In the cockney rhyming slang lexicon there really should be an entry marked “Gemma Ray” that translates to “The Hard Way” for the sultry Essex singer’s career is one filled with false starts, battles with illness and sheer bloody mindedness. Her first foray into the music world leading the Gemma Ray Ritual produced two albums in the mid 2000s that were largely ignored (and are now out of print). Then she was knocked sideways by the cruel condition known as ME and after struggling to record her first solo release The Leader, due to that illness, saw it greeted by indifference. Her luck started changing last year after her cinematic take on blues, rock and pop Light’s Out Zoltar! and the Latin infused single “100 mph (in 2nd gear)” saw her tour all over the world including Australia. While here she made an appearance on ABC’s music quiz show Spicks and Specks — surely Gemma is the only person who could make singing from the Golden Circle cook book sexy.

Barely finished promoting and touring Zoltar! Ray has just released an album of bare, bluesy covers It’s a Shame About Ray which draw its song pool from classic rock, jazz and blues artists like Buddy Holly, Lee Hazelwood, Etta Fitzgerald and Etta James, alternative heroes such as Sonic Youth, Mudhoney and The Gun Club, and a few surprises by The Obits, Gallon Drunk and Shirley Bassey. Webcuts catches up with the brunette with the beehive while she is touring South Africa to talk knives, the new album, Rosemary’s Baby, illness affecting songwriting and the recording of new material.

I’ve got to first ask about the knife you use as a guitar slide. There was an incident in Oslo where you injured yourself with that knife wasn’t there?

Yes, I did a show in Oslo — I use a knife to make beautiful noises, in a nice transcendent way — and on the last song of the set I stabbed it into the stage but by hand slid down the handle and the knife cut my hand. I didn’t realize how bad it was and before I got to the backstage room I passed out and they had to take me to hospital and get stitched up.

The knife is just a means to an end really. I used to use a guitar slide to resonate on the strings because I use an open tuning but it wasn’t quite long enough, I’d stab at the strings and it made ugly sounds so I needed to find something longer and the knife was the first thing I found in the kitchen… It does the job.

You’ve just released an amazing covers album which was recorded in New York in three days between Christmas and New Years. When the idea for that come did about, was it somewhere between the turkey and Christmas pudding?

(laughs) Yeah it was post Christmas pudding: “I’m going to do record an album!”

It wasn’t an idea as such; it was more of a happy accident. I made friends with Matt Verta-Ray (a member of Heavy Trash with Jon Spencer) who’s got a great analogue studio in New York and he invited me to record a couple of tracks for fun. We both enjoyed it so much he invited me to come back and do more so I got a cheap flight for Christmas and spent a couple of days there and it turned into an album. I just liked the thought of something being spontaneous and in the moment without having a definite objective. Matt’s set up has a great sound, he’s got these great old amps and we did it live pretty much.

Were you surprised how fast you could cut an album and then get it released?

The label really liked it and wanted to release it. While everything I record means something to me this isn’t a big statement to the world it’s just something I enjoyed doing and hope other people enjoy it too. It was cathartic because it’s so stripped down, usually when recording my songs I go nuts and track everything up ten times, so it was an nice change. I’m on an independent label (Bronzerat) who are great because they don’t do everything by the book, they’re quite spontaneous and I think for both of us it just felt right to throw it out there and see what people thought.

You mentioned you’d been playing some of the songs in your live set. Have all the songs on It’s a Shame… been played in concert?

There were only a couple that I had been playing live, “I’ve got a Crush on You” and “Put a Bolt In the Door” were the two that I had recorded in October as an off the cuff late night session, but that’s all. I’ve been playing some of the others at home, knocking around with them for a couple of years and some are totally new. But most of them chose me in a way; they were in my head or came into my life, particularly the Shirley Bassey track (“Hey Big Spender”). I don’t really like her but my best friend passed away and she was a theatrical, glamorous girl and her family chose to have that song played at her cremation, so I had it stuck in my head. That’s why it struck me to totally take the glamour out it and record it in a slightly warped way. Some songs just came into my life, it wasn’t like “oh I love that song I have to cover it” but a couple of them are certainly hats off to bands that I like.

There’s a couple in particular that stand out for me. “Rosemary’s Baby Vs Drunken Butterfly” which juxtaposes the melody from the theme to Rosemary’s Baby with lyrics from Sonic Youth’s “Drunken Butterfly”. How did the idea to combine those two come about?

It was a happy accident really. I’m a big fan of Krzysztof Komeda the composer who has scored most of Roman Polanksi’s films and I absolutely love the theme from Rosemary’s Baby. I had been playing that tune to myself, and I had also wanted to cover a Sonic Youth song but I wasn’t doing any of them justice. One day I had the lyrics to “Drunken Butterfly” written out in front of me and I just sung that along with the guitar at home and I really liked the way they fit together, I think it sounds like a creepy stalker song, but it wasn’t a master plan.

Have you ever merged the lyrics of one song with the melody of another before?

No. It was just the fact that a piece of paper was placed in my eyesight at a certain time. That’s what I love about music there’s these random little moments that you can’t control but you have the pleasure of capturing.

I’m also curious how you discovered Gallon Drunk?

Well I was a bit young when they were at their peak (early ‘90s – Ed) but I remember going to a concert a couple of years ago and they just blew me away. They were everything that music should be for me: edgy, dangerous and passionate. It felt cathartic, like being in a Church. I very loosely got to know some members of the band through common friends but I was more of a fan really. I thought they’d done a killer album with The Rotten Mile (2007) which had “Put a Bolt In the Door” on it. I changed it to “Put a Bolt On the Door” but I think they like it.

I saw them in 2000 headlining an indie festival at the Scala in London and their mix of punk, blues and soul was a revelation.

Oh did you! God I’d love to have seen them then. If I’d seen them in 2000 it would’ve changed my life but where I come from you don’t get many underground bands.

For the older songs that you cover were they influenced by your parent’s record collection at all?

No (laughs), my parents are not musically inclined. But my dad had a Country Great’s cassette that had Buddy Holly on it that he used to play in his pick up truck when he picked me up from Brownies or school or whatever. So the Buddy Holly song I kind of did it for my Dad even though he probably wouldn’t like it because it’s a depressing version — “Why can’t you make happy music? In our day everyone made happy music”.

Have you got any feedback from any of the artists?

I must admit because it was so unplanned it was a bit of an afterthought to ask if anyone minded. I heard from Rick Froberg from The Obits, he and his band really liked it (“SUD” appeared on The Obits’ 2009 album I Blame You). Also Thurston Moore and Kim Gorden liked “Drunken Butterfly”, they said nice things via e-mail. A lot of people aren’t around unfortunately. I’d like to get in touch with Lloyd Price as he’s such a great songwriter but I haven’t attempted that yet. Although I wouldn’t assume that every artist will automatically like my version or be even be flattered by them.

Gemma Ray – Touch Me I’m Sick

I couldn’t help but be struck by your experiences with ME/CFS, something I’ve suffered from for a decade now myself. It impacts all parts of someone’s life but I was wondering how it affected your songwriting?

It made me more focused. I’ve made music since I was fifteen and it’s been a slow journey because I’ve kept my own style along the way but I was going out and getting drunk more often and seeing friends. As you’ve probably experienced, when it hit me bad I couldn’t really do that, not without losing a month to recover. So when I was at my worst it made me record the two records because the only thing I could do was sit at home and play guitar. I was pretty ill when I recorded The Leader and I had to have short sessions and stick to one or two takes, I couldn’t be such a perfectionist. It gave that album a certain character, it’s a lot scrappier and I like the charm of that.

With Lights Out Zoltar! I started to get a bit better and in the studio I’d find a guitar amp room or cupboard and take in a pillow and quilt and take a rest every few hours. So it really focused me and those rests which I wouldn’t have needed normally gave me a lot of clarity on judging the music I was recording and that really became a powerful tool. It’s a Shame About Gemma Ray is the first one where I didn’t have to have more than one rest per session as I’ve been getting better, touch wood.

That’s fantastic to hear. So are you recording any new songs?

Yeah I’m halfway through writing and recording my new album. I started that in Australia in April, when I couldn’t leave because of the Icelandic volcano. I spent a week in a studio in Australia and recorded four songs and then for doing a festival in Norway I was given a studio for two weeks in this remote island which was so idyllic I can’t even describe it. So I’m ten tracks into my new album, but I don’t have a fixed address at the moment so I’m trying to beg and borrow studio time wherever I go. That impromptu aspect is going to be a very big part of the next album.

What direction are the songs heading towards, I’d assume they’re lusher than It’s a Shame..?

Yes it’s definitely going to be a big production. It’s a big step up from what I’ve done before but there’s still similar threads. I won’t give too much away because god knows how it’ll turn out, but it will be fresh and vibrant, and upbeat… it certainly feels more upbeat.

We’ll leave you, dear reader, with an acoustic version of one of the tracks from It’s a Shame About Gemma Ray, a sparse, decidedly non-punk take on The Gun Club’s “A Ghost on a Highway”. Thanks to Gemma for her time and enthusiasm and head to Gemma’s MySpace for more Rays of light

Question assistance: Craig Smith

Photos: Louis Vorster (top), Sarah Dawson (portrait, thumbnail)

It’s not so much lurking in the 3 minute bluster of their debut single “How Long”, but a part of its DNA, where you quickly catch onto Ramona’s game. In the first 10 seconds alone they manage to answer the eternal question of “What if Debbie Harry joined The Ramones?”. You see it in singer Karen Anne’s bleached blonde locks and her breathy purr, and you hear it all over “How Long”, the harmonies n’ hooks, and the buzzsaw guitars that graduate with honours from The Ramones “Rock n’ Roll High School”.

It’s just one song/one question answered, and without wanting to pigeon-hole this Brighton-based 4-piece on the strength of one song alone (or making incorrect presumptions about the origin of the band name!) we thought best to rattle off 15 more and drop Ramona a line. Thus becoming the first in our “Who The Hell Are…?” Q&A’s where we send out, Smash Hits-style, a random bunch of questions to a new act that has caught our eyes and ears, and then let them answer in their own words.

With “How Long” due for imminent release and a UK tour that starts on September 1 at the Flower Pot in Kentish Town, London, the band have also managed to find time to accept an invitation to play the opening of the Burberry store in New York. It’s beginning to seem like Ramona didn’t have to wait that long at all.

01. Who are you?

We are Ramona, a 4 piece band from Brighton.  Karen Anne (vocals, guitar), Charlie Snelling (guitar), James Watts (bass) and Fred West (drums). Our name is inspired by the Bob Dylan song “To Ramona” and we have been playing and recording together since last October.

02. What do you sound like?

Our main inspirations are The Clash, Lou Reed, New York Dolls, Pulp, 3 minute pop songs with lots of hooks

03. What do friends say you sound like?

Like a punk band meeting a ’60s girl group in bar and a having a jam.

04. Full-time musicians or wage slaves?

Full time musicians but only recently after years of waitressing, coat hanging and soul selling

05. Current band highlight?

Playing T in The Park in Scotland this summer. The crowd were amazing

06. Favourite decade for music?

The 1970s from the Bowery in New York to the streets of London

07. Should music be free?

It should be value for money. Unfortunately to enable musicians to keep making great music there needs to money in the industry

08. Which 3 musicians would you invite round for dinner?

Patti Smith, Paul Simonon and David Bowie

09. Preferred tour reading?

Tank Girl, anything by Alan Moore and Please Kill me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

10. Best mood for songwriting?

When I’m in a bad mood about something, its always good therapy

11. Last record you bought?

Crazy for you by Best Coast

12. Five favourite albums?

Transformer by Lou Reed, A Different Class by Pulp, The Clash by The Clash, Horses by Patti Smith and The Velvet Underground and Nico

13. Your biggest rock and roll fantasy?

Playing at CBGB’s alongside Blondie, Talking Heads and Television

14. Goals for the next 12 months?

Play as many gigs as possible and get our first record ready for release next year

15. First time listeners, where should they start?

With our first Single “How Long” which is in September!

Edwyn Collins and his Scot-pop accomplices are to tear it up once again via a comprehensive seven-disc anthology entitled Coals To Newcastle. Comprised of six CDs and one DVD, Coals.. contain the band’s complete discography and other studio recordings as well as a collection of their BBC sessions. The DVD contains the band’s two promotional clips for “Rip It Up” and “What Presence?!” (the latter directed by Derek Jarman), four performances on The Old Grey Whistle Test and the rare posthumous concert video Dada With (The) Juice. In total, Coals To Newcastle contains 16 previously unreleased tracks with another 23 tracks previously unavailable digitally on earlier re-issues.

Coals To Newcastle is to be released on November 8 in the UK and Europe and the following day in North America through Domino Records.

In six tumultuous years, Orange Juice, led by Edwyn Collins, blazed a trail of self-reliance with the legendary Postcard label, ran in conjunction with then-manager Alan Horne, and greatly expanded the palette of independent music at the start of the ‘80s with their brand of literate pop songwriting that both pre-saged the coming of The Smiths and kickstarted a renaissance in Scottish pop music that continues to this day.

After an embryonic start as the punk-influenced Nu-Sonics, Orange Juice came into being in 1979 as unfashionable pre-Year Zero punk influences such as The Byrds, Chic, Motown and The Velvet Underground began to make their presence known in the band’s developing sound. Over the next year, the group recorded four landmark 7” singles on Postcard (as well as putting out early releases from Aztec Camera, The Go-Betweens and Josef K). Though each single proved more successful than its predecessor, greater commercial aspirations led the band to sign to Polydor in the midst of making their first album in a prescient deal in which the band retained ownership of their material.

The original lineup abruptly fell apart shortly after the release of the debut album, You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever, and, as quickly, the band’s future was decidedly unassured. However, with the addition of Malcolm Ross, formerly of Postcard labelmates Josef K, and Zimbabwe-by-way-of-Glasgow drummer Zeke Manyika, the group proceeded to make their commercial mark with the timeless funk and soul-inflected “Rip It Up”, whose title track was to be the group’s biggest UK hit, peaking at #8 in February of 1983.

During the recording of a follow-up, the group had decided to head in a more rock direction, but creative tensions arose again and the group fell apart during the recording sessions from which the Texas Fever mini-LP was culled. With Polydor’s support of the group withdrawing, Collins, joined in the studio by Manyika, persevered to make the bittersweet swan song album, The Orange Juice, a collection that telegraphed the group’s impending demise amidst some of their finest recordings. Collins made it official in March of 1985 announcing mid-performance at a miner’s benefit at the Brixton Academy that it would be Orange Juice’s last performance.

Complete tracklisting and UK/US pre-order information can be found here:

http://www.dominorecordco.com/uk/albums/20-08-10/coals-to-newcastle-boxset/
http://www.dominorecordco.us/usa/albums/19-08-10/coals-to-newcastle-boxset/

Ok, I’m trying to be objective here.  Because I like “weird” music.  Animal Collective and Dan Deacon made two of my favorite records last year, and neither one of them would escape the weird music moniker if held up to the blacklight of critical analyzation.  M.I.A., the noisy, politically-charged London electronic hip-hopper, also falls into the same category.  So, between my affinity for the weird, and all the heaps of praise she has already gotten from countless hipster blogs, NPR and a huge section of the indie music-buying populous, it’s gonna take some thorough bits of negative album breakdowns to justify my overwhelming dislike for MAYA, the third studio album from M.I.A..

And yet, my puzzled inability to embrace this messy sound collage remains.  Pushing forward and listening through the whole record is an ordeal, slicing through discordant paranoia, bizarre drilling and chainsaw samples, and stale rhymes like the cliched, muscle-bound jungle explorer slashes through the jungle with a machete.  The album lacks the lauded originality and cleverness exhibited in her earlier music, but even more alarmingly, it lacks more important things, like melody. Listenability. And some semblance of a point.

“They told me this was a free country/But now it feels like a chicken factory.”  Uhm, what?  I’m all for progressive political discourse, but, it usually comes with some sort of logic and reason.  If we are to believe Ms. Maya, Google is directly connected to the government and there’s no such thing as freedom anywhere.  Granted, she’s been dealing with real-world trauma throughout her life, so we can grant her goofy artist liberties. Prince said the internet was dead, and nobody’s turning off his music because of it.  But, then again, Prince is still making good music.

So ignore the warped, overly suspicious rhetoric, and there’s still the music to grapple with.  “Xxxo” and “Tell Me Why” have the distinction of book-ending the record with a couple serviceably decent cuts, with the former rocking heavy bass and jagged percussion over not-too-shabby vocals, and the latter foraging through pep band snare drums and layered harmonic choruses.  These illustrate what has really made M.I.A. so much fun in the past: rocksteady beats and cheekiness, “start throwing hands up like you’re mad at the ceiling”.

And… tell me again why the rest of the album couldn’t have been that way?  Instead we get loud, painfully-constructed capsules of nonsensical lyrics and party-stopping hullabaloo that revolves around noise intended to illustrate a feeling of disconnection.  Disconnect is what I wanted to do to my headphones many times while trying to take this all in. It is addling.

One needs to look no further than the cover art, M.I.A. hidden behind a pack of angry YouTube player counters with her name spelled out in gold bricks, to get an idea of the madness behind the music.  Lost somewhere in the mishmash of poor grammar, beguiling samples and irrationally suspicious lyrics is the talent that made her early music so fantastic, and let’s hope at some point it returns for at least more than two songs.

Recorded between Christmas and New Years Eve 2009, It’s A Shame About Gemma Ray is a great example in making the best out of the worst time of year. Idle hands, idle time, and lo and behold an album is born. Cover albums, you can take’em or leave’em. They’re a curio at best and you’d have to be the worst kind of fan to prefer ‘the cover album’ to the artists own work. For a relative new-comer, often it’s the artists covered that will prick the ears up — Sonic Youth? Gun Club? Mudhoney? — and draw their attention. 16 songs, 5 days, a girl and her guitar and thankfully no songs about Santa Claus.

The general rule of thumb with the cover album — the more unplanned, the more unaffected by indulgence, the better it is for everybody. With this album, Ray’s third, it’s a quick knock-off that works. Opening up her songbook, her other songbook, Ray hits the showtunes, the slow-tunes and some downright woah… tunes. The choice of content, the torch song blues of Etta Fitzgerald and Etta James sidles up alongside the gravelly blues of The Gun Club and The Alex Harvey Band. The girls and the boys are evenly represented and they’re all treated to the same stark and unfettered arrangement, with Ray content to let the notes hang and flicker, her voice staying well within reach of the reverb-ed twang of the guitar.

It’s a real no-tell motel kinda record, bare bones and cheap frills but full of surprises — like listening to PJ Harvey circa Rid Of Me minus the man-hate. Though you gotta question what kinda gal mixes her Gershwin with her Gallon Drunk, if not one who likes to occasionally stray on the wild side. Leading off with the Drunk’s “Put A Bolt In The Door” its as much an invitation upstairs (in Ray’s clipped Essex-bred tones) as is Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick” is to sit down and make yourself comfortable. Shirley Bassey’s “Big Spender” and Buddy Holly’s “Everyday” both harmoniously skip along, a bright moon in an otherwise cloudy sky, but the real oddball moment of the record given over to Ray’s pairing of Sonic Youth’s “Drunken Butterfly” with the theme to Rosemary’s Baby. Sonic Youth fans might arch an eyebrow, but Kim Gordon should be pleased with it.

For anyone not around in the rose-tinted 90′s, the title may seem like an oddity, but it bares some truth. It would’ve been interesting for Ray to take the elements that she brought into the studio and handed in her own compositions to be judged. With a lot of taste and little invention, Ray handily shows off her record collection and pulls something unexpected out of the bag at the same time. Perhaps a little too corny to throw in a Lemonheads tune to match the title, but with what’s on offer, there’s no real shame about that.

When you get down to the nuts and bolts of rock and roll, it’s not about how tight your jeans are or how good your stylist is, it’s about the music. It’s about the song. For some bands in particular, it’s about the pop song. Two and half minutes of spun gold that held your attention long after the needle left the record. Few bands embodied the spirit of the sublime ’60s pop song than The Primitives.

This Coventry four-piece arrived in the mid-80s with their winsome pop debut single “Thru the Flowers” before quickly mixing their pop flair with some garage growl on follow-up singles “Really Stupid” and “Stop Killing Me” before suddenly arriving at the inexplicably perfect “Crash” — the song that broke the band internationally and turned them into Smash Hits pin-ups.

Lost in the rock and roll wilderness for 18 years, they’ve no doubt watch bands come and go, obviously in debt to their charms and chimes. If it weren’t for the sad occasion in the passing of their original bassist Steve Dullaghan last year that brought vocalist Tracy Tracy and guitarist/songwriter Paul Court back together, we might not be so lucky to hear these songs played live ever again.

Sitting backstage at The Scala in London on the final date of the short n’ sweet tour, Webcuts was fortunate enough to catch up with Tracy and Paul to talk about the circumstances that brought The Primitives into the 21st Century and what lies ahead for the band.

Tracy: We met up again at his (Steve’s) funeral and decided to do something in honour of him, really. It coincided with being asked to open a launch night of an exhibition about Coventry music, and it seemed quite apt to do it there and then. Paul DJ’s in London and was asked to play at a club that he DJ’s at and it just built from there, really.

Paul: We just tried to do a couple of larger shows off our own back after those two and it somehow ended up being a tour. The idea, really, was just to do about three gigs. A place like this (The Scala in London) and there’s was a nice place in Leamington Spa we’ve just played and maybe one up in Scotland. So we’ve kinda gone back to being on the road for two weeks.

Tracy: The list just grew, but it’s been brilliant, though. It’s been really good fun and we don’t want it to stop now.

Did the thought of reforming ever cross your mind in the intervening years? There’s been a steady stream of compilations and cobbled together rarities over the years.

Paul: Those were nothing to do with us. So that was out of our hands, really. (The idea of reforming before then) never really crossed my mind. I’d totally washed my hands of anything to do with being on-stage with a guitar since about 1997. I had no interest.

How does feel stepping back as The Primitives again? Does it feel like pulling out an old dress from the wardrobe and seeing if it still fits?

Tracy: Yeah, it is. Personally for me, yeah.

Paul: It seemed like it wasn’t more than about four years ago that we were doing it. It seemed like when we met at Steve’s funeral, something like that happening does make the past seem very present in a tangible way. It made like 20 years ago seem like 4 weeks ago and in a way that’s how we kind of connected again, I suppose.

How has it been relearning all the songs?

Paul: It hasn’t been too difficult really. It’s all been programmed in, I think. A couple of little bits we’d forgotten about here and there. It didn’t take long to pull it back together, really.

Tracy: Just a bit of tweaking here and there. We just seemed to know them, really. They’re sort of locked in there.

They’re like a part of your life…

Tracy: Locked in a corner in the back, yeah.

How has the tour been so far? Have you been surprised by the fans response?

Tracy: Very surprised, yeah. The fans have been amazing. There’s been two generations — Indie families bringing their kids. So it’s been lovely seeing them again and a lot of them have been bringing back a lot of memorabilia and magazines — things we’d sort of forgotten about. A lot of them said how grateful they are, they’d been waiting for this to happen. It seemed quite sort of prevalent in their lives.

It was quite prevalent in mine too. Despite the only access I ever had to the band was on record and via music television. I remember being quite taken with the clip to “Way Behind Me”

Tracy: That filmed was at the London gasworks.

Paul: Yeah, that’s one of my favourite songs. I prefer it to “Crash” though it’s in the same kind of vein.

Listening to you play that track during sound check, it sounded as good now as it did then. It’s quite a good time for The Primitives to re-assert their place in music, now that’s there’s a resurgence in female-fronted guitar bands in the UK and overseas.

Tracy: There seems to be a lot of that around now, which is really good.

Paul: There’s also a bunch of American bands taking influence from that mid-80s English noise pop which is good. It’ll probably create a lot more interest in what we did, with like Dum Dum Girls and bands like that.

Towards the end of your career it seemed like that kind of sound wasn’t quite the flavour of the month anymore.

Paul: The Madchester thing happened, didn‘t it. That was very macho. That sort of thug element saw to the end of The Primitives in a way. I always thought the Stones Roses were similar in a ways, with a similar record collection. Just they had more of a dance beat going on.

That’s something I guess you tried a little on your final album, Galore.

Paul: There’s a couple of tracks on the last album that had a kind of funkadelic drum beat that Ian Broudie put on it, but there’s little bits on the second album Pure where we used that and we got accused of trying to sound like the Manchester bands, and we didn’t even know about the Manchester bands when we recorded that. There’s a little bit of influence, perhaps of what was in the charts that was a bit like the lighter side of acid house, like in the rhythm on “Sick Of It”, but we didn’t know about these groups. The first time I heard The Stone Roses was when they were on Top of The Pops and we were doing “Sick Of It” and they showed the video for “She Bangs The Drums” and I thought “oh, they sound quite good”, then suddenly we were ripping them off, apparently.

How is the chemistry between the two of you these days?

Paul: It’s been alright I think. Same as, really.

You were never at each other’s throats near the end?

Tracy: No, there was never any problem. Never any internal problems with The Primitives. It was more so the people on the outside — the record companies and managers.

You kind of run out of steam?

Paul: It kinda felt like that really. There was no kind of implosion of massive bust-up. There was nowhere left for us to go really. We did this kind of secret spin-off band called Starpower for a while and we were just doing that as a safety valve thing really to do something that was interesting again, but that only lasted half a year.

With this being the last show of this tour, what have you got planned next?

Paul: We’re playing New York, a week on Saturday, just for one gig. It’s costing all quite of bit of money to get over there. We’re losing money to get over there. But for now, we’re doing what we’re doing. We’ve got a couple of festivals coming up. If someone wants us to do something and we like the idea of it, we’ll do it. There’s a possibility of going back to the States in the Autumn and doing shows then.

So is The Primitives something you’re going to keep on doing?

Paul: Possibly, yeah. I’m only really thinking about this year and perhaps a bit of next year.

Tracy: Just to see what happens, I suppose.

Paul: We had this idea of just recording a few tracks, cover versions of female-fronted, but not very well known, tunes and we’re going to maybe expand that to perhaps a mini-album or something.

You’ve actually been in the studio? Is there a plan to release these tracks?

Paul: It was the end of last year when we recorded a Lee Hazelwood song, “Need All The Help I Can Get” and a Toni Basil ’60s Northern Soul tune called “Breakaway”. We play the Lee Hazelwood one in our set. I’d like to do a vinyl release. Cram as much as you can onto a piece of 7” vinyl, like they did in the ’60s. Sod the quality. So that’s kind of in the pipeline.

Tracy: It’s just to see what happens, really. We’re really enjoying this at the moment, and there’s no pressure about what comes along. If we’re still up for doing it, and we’re happy doing it, we’ll probably do more.

Ugh. There was a part of me that was really rooting for Kele Okereke’s solo debut to succeed, but only because I missed Bloc Party; the same way another part of me was rooting for Julian Casablancas’ solo album to do well, because I missed The Strokes. And otherwise, their stories were awfully similar. Young, fresh-faced band, too-cool-for-school, with a stellar, historically-good debut. Follow-up album that was almost as good as the first, because it stuck to the basic elements that made the debut so good. A third record that fell off the wagon to varying degrees (in the case of The Strokes, a bit; in the case of Bloc Party, quite a bit).

And then the brooding moment when the bands were, suddenly and dramatically, on a “break”. Fans yearned for more, blogs spouted break-ups and solo band member album rumors, and finally the leads of both produce their own solitary albums. Which is where the tales diverge. Casablancas made a record rooted in his past work that also introduced something neoteric, while Okereke seemed to disregard everything that made Bloc Party so good, even simple stuff like melody and emotive resonance.

This is, unfortunately, all but neglected; obvious from the opening strains of the album in the form of repetitious lyrics, drilled out bass lines, and dance hall hand-claps, that clearly those searching for the sort of windows-down, shout-it-to-the-world power rock songs of early Bloc Party should look elsewhere. It’s hard to separate the onslaught of press over Kele’s recently revealed sexual preference from the album as well, both with the musical choices as well as pervasive themes. “I don’t know what you’ve been told/But this starts now, walk tall walk tall,” may be speaking to this, and over glitzy, discotheque beats even the most unsuspecting listeners may have that reaction drawn out of them. It’s discouraging to have this feel cheapened, that an otherwise courageous statement about one’s self be reduced to media frenzy, banal music and tired lyrics, but, there it is.

Tonally, not much changes after this either. Club beats and minimal ideas, rinse and repeat. “Tenderoni” is the first single off the album, and would be an outstanding song for a Gap Outlet store or a racing video game. It’s honestly about as good as it gets, there’s not that much diversity elsewhere. Even one of the more poignant lines from the record, “I used to want to rule the world/But now I just get by,” is lost in a non-existent melody and the tinkling of a keyboard on “The New Rules”.

If this really is the future of Kele and/or Bloc Party, count me out. I love the fact that Kele was brash enough to delve directly into unapologetic pop music, but I’m also kind of shocked he didn’t bring any of his early songwriting skills with him. Brilliant debuts like Silent Alarm aren’t fluky, and I have to believe we could see more music like that in the future. But this ain’t it.

An unfortunate myth about artists: the more miserable, the better. From Poe to Moz, we like our creative minds pensive, brooding, as drenched in dread as possible. And when an artist achieves success – grasps at contentment – the fan base is quick to revolt (e.g. Rivers Cuomo post-Pinkerton). Frightened Rabbit enjoyed critical success for The Midnight Organ Fight, a self-destructively gloomy record recounting songwriter Scott Hutchinson’s messy break-up and subsequent months of couch surfing. By his own admission, Hutchinson’s life has since improved tremendously, and The Winter of Mixed Drinks reflects this. But, contrary to the myth, the band’s newfound optimism brings with it vigor and poeticism beyond their previous efforts.

The tight pop noisiness of The Midnight Organ Fight has been slit open at the seams, releasing a vibrant sonic wash. Throughout the record this wave recedes and returns, ensuring a dynamic and cohesive sound. On “Things” the wave is in full force as Hutchinson begins to brood on the artifacts of his past. But with a rattle of drums and an organ hum he realizes: “I didn’t need these things.” These are the band’s first steps into the sunlight, and they sound more passionate than ever. The album is permeated with this spirit of abandoning the unpleasant, choosing adventure instead: in “Swim Until You Can’t See Land,” Hutchinson gives up staring at the sea to dive into it; on “Not Miserable,” he acknowledges his dark roots but insists on moving on, even though the band’s old tunes will “sing of history now.”

It’s easy to see why Hutchinson would feel the need to go right out and say it. Despite a distinct sense of joy in the composition and execution of these songs, they’re not without moments of lyrical darkness. The difference: here each bit of sorrow is tempered by a more important optimism – loneliness is mentioned only on the way to the beautiful scream that negates it; an animalistic struggle turns out to be the very confrontation Hutchinson needed.

The more I listen to this album, the more it arranges itself into a narrative arc: the decision to abandon the transient physical world (“Things”), escape into the sea (“Swim Until You Can’t See Land”), a bloody battle (“The Wrestle”), reminiscence of times past (“Nothing Like You”), realization that the present is great (“Not Miserable”/”Living in Colour”), a return to land to lead a new kind of life (the heart-twistingly gorgeous “Yes, I Would”).  Probably it’s not that simple. But the essentials are there. This album is a glorious rebirth, a thoughtful and heartfelt moving-on. Even with their worst times – and, so the myth claims, their best source material – behind them, this band still has a lot to say.