Well, it was long overdue, wasn't it? I know that people were having trouble with the somewhat over-zealous spam filter on my old comments system, which switched to zero-support mode ages ago, and so is effectively defunct. I also know that Haloscan is not without faults of its own, but let's hope that things go a bit more smoothly from this point onwards...

Of all the people that I interviewed last year, Alison Moyet wins the award for the interviewee I'd most like to go down the pub with. Warm, earthy and direct, with a wicked laugh, I took to her from the off - and I could happily have gone on talking to her for twice as long. (This was also the only occasion to date where I ran out of time to get through all my questions, as I wasn't expecting such detailed and thoughtful responses.)

What follows is an extended remix of the version that ended up in the newspaper - including a lengthy first section, in which we talk about a subject that is particularly dear to my heart. Chauffe Alison, chauffe!

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Before we talk about the new album, I want to ask about your blog, Letters Home. As a blogger myself, I’ve been enjoying reading it. Do you enjoy having a place to vent your spleen, and to communicate directly with your audience?

Yeah, I do. It’s a funny thing: you’re aware that people are reading it, but at the same time, there’s this feeling that you’re still at home with it, and you’re saying it to yourself. Do you know what I mean by that?

I know exactly what you mean. It’s like you’re in the confessional booth…

You have a greater honesty. You can use a language that you might not use somewhere else, but that is your own language.

You have a very particular writing style, which comes across well. I perceive you differently from having read the blog, I think.

I think a lot of people have got that, and that’s one of the great things about having it. Being in the public eye, there’s sometimes an intimidation about being on the television or speaking to a journalist, which can curtail your natural language. The fact that I’m also a bit of an insular character means that I stutter and start, and can’t always be particularly cohesive in a public forum – and so when I’m on my own, just writing, it’s all much clearer to me.

And you don’t have to be consistent, either. There are pieces written in different styles, and it’s however you feel on that day.

Absolutely. The record company said I should do something every day, but I said that wasn’t the point. I’m not doing it to pull anybody in. I’ll write when I feel like there’s something that strikes me, and when I’ve got something to say. The only reason it’s readable is because you’re not particularly searching for something to say.

I’ve seen so-called “celebrity blogs” before, and they can be very PR-driven.

Either that or they’re like a diary, and I’ve no interest in that. My life is no different to anybody else’s, and it sometimes makes me laugh when you come across people who say: why don’t you go and do a photo session for Hello, for example. Oh yeah, here’s me by a Dust Bunny! Here’s me by a pile of laundry! Your life is no more interesting than anybody else’s. You just have these kinds of little actions, these little activities that people will find fascinating, because they’re different to what they do. You see what I mean now? I can’t even be coherent! (laughs)

Well, it’s smoke and mirrors in a way. You give people the feeling that they’re really getting an insight into you, but actually you’re controlling what you put out about yourself.

Of course you can be controlling – but more to the point, you can be concise. You can think about what it is that you really mean. If there’s something that I really didn’t want to expose, then I just wouldn’t write about it. So the things that I do write about are things where I’m really happy to tell it like it is.

Do you read other blogs? Do you take part in that kind of community building aspect?

No, I can’t say that I do – because in some ways, it’s something that I’m writing to myself. It’s for when I feel like a rant, and I don’t have any ears that are listening to me. My husband’s got no interest in me going “nyeh nyeh nyeh”, the kids are too self-absorbed…

So it’s like: go tell it to the PC!

Exactly. I have other areas, though. I go onto forums, and I’ve got an Internet fan base, and we’ll be pretty straight with one another. I kind of like that. That fulfils the role that I might have had on the Internet, had I not been somebody that was known. What I like about doing it with the fans is not because I’m looking for someone to tell me that I’m great, but it’s about people who have, in a way, gotten over who I am. If I was to go somewhere else, and write with another group of people, then I would do it under a disguise – but then you could never be completely open with anybody, because you wouldn’t be telling the truth about who you are. And if you do tell the truth about who you are, then you’ve almost kind of separated yourself.

Those people who write a personal blog under a disguise will all too often come a cropper, because there’s some identifying detail that gets traced back to them. It’s a very dangerous strategy.

There are some things that I’ll choose not to say. For example, people have wondered why I don’t write a biography. But my kids have got different dads, and we’ll have had altercations during that time. So you could sit there and dive into another human being, or you can say: well actually, that’s somebody that somebody who’s close to me cares about. I’m not going to share somebody else’s life with you.

And what need are you fulfilling on the part of a reader? What insight are they going to gain by rifling through the dirty laundry, if you like?

Exactly. Why would you want to do that? Why would you do that to your kids, or to anybody you’ve ever cared for, you know?

And then you cross a line, and then people can use the defence of: oh well, she makes herself a public figure, so we can dig all the dirt we want.

Precisely.

OK, let’s talk about your new album, The Turn. There was a mix-up in getting a promo copy to me, so I actually went out and bought it. With my own money! In a shop!

Thank you! Let’s hope you can charge somebody for it, eh? (laughter)

I think there might be a few meanings associated with the title. Obviously, there’s you as the cabaret “turn”, posing in your feather boa on the sleeve. I presume that no menopausal reference is intended, though. I mean, it’s not called The Change…

(Laughter) That’s one I hadn’t thought of. I probably would have used that if I had! But the thing about The Turn is that, if you look in that face, there’s something kind of resilient and tragic about it, all at the same time. It’s the idea of being a 46-year old, and still having to shake your arse out there, and still having to sell yourself, even when you’d really like to say to someone, why don’t you just f**k off? You’ve still got to take it up the arse sometimes. Whatever anyone says, when they talk about never compromising themselves, that’s just not true. In every walk of public life, there is a compromise. And that compromise is what makes one a “turn”.

But for me, what I can genuinely say to you, hand on my heart, is that musically, I haven’t compromised. There are other compromises that you make.

Well, your whole career took a “turn”. After an eight-year hiatus, you’re now well into Chapter Two, which seems to be much more about establishing artistic control, and making the music which you want to make. You’ve also indicated that this is your favourite album to date. Why so, and why now?

It’s something that you can say with every new love affair. You’ll tell them that you love them better than you’ve ever loved anybody else, and at that point it’s probably true – but you’ve also been at that point with somebody else at another time. It’s just that time has rid you of it.

Going back to why I think this is my best record: firstly, I’m singing much better than I have sung before. As for the lyrics, I’ve always been slightly anal about them. It’s always been important to me to make a lyric intelligent. Sometimes I’ve succeeded in that, and sometimes, due to my lack of education or my lack of nous, it hasn’t happened. But there has been a progress, and it has been something that I’ve been going towards. With this album, I’ve tried to write intelligent lyrics, but ones that lose the self-conscious obliqueness that is present in some of my older work. And so lyrically – as a kind of prose, or as verse – it’s my most coherent work.

I have approached this whole record as a melodic collection – and melodically, I feel that there’s great form and great shape. I think there’s passion, and I think there’s restraint, and I think there’s intelligence.

It certainly pushes the envelope a bit further than I was expecting. I’ve not followed every inch of your career over the years, and so it took me somewhat by surprise. Vocally, a different quality is coming out in your singing. There’s something about the technique, and the precision, which has maybe come after all the stage work that you’ve done. Has that had an impact on the way that you approach your singing?

The reason why the stage work has helped is that up until then, I had never got to work consistently. Instead, I would have these little bursts of activity. I might do a thirty date tour, and then I wouldn’t work again for three years. I could never learn from the previous experience, because you always have to go back a step and build yourself back up – and just as you’re ready to start learning again, the work stops.

The great thing about doing theatre – seven shows a week, for eight months – is that every night, I was learning, and adjusting, and applying. By the end of it all, I had lost any residue of the stage fright that I used to have. That’s one of the most important things for a singer, because when you’re frightened, your larynx is up. It’s as simple as that: all of the stress goes into the voice, and so the whole time that I was touring, I was completely neurotic and paranoid that the voice was going to go, and that I was going to cancel a show. So it’s just learning how to get rid of that fear, dropping the larynx, and just singing with an open throat. Obviously, as I’ve got older my voice has dropped anyway – but there’s just less fear in it, and I’m more able to manipulate it.

What is interesting is that people will see that I’m singing differently, but they might not realise that I’m singing differently for that record. I can still do all the other stuff, but for that particular project I choose not to. For the next one, I very possibly would do again.

There’s also a marriage between the tone of your voice and the age that you’ve reached. When you first came out, there was that slight disconnect: an old voice, but on young shoulders. In a way, it’s like what happened when Joss Stone first appeared. But now I think the two have melded together very successfully.

I think that with Joss Stone, there is an element of being a tribute singer. You can hear that with a lot of young singers. You can hear who they’ve been listening to.

But they haven’t lived it yet.

Yeah. You hear their influences, and what they’re doing is moulding their voice to suit the style that they enjoy listening to. When I first started singing, I was listening to a lot of British R&B such as Doctor Feelgood – but also to people like Sonny Boy Williamson and Billy Boy Arnold, so there was that slight American twang on an estuary voice.

As I’ve gotten older, two things have happened. One is that I’ve become very protective about my English accent, and I’ve become determined never to sing with an American accent. People often see that as being an older approach. It’s absolutely not; it’s just claiming your nationality. The other fact is recognising what you are as an instrument, and the sound that your body makes. If you’re a cello, you can sit there and mimic a flute as much as you like – but it’s not until you recognise that you’re a cello, and try to make the sound that cellos make, that you’ll find what your voice is.

But you’re also blending in some of your French influences on the album – by including the veteran French accordionist, Marcel Azzola, for instance. He certainly plays well for eighty.

It was the most incredible thing. He played on Jacques Brel’s Vesoul. When Brel is going “Chauffe Marcel, chauffe!”, that’s who he’s talking to.

French music has been a big influence – but more than that, it was my French upbringing. Culturally speaking, I most definitely had a French upbringing. In the same way, I suppose British Asians could say that culturally they’ve been brought up as Asian, but that they’re British and that their British culture comes from a different place. That’s what it was like for me. Outside of the home, my reference points were British, but inside the home they were French.

My family was very heated. There was no restraint. I wished to God there had been restraint, many a time, but everything was on the surface of everyone’s skins. It was in your face all the time. As such it informed my music, and so I never felt self-conscious about emotional display.

Labels: albums, eveningpost, interviews

It has been the thick end of three years between your last album (Open Season) and the new one (Do You Like Rock Music?) Why such a long gap?

It wasn’t going to be quite so long, but it turned into a bit of an epic recording adventure. The new album took about two years to make. After touring with the last album, we ended up going from Canada to Cornwall to the Czech Republic, trying to finish this one off.

You recorded in three different locations, all starting with the letter C. The letter C is the third letter of the alphabet, and this is your third album. Was this a significant factor?

You’re the first person to bring that up, actually. It must be pretty meaningful! (Laughter) We started in Montreal, basically because we were a bit suspicious of clean studios. We worked with Howard Bilerman [drummer with the Arcade Fire], and Efrim Menuck [from Godspeed You! Black Emperor], and they ran the studio more like a musician would. It was a way of getting away from the technical sort of people, to have a bit of an adventure, and to live in a foreign city for several months.

As regards the album’s title, I’m intrigued as to why you feel the need to ask the question. It feels like you’re saying: put up or shut up, either you’re with us or you’re against us…

Yeah, it’s a bit like that. I also thought it was quite funny; it’s a different kind of title than we’d normally go for. Maybe it’s asking what rock music is, and what it should be nowadays, and whether it’s capable of expanding and taking on a few new subjects.

You’ve also hinted that the theme of the album is a kind of Good versus Evil, where you’ve equated rock music with Good, and non-rock music with Evil. It’s not as clear-cut as that, surely?

Well, we’ve kind of redefined “rock music” there, and we don’t mean a lot of the things other people might take as “rock music”. To a lot of people, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are rock music, but to us they fall completely outside that category.

I’ve noticed a little game developing, in which you’ve been deciding what “rock music” is, and what it’s not. Looking through your list, I see you’ve got Iggy Pop and Little Richard down as “rock music”, and U2 and the Chili Peppers as “not rock music”. OK, I can see what you’re getting at there. But then you’ve also listed dominos, Bill Clinton and soap as “rock music”, whereas malnutrition, George Bush and shower gel are “not rock music”. So there are some interesting criteria at work!

(Laughs long and hard) It’s confusing isn’t it? But yeah, it is up for some debate, and that’s part of the fun of it.


Another emerging theme is economic migration, particularly from Eastern Europe. Apparently the album contains, and I quote, “uplifting odes to Slavic beauties and Polish taxi drivers”, and your current single Waving Flags is apparently a tribute to Polish plumbers. I guess this must have been partly influenced by your stay in the Czech Republic, when you were applying the finishing touches to the album, but how do you view the current situation? Are you suggesting that it’s a positive development?

Yeah, I’m suggesting it’s a positive development. I’m interested in migration in general. Birds do it with no trouble at all, but people seem to have a lot of trouble migrating. They put up all kinds of barriers and rules and stuff, and I’d prefer to do it a bit more like the birds, really. It seems to not be quite so bad at the minute, but certain people seem to be verging on a kind of “keep these people out” attitude. It just seems pretty ignorant, so we thought we’d redress the balance a little bit.

You have also been quoted as saying “The East is maybe the future of all of us lot in the West”. What did you mean by that?

I think it’s possibly that we’ve had quite a long run of new ideas, and of changing things dramatically. Maybe it’s time to swap over, and take ideas from the other end of the spectrum. Eastern Europe is a place that’s changing a lot, and modernising. Maybe they’ll do it in a slightly better way. And then there’s China, which is obviously economically the future of the world.

OK, so you’re not exactly shy of covering big, ambitious themes. You’ve got a track called Atom which even touches on quantum theory – but it also sounds as if it’s describing the dangers of trying to analyse everything to bits. Is that a danger with your music?

They’re the kind of songs which have several levels to them, and if you have that kind of mindset then they probably do attract you. I wouldn’t like to analyse them, because I’d just be analysing myself, and that would lead to all kinds of bother. And I think I did enough of that! (Laughs)

In terms of musical style, are you aware of any significant changes in the sound of this album? Tracks like Atom certainly sound thicker, fuller – more aggressive, if you like.

Yeah, that was generally how we wanted to approach the whole thing, even if it was a slower song: to keep it kind of rusty. Not to have everything too hygienic and clean and perfect.

Your tour is just about to start. Last year, you played some notably less conventional venues, including a ferry across the Mersey, and Britain’s highest pub. Is returning to the regular gig circuit going to feel like a bit of a comedown?

There are pros and cons. The ferry was a fun evening, but musically it was almost impossible. It had a seven foot high ceiling, and we couldn’t even fit the speakers in properly. Whereas the highest pub in England was a success on both fronts: it was fun, and it was good musically. There is always that risk, so there’s something to be said for being able to play our songs properly.

What happened with the pub? Were your supporters shipped in, or were you playing to bemused regulars, nursing their pints?

There were about thirty regulars, and a hundred others – but to be honest, the regulars were much crazier and stranger than even our most obsessive fans.

Isolated villages can be very “rock music”, in my experience.

Yeah, and they keep the bar open all night. At about three in the morning, they had us doing a charity singalong for the mountain rescue!


During the course of the interview, I challenged Yan to a game of “rock music”/“not rock music”, using a pre-prepared list. Here are the results:

Rock music: Morrissey, Pete Doherty (“against my better judgement”), Girls Aloud, socialism (“but it depends on who’s spouting it”), Dolly Parton, 50 Cent (“but I’m not sure why”), Robin Hood, Torvill and Dean (“but I hoped you were going to say Eddie The Eagle, because he definitely is”).

Not rock music: Morrissey fan David Cameron, Coldplay, V-necked sweaters (on boys), polo-necked sweaters, Buxton Spring Water, Bacardi Breezers, free market economics (“it’s just money, that’s no good”), the “Rock & Pop” sections of regional newspapers (“but there are probably exceptions”).

(Photos of Yan taken at the Bowery Ballroom in New York by forklift, October 19th 2007.)

Labels: eveningpost, interviews, popmusic

Following the recent DVD release of his London Palladium show, Wainwright fans can now enjoy a double CD version of his widely acclaimed song-by-song re-creation of Judy Garland’s 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall, as recorded at that very venue in 2006. Given that this was his debut performance, the practised slickness of the London shows can’t quite be matched – but the sheer excitement in the air is tangible, and not lessened by the occasional fluff or re-start. As with the DVD, Rufus’s emotional rendition of Noel Coward’s If Love Were All is both the highlight and the evening’s turning point – although two songs later, his sister Martha threatens to blow him off stage with a truly incandescent Stormy Weather. Touching sleeve notes from Wainwright’s mother Kate McGarrigle complete the package.

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Labels: albums, eveningpost, popmusic

Never shy of making somewhat grandiose claims for their music, British Sea Power’s third album sees them addressing some fairly weighty themes, ranging from quantum theory (on Atom) to Eastern European migration (on the anthemic current single Waving Flags). Of course, by flagging your work as Big And Important and suchlike, you also run the risk of promising more than you can deliver. Although this risk has just about been avoided, prepare to be initially underwhelmed by the somewhat generic material on offer (Arcade Fire, anyone?), which sounds as if it has been made by pale and earnest young men in big overcoats, gazing out to sea from a suitably craggy cliff-top. Give it time though, and the undeniable power and majesty of the music will eventually win you over.

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Labels: albums, eveningpost, popmusic