Interview: Sir Andrew Motion

Sir Andrew Motion's illustrious career has seen him traverse much of England's literary and cultural landscape. He's won the Whitbread Prize (for a biography of his friend Philip Larkin), he's edited thePoetry Review, and he's held the post of Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. In addition to publishing a rich selection of poetry and prose throughout his life, in 1999 he was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom - a position he would occupy for the next ten years.

After leaving the post (and receiving a knighthood for his services), Sir Andrew returned to prose with Silver; a sequel to Treasure Island, the much-admired novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Published 15th March 2012, the novel takes place a generation after the original, though it stays faithful to its celebrated seafaring spirit.

Ahead of his appearance at the York TakeOver 2012 Festival (on 30th May 2012), Sir Andrew spoke to Joe Burnham about his new work, his attitude to writing and the value poetry can play within our lives.

To begin quite generally: I'm aware that you did a great deal of research on Robert Louis Stevenson's work when preparing to write Silver.

I pretty much read all of it, I think, and I learnt a lot. Even though most people know a certain amount of his work - that's to say, Jekyll and Hyde, Kidnapped, and Treasure Island, of course - there is a great deal of largely unread Stevenson. This is a pity, because a lot of it is extremely good, and there are one or two things which certainly deserve to have the same sort of popular reading which his best known books have.

So I just immersed myself in it all. But I have to say, most of my time was spent endlessly re-reading Treasure Island. I simply wanted to inhabit it in an obvious way - and no doubt, for obvious reasons. Not because I wanted to sail too close to it in what I wrote; that's a competition I wouldn't like to have. But just so I knew my way around it absolutely, intimately, and in quite a relaxed way - so I could bring little bits of it in when I wanted to, and also depart from it when I wanted to.

What was it like to write a new story, set within a world created by different author?

It felt like a lot of different things. It felt cheeky and - well, I don't want to say 'bold', because that sounds as if I'm patting myself on the back. When I started, I was very aware that it was the kind of thing that might get me into trouble if I didn't do it right, because it would look as though I was sticking a lump of chewing gum on a much-loved national monument.

But it also felt - and, perhaps less predictably - as though doing it in a totally serious way (as I was doing) wasn't a million miles away from the way other types of artists think about their work in this day and age. For example, a lot of visual artists quite candidly quote material by their predecessors. Musicians are doing it all the time: quoting and mashing things up, introducing little bits of other songs in their own work, and so on.

I want to stop myself from sounding grand, but I think it's possible to look at what I've done in the book as being symptomatic - or empathetic - with the same things being done by visual artists and musicians around me.

It's interesting that you refer to Treasure Island as a national monument.

Well, the book is so famous - although to be honest, it's not clear to me how many kids still read it. But whether kids read it or not (and whether they know it or not), they're still absorbing it a lot of the time; if they go see Pirates of the Caribbean, somewhere in the background is a 'Stevensonian' experience. There's also a new animated movie being advertised at the moment [The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists] which clearly has a Stevensonian influence.

Part of Stevenson's genius is to have created characters that are, in a sense, archetypes.

Jekyll and Hyde are archetypes of one kind, the boy in Kidnapped is an archetype of another kind, and Long John Silver is certainly the definitive pirate figure. I think those archetypes are fascinating, and potentially very creative - provided that we remember (and I think many new stories don't) that while part of Long John Silver's personality is about adventuring and having fun, there's another part of him as well which is seriously grim. That's the bit that tends to get forgotten, as though it somehow stands in the way of entertainment.

When we're watching Pirates of the Caribbean, we never really think that Johnny Depp's going to get his head blown off, or suffer some other significant injury. But when we read Treasure Island, we definitely think the people around Long John Silver are going to get knives stuck in them.

It's almost a shame that Pirates of the Caribbean involved a lot of supernatural elements. For me, the power - and the fear, really - of Long John Silver wasn't that he was a particularly strong man: it was that he was very good at playing people off one another.

Yeah, that's right. I think that's the seat of his power, and why he's so magnetic: he's profoundly duplicitous. One moment he's being all smiley and nice to Jim, but the next moment we know he'd just as easily string him up; that's the bit which tends to get forgotten, I think. You're quite right about that, and you might almost say there is something supernatural about Long John's ability to show that behaviour.

Interestingly, it's an element which isn't developed in the original book. To put things slightly differently: if we think about pirates in a way which is grown-up and serious, we really ought to be thinking about Somalia pretty soon. And again, that's the bit which thePirates of the Caribbean-style treatment doesn't really seem to cap on. So when I wroteSilver, I didn't want to re-make the original book; I certainly wanted to write a good and exciting story, but I wanted it to be seriously, seriously grim - and sort of realistic, too.

Silver's tone certainly is dark.

Yes, I think it is. Again, I didn't want that to stand in the way of Silver being a good story, but the characters still have to think about some very serious things. They have to think about the relationships between children and their parents, they have to think about what piracy is, and they have to think about what greed is. When they get to the island, thinking that they're children of the next generation (and therefore a type of post-enlightenment people who can expect a better life), they also have to think about what it's like to live in a reality where the bad, old world keeps churning out crap.

That seems to be a theme of the novel: the loss of innocence

Yes, I think that's really what I wanted to write about - I mean, as far as one's ever aware of what's driving you on to write about things.  I wanted write about the loss of innocence, and I wanted to write about the survival of wickedness in what we perceive to be 'better' worlds. In the background while I was writing, I was thinking about Afghanistan, Iraq and - towards the very end - I was thinking about Libya too. Those are all very good examples of people going in saying "We know better, because we're enlightened" and then coming a cropper.

One thing which struck me when I re-read the original Treasure Island was the lack of female characters, with perhaps the exception of Mrs Hawkins. However, yours features a very strong central female character: Natty.

Yes. Of course, she has to be in disguise a lot of the time but she is [a central character]. Her being a girl mattered to me.

There was another thing which mattered to me a great deal. I couldn't do very much about the fact that slavery was still happening in 1802, even though I made my central characters particularly enlightened about it, having them think that slavery was a terrible thing and ought to be stopped. But I couldn't change the reality that slavery still took place at the time.

But, what I did feel I could do, was to change (in quite a fundamental way) the attitude that the young characters take to the natural world. Even though Darwin hadn't come up over the horizon yet, it's perfectly plausible for people of that age to take a completely different kind of interest in nature. If we think of the young John Clare, who is more or less the character's contemporary, he's looking at nature in England in a way that I hope a lot of us now pretty much take for granted.

Again, it's a sort of a post-enlightenment attitude. Stevenson himself speaks about "dumb creatures" but my young characters know better than to think of them that way. They think of themselves as representatives of the species, living among other species. And again, that mattered to me very much because it was a way of manifesting the generational division between Stevenson's book and my own.

I can see how man's relationship with nature is a theme of the book. For example, there's a scene in the beginning of Silver, where Jim has to destroy a jasper nest.

Yes, and he admits to a kind of destructive impulse in himself as he does it. But he's also very aware of them as an intricate society. Actually, quite fascinatingly, I've just been reading the journals of James Audubon, having previously only known his bird illustrations. He describes his plunking around America in the 1810-30s, and he has absolutely no compunction at all about shooting things while at the same time having a kind of reverence for their wonderfulness.

It's an amazing combination, which can seem strange to our eyes.

It is. Well, we see a version of it - I suppose - in sort of old-style country people who have forever been shooting things, ploughing on horses, and chasing after foxes - but at the same time, sort of loving the animals really.

When it comes to the narrative voice of Silver, was it a conscious choice to try and adapt your own style to match Robert Louis Stevenson?

Well, yes and no. People have been nicely saying it sort of ventriloquises Stevenson - actually, I don't think that was ever my intention. This is for the very simple reason that my book, as we've said, is set 40 years later, and my Jim has been educated very differently to the way in which 'Jim one' (his father) was taught. I imagined that my Jim probably attended a dissenting academy in Enfield.

So he's been better educated than his father, and that allows him to narrate in a different tone of voice - and again, I thought that was rather important. I wanted to come up with a voice that was broadly sympathetic to the original book and made you, the reader, aware that you were dealing with something which was set back then.

Because of the interest in natural things - and various other elements in the story - this was created in a way which was at once very sympathetic, but different. In other words, I wanted the book to be a kind of homage, really - but a living homage.

Many of the characters in Treasure Island don't feature within Silver, so there must have been a lot of invention as well.

Exactly. Well, I thought that, and that really takes us back to where we came in. I think the reason the road to hell is strewn and paved with bad sequels and prequels is because people make (what seems to me) a very unwise move: they take the original on at its own game.

A much more liberating and, I think interesting approach is to hit the original story at an odd angle or move it on a good deal; this also means you're more likely to get away with it. Onwards, sideways or, indeed, forwards. As I'm saying this, I'm thinking that the two sequels and prequels that I like most are Guildenstern and Rosenkrantz Are Dead and Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. Both of these have very interesting things to say about the texts they refer to, but both also take a very big step away.

Though even with a new cast of characters, Long John Silver is still there.

I thought we had to meet him. I mean, I partly thought we had to, and I partly couldn't resist it. But of course, he's now a vastly old man - a cobweb of a person - and although he's feeble in all kinds of obvious, physical ways, I thought it would be right to allow the readers to think that he was still full of menace - and really, rather seriously creepy.

I mean, what is this relationship he's had with his daughter? We don't quite know, and we fear the worst of it, because that would be a way of helping us to understand why the younger characters felt they had to leave; particularly why Natty had to go - perhaps she had to get away from it.

But - much like Jim and his father - she has to become her father's equal somehow, and the only way that she can think of doing that is by going to the place which gave him his reputation, the island, and matching his activity there in some way. This is a way which is equal to her father in courage and ingenuity, and so on, but also one which is headed in a slightly different direction - because it isn't driven by the same malice which drives her father.

One thing I remember strongly from the original - and I'm sure that lots of others do as well - is the speaking style of the characters, and Long John Silver in particular; his way of posing questions, his way of communicating himself.

Yes, it's absolutely extraordinary, it's one of the most interesting things about Treasure Island: the way Stevenson comes up with this completely kind of crazy language. It's full of nautical terms that I simply don't know; that weird mish-mash of sailing slang and nautical terms. It's very extraordinary.

I had a serious conversation with myself about whether to try and come up with an equivalent of it, in my own style, and in the end I thought 'I can't do that'. Not only because I can't sort of rise to it, but also because it's so associated with Stevenson, and he does it so well, that I'd be crazy to take it on.

I can imagine that that would be very difficult; I couldn't imagine taking it on.

Yes, but actually I think you touch on something very interesting about Treasure Island, as you said that all the characters have quite distinctive ways of speaking, even if it's a rather bland way of speaking - like the doctor, and so on. This means when you're reading the book, I think, you feel that everybody in it isn't quite understanding what everybody else is saying. That leads to a sort of confusion in the book, which is part of the adventure.

That must have been a consideration when you went into Silver: how much of that to continue featuring?

Very much, yes. What communication can there be across generations? What kind of communication can there be across types of personality? How much is communication between people who might seem nearly equal, like Jim and Natty, damaged or not by experience that they might have had?

In other words, is there something frozen in Natty by her relationship with her father? I think, probably, the answer to that is definitely yes. I'm exploring all these things a bit more at the moment because I'm, very slowly, setting off into the next book - and because I want to bring the characters back to England somehow or other.

One thing which we touched on a little bit earlier was the theme of slavery within the book. One character which obviously stands out is Scotland (a slave). I read in an interview that you named him that quite overtly to highlight Scotland's and England's role in the slave trade.

Well, I did. Not to punish Scotland.

To bring it back home, if you like.

Yes, absolutely, to bring it back home. I mean, when I was writing the book, I was very conscious that Stevenson was a Scottish writer, and actually I've been particularly pleased by how liked my book has been in Scotland, where I thought it might get a bad reception. It's been a big relief for me.

But I thought by calling the character Scotland, I would be saying, you know, the story begins with somebody who comes from a country which was as involved in slavery as we (England) were. Not to point a finger in an aggressive way, but simply to make that point in passing. I also thought it would give a jolt to the idea of how an imprisoned person might speak, if the reader expected him to speak like, as it were, Bob Marley. But instead, he speaks like Alex Hammond.

I've heard you have a very rigid routine when it comes to writing, waking up at 6am every day. Would you recommend that?

Well, I would in the sense that it suits me personally. But actually, the recommendation that I most happily make is to find out what rhythm suits you.  I talk about this quite a lot, because I'm on this creating writing MA course at Royal Holloway. Some people work really well at night; I don't personally because I'm tired, probably because I get up so early! But I also want to watch the telly, talk to my wife and feed the cat - all that kind of thing.

Some people work well in the afternoon, but frankly I might as well be asleep at that time; the afternoon is often my sort of downtime. But I'm pretty wide awake in the early morning, and I've been getting up early for such a long time now - I simply don't notice it. My alarm goes, I get up, and half an hour later I'm at work. That's wonderful for me.

You know, the house is quiet, the cat's been fed and I know I've got three hours (if I can resist doing my emails) before I have to think about doing anything else, by which time I would have written myself out more or less of that day.

Returning briefly to what we spoke about earlier, when you were saying how you did a lot of wide reading on Robert Louis Stevenson. I read in an interview that you felt he went a little bit overlooked because his work had such a strong focus on story.

Yes, I think there is a question about how seriously Stevenson is taken within the academy. If you think of him as a person who is essentially interested in the same sorts of things that [Joseph] Conrad is interested in - writing more or less the same sort of time, particularly in that late imperial moment - then it is rather striking how people in the academy are all over Conrad like a rash, but they're not really all over Stevenson.

I think that's to do with something very basic: people teaching at universities are nervous of good stories. I mean, they think it can't be any good if he [Stevenson] tells a good story. Whereas a book like Portrait of a Lady, which - as it were - hardly has a story, almost has to be good because it doesn't have one. I don't want to "diss" Henry James, because I revere him, but you see the point I'm trying to make. And I think that if there's an equilateral benefit to come of all this, it would be that Stevenson is taken more seriously within the Academy. I'd certainly love to see that happen.

Would you say that there are authors who often focus on the stylistic concerns of their books more than their actual stories?

Yes, I think that probably is true. Although we know perfectly well that in the books which work best, and this includes Henry James as well as Stevenson's best work, there's an extraordinary deep marriage between the way the language is working and what the story is interested in telling us.

This feature of James's prose actually makes the story of the characters' consciousness manifest. And the much limped, driving, energetic, sort of spring-heeled prose that we find in Stevenson's best work tells us something about what he thinks about the benefits of action, let alone the excitement of it.

Going back to your former life as the Poet Laureate: do you think that writing poetry is something everybody can benefit from, or will it always be something which is only suited to a certain type of personality?

I think that's a very interesting question. My instinct is to say that everybody should read more poetry, and everybody should write more poetry, but I think you can't realistically say that and expect it to mean very much - unless you also say that different people write poetry for all sorts of different reasons. I write poems because, if I didn't write poems, I wouldn't know who on earth I was. For me it's like breathing, and I want to make beautiful things which (I hope) will live longer than I do. That's sort of it, in a nutshell.

It's a form of engaging with the world, in a sense?

Yes, and I want to tell people - if they want to listen to it - true things about their lives, which I say in a way that they find interesting, beautiful, memorable and so on. But if I was running a poetry workshop for a group of prisoners - or people in a hospital - or wherever it might be - I would quite clearly have in mind an idea of the value of poetry.

The main concern isn't the production of masterpieces; it's definitely more to do with the release of pent-up feelings, which is something therapeutic if you like it.  Provided that you're clear in your mind about what you're expecting - and what you're trying to create - I have no problem saying that the experience of reading and writing poetry creates an interestingly big spectrum of different possibilities.

You've also created a new project: a huge online archive of poetry, as read by the original authors.

Yes, the archive is a very interesting manifestation of this, and it actually does prove something else that is latent in your question. We tend to think of poetry as having a rather small share, and it's certainly true that book sales are pretty small, but the audience figures for the online archive are absolutely amazing.

We have a quarter of a million people using it every month and 1.5 million pages of poetry. For me, that concerns something I've always believed: we might grow up thinking poetry is a sophisticated thing, but actually it's as fundamental as breathing.

It's interesting that we're talking about the online world and how that interacts with poetry, because that's obviously changed how a lot of writers - young writers, in particular - get their work out there.  Personally, I've felt the danger that - because the internet is so vast - it can almost make a person's work feel more lost than perhaps it might have.

Well that's another very interesting paradox isn't it? The opportunity to get work out there is very exciting, and rather validating. It makes you feel as though you've been published in some way - but if you're publishing in deep space, who the hell is reading it?

I think the future of these things is likely to rest on a combination of old technologies and new technologies. For that reason, among many others, I think the book is not an entirely doomed sort of thing. But, the question is how interesting and varied the experience of reading a book can be made to be. One thing we can be absolutely sure about, in a rapidly shifting and uncertain book world, is that it's the content that matters most.

When young writers are starting out, they often want to receive objective criticism about their work, but they're at a loss for how to find it. They might not want an anonymous opinion from the internet, and they might be hesitant to show their teachers. What would you suggest?

I think the really important thing is to set-up - or join - small groups of like-minded people who agree that this is a perfectly sensible way to be spending your time; in fact, it's probably the most valuable way you can spend your time imaginable. That way, you'll be able to generate a little sense of community within the larger society. I've noticed in my teaching how much benefit that has for students; I mean, I sit in my workshops and tell them what I possibly can about their work - and my larger thoughts about things - but I have absolutely no doubt at all that they get just as much (and possibly more) benefit from the conversations they have with one another. So join a writers' group, and just arrange to meet once a fortnight and so on, and circulate your work amongst yourselves. And be nice to one another when you can.

Are you looking forward to seeing York? Have you been here before?

Yes, I've often been to York, and I absolutely love it; God's own city. I have some good friends who live there, so it'll be a real treat to come back. I mean, who couldn't like it? It's so beautiful. I used to go there a lot when I was living in Hull, so I got to know it fairly well back then. But because I have friends who live there now, I'm in the city reasonably often.

Anton Newcomb from the Brian Jonestown Massacre(early 2011)

This is the full-version of an interview which was recorded for Sleeve Magazine (currently in hiatus). Within it, Anton Newcomb speaks to Joe Burnham about his current life, interests and projects.

JOE: So you're in Germany now then?

ANTON: Yeah, in Berlin.

JOE: Are you enjoying that?

ANTON: Of course, this is one the best cities on the planet, especially for artists. It's the most forward thinking place on the planet. It's a really interesting dynamic because it has to be forward thinking, the history is pretty intense.

JOE: What sort of projects are you involved with these days?

ANTON: We've just purchased our new studio in central Berlin, but aside from that I'm working on five albums at once, but it's more complex than that. There's a French version of the record but it's not how the Beatles did it, I'm using the music to experiment. I want to express myself underground in a way that no-one's has ever done before which is making content in different languages so it's cross-cultural; the emphasis is totally on art. The emphasis is not really the commerce aspect of it, it's truly the art.

JOE: Is it fair to say that you've been going more international recently? With My Bloody Underground and working with more German artists, is that a deliberate move to try and go more international?

AN; I don't think there's any role involved, I just think it's an interesting place for me to be as a creative person. It's no secret that if I put out fifteen albums with limited acceptance from other people, what's to make sixteen any different? People have a lot of criticisms with my production values and how I handle myself artistically, but now we're writing music for the biggest show on the planet, so what does that say about Martin Scorsese's validation of the ‘do it yourself' approach? It puts it all in a different context I think. There are a lot of different things intersecting in my life right now.

JOE: You've had a huge catalogue of albums and you're still producing them at a high frequency. Have you had any feelings of slowing down or do you still feel like you're at full speed right now?

ANTON: With my management we've worked really hard and I feel like I can finally express myself as an artist and give people an insight into the process because I'm very interested in that. I think it's important for people of my age and experience to share that knowledge and when you watch somebody that's fully formed with an orchestra like Bach and the way he puts on a production it's hard for you to associate that it's possible for you as a young person to feel like you could put on a production like that. It's important for people to see the process and I'm very much interested in sharing that.

JOE: So you're quite happy about being open about the production process, to prevent the idea of how these things are actually made from being a secret?

ANTON: That's very common. We've seen the industry present its best ideas and destroy itself. I'm not having that problem financially because we're very successful in our business endeavours and I think there's room now for a lot of my models to be looked at. For instance, I've been exploring some of the themes that I'm orchestrating, these new compositions and handing them over to a dance troupe, to give rise to mixed media events in the future. It'd be like having a Pink Floyd element of a rock band moving onto a symbolic situation but the difference is I have enough bread to bankroll the creation of it and then we'll appeal on a cultural level to these national artistic organisations in different countries. I'm working on the record using various languages, such as French as well as English, so it's really exciting.

JOE: Would that be presented in a live setting or would it be a pre-recorded, mixed media sort of thing?

ANTON: I think it would be a production but it would be like live mixed media. If you think about somebody like (name?) and what he does with the glass doing the sounds and there's the theatre involved, as a point of reference it'd very much be something like that.

JOE: I could see that actually. And would that be a touring thing or an installation?

ANTON: It would be an installation, it would still be showcasing my group or me with other people but it doesn't have to be that. I'm just going to score the thing, and explore the themes that are hinted at in the rock element so it would be a really dynamic thing. That's what I'm doing over here, working with people from France and Germany to make all these things happen. I'm trying to think about how to keep my mouth shut because I get so excited about it.

JOE: That's the great thing though, that after so many albums you can still find new sources of inspiration and new things to sink your teeth into.

ANTON: …..to watch all my peers become entangled where all their dreams are seemingly coming true. You find yourself in a situation where you have a reputation and if there's nothing that is financially viable then you become a business.

JOE: At the same time, although many groups that are associated with you such as BRMC have become very mainstream and famous, you are still well known. In the NME magazine, they had the top ten ‘animals of rock and roll' and you were number six. So you are still known, you are still in the music culture here.

ANTON: Well that's great. Something really happened the last time we were in London. We were playing Shepherd's Bush and sold it out in two hours, and when we sell out an institution or venue like that, it's not the same as when Coldplay sell it out in two hours because they buy out the realtors or guests, see? And BRMC pays for the commentary on their existence in the media. There is no wriggle-room for a journalist to insert whatever they feel like writing about, I have no illusions about that. The whole media became this whole thing of selling the American way of life to the rest of the world.

JOE: I couldn't agree with you more there. That's one thing that's been inspiring us personally, that a lot of music journalism is generally based on being an advert and a commercial for bands, and it has become quite detached from the idea of thinking about critically where they've come from.

ANTON: We can't pin it on the media because guess what, look at the Iraq War and how the government fooled everybody on it. This is just, as a culture, the way that things are being sold. It's wrong, it's just flat-out wrong and it's gotten out of hand.

JOE: There's the problem of whether it has always been that way, or has it been getting worse do you think?

ANTON: It has obviously been getting worse. It's obvious that it needs to be reeled in, everybody's saying that. But going back to this dance piece that I want to create, think about how revolutionary it's going to be to have this on a grand scale, life size. This simple act of me concentrating on this for a couple of months or something, I'm going to work with other people. It's not going to be me and my sister in my living room choreographing some imaginary shows! But think about it, it is art because it will restore faith in the humanities. As a journalist, you're a fucking joke if you can't go, in this day and age, ‘Jackson Pollock, you've got to check out the stuff he's done, it's intense', that's your background. When you start talking, you should be well into humanities in a couple of minutes or even words or else you have an agenda, you're there to knock this down. When people miss what's really going on you think ‘well, what else did they miss?'

JOE: Yeah, I completely agree with you there. I think that a lot of people, especially in the media and the music media have an agenda and they sort of start knowing who they want to promote, who they don't want to promote and I can see that being constricting because when you don't fit into a model, like if you were doing a dance mixed-media thing, there's no real way for the mainstream media to instantly absorb that and write about it because it is something which is new.

ANTON: The music media doesn't give two hoots about the arts, so we have to take it for granted. But to willy-nilly ban me from television because I'm a troublemaker is just ridiculousness and I'm going to prove that wrong. Thinking about all the stuff, all this volatility and the dangerous aspect of it, well, I can't be used to sell tampons occasionally, that doesn't make sense.

JOE: That'll be the pull-out quote that we use for you there.

ANTON: It's sort of hilarious if people can't see the humour in it, somebody has to stand up and not just critique everything they don't like or that falls short of the mark, and that's why I'm helping out new bands and spending my own money putting it back into producing other people and all that other good stuff.

JOE: I think that's a great thing because I think there's not enough out there for emerging talent. When there is talk of emerging talent it's often in the form of award for upcoming talent and it's very rare that you can have a way of shedding publicity on these new people that may not have the tools themselves.

ANTON: But it's so weird when they do that, like this ground breaking shit that resonates where they've sold like 100 with no advertising, just faking …..100,000 discs per song. But they can't award it to them because it's this grand statement, he won't make a video or appear. So even the awards are just a mockery and they keep trying to remarket dance music with some sort of content and they're like, here's…. in the machine, like that's some sort of revelation. And I've got nothing against the simple stuff in pop music but come on.

JOE: Then also you get things like American Idol and all that…

ANTON: They can't tell you that all this underground stuff is outselling The Arcade Fire and their number one album in America. Some of these kids from Hackney literally sell more records than Lady Gaga or some shit on a daily basis and they just can't tell anybody because it's abrasive.

JOE: I know and that's a real shame. That's probably one reason why new bands are using the internet so much because it can be quite a liberating way to not be so restricted by mainstream acceptance.

ANTON: Well have you seen this thing about file trading and all the New Paradigm shit? It's one thing for the US government and Germany to go ‘OK we want to be your friends Russia, we're so glad that we don't have this hostility'. All that's just talk, when our governments don't listen to Russia about Iran or something, when you're proposing friendships between cultures and a new way of looking at things and you're thinking about what's really doing it. Well it's the fucking arts that are doing it, not the oligarchy that's making some business deal with gas to make the new North Sea pipeline into Germany and fuck the rest of Europe. The real things are cultural restraints and then you find me recording with Russian guys and doing songs in Russia so there's something else to this. I'm just talking about the file –trading sites in Russia (laughs)

JOE: So is that something that's inspired you, that idea of cultural exchange. Is that part of your collaborative pet projects?

ANTON: In a nutshell it's the reason I have a German edition, an EU edition to my passport being a Yankee right? I'm obviously welcome here to do precisely this and I didn't make it into super-CV trick but it was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

JOE: You mentioned earlier that you've been seen as someone who is not safe of TV and someone as not the kind of person generally that people have on their shows. Do you think you still have that reputation?

ANTON: The BBC have been really cool to me, they're super cool. I've done Tim Robbins' show and what a guy, he's trying hard to fill in the slot with the death of John Peel. At the same time, they've never shown ‘Dig' on Channel 4, they'd rather not present the idea to young people that they can do whatever the fuck they want. Even though the whole storyline is titled in another direction it's obviously not true, that's why it says ‘written by Ondi Timoner'. How do you write a documentary, you edit a documentary? So that just shows you what it is.

JOE: But then how do you fight against that do you think? How would you recommend to someone that disagrees with how mainstream music is being manufactured, how does the average person respond to that?

ANTON: Shit man, I need to listen to the wording of your question. What would I suggest to someone who is having difficulty finding what they need from the arts, through the mainstream media?

JOE: More sort of how do you think we can stop this mass production and corporatisation?

ANTON: Check this out, I've been researching dance and these people have been bothering this woman from eighteen-ninety fucking eight and she's like the American modern dance lady. It's just nuts, so obviously this has been going on forever! Like you can discover the birth of film and sound inside these people who were just out on a fucking limb. They just discover this stuff on YouTube on a daily basis. In any kind of situation where someone is interacting with me, could be a record company, I'm going to fuck them up so badly because they don't understand the dynamics, how it works. It's like what's really going to affect me, whose evil eye is really going to affect me?

JOE: I think that can be a very liberating idea, that you can never let yourself be affected by these people; you can always just brush them off. I think it would be great, even if I could do that, now and then, that you could stop completely caring and know that you don't have to be affected by these people.

ANTON: But you are affected in that, you're absolutely affected because you have to understand how far barnyard politics really works So many people just snap to show others that they're not afraid of you. A lot of it isn't really even a hostile threat, it always seems like a gang situation of you against the world, a lot of it is just the mechanics of a dog barking at you as you walk by, and it's what they fucking do. Think about postmen, you deal with it every fucking day. I pay all my tax in the UK and I'm under the impression that a gentleman has the right to an opinion. At a base level, I am the fucking establishment and I have serious grievances with the way things are run but you know, there was dissent in the Roman Senate, there's nothing different about this. People had to sweat it out under numerous fucking emperors until they changed the way it went and we're just in another one of those times. I'm not advocating the destruction of the sewer system but I'm saying the media has gotten way out of control and the media is the fucking mouth of the whole thing! I'm sick and tired of hearing about The Beatles and how they're greatest band ever because guess what? They're not the greatest anything; they're just the greatest Beatles ever. They're not the greatest hip-hop act. Chuck D pisses all over them at rapping. That's the power of marketing right there and that's the thing I want to avoid with my thing. There's a difference between entering the popular lexicon and being a Coca-Cola type branding situation. Jimi Hendrix epitomises a certain type of freedom artistically whereas John Lennon doesn't at all, he's the opposite of Jimi Hendrix.

JOE: So you're saying you wouldn't mind being known for something you really were but you're very conscious of ever appearing like a brand, like living up to it?

ANTON: I don't have a problem with corporate, I own a corporation LTD, so obviously I'm not anti-corporate because I am a corporation. At the same time, I think the way that things are being sold on every level is a little bit disturbing. Everybody bought into this snake oil, saying like ‘hey, I want to sell you the Eiffel Tower'. It's embarrassing but when people are looking for exposition you want to sell it for junk metal. The Eiffel Tower's been sold like three times by conmen, by the same parties who were afraid to admit that they'd been burned for so much money. It allows it to keep happening.

JOE: The problem is though, is that corporation extruding their influence over people or is that human nature that people are very susceptible to easy answers if they just want to know what the best band of all time is, it's very easy for them to buy into it being the Beatles. Is it down to human nature do you think?

ANTON: I think it's completely in our nature to tear things down and start again. It seems like that's just the whole thing in a nutshell. You've got to be open. Whatever doesn't work, like when the governments around the world swing back and forth between making all these provisions for the population and stripping them away. With the environment and every fucking thing that you can name, we have to start doing things that last forever. I'll tell you what, John Lennon is dead because he fucking listened to Yoko and led a protest rally down the street, that's when the whole band said ‘where's this fucking headed?' That was when his days were marked. John Lennon was no Fidel Castro and Fidel Castro can't play music as well as I can so I'm more badass than either one of those guys. I'm not a Communist see, I don't care what people care about it. John Lennon is no Fidel Castro and Fidel Castro can't play music as well as either one of us but I have those guys fucking covered for sure. And I'm going to prove it, that's what I want to do.

JOE: I like the energy there; I like the idea of being able to do that.

ANTON: I'm sorry for going off on a manic rant!

JOE: That's fine. So where do you stand politically? I remember I saw your MySpace page at one point and you were obviously very anti-Bush, but do you even agree with the Democrats or is that another thing which you don't buy into whatsoever?

ANTON: No, we live in a technocratic, fascist state. I think we ought to be done with listening to these people and their plans because they don't know how to execute them; I am fully in the know about what is going on. Their big fucking plan was to infuriate the Islamic world and see who has the balls to react, it's been going on forever since we've been interacting with these people and I think it is a piss-poor plan. I think it's outrageous; Obama's election didn't change anything, where did this man come from? I have no illusions that Germany is fully part of that, Germany leads Europe on many levels. Check this out, there's no way could act like they do in the UK and the US here because people here will not stand for a return to national socialism of any degree so they can't dress up like Nazis, they can't put it in your fucking face because the world will say ‘It's back'. The same thing is not true of the way that the powers that be are interacting with people in these other countries, you know that isn't true If Germany acted in the same way that people act in the Gaza Strip there'd be hell to pay. Even with the new laws in the UK, the anti-terrorism clause. I understand that they have to do their job and we don't want to interfere with that but it's bullshit.

JOE: That's an interesting point though because obviously Germany will be more sensitive to try and avoid doing that because obviously they don't want to seem…

ANTON: Well Germany perfected surveillance societies. Just twenty years ago, 1 in 10, 1 in 4 people were getting paid to spy on each other, you know what I mean? This is the headquarters of that stuff but what I'm saying is that this is a blatant violation of human rights, a complete lack of understanding of how to get things done. Obviously Germany has a better style and so it's genius for me to move here because I don't interfere with their politics and I like our technocratic tradition here.

JOE: Are you living there full time now, have you fully moved over to Germany or are you just there for a while now?

ANTON: I live here, I've been here for three years. You need to meet requirements to have a corporation in the UK so here my issues are nil.

JOE: You're obviously involved in a lot of projects over there now, is there any room for touring in the future or is that just not on your radar right now?

ANTON: Well I've put it on the backburner because I don't see us getting very much larger as a band in a certain respect. We've already played at the same place as Bob Dylan; I don't see us making the transition to 18,000, 20,000 places every day and so there's no point in me touring because we just sold out the whole world in 65 shows. I don't want to feel like Def Leppard or something and playing 300 shows a year. I'm just going to do these five records and all the projects I'm putting out on my label, a band on my label from America called ‘Magic Tassles'. What else? I'm trying not to make the mistake that Creation Records made because there are no way you could ever pay proper attention to 80 records being put out in one year. That number is ridiculous, but that's what they did.

JOE: Well you're always welcome to be in our pages if you want Anton.

ANTON: Awesome.

JOE: I suppose that takes up a lot of your time, it'll be a while then before you'll be doing shows again do you think?

ANTON: I just don't know, I'll probably end up playing in London or the UK at some point. I'm going to do a show here at the end of the month with the guys that I'm recording with called ‘The Serious Matters'. See this is something I can do that nobody can ever do really well, and you know what that is? I can bring song craft out of these repetitious soundscapes. They have all these textual pieces and this incredible influence to everybody but a lot of people make noise for the sake of making noise. DJ culture is all just beeps and bops and beats, people don't realise that's all it is.

JOE: Is that sort of the sound of what you're doing then, a more noise-based music?

ANTON: No, this is like some really insane shit. I get like 2,000 listens a day and I get people saying ‘you need to pace it differently'.

JOE: Just to ask then, when do you expect to be releasing those new songs?

ANTON: I covered a Bobby Jameson song so that'll come out at the beginning of the year and also I'll have some releases from the beginning of my label.

Los Campesinos - 13/2/2010

Written for York Vision, www.YorkVision.co.uk
(Joe Burnham interviewing, Kirsty Farthing photography)

Interview 1: Tom Campesino.


So you've been having a fun time so far?

T: Yeah, it's been a bit nervewracking since we're playing these new songs for the first time. I think we're getting into it slowly, but it's harder to enjoy playing those new songs at first because you're concentrating so much.

Yeah, there's more of a dynamic than some of the songs on your first album. More going on?

T: Yeah, the main goal was to try and write songs which would be more interesting over a longer period of time; trying to delay the sense of gratification you get with some of the older stuff.

Because your first album was quite accessible?

T: Yeah, but we've now deliberately tried to spread those moments out, instead of sorta trying to force them down the listener's throat. So there are some things, like trying to avoid the repitition of hooks and creating more dissenence; just that idea that when there is that dissenence, that the more harmonic moments are exaggerated.

Do you enjoy playing songs which are more stretched-out, or do you perfer the immediacy of your earlier work?

T: I think for a live session it's a combination of both. It'd be exhausting for us - and those in the crowd - if it was too much one or the other. It's sort've like doing the tracklisting for an album; there should be the peaks and troffs. And so we try to do that live as well; the same with balancing old material with new material. We've obviously got this new album that we're excited for people to hear but we're aware that it's a live show and they've actually paid money for it - they probably 'wanna hear the other stuff. And we're happy to play them too, playing to how the crowd reacts.

And you've been playing America now - how has that gone?

T: Over the summer we were there for quite awhile. We had four months, this time last year, where we did two sorta sets of recording, and then we went back in - may? - for another month. We've not been back since, but I think we're going back - I think May again this year for a gig.


Were you playing mostly festivals or smaller gigs?

T: Kinda a headline tour - the clubs of the bigger cities. I mean it was a pretty comprehensive tour: up and down the east and west coast. And further inland this time - bits of Texas - New Mexico. Had quite a long spell down there. It's fun to be in those places - you get something called 'Vegas throat'

Vegas Throat?

T: Because the air is so dry, you start to get a croaky voice. Apparently Frank Sinatra used to suffer from it when he was in Las Vegas and the nervada desert.

Well that adds some credibility to it, at least.

T: Yeah, it makes it seem less weedy in a silly way.

Do you think the American audiences have reacted differently to the songs?

T: I dunno really. We sell more records, and we do better in America.

Really? I didn't know that.

...

T: Yeah, and the fact that we can go to smaller places in America - the more provincial places and have people come is kinda fun.

I didn't know you were doing so well there, because a lot of English bands find difficulty breaking into the states

T: Yeah, well we actually do better in the US than we do in this country; which is kinda weird.

Why do you think that is? Because it's quite rare for an English band to do well there.

T: Well that might be more indicative of how badly we're doing in this country *laugh* I think there is this British thing - Americans like the accents, so we can get away with it. Maybe they find us charming for some reason?

Is it intentional that you're starting this tour a few days ago, and you've got the album - romance is boring - coming out the same month as valentines day?

T: *laughs* Well it's a nice coincidence, and we're going with it. But it wasn't pre-ordained, it was.. yeah.

What does valentines mean for a campesino then?

T: We've actually got a day off. I'm gonna see my girlfriend back home... I think everyone's got boyfriends or girlfriends back home, so we'll probably have a big band orgy.


Interview 2: Tom Camesino and Rob Campesino


The album leaked last year. How did you feel about it? I know when Brand New's album leaked, they took it very personally and changed a lot of the arrangements around. Did you feel like that?

T: Yeah, I mean the immediate reaction is that it's disappointing and it's really upsetting because you want to be in control of how you present your material to other people. But it's got to the point where you're seen as stupidly idealistic to even consider that as a way for it to happen. But we are still idealistic, and we are still at the stage where we'd like to believe that we could have that control.

I mean it is quite rare now that albums will come out without being leaked first.

T: Yeah, I mean it is rare, but it's kinda sad as well that it's got to that stage. And the thing is , as well, it's obviously flattering that there's a demand to hear the music and that people are willing to go to the effort to leak it. And there is something quite nice about the idea of it spreading organically on the internet, with people just taking an interest in it and sharing it with their friends. But at the same time it's frustrating.

This is a question which might be quite cliché - filesharing and your opinions on it. Are you frustrated when people download your albums, or do you take it as a compliment?

T: Well it's a combination of both because I really don't know what the answer is. And I can understand why people do it - if you can have something for free why would you pay for it? Because that just becomes a charity otherwise. But my own stance - because I used to download illegally - but since I've seen the effect of it on bands and the industry, I've made a concerted effort to stop doing it.

What sort of effect have you seen on bands?

T: Um, they can't afford to tour... they can't afford to do anything basically. And when we've been trying to arrange support for our American tour, hardly any of the bands can do it because they're not making any money from anywhere. No band at our level and considerably upwards makes any kind of profit at all from touring. You're lucky if you break even at most. Most tours lose money, but the tour was always to promote the album.

I didn't know that, I'd always heard that most bands make more money through the touring?

R: That's the rolling stones example, where they make millions a night.

T: It was always like a lost maze, but it was promotion for the album. And we gain back through selling records.

R: It's strange really, I think people consume a lot more music than they used to. I think with the internet particularly, there's sort of more awareness of bands than maybe there was 10 years ago. And maybe that's why people feel the need to - because CDs used to always be massively overpriced, and we'd buy maybe one a month whereas now, people can download like 12 albums in one sitting and maybe not even listen to them.

T: And that's one of the things I've found that I've liked about my new approach. Because once you start paying for music, you make sure that it's something you really want, and you almost put more effort into enjoying it and listening to it because you've made that commitment. I genuinely get more pleasure from music that way, and things feel less disposable, and albums which I might've discarded after one listen before, I now take more time with because I've spent - like, £6 - online.

Obviously with your first album it took awhile for reviews and stuff to roll in, but now with this it's obviously all happening at once - do you read the reviews? Or try to...

T: Yeahhhhh, kind'of. *Laughs*. I have Google Alerts and so...

Cause this is one thing I've sorta wondered, like, do the bands all sort've get together in a group and read them or is it more like "Hey, I heard these guys like us"

T: Sometimes the people that do the PR will forward you the good reviews saying you've done a good job and quietly forget about the bad reviews. I think me and Garath both get Google Alerts and both read most reviews. And every now and then we'll be like "Did you read that one?". But there's a LOT of reviews, but - not surprisingly really - there's a small amount of well-written reviews. Kinda regardless of what's positive and negative, it's always apparent what's well-written and what isn't. And so, as soon as it's badly written you sort've discard what they're saying.

What publications do you take more seriously then?

T: It's not even that, it's down to blogs too. I mean anyone can write their own blog. And some people are better at assessing music than other people. Like, music criticism is a pretty hard thing to do - and it's great that everyone can have their own blog and say what they think, it's good to have that - but it's almost an art-form in itself that not many people can do that well. And again, regardless what they think of you, it is obvious whether it's well-written or not.

R: It is though. Like, I used to do the music reviews for Nouse - and I used to like pan bands all the time without any kinda' feeling... Because we kinda knew that - although we had a website - there wasn't really going to be any repercussions, unless the paper was sent out to press people. But now, like if anyone says anything bad about you on the internet, you can find it and track it down. Which can be kinda depressing!

T: That's the thing as well, I don't think we could ever preach about filesharing or downloading because it's only now that we're in this position that we can suddenly emphasise with musicians! *laughs*.

How do you think the reception has actually been to the album?

T: It's kinda as I expected because we're sort've a marmite band and we've made a marmite album. So it's obviously not gonna be for everyone. Well we were quite aware of that... and we tried to be as self-indulgent as possible... because you can go down the route of sorta trying to second-guess what people want to hear or try to write what you think's going to be popular, and you're gonna end up in a coldasack. I mean we could write a Vampire Weekend album, but we're not like that. You've kinda just gotta do your own thing, and if people connect with it in a positive way then that's great, but if not... I mean, we made like a 15-track album which is obviously overlong in the modern...

And obviously you had sorta an 'extended EP come out last year'

T: Yeah yeah. And I think we could've paired down the album, but we sorta decided to leave it as it was like... I mean, albums like Wowee Zowee or like the first three or four modest mouse albums are far too long

R: It's weird because shorter track-lists sort've elevate the tracks, making them signposted like "these are really precious!" Rather than if you have loads of them... I don't really understand the whole thing, because I always sort've see it as a bonus when there's lots of tracks on an album.

T: I can understand why people would think it'd dilute it, but at the same time I can still go back to those longer albums - even now - listen later in the album and discover things that I might not've paid attention to.

R: Like 69 Love Songs

T: Yeah exactly. But you can't listen to that in one sitting.

Yeah, it's a bit overwhelming.

T: And 15 tracks isn't quite 69 but it's the same sort've idea.

Obviously from the first to the second to the third album, it has been sorta getting moodier, more stretched out, more... because obviously, as all music reviewers should, I read the Youtube comments on your videos to see the 'common person's' view of things, and like one thing which kept on coming up was people were like "This used to be a really happy band that I could kinda play and it'd make me feel bouncy", and a few of them are saying that's not happening now. How do you sorta respond to that? Is that intentional or?

T: I don't know, I guess from our perspective the emphasis was always on sorta melodies and the melodic aspects of things. And it still is, but we've just sorta stretched that out and introduced more dissinent aspects and spaced out the hooks. I don't think we ever saw ourselves as a happy or sad band, like you kinda hope that things are a little more complex. We always tried to embrace the paradoxical elements as well because Gareth’s lyrics were often quite dark and they'd contrast with the upbeat elements of the music, so we always saw ourselves as that. But no one ever sees you in the way that you want to be seen or that you see yourself, so you can't control that. But I don't mind that people think it used to be happy and now it's sad.



Do you think that pattern will continue, or do you think you'll keep on changing your style? Or where do you see it going?

T: I think instinctively we naturally sorta want to push ourselves and change and try things out. I mean we might start approaching things more conceptually... but to me, the change that you mentioned just felt like this more organic, natural development, as much as playing live, playing louder with the guitars more distorted. And it's only when I go back now and listen to the first album I realize how different it sounds. It wasn't necessarily that we sat down and decided "let's sound like this", it's just how it happened.

R: Because you had like a different lifestyle when you were writing the first record too, so I suppose the purpose of it was different. You weren't writing it as like a record were you?

T: Yeah, like that was kinda like the main conceptual approach... to write an album in its entirety, with the peaks and troffs and let it develop either musically or lyrically .

Where do you think it'll go after this then? Same sorta style, or try something new?

T: Well hopefully we'll try something new but I don't like it when bands kinda cynically genre-hop. So I think we're not gonna go electro or start making afro-pop.

R: Cause bands make those... Like there was sorta a spate of Balkan folk music records that came out, sorta like cultural pillaging

T: Yeah like that's the thing, because it can sometimes come across as sort've dilettantism where you're just kinda superficially grabbing these elements from certain genres. So hopefully those changes will continue to develop, but it'll continue to be a natural thing.

Playing any festivals this year?

T: We should be, yeah, but it's all being arranged at the moment. Well *laughs* we're kinda waiting for the offers, see if anyone wants us.

R: Yeah, York Woodstock maybe?

That'd be good, sure they'd be happy to have you

R: They still have that?

They do!

T (to Rob): How do you feel about being interviewed by your old rivals?

R: Ha, well it was quite a fierce rivalry as I remember it. Because at the time, and it's probably still the same now, but Vision was a bit more tabloid-journalism but like massively more successful and streamlined and professional. Yeahh, and Nouse was a bit of a joke really. We were trying to sorta tidy it up...

That's gonna be in quote-marks!

R: Ha, we put loads and loads of white space in everywhere... We won like a student media award but... I think Vision was probably... well, not superior at all, but shallow. Ha, yeah, you can quote this.

How about seeing bands? Any bands coming up that you're gonna try and see?

T: Yeah we're going to the ATP with Pavement hopefully. Hopefully get a chance to go to prim-con-ver-ah(?) as well, as that's incredible, I went last year and it's vast become my favourite festival.

Where is that?

T: In Barcelona. Yeah, I'd really recommend looking up that festival.

One last question I guess - any crazzzzy stories? On tour, that you can delight the kids with?

T: *Laughs* Well we've got two separate vans on tour and one has been labelled the party van and one the pooper van. I think me and Rob are firmly in the pooper van, so we're probably not the ones who are partying. Oh we had some mayo on the bus earlier that threatened to spill over.

Hardcore!

T: Yeah, it nearly went everywhere.

R: We have more a free-and-easy attitude towards condiments... it may've spread all over the windows.

So not exactly smashing windows or burning down hotels?

T: Not yet, no.

R: One day. Although I broke the toilet roll holder this morning. God it was... yeah, I was going through a really tough period.


Interview 3: Garath Campesino


Kinda exciting, all the loud booming noises! It's a bit like we're in a bomb shelter here.

G: *laughs* it becomes a lot less exciting when you do it every day. Yeah, sound-check is quite traumatic.

You look like you're sorta hiding from the world there.

G: Nah I just worry about coming out into the cold, so I popped this on

Oh what, because that affects the vocals?

G: Nah, just because I'm a wuss.

Is it true that if you have certain environments in the day it changes how you sound? One girl I knew wouldn't drink milk a week before she sang.

G: Well I don't drink milk anyway! I'm a vegan, so. So I don't have any dairy, dairy never comes near my throat. But I think I'm not exactly a singer per-say anyway.

What are you then, if you're not a singer?

G: Well I sing but I'm not a singer. You know...

So how do you pinpoint yourself in the genre of everything?

G: I try not to!

How've you been? Because you've been on tour two days now?

G: Yeah this is the third show tonight, cause we did Wrexham a couple of days ago, and had a great gig the day before yesterday. Really busy gig. And tonight should be good; it's sold out, and it's a really cool little venue, so it should be fun.




Looking forward to the rest of the tour? Any dates in particular?

G: Yeah, London will be good it's our big headline shows at Coco's, one and a half thousand people so that'll be amazing. Really looking forward to playing Falmouth because we've never played in there before. And often when you go to places that don't have gigs so frequently, the people at the gigs enjoy it a lot more.

I think York is like that too. This is more or less a wasteland for decent bands.

G: This is my first time in York, and I've just wondered through town.

Well welcome to the city!

G: Thank you for having us. It's very pretty.

We were just saying that York has a smell of burnt chocolate mixed with ciggerettes.

G: Well we noticed the chocolate. When we were coming in earlier we were like... wait, hold on! Nah but I'm from Bath, and Bath is quite similar looking to York really. But it seems like a nice place.

So the album's out now. Think it's been a positive response? We were talking to the other guys about whether they read the reviews, and they said they occasionally forward you things.

G: Yeah, well I think myself and Tom pay attention to the good or bad. It's always interesting to have your ego massaged or be kicked in the teeth a little bit. It's been brilliant though; the places where it's kinda important to get good reviews from, or we'd like to get good reviews from - have been incredibly flattering.

Which places are that?

G: Well obvious place like Pitchfork, NME, and I guess more prominent British websites like drowned in sound.

You do a blog for drowned in sound don't you?

G: Oh nah, we did like a takeover thing awhile ago to coincide with the release of the album, so we provided some content. But most of the blogging we do is on our own blog.

Cause it's like, this is what one person said, that when you believe one reivew when they're good, you also have to take it on board when they're not so good as well. Do you find that to be quite hard?

G: Well

Because obviously this is a large change of direction from your first album, so the reviews will be quite varied.

G: Well ultimately we don't put out records unless we have the upmost faith in them, so to a certain extent I can read bad reviews and not really get down about them. Because we've realised essentially that this record that we've made is the record that we *wanted* to make. And the state that it's in now is it's perfect state, because these are the songs that we've made and how we've envisioned them to be. And so some person who works part time for a webzine sayin' "I don't like it" doesn't really matter.

So you sorta have a layer of thick skin?

G: Yeah! Or just a total lack of concern. It's just like - I don't know them, they don't know me. They might not like our band, but I might not like a feature that they wrote. So you know, you can't expect everyone to like everything. But it's important to have people around you who's opinions you respect - there's like ten people who I probably want to hear the record - and if one of those people said "Oh, you haven't done this bit very well" or "That bit's a bit fast" I'd be affected by that. I'd think - "ah well, I want you to like it". That's just like close friends and people who's music I like myself. So as long as they like it, they're the people you care about liking it.

Has it been a change touring without Aleks now?

G: Um, it's been remarkably smooth; it's been like a really easy transition. And I think it's really exiting now, because we've got Rob touring with us as well, and he's toured with bands before but never as intenseively as he has with us. And Kim joined the band, this is her first experience of touring.

How's she found it?

G: She's found it really well, like a lot easier than I think any of us expected her to. But because all of this is totally new to her, she brings like a newfound enthusiasm, that perhaps is doing good.

Not a bad thing

G: I think we'd become a little bit jaded. And now that we're experiencing this, and some of us had been experiencing it for the first time, they're more excited and I think that rubs off on us. And I think now with the eight of us, we've got a really good mix of characters. And we're getting on better than we ever have.

That's good. So with the change of direction - it was kinda hinted at with the last album; I know you don't call it an album, you call it an extended EP, don't you?

G: Uh we don't, but other people do. But again, we don't really see it as necessary for us to pigeonhole everything. We just leave it up to other people.

But it's definitely a change of direction from your first one. I mean, would it be fair to say the first one was much more accessible?

G: I really don't know. Like, as you said there, feeling it's different to previous stuff, I've read and heard people say that they think it's vastly different, but equally I've read just as many people say that it's just a continuation of what we've been doing before. So I think it's really interesting that there's two really different takes on it. But I don't... I think the first record, the way that it was recorded I don't think was particularly accessible. I think it's quite an abrasive record and all the songs are played far too quickly and very much sounds like the first time we're in a recording studio. And I think now, we've really become better songwriters and I think the hooks... well, there's nothing quite as obvious as 'You me dancing' but I think a lot of those successful songs rely on the fact that the chrous is so juvinale.

Because you did have more prominent choruses in your first album. And that's probably less so now? I mean you have Romance is Boring which is probably the main sorta chorus you have now?

G: Yeah, yeah. I think so. I think it probably is a result of us improving as musicians and wanting to try to push ourselves more. And that means that while trying to experiment, we experimented with song structures more and sonic pitches and stuff, so perhaps it's not as much verse- chorus -verse- chorus like things might previously have been.



Do you see that sorta continuing in the future? Going further and further out?

G: I... no, I don't know what the next step will be. It'll be something that we'll have to give consideration to. And I think the way the band is now, with the eight of us and the musical knowledge that we've gained and the musical ability that we've improved with - and also the support we've had from our management and our record label - means that we can go in lots of different directions, there's lots of different things we could do. So hopefully whatever we do do will be exactly what we want to be doing.

One of the things the guys were saying is that the band is actually more successful in America than it is here. I just thought that was kinda interesting because I've never heard of that happening before.

G: Yeah, yeah, it's great. I wouldn't really know what to put that down to. Like when we go to the US we play to ridiculously large sell-out gigs all over. Yeah it's amazing. And it's obviously very exciting to tour the US because it's obviously... America!

Like to spend more time there?

G: Well we go there a lot anyway. We spent probably six months of last year in America, so I think so as much as there's demand for it basically. But it's always exciting to be there, and there's places in America now that we feel we know quite well and quite comfortable spending a few days in.

So it's valentine's day tomorrow, the album is 'romance is boring', how are you spending the holiday?

G: Ha, well I don't celebrate myself a cynic as much as a realist.

So what's the nature of romance to you then? This is a pretty deep question for a music interview, but that's just how I roll.

G: I don't know! *laughs* I think when you start thinking in terms of romance, that's when it becomes contrived when the object in itself is defeated. So I wouldn't know... it's not something that I'm able to... I plan to spend Valentines in a romantic tryst, we're going to Aberdeen tomorrow, and we have friends up there. I think Richard has booked a resturant.

Sounds very classy?

G: Yeah, I think it'll start classy and then rapidly decline, like any good relationship really.

One thing I was asking the other guys as well - when the album leaked onto the internet, how did you feel about that? Because some bands really get affected by that.

G: Well I imagine the fact that you're asking means you perhaps know how I felt about it, because I think we were quite open at the time. I think it's incredibly disappointing, because at the time I hadn't finished the artwork and stuff. I just think it's our creation, it's our thing, and I think at least we should be entitled to choose when people hear it. Because there's so few things that you can actually control when you're in a band, so it'd be nice to have control over that, which is essentially something we spent a year making.

And obviously that taps into the whole filesharing thing?

G: Well I think there's a real distinction between downloading generally and leaks because I think leaks really do just impinge upon the rights and choices of the artist, whereas downloading is a far bigger cattle of fish that I'm no where near intelligent enough to consider.

That's a very safe answer?

G: Well it's a very honest answer.

Because a lot of musicians have this problem. If they say they don't mind downloading, the label gets pissed at them, or if they say they do then the fans get angry.

G: Well I think an artist is very much entitled to mind, to be honest, because they invest time and money in making it so it's only fair that people - if they want to hear it - should be prepared to give something back. But as I said, it's not something I'm particularly...

Mm. So are there any places you'd still like to play? I know you wanted to do ATP before.

G: Yeah we did ATP! Perhaps too early on. Because it's something I'd still like to be looking forward to playing.

Cause it's even referenced in your songs?

G: Yeah, that was before we played it. I think... we've never played in Australia before, and we'd like to. That's the only part of the world really that we've not been to. We've been to South America, we've been to Asia, but Austraila remains quite elusive. It's very expensive to get to. And there's not very much demand - well, there's a small but very devoted group of people who are increasingly frustrated that we've never been there. But I really hope we do before the end.

Mm, and where do you see the end of Los Campesinos? Do you think this could be something that could last quite a few years, or do you think it might be flash in the pan?

G: I hope so. I think we've been going for four years, and had three records, so I'd like to think we're slightly past being a flash in the pan. I think it's exactly the sort of thing that we'll stop it when we get bored, or when we get boring. One or the other. As soon as it stops being fun. And as soon as it starts to seem like something we're doing through duty. That would be when we stop.