was doing”.

Sounds like it. 

Full article at https://www.songsommelier.com

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After her fourth album The Fall in 2009 proved to be a departure from the well known blend of blues-jazz-country-pop, Norah Jones received a fan letter:

“After I made The Fall, I received the sweetest letter from a fan in Argentina, but it was also criticising me as well. It said “I’m a really big fan but would you please go back to singing the ballads, because you do that better and I really need that from you”. It was a sweet letter but I decided then, you are never going to please everyone”. 

As Norah prepared to release a box set 20th anniversary edition of her quietly colossal debut Come Away With Me, I invited her to talk with me on The Art of Longevity with the aim of exploring just how far she had come in the intervening 20 years, musically speaking. After all, when an artist achieves the sort of success Jones did with a debut record, there is no point trying to repeat it. Instead, with each new album since, she has moved forward, while collaborating with some of the world’s finest instrumentalists and producers. Genre blending was on the agenda from the off, yet Norah has continued to play with more different styles in such a way as to be a true alchemist. 

Do such talents pose a dilemma, I wondered? Was The Fall and then Little Broken Hearts a deliberate rebellion against the mould? Yes and no seems to be the answer. Jones was always a creator without boundaries, it was simply her massive early following (including the author of that fan letter) that placed certain expectations on her music. 

Our own fan letter to Norah would contain a somewhat different narrative. Never go back, keep moving forward and go even closer to the edge. Let’s see where she travels next. 

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Try playing a Crowded House record (any of them) then let Spotify play on…you will get just the best selection of really great songs. Go on, try it and you’ll see for yourself. This discovery may well make drivetime radio programming a heck of a lot easier, or possibly redundant altogether.

You may of course be a Crowded House fan and like, know this already. You may be a casual admirer, or even a sceptic. In which case, take the time to enjoy this shared revelation. But let me tell you that this is simple proof of Neil Finn’s songwriting skills. Certainly it’s more to do with that than mathematics.

I’m saying this as a recently converted fan. One of the deep pleasures (and deep privilege) of doing this podcast is that I can discover what I’ve missed, correct my own perceptions of some artists, and get up to fan-speed.

This band has made stone cold classic albums. Woodface, Together Alone, the debut album probably too. But each one of their seven studio L.Ps now including a brand new album Gravity Stairs offers a masterclass in high quality song and sound craft. Together Alone is a high point for sure but I particularly enjoyed the 2010 Intriguer album. Thing is, Crowded House records take time to love. They grow on you, something Neil Finn is well aware of:

"In general our records that may have been regarded as classic, have taken their time. Every album has been a slow boiler, requiring a lot of belief in it".

However, Gravity Stairs feels much more immediate than the band’s more subtle 2021 release Dreamers Are Waiting. Crowded House have cracked the code to a healthy longevity. Classic songs, great stagecraft, a relaxed attitude to ‘success’ and a continuous desire to create something new that’s actually good. Whether the new songs last as long as the old doesn’t matter too much when it’s the same writer, the same band that has made its mark indelibly. 

One thing is for sure, those songs will probably outlive the algorithms.

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If all music artists of longevity have a good book in them, then Belle and Sebastian are more bookish than most - something that’s always been present in the band’s lyrics of course - wry observations of everyday life, spun into song in a way that seems natural and effortless, though is probably the result of hard graft and fine craft. 

It was a listen to the band’s latest offering ‘A Bit of Previous’ that had me intrigued enough to thoroughly anticipate and enjoy a chat with Stuart Murdoch. Belle and Sebastian’s 10th full studio album is a joy - an example of a band of longevity (in this case 20 years) enjoying and expressing yet another creative peak. Yet it is also different from their previous albums - more driving pop, ‘big’ choruses and a good dose of blue-eyed soul thrown in for good measure. That’s the remarkable thing about longevity - bands with as much about them as Belle & Sebastian are bound to pick up new fans along the way, and meanwhile their frighteningly loyal fan base ‘the Bowlies’ will always follow them. 

‘A Bit of Previous’ was meant to be recorded in California in the spring of 2020, but that plan was thwarted by, guess what? If, as Stuart Murdoch’s liner notes for the record suggest “Corona probably came 46th in the list of entities most influential in the writing of this record” - then surely the pandemic loomed large over how the record was eventually made. Towards the end of 2020 Murdoch & his merry band (there are seven of them) abandoned the notion of going to the US and instead converted its own rehearsal space in Glasgow into a makeshift studio and got to work, with unhurried resignation. 

How full circle can a band come? Belle and Sebastian’s very first recording sessions were at Cava Studios on the edge of Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park way back in the mid 90s, which happened as a result of them winning Beatbox, a competition funded by the Department of Employment. Their prize was three whole days at Cava to record a song. Murdoch was determined to use the allotted time to record an entire album though - the end result being the band’s debut Tigermilk. That first album was originally given a limited release of just 1,000 copies by Electric Honey, Beatbox’s associated record label (the album was subsequently re-released in 1999 by Jeepster Records). Of course, the deal was to have a limited print of CDs, but again Murdoch insisted on vinyl. 

Those changes of plan have been Stuart Murdoch’s modus operandi since the inception of Belle and Sebastian and I was curious to find out just where that self-belief came from. His answer was suitably self-effacing, and charmingly vexed:

“I got really ill with M.E., but roundabout that time I had spiritual feelings as well - so illness, god, and discovering I could write songs. That was like a lifeline to me, so I’m not sure it’s self belief but more determination. I was just determined to use my time - because of my illness - in a focused way”. 

Yet Murdoch’s approach throughout the evolution of Belle and Sebastian has remained eccentric. Without a doubt, longevity is a far greater possibility if a band is driven by single-minded, quixotic decision making.

“We’re lucky in that we never really had hits, so no label was ever pressuring us in that way. I wish we had some of that pressure in a sense. I’m never comfortable, I’ve been bitching, in a semi-comedic way, since 2003 about why we can’t be bigger than we are”. But once you have a following, no one can really knock you back”.

Seems like a bit of previous has been enough to see Belle and Sebastian through. 

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When Teenage Fanclub formed in 1989, times were unusual in music, and not in a good way. It was pre-grunge, pre-Britpop and the charts were still in the grip of mass-produced pop (much of it naff) as many 80s bands were struggling to remain relevant (Depeche Mode being the exception). Yet something was afoot across the musical axis of the Eastern Seaboard, Washington Seattle, and Glasgow. Maybe it was something to do with areas of high precipitation joining forces to rain on Stock, Aitken & Waterman’s parade. The peak of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Yo La Tengo, Jesus & Mary Chain, The Vaselines…and very much arriving at that time, The Fannies: 

“When we first arrived there wasn’t really a scene, no context to speak of, we were working in a vacuum”.

They were at the very beginning of the resurgence of guitar music - the age of Creation Records and Oasis, Sub Pop and Nirvana - a decade of legend making stories in which you’ll find Teenage Fanclub playing a series of rather important cameos.

The band consider themselves lucky on several counts. For one, they have never had a hit, no big signature song. And therefore, no albatross. From their earliest days, once they’d made an album, A Catholic Education, they felt as if they’d already made it - having created an album on their own terms - no label and no strings attached.

How indie can you get?

Except of course, the band had a good run with major labels, first with Geffen in the USA and then later with Columbia Records, after Sony Music had acquired most of Creation. Given their huge influence and reverence among their rock & roll peers, it’s easy to ponder could/should/would Teenage Fanclub have been so much bigger, commercially speaking.

“We did okay, just not compared to the likes of Nirvana”.

But Teenage Fanclub never succumbed to music industry cliches. No massive rise to superstardom? No problem:“We weren’t disappointed because we weren’t planning to be the biggest band in the world. We’re better off being thought of as underachievers”.

And so no big dramas, no drug-fuelled implosions - not even much in the way of musical differences (though founding member and principal songwriter Gerrad Love departed pre the making of new album Endless Arcade). Other than that, the band is tantrum-free and as friendly as they were from the very beginning.

Indeed, the essence of Teenage Fanclub can’t be easily captured by lazy narratives about commercial or creative peaks, as such. Although they’ve made a trio of fine rock & roll albums in Bandwagonesque, Grand Prix and Songs From Northern Britain, the band has found equilibrium since 2005’s Man Made - making consistently excellent albums every five years since, self-funded and always critically lauded:

“We're not trying to pretend to be the band we were in 1989, but we have the same intentions, we still feel as excited about it as we ever did”. It’s only a band. It’s just what we do”.

Long may Teenage Fanclub continue to defy rock & roll conventions, all be it through low expectations and increasingly lovely records. Now that’s a way to achieve longevity. 

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Steve Mason first made his name as one quarter (and the frontman of) the Beta Band, one of the most critically lauded acts of the late 1990s. They mixed disparate genres like hip-hop, folk, dub, house, psychedelia to create something beautifully cohesive and arresting. 

Their tastes were so eclectic and their desire to make music so compelling that they ended up with something that took the DNA of the past and spun it into something wholly new. In that regard, there was a creative parallel with Super Furry Animals. Their first three EPs in 1997 and 1998 set out their musical agenda “to put a nuclear bomb under britpop” so convincingly that they were always going to struggle to meet the ludicrously raised expectations around them. When Eamonn Forde sat down with Steve for The Art of Longevity, Mason explained that the band’s self-titled debut album in 1999 was rushed and they spent their interviews ‘promoting it’ by saying how much they disliked it! 

The use of ‘Dry The Rain’ in the 2000 film High Fidelity was one of those rare moments where music in a movie can escalate the artists profile more than any other medium, and The Beta Band was suddenly bigger in the US than they were in the UK. Hot Shots II 2001 should perhaps be treated as their debut album proper and is the record Mason is most proud of. However, Internal tensions, politics and mounting pressure meant that Zeroes To Heroes in 2004 ended up their final album before the whole enterprise collapsed in on itself. 

Mason had already been issuing solo work, notably under the King Biscuit Time name, while the Beta Band were still operational and then evolved into the more electronic, but short-lived, Black Affair. It was the writing of ‘All Come Down’ that led to the career-vivifying Boys Outside album and its companion sub album Ghosts Outside. This was the first time Mason released music under his own name and thereafter he released a new album roughly every three years. 

Mason talks about his circuitous career – from being in a band but feeling like the pressure of it all was solely on his shoulders to operating under pseudonyms and finally venturing out under his own name. There are common musical threads, but he has found an approach and an audience where he can move at his own pace. 

Presented by Eamonn Forde

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The Wombats have defied all UK press scepticism (and cynicism) to become one of the country’s biggest indie pop bands. Big streaming audiences, huge social media followings and a multi-generational fanbase now pretty much guarantee the Wombats will hit no. 1 on the album charts, as new album ‘Fix Yourself Not the World’ has proved. They also secure headline festival slots and sell out shows and tours, not just at home but even in the USA.  

Having come to know and admire the band’s songcraft on their previous record Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life In 2018, I’m fascinated by The Wombats’ story. How did the band defy the critics and cultural trends (indie has hardly been in cultural favour for the past 20 years) to become every young bands dream: independent, popular, commercially successful and on a seemingly unstoppable creative roll? 

The answer is multi-faceted of course. The band is a close knit, collaborative unit of multi-instrumentalists, all trained in music and sound production at Liverpool’s LIPA. They have ridden a wave of ‘pop as the new indie’, adjusting their sound to be something way beyond their early post-punk/grunge guitars of the early 2000s. At the core of their success are those songs - catchy, bouncy, poppy earworms - some of which have topped 100 million streams. 

When I was reading through the reviews for The Wombats’ latest album Fix Yourself, Not the World, it was The Guardian’s Alexi Petridis who put it best:

“Scroll down the Wombats’ Spotify page and you come to the section headed “Fans also like”. It features a selection of their mid-00s contemporaries, fellow strivers in the league of what was cruelly dubbed “landfill indie”: the Pigeon Detectives, the Kooks, the Enemy, Scouting for Girls”.

In my conversation with Dan Haggis of The Wombats for The Art of Longevity, I didn’t want to be the one to bring up the phrase landfill indie but I didn’t have to...

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In a warm and whimsical conversation with Yan (Scott Wilkinson) of Sea Power, I learned to appreciate just what this unique band has achieved. With the recent name change, I might suggest the band wears its status as National Treasure with a certain irony. But over the course of two decades the band has made a batch of fine songs, really solid albums, award winning soundtracks and plays sold out, highly renowned live shows. Sea Power  also had some hits in the early days but the band's true supporters are its core fan base, who buy all their records and see them live repeatedly, religiously you might say. 

Those fans, and the band's creative momentum, have pushed Sea Power to get better and better. 2017’s album Let The Dancers Inherit The Party was a fine record, with across the board four star reviews. 

Yan: “It did okay, not as well as some people might think. It didn’t do an Ed Sheeran or anything like that”. 

Well it looks like that might change with new L.P. Everything Was Forever, an amalgam of everything the band has done and have ever sounded like, wrapped within some genuine quality songwriting, the sort that can be achieved only after a band has put in its time working together as one. As we published this episode, Sea Power is vying for a number one position on the UK album charts, with their main rival being...the ginger genius himself (who said the band can’t sell as much as Ed Sheeran?). 

That might say more about the chart than it does about the popularity of Sea Power, but it’s a remarkable achievement nonetheless. Yan himself is less sanguine about all this than he was when the band formed:“I thought we were destined to do really well. That the world would fall gently at our feet”. 

Perhaps the world is. Just a gentler and longer fall than the band expected. Everything Was Forever should be the start of a new journey for a band with a new name.

“I saw this album as both the last record and the start of anything new, if it is going to happen. Getting the best of our influences over the years, before we move on to something new or, just stop”. 

It's pretty clear that the music scene is better off if that new something does happen. Whether we are British or otherwise, we could do with Sea Power. 

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From the earliest beginnings of 1983’s The Hurting to the band’s huge 1985 LP Songs From The Big Chair, Tears For Fears songs captured sadness, ambition, pain - confessional levels of emotional honesty. All this conveyed with the magic touch of songwriters who were also not afraid to get weird.

But as the 80s music scene spun out of control so did Tears For Fears, famously making one of the longest, most tortuous and expensive albums in history in The Seeds Of Love. The aim was flawlessness but the result was a flawed masterpiece, an album that literally exhausted the band (at least as a duo) until a reformation 15 years later. When they came back in 2004 with Everyone Loves a Happy Ending. Roland Orzabal describes that record as “Seeds Of Love’s little brother…it was lighter but the songs lacked the emotional honesty”.

But now Tears For Fears are back. In this streaming age of always-on music, when most artists are terrified to take a month off, let alone a year, let alone 18 years, Tears For Fears return with brand new album The Tipping Point. It comes at a time when their music is back in vogue (a gentle groundswell has seen more than 140 versions of Everybody Wants To Rule The World dropped onto streaming services in the past decade or so, urging the song towards one billion streams).

The duo has always navigated an intriguing relationship, often distanced from each other. Yet the two troubled souls that grew up together have come to accept each other as brothers, musically speaking. In the band’s early years, it was Curt who sang the hits and appeared to be the frontman and pop star of the band, with Roland the “backroom boy” (his words). Yet Roland stepped forth to dominate on The Seeds Of Love, his “musical Tourette's” allowed to run amok.

But a recent revelation is how Roland has learned to listen to Curt again. "When I saw were he was coming from the process of making the record became a joy. I felt the wind was blowing in our favour". It is Curt’s self-critical leanings that stepped-in on The Tipping Point, firstly to throw out most of a batch of songs written in a ‘songwriting camp’ (a fascinating and tragicomic scenario in a way given the songs written as a duo). Second, to step forward once again as co-lead singer and a co-writer in Tears For Fears as a duo, not a committee of songwriters. The band is even enjoying their time in the music industry’s fickle spotlight together once again - from Zoom calls to accepting the Ivor's lifetime award. “Curt and I have both got something to say and they are very different things”. 

And here’s the rub. Tears For Fears are back into the culture at a time when many of their 80s peers, from Duran Duran to Gary Numan to Aha, are in fine form, making great records and sounding fabulous live too. After the two years we’ve spent at home, the contagion we now need is to see legends playing truly great pop songs with smiles on their faces. 

Forget 2004, the happy ending is happening right now and long may it last. 

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After the release of a ‘best of’ collection Everything Hits at Once in 2019, Spoon are back at long last with brand new material - the album Lucifer On The Sofa - a raw, rollicking rock album (complete with new players on lead guitar and bass) recorded as near-as-dammit live. It is an antidote to Spoon’s previous (superb, but far more produced) Hot Thoughts (2017). 

In 30 years, the band has come full circle in the best possible way. Their first record (“not my favourite” says Britt) Telephono was released on indie label Matador, yet Spoon soon found themselves in a dalliance with a major label for their second outing A Series of Sneaks (1998). While that did not end well, it turned out to be the making of the band in a way, Spoon’s true beginning. The bitter experience of being dropped gave the band its first big song, the naming-and-shaming ‘Laffitte Don’t Fail Me Now’ (featured heavily in The Song Sommelier collection ‘Stick It To The Man’), the second song we discuss on the podcast. 

Almost two decades later the band was back on the Matador label and in a happy place - having consolidated their unique sound on a run of brilliant LPs. The most indie of bands was somehow destined to make their best work while signed to an iconic indie label. 

I’m glad to say that Spoon’s hot streak doesn’t end with 'Lucifer'. The album is a fine addition to an outstanding catalogue, already receiving those glowing 4 & 5 star reviews. “It fits perfectly as number 10” in Britt’s own economic language. It does indeed. Not only that but the title track and album closer is something different entirely, an inspired (by the pandemic in part) and momentous stroke of genius from a band at the peak of its powers. 

The only downer on a thoroughly enjoyable career-spanning conversation is the fact that poor old blighty is losing out big time, yet again. Spoon is touring extensively in the USA but has no immediate plans to come to Europe. That doesn’t stop me trying to persuade them however. In concluding our chat with the suggestion that Spoon comes over to London in 2023 (the band’s 30th anniversary year) to do not just a show but a residency, I’ve set to work on the very idea…watch this space. 

Meantime, check out the impressive new record and back catalogue of my favourite - and your new favourite - indie band. Ladies & gentlemen this is…Spoon, as brought to you by Britt himself!

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When it comes to longevity, Feeder keeps coming back around, and the guitar-rock scene is all the better for it. It was back in January 2001 that “Buck Rogers” reached number five on the UK chart (the song remains a radio standard even in its 21st year). Grant Nicholas originally wrote the song to impress producer Gil Norton in the hope he would be persuaded to work with Feeder. Buck Rogers contains a big guitar riff and stream-of-consciousness lyrics about being jealous of his rival’s brand new Jaguar (with a CD player) and whatever else came into his drunken head. Including drinking cider from a lemon.

Having a bona fide top five hit was never going to put Grant Nicholas under any pressure to repeat the trick. Songs just pour out of him and while not all of them are as catchy as Buck Rogers, Nicolas knows his way around a melody and a soaring, anthemic chorus as well as any songwriter in the business. When we spoke on The Art Of Longevity I asked Grant how come he hasn’t often been asked to write for others (he has only a little, and I hesitate to suggest he could do more, not wishing to worry Feeder fans we’ll lead him astray). It remains an option, always. 

Feeder may not be fashionable but they have made it through the music industry mangle - achieving chart success, playing arenas and having made a bunch of very good albums (with Comfort in Sound a genuine rock classic). These days it’s all about the joy of new songs and playing to the fans. Nicholas and his co-founder member/bassist Taka Hirose soldier on as Feeder through thick and thin, yet they operate with an enthusiasm and energy befitting of any up & coming rock band blossoming for the first time. Where a lot of their contemporaries have fallen by the wayside, Feeder stayed on the bus, and it turned out to be a magic bus!

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When Suzanne Vega played a short residency at New York’s exclusive, super high-end Cafe Carlisle in 2019 (for the second time in her career) she wanted to put on a show, something special:

“I thought, let’s make a show out of it. I wanted to make it like an old style revue, since it’s a small and very upper crust place with out-of-towners and locals as well, from all over New York. So I thought we’d make it about New York songs. It seemed to go down really well. I heard the elevator boys talking about it after the show so I knew it must be good”. 

Who knows if the Carlisle Hotel elevator boys knew who she was before those shows, but there can be no doubt about Suzanne Vega’s mastery of the craft of songwriting, and of performance, something that comes together perfectly for Suzanne’s current project “An Evening of New York Songs & Stories”. The show comes complete with Suzanne the songwriter but also the raconteur and the ‘show-woman’ (complete with top hat) - something she never expected to become when she was starting out in music at the beginning of the 80s. After all, as a child, she hated being looked at. 

My chat with Suzanne starts with the concept of storytelling through song - but also between the songs, and why that’s so rare on the music scene these days. We explore the early years of course, and the various lives of some of her greatest songs, like ‘Tom’s Diner’ and ‘Marlene On The Wall’. 

I wanted to know if she still felt that a song should be an essentially sad thing and I had to ask her about one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard and a personal obsession for 35 years - her song Ironbound/Fancy Poultry, from the 1987 classic album Solitude Standing. 

I was excited to hear about the prospect of a new album of brand new Suzanne Vega songs in 2023 and she is to begin the European leg of the New York Songs & Stories tour early in 2022 (pandemic permitting) - whatever you do don’t miss it. 

In a world in which music is in great abundance, what Suzanne Vega does is as rare as things can get. Hats off to you Suzanne!

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Discovering a band all to yourself is the best type of music discovery there is. One day in the mid 2000s as my wife and I wandered along London’s South Bank, we were stopped in our tracks by music the likes of which we’d never heard before - jazzy, rhythmic, with a haunting steel drum but also with an element of ‘indie’. There, were four very young men (then in their late teens) busking with a confident authority - more a private performance than a busk, and with quite an audience too. 

That band was Portico Quartet and we were just two of many thousands of early adopter  fans from those early South Bank busks outside The National Gallery. We bought a copy of the band's very first, self-pressed four-track CD for £5, one of 10,000 sold I recently discovered. When I spoke with Duncan Bellamy (drums and the hang steel drum) and Jack Wylie (sax) for The Art of Longevity, Jack told me:

"We'd go off to buy big stacks of blank CDs at Maplins, and we bought this burner machine that could do eight at a time. I think we managed to do 200-250 a day. As a student, it meant we could make a living without working in a bar. It was great fun”.

I put it to Duncan and Jack that they would have to achieve 10 million streams to make the equivalent revenues now (20 million if splitting revenues 50:50 with a record label). Who’d have thought that, as part of establishing an early following as an instrumental band, you could create your own perfectly viable business model as well? For the Portico Quartet, those early years of ‘struggle’ were more like an exercise in building a cottage industry. 

From those early days, the Portico Quartet’s rise was as meteoric as it gets for an instrumental band. In 2008 came the Mercury Music Prize nomination for their full debut album ‘Knee Deep in the North Sea’ and one year later the band signed to Real World Records, the independent label owned by Peter Gabriel. That came with a huge leap in the maturity of their sound (2009’s Isla) and a full stop to the days of busking. As a fan, observing the band’s musical development has been a truly remarkable experience but don't take my word for it, listen to Duncan and Jack's take on things...

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When Real Estate's fifth album The Main Thing was released to fairly mixed results, was it time for a reset? In a sense, yes. For band leader Martin Courtney, it was time to get back to songs. After all, without songs, bands are just jamming, right? He set the bar high too, inspired mostly by the 1992 R.E.M. classic Automatic For The People.

Besides, you cannot call in a producer like Daniel Tashian without being able to play him songs of exceptionally high standard. For a start, Tashian produced Kacey Musgrave’s modern classic Gold Hour, as well as writing a bunch of understated classics with his own band The Silver Seas. 

Consider then, that the batch of songs landing on the new Real Estate album Daniel were so good that Tashian (who co-writes with many of the artists he produces) only tinkered with them. And in doing so, hopefully gave each one a liberal sprinkling of his magic song fairy dust. 

“In terms of his input into the songs it was minimal. Daniel was more like a cheerleader in the studio. He’s so fun - he’ll be jumping around and hype you up - so it’s much less daunting in the studio having him around. Graig Alvin mixed the record, and he’s also won Grammy’s too. We had high-powered people in the room”. 

Despite all this, Martin sounds surprised at the possibility of creating a classic album, although Daniel has the potential to be just that. What that means, in this day & age, is another thing entirely. Yet the band has been in classic album territory before, in 2014, with Atlas - songs from which brightened up daytime radio, found their way onto the biggest indie streaming playlists - and even landed that record on the Billboard top 40 and UK album charts. 

A decade on, with the music landscape much altered, the expectations for Daniel are less certain. In Courtney's own words “I know there is a good chance that it will come and go, like everything else these days”. But be assured that if you do become familiar with the record, it will pay you back dividends for a long time to come.

So where does a band like Real Estate fit into the modern music industry landscape? Still in the game and getting better, the band’s cultural caliber is steadily rising. 

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If one of the secrets to longevity in the music industry is simply taking your time, then Danish alternative rock band Mew are grand masters. Formed in 1995, the band took eight years before a major label deal came along, and with it, international success (the superb breakthrough album Frengers). It did not lead to a rush. Some 26 years into the band’s career, Mew has released just seven studio albums - one every four years. That’s not something Spotify would advocate as an operating model for bands these days, is it?  It’s rare for a European rock band to breakthrough to an international audience and to have a career of real longevity (count them on one hand), but it is even rarer to be so damned cool about it! 

Yet Jonas Bjerre is unfazed by any concept of FOMO - or the creator equivalent ‘FOBF’ - fear of being forgotten. In fact, when the band released their last LP  ‘Visuals’ in 2017 just two years after the 2015 album ‘+ -’, Jonas’s overwhelming instinct was that fans were not expecting it.

Visuals plays from beginning to end like a stage musical, something I put to Mew singer Jonas Bjerre on the Art of Longevity. It may well have been the influence of Prefab Sprout and Paddy McAloon. When it comes to influences, Mew are true musical alchemists. While many ‘rock’ (as in guitar rock) bands have eclectic and ‘classic pop’ influences, very few can meld them successfully into their own sound. Perhaps it’s because of the restrictive formulas of rock, or not wanting to upset fans. Not so with Mew. One minute they’re all off-kilter time signatures and dissonant guitar noises, the next, soaring, beautiful and catchy pop - nicely topped off with Jonas’ angelic vocals. 

Listen in to hear a truly unique way of working. Jonas and Mew don't rush anything, but the results are often sublime. It is good to hear that the band is talking about another project - even if it is early days and Jonas would also like a break before. Sometimes as a music fan, patience is a virtue and the rewards are all the sweeter. 

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When I sat down with Steve Berlin, the Los Lobos sax player and de facto spokesperson, I was a little more than intrigued. To most people around the world - outside of North America anyways - Los Lobos remain the La Bamba band. How wrong we are.

There is a very common thread with the artists we’ve had on the show - and with longevity - every one of the artists (except so far, Laura Veirs and Maximo Park) had a very big song: James, Turin Brakes, Gary Numan, KT Tunstall…

But Los Lobos is the most extreme example of a longevity outfit with a big song - the band had no other hits at all. Taking nothing away from La Bamba - a fine record and a justified number one in ten countries back in 1987. But stop right there. Try Googling, as I did, “Los Lobos, greatest American rock band” and there are more than a few articles examining that hypothesis, for good reasons. Built around the soulful songs of drummer Louis Perez and lead vocal and guitar player David Hidalgo (throw in a few rollicking rockers by Cesar Rosas) Los Lobos make solid, classic Americana-rock, but from a Latin point of view - and a deep rooted connection to traditional Mexican music: cumbia, boleros and norteños. Finally, throw the city of LA into the mix and you have the Los Lobos agenda, musically speaking. 

It’s not surprising that Los Lobos have made a record of cover versions of seminal LA songs (The Beach Boys, Jackson Browne, War, Percy Mayfield) but what is surprising is how long it took to come up with the idea to do just that.

“We have a sixth sense of when to do stuff, somehow the muse talks to us. It's important for us to have a boundary - an idea - not just another Los Lobos record. The main thing for us is longevity and being able to do what we do and to answer to nobody other than ourselves, we have such gratitude for that. We have no obligation other than to move forward with our music”. 

Now that is an agenda for lasting the distance. Yet Steve and I have fun with one idea - for Los Lobos to soundtrack a Netflix (or HBO, or AMC) production of Jaime Hernandez' genius Mexicana soap opera Love & Rockets. What a collaboration that would be.

Somebody get Ted Sarandos on the line…it’s Steve Berlin calling, from Los Lobos...

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On The Art of Longevity, Fin Greenhall explained the ideas behind Fink's new project IIUII: an acoustic retrospective of some of the band's (and fans) favourite, biggest songs. 

“I’m a better singer now than I was in 2005, so I feel I can do a better job of singing these songs. As a band we are much more loose, grounded and subtle than we used to be - comfortable with who we are”. As such, the idea behind the project is to do a better job of those songs by bringing experience to bear as the songs are revisited and reinterpreted. “I love the fact  that when you write a song, that song exists, but then over time it can be dressed many different ways”. 

Indeed, we discuss one of the most intriguing concepts in music today - that of making a song something more than simply finite recording. A song should never be set in stone, something Fink seems to understand acutely. Their last studio album, ‘Bloom Innocent’, is a case in point - the band has since released two further versions of the record - an acoustic work and a “Horizontalism” edition (Fink has even sub-branded it’s remix versions under the Horizontalism concept). The IIUII album is the first acoustic retrospective of the whole catalogue, yet already there has been some orchestral versions of some of these songs, in the superb 2013 release ‘Fink Meets The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’. 

While the music industry is littered with ex-musicians and creatives now working on the management side, Fin Greenhall did the opposite - spending nearly half a decade in the offices of labels (hence ‘Biscuits’), figuring out how the industry worked (and working his way up from office skivvy to marketing manager). He flipped from being an executive to a creator - but seems to have picked up on some clever marketing angles along the way. Along with these reworked versions, the 2015 short film “Less Alone” was one of the first examples of an artist manifesto I’d ever seen expressed through the short documentary format. It’s a nice exercise in artistic branding. That might just have something to do with Fin’s thought processes.

Another example is the track selection for IIUII. Fin told The Art of Longevity that: “we went back over the streaming stats and thought about our live shows over the years and picked the songs that the fans feel really represent us”. Savvy indeed, now that is how creatives can use industry data simply and effectively. 

Considered decisions have been part of the band's two decade career, along with a close knit musical understanding between the three members, Fin, Guy Whittaker (bass) and Tim Thornton (drums). The benign dictatorship is a famous formula for some bands but Fink works a very democratic system. The band still enjoys the shared experiences of touring, recording and creating their unique sound. The way Fink works is what most bands would wish for, so tune in to Fin and co's guide to longevity. 

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Is it possible to make your best record 33 years into a career? That’s what may just have happened with Canadian legends Barenaked Ladies and their 2021 release Detour De Force. The album covers most of BNL’s styles (i.e. a long list of genres) and is a masterclass in songwriting. It starts out with three BNL bangers, before settling into something more reflective, but typically varied and never boring. 

When I spoke to Ed Robertson for episode 2 of season 2, he himself seemed pleased with the results on Detour De Force and explained how carefully the band had scheduled the record despite the irony of doing that at a time when few listeners have the attention span to listen to entire albums. But with those songs and the order they are in, the band has made another classic alongside their phenomenal debut Gordon (1992) and international ‘claim to fame’ Stunt (1998). 

The in-between has been the usual roller-coaster ride (all in all BNL has made 17 albums in not including the early demos, live albums and compilations and occasional side projects). There is just so much, we barely touch on matters such as the departure of Page and the band’s steady successful transition to a four piece. But we do talk about their surprise success in the early 90s (yes, they worked at it in those early years despite what looked like a surprise success in their home country), the early days of signing to Sire Records, and how tough it was to make their sophomore album. The tough times continued through the 90s when things became something of a grind - to the extent that Ed Robertson was telling his manager of doubts about carrying on: “I could have made more money managing a McDonalds”. 

Then came the big breakthrough with their song ‘One Week’ (a US Billboard number 1). Although he had written the song and taken the lead vocal (including that famous dexterous rap) Ed thought the idea of the record label to make One Week the lead single for Stunt, to be a joke. But then suddenly it all got very serious. The band’s peak came at a time of change for the record industry though, with Napster emerging as the century changed over and we discuss being experimented on by visionary manager Terry McBride in the post-Napster, digital music industry in which band’s cannot expect to ‘sell’ anything as far as records are concerned.

The band’s chemistry has survived line-up changes (even the departure of co-founder and principal vocalist Stephen Page) and more recently of course, the pandemic live music shutdown. Once BNL returns to real live shows though, expect their dedicated audiences to be chanting along to new numbers like they’ve known them for as long as the classics. One senses that Ed and co will enjoy every minute but not take any of it for granted. 

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