Band of Skulls: Essential Live Listening

Originally published by Live4ever on November 11, 2010

If the true sign of a band’s worth is whether they blow your socks off on stage, you could do a whole lot worse than put your faith in the power of Band of Skulls The reports appear to walk the razor thin edge between revelation and hyperbole, but every amp-disintegrating detail delivered by slackened jaws and shellshocked blog-fingers seems to push the consensus firmly toward the latter. Band of Skulls – a trio! – are the genuine article.

So few bands truly bring it live, it’s no surprise there are only a handful of official releases considered essential. Certainly the Ramones’ It’s Alive is a worthy representation of the band’s amphetamine fury, though it’s primarily noteworthy for stampeding through the material at an even more absurdly fast pace. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison is charged with caged electricity, and the MC5’s Kick out the Jams delivers on its promise from the first shambolic groove to the last.

But perhaps the great live benchmark, the one to which Band of Skulls might aspire should they ever go that route, is Live at Leeds, the Who’s 1970 concert document that still hits like a tidal wave. Its power has been diluted over the years with the addition of superfluous bonus tracks every time Pete Townsend funds whimsical lure of some mad audacious and expensive fantasy by reissuing the thing.

40 years ago, Live at Leeds was six songs on two sides of vinyl, as hot as the earth’s core and as shockingly and powerfully brief as a random encounter in a dirty bathroom on the Lower East Side. But no matter how much Keith Moon obliterated his liver and drumkit, or how impossibly quick John Entwistle’s fingers and Townsend’s windmills were, the album wouldn’t still matter if it hadn’t elevated glorious studio recordings into something otherworldly.

Consider “Substitute,” which in its original ’66 incarnation clocked in at nearly four minutes. Four minutes of pop thunder which even in an era where the Beatles and Stones were locked in a battle royale for chart supremacy must have simply sounded enormous. And on Live at Leeds, it’s even more so, Moon’s drum fills hitting like cover fire, Roger Daltrey’s delivery more insistent than ever.

“Magic Bus” goes from cheeky to absolutely dangerous on Live at Leeds, and even the first reissue, a 1995 single CD set with eight additional songs seemingly chosen at random, has something to offer, specifically “A Quick One, While He’s Away.” Originally the artistic centerpiece the 1966 album A Quick One, the intriguing studio version made it seem as though Townsend’s ambition was simply more than his reach could bear. But every nuance, every rollicking twist and turn and tongue-in-cheek fanny gag is gloriously rendered on stage. This, one might argue, is how the song should have always been heard.

Which brings us to Band of Skulls. Their album, Baby Darling Doll Face Honey, is already an unpolished gem, a hint that when they take it to the stage, the hardest working band in Southampton (England, not New York) would likely leave cracks in the foundation. And if you haven’t had your mind fully blown by them in an actual live venue, Band of Skulls has seen fit to take pity on your sheltered life with a pair of EP’s that comes precariously close to allowing intrepid listeners to hear exactly how the album sounds in a sweaty room full of fans who don’t know whether they’ll survive the sonic onslaught, or if they really care one way or the other, because they only want more.

Though they hail from England, Band of Skulls planted their flag deep in the southern California soil on two momentous occasions separated by six months in 2009, the first a bonecrushing June 5 appearance on venerable radio staple KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic, and the finale a vinyl-melting December 15 in-store at Fingerprints Records in Long Beach released in April 2010 to coincide with Record Store Day.

Between the pair of EP’s, one has their choice of the crunching album opener, “Light of the Morning,” which even in its studio version is kind of like listening to Led Zeppelin without wondering if you can actually stand Robert Plant’s shrill voice. Between the two, the Fingerprints version stands out like some feedback-laden artifact uncovered by hirsute archaeologists in filthy tight jeans. It’s here the band’s immeasurable strengths are fully displayed, with the explosive riffage tempered by the vocal and instrumental interplay. Emma Richardson’s bass guitar and Matt Hayward’s drums are as solid and incendiary as a rock rhythm section has any right to be, and the same is true of the soaring shared vocals of Richardson and guitarist Russell Marsden. To his great credit, Marsden knows when laying back in the groove is what the song needs from his guitar, and it’s in this all too often overlooked understanding that when he lets loose and shreds, it’ll peel flesh straight from the bone.

Next up on the album proper is the terrifically titled “Death by Diamonds and Pearls,” which becomes even more venomous in the Fingerprints performance, an avalanche of sound and fury. The song also appears on the KCRW release, where the guitar is a far sludgier affair, the sort of sound Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi wore prosthetic tips over fingers damaged by a teenage sheet metal accident to discover.

Moving along the band’s debut, the third track, “I Know What I Am” makes an appearance on both EP’s. At the centerpiece of the shuffling song is a vocal conversation between Marsden and Richardson that’s sort of like the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” if the lovers drank gasoline rather than delicately prepared lattes. In this case, the KCRW version may be the more definitive live take, as it reveals an uncomfortable intimacy and tension, like an overheard conversation in a thunderstorm.

Next up is “Fires,” which marks the natural progression of the LOUDquietLOUD aesthetic and is maybe the band’s loveliest melody, impossible to bury noisy or not. On KCRW, the loud bits sound like a flurry of fists, while at Fingerprints it’s the frantic fumbling of new lovers in the dark. Either way, it’s another case of knowing what works live, whether by practice, design or some inherent and unspoken bond only your favorite band would ever really know.

After bypassing the album’s next track, “Honest,” the hit parade picks up again with “Patterns,” which appears on the KCRW release before an entertaining-but-sorta-cold-shower arrives by way of an interview with DJ Jason Bentley. Live, “Patterns” is transformed into a fairytale with buzzsaw blades, like something Siouxsie and the Banshees used to do, but with the guitar right in your central nervous system.

On the album, “Hollywood Bowl” arrives midstream, full of audience-friendly “Hey” calls and ominous guitars. At Fingerprints, Band of Skulls recognize the song’s epic scope and opt to unfurl it at set’s end. It rumbles and churns, hits an almost quiet arc of slow motion like when Michael Jordan appeared to hang there before ruining another guy’s basketball career on the end of a soul-destroying dunk. At Fingerprints, it sounds like there’s maybe 10 people clapping and a few more cheering. If anything, it’s because the song likely rendered the rest of the room comatose.

“Impossible” treads in Zeppelin territory again, though only through the swirling cymbal action in its KCRW opening. “Cut me out of the family photo,” Marsden slurs, and it’s the sort of thing you really don’t want to argue with the guy on, because he means it. If there’s a song which belies any debt to early U2, it’s this, and even in a radio session it’s delivered in full arena, hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck-dancing glory.

Though three songs remain on Baby Darling Doll Face Honey, the official live versions spread across the two official EP releases ends with “Blood,” a Richardson-fronted come on resplendent in weak-in-the-knees plumage and come-hither “Oooh-ooh” bits that can’t help but make you feel a little funny inside. On the album, it’s a killer, but on KCRW it delivers on its title and downright bleeds, with disorienting guitars that come as close to intoxication as a sober listener can hope for.

Band of Skulls didn’t have far to travel to come off as essential live listening, even in the privacy of your own earbuds. They didn’t have to, but they did, and then some. Over two EP’s, both of which are available on the band’s official website, Marsden, Richardson and Hayward deliver more than just electrifying versions of most of their debut’s 11 tracks; they also bring the show right to your ears. You’ll find yourself seeing cracks running down the walls, the awkwardly sensual grind of a stranger in close quarters, the acrid stink of smoke and sweat and pure Rock ‘N’ Roll lust. You’ll also sign a mental pact with your soul that you will absolutely not miss Band of Skulls, no matter how far you have to travel by plane, train or automobile to make it happen. And if you’ve seen them, you’ll see them again. How could you not?

Heart: Red Velvet Car

Originally published by PopMatters on November 4, 2010

When I was in the sixth grade, I was friends with a guy who had an older sister who wore a lot of denim and smelled like stale cigarette smoke and whiskey. She had a mirror on her wall, likely won at a county fair, emblazoned with the Heart logo. That’s how Heart is for a lot of people, even those who saw them settle into AOR balladry in the ‘80s. But lest we forget, “Barracuda” was no fluke: the Wilson sisters rocked!

Red Velvet Car showcases both of those extremes and is likely exactly what longtime fans like my old friend’s sister were hoping to hear.

It’s always a little awkward when grown-ups use Internet acronyms, and in the case of Heart’s “WTF”, it feels doubly so. Thankfully, the album’s most thoroughly ramshackle rocker only uses the shtick in its title, settling instead on a more philosophical bent: “What bridge to cross and what bridge to burn?” The album is filled with lyrics like that, the kinds of questions posited while drunk or high in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. And if anyone else pulled that shit in 2010, you’d laugh your ass off. But with Heart, it works. Seriously. Because what Ann and Nancy Wilson know that all the Arcade Fires and Radioheads of the world don’t seem to understand is that sometimes feelings don’t have to be conveyed any deeper than a can of Schlitz.

Red Velvet Car is an album that feels like it doesn’t know it’s the 21st century or that the record industry is in the toilet. The lyrics are earnestly corny, the guitars—even the acoustic ones—layered and LOUD. “Wheels” is the most “Barracuda”-esque of the bunch, with soaring vocals and a crunchy riff. “Safronia’s Mark” picks up the scent of Led Zeppelin’s mysticism and I have no idea what it’s about or where the “winding alleyways of Sodo” even are, but goddamn if it doesn’t sound like it should be played driving too fast with the windows rolled all the way down. If someone told you this was secretly recorded betweenLittle Queen and Magazine, it’s only lyrics like “I texted you in desperation” (from the otherwise timeless “Death Valley”) that would give the game away.

Red Velvet Car is unapologetically huge in every conceivable way, and that’s exactly what it should be. Heart are crafty veterans in the rock & roll game, but there’s much more honesty here than you’ll find in current releases by many of their contemporaries. Red Velvet Car is exactly what Heart has always been about, through their varied heydays and into the present. This is music meant to be played in arenas, but still give the listener that same feeling of intimacy they felt when they hung their first country fair mirror on their suburban bedroom wall.

7 out of 10

Carl Barât: Carl Barât

Originally published by PopMatters on November 11, 2010

Between the two sides of the Libertines, I’ve always argued that Carl Barât was the more musically intriguing, though he certainly failed to give me much support over two dreary efforts with Dirty Pretty Things, his Libertines-lite response to his more notorious partner Pete Doherty’s Babyshambles. What I probably meant was that Barât was a slightly less irritating public persona, or perhaps not as likely to steal spoons from a dinner party to cook heroin on.

So, what are we meant to make of Carl Barât, a debut solo album released in conjunction with the artist’s autobiography and in a year that saw him tackle a number of other media opportunities as well as reuniting with the Libertines for a string of festival cash grabs? Has Barât spread himself too thin, or is he merely best when keeping busy? Perhaps it’s a bit of both.

His work with Dirty Pretty Things was always too close to home to matter much, so it’s understandable that Barât felt the need to finally fly solo with the material he’s got here. And the album is at its best when Barât lets his flair for the dramatic seep in, as on the swirling Brechtian “The Fall”, as well as on the set’s opener, “The Magus”, which sounds like what falling down a flight of stairs in an early 20th century music hall might possibly have felt like. “So Long, My Lover” is also ludicrously, gloriously dramatic, with sweeping strings and the voices of angels and ghosts entwined throughout.

But the news isn’t all good.

“I carve my name on the livers of my lovers” isn’t the worst lyric on the album, but it’s doubtful it’ll ever make a Hallmark shortlist, either. First single “Run With the Boys” is a fun little romp, though so are the Jam’s “Town Called Malice” and half of the Motown-infused tracks Mark Ronson produced from a few years ago. Dimestore psychoanalysis is a drag, but so is listening to the dreary “Ode to a Girl” and “Death Fires Burn at Night”, which at least has an interesting title. So, what say you, Carl? Are any of the lyrics about Doherty? Are all of them? “This is the song I never wrote for you,” Barât sings on “Irony of Love”, one of two tracks included in the release given to the press that aren’t part of the album proper. Doherty? Maybe. “He’s gonna get his fucking head kicked in, he’s gonna die in a fucking loony bin.” More likely.

Carl Barât is put together like a tragic soundtrack, and because the artist has a history of baring his personal issues in song, it’s hard not to assume every word is about Doherty. The duo’s fractured, drug-addled relationship has made for terrific tabloid fodder for the past decade, but even in column inches, Barât always seems to come up short. And it isn’t just in red top headlines where Barât’s been a step behind, either. Doherty was the first to strike outside of the Libertines with Babyshambles, the first to release a solo album proper (last year’s Grace/Wastelands) and at least by measurement of released material, is the more prolific songwriter. 

Regardless of how much of the muck and mire Barât has really sunk himself into, he’s always come off as a semi-committed Method actor looking for an angle to sell an image. What makes his solo debut an enticing prospect is that he’s finally comfortable coming clean about his theatrical ambitions. Carl Barât, when it works, is a thrilling proposition, not because he’s suddenly a great pretender in a world of art, but because that’s what he’s always been.

And so the inevitable comparisons. Though his fragile range might imply otherwise, Doherty’s delivery is a more natural fit for stark confessionals. But while Doherty’s tired tabloid shtick has created a sense of two-dimensional drama, Barât is far more adept at grand, dramatic musical gestures. Carl Barât isn’t perfect, but by comparison to his other post-Libertines musical efforts, it’s the first real sign there’s something more to Barât than what we’ve been led to believe.

6 out of 10

Jamiroquai: Rock Dust Light Star

Originally published by PopMatters on November 10, 2010

Whenever Jamiroquai comes up in conversation, the words “guilty” and “pleasure” are almost guaranteed to follow. But what’s there to feel guilty about? What Jamiroquai does isn’t hurting anyone, except maybe whatever birds have sacrificed their lush plumage for frontman Jay Kay’s goofy trademark hats.

Jamiroquai is sort of like M*A*S*H, the classic sitcom which squeezed 11 seasons of television out of a three year war. Jamiroquai’s retro-funk sound, nearly two decades along, still mines much of its sound from a period in the mid-‘70s when funk made the coke slide into disco. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, because fans of any artist are fickle, wishing for artistic development on one hand and longing for the sounds of the glory days on the other.

Witness “All Good in the Hood”, (I’ve seen footage of the tony mansion in which Kay and his fleet of sports cars resides, and it’s hardly a “hood”) with its insistent Larry Graham bass and four on the floor dance rhythm.

Even the slow jams (“Blue Skies”) sound either dated or classic, likely depending on whether you love or loathe Jamiroquai. It’s also where the album really stumbles, as there’s way too much of the half-speed stuff. It’s as though Kay’s age is catching up with him, and he needs more breaks in the live set where he can get away with not running up and down a conveyor belt.

There are a few minor tweaks to the Jamiroquai template, like the noisy riffage of “Hurtin’”. But even when injecting a new flavor, Kay and Co. still seem hopelessly devoted to the ‘70s.

Here’s the thing: Like every Jamiroquai album, Rock Dust Light Star is a ton of fun. It shows virtually no development, no nods to anything but its own core sound and nothing to distinguish it from all the albums that came before. And yet it’s still exactly what Jamiroquai should be. Kay still sounds great, and the hired hands that make up the rest of Jamiroquai hit all the right notes in keeping the message unvarnished. Lead single “White Knuckle Ride” could have come from any album in the band’s canon, but so what? It’s ridiculously infectious.

The cover, which features Kay in a hat that looks like it fell off the epaulet of one of Elton John’s old stage outfits, is probably meant to feel like a party. It shows the frontman on stage, facing away from a massive crowd. And maybe that’s meant to come off as inclusive, but what it really feels like—especially with the security-lined chasm between the edge of the crowd and the lighted catwalk on which Kay presumably shimmies—is separation. And that’s okay, because Jamiroquai never wanted to get into your pants anyway. They were always about hitting the dancefloor, even way back when they had a guy playing didgeridoo and feigned political consciousness in their lyrics.

Rock Dust Light Star is thankfully much smoother than its clumsy title. It’s the seventh straight album of mostly identical music released by Jamiroquai, and what else could anyone really want from these guys?

7 out of 10

Mark Ronson & The Business, Intl.: Record Collection

Originally published by PopMatters on October 14, 2010

At every possible turn, superproducer Mark Ronson has talked up his work on the forthcoming Duran Duran album in the press. It’s as though he’s being paid by the word, but listening to his own new album, Record Collection, it’s obvious Ronson is really more of a fan than even he’s admitted.

Ronson is a music nerd through and through, and he’s put himself in a position through his production success with artists like Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen to field his own fantasy team when he puts together his own albums. On Record Collection, Ronson’s third solo effort, the selection is as diverse as your own actual record collection, with on-paper options that seem incongruous until they’re flowing through your speakers.

Ronson’s last album, Version, was primarily comprised of covers of indie hits past and present filtered through a retro-soul aesthetic. It worked if you’re into that sort of thing, but not everyone was, and Ronson has confessed to hearing from humorless fans of the Smiths, whose “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before” sung by Daniel Merriweather sat alongside covers of songs by Radiohead, the Jam, Kaiser Chiefs, the Zutons, and…err…Britney Spears.

It’s hard to understand what it is about Ronson that irritates his critics. Perhaps it’s his ability to make mixtapes with real people, or his increasingly skinny ties and lapels, each more perfectly crafted than the last. But even though he probably sleeps on a pile of money Scrooge McDuck would pop his buttons over, Ronson really is a lot like those of us who’ve found themselves worryingly bordering on obsessed over a single song, or digging through digital or physical archives to find the next two-and-a-half minutes of aural bliss. Love him or loathe him, Ronson is a fellow music nerd, and Record Collection proves it.

Much has been made of Ronson’s cultural shift between his last album and his new one, though it’s really nothing more than trading in one row of instruments for another. The beats, for better or worse, are pretty much the same. Three years ago, Ronson was really into horns, and now—thanks to Nick Rhodes, apparently—he’s into synthesizers.

Here’s a confession of my own: Like Ronson, I’m a huge Duran Duran fan. Like Ronson, my tonsorial history has seen ozone-destroying forays into John Taylor-aping highs and lows, and my shoes were once so pointy I could have auditioned for the part of Rosa Klebb in a splashy dinner theater performance of From Russia with Love. And like Ronson, I never gave up on Duran Duran, even when they weren’t cool. And, let’s face it, some people never thought Duran Duran was cool.

But Mark Ronson did, and he’s spent the better part of the last couple of years flouting it to the world. Never mind the synthesizers, he’s even got contributions from Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes on Record Collection, the former singing the most honest thing he’s sung in the past 20 years on the chorus album’s title track: “I only want to be in your record collection.”

Ronson’s true gift, at least on his own records, is having an innate alchemist’s understanding of what’s going to work well in any given situation, no matter how patently ridiculous it might appear at first glance. It’s why lead single “Bang Bang Bang” features Q-Tip and MNDR, or why Le Bon is paired up with Wiley, or why Boy George sings alongside Andrew Wyatt.

It’s not all ‘80s futuristic, though: “You Gave Me Nothing” is a synth-heavy nod to the his/her response of the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”, with vocals by Wyatt and Ronson’s latest female muse, Rose Elinor Dougall. Dougall, former singer for the Pipettes, also appears on the Afrobeat/synthpop album track “Hey Boy” and closer “The Night Last Night”. The most curious track is possibly “Glass Mountain Trust,” featuring vocals by D’Angelo on which the reclusive crooner sounds more Cee-Lo than “Brown Sugar.” 

As on Ronson’s last album, Record Collection is sometimes bogged down by interesting but ultimately pointless brief instrumental interludes. But like anyone’s record collection, Record Collection has more hits than misses. It’s future pop with a foot firmly in the past.

7 out of 10

The Black Angels: Phosphene Dream

Originally published by PopMatters on October 1, 2010

There’s been some chatter on the internet that the Black Angels’ move to the newly resurrected Blue Horizon label is tantamount to selling out, a tiresome complaint that was as old as dirt way back when Mark Perry stopped sniffin’ glue long enough to bitch about the Clash signing to CBS Records.

In the case of the splendid new album by Austin’s Black Angels,Phosphene Dream, maybe it was a gripe rendered before the opening number even spun. Fair enough, because over two prior albums of fantastically schlocky psychedelic drone, the Black Angels and brevity weren’t exactly on speaking terms. Yet the longest track on Phopshene Dream is the swirling “Yellow Elevator #2”, which clocks in at just under five minutes. For the Ramones or (early) Wire, that’s a marathon, but for a band with no less than three songs at over seven minutes on their sophomore effort (Directions to See a Ghost), it crosses the finish line quicker than Usain Bolt.

But while Phosphene Dream clocks in at a little over half an hour, the 10 songs on the album proper (there’s a variety of bonus tracks from different sources) hit like an earthquake, replete with unsettling aftershocks. That the lengthy instrumental passages have been condensed on record may be a turnoff to some of the Black Angels most ardent fans, but it’s unlikely they’re ready to give up the ghost on stage.

The new clipped aesthetic is the band’s primary departure from its signature sound, and while those who like to hear their menace ramble on for ages might have hard time adjusting, the core elements of what makes the Black Angels so intriguing are still undeniably in the mix.

The first step is admitting there’s never been anything particularly revelatory about the Black Angels. Even their name is a nod to rock’s dark history, a nod to the Velvet Underground’s “The Black Angel’s Death Song”, a grim little number even by Lou Reed’s decayed standards. They’ve appeared on Northern Star Records’ “Psychedelica” compilations and host their own Psych-Fest in Austin. Even Alex Maas’ vocals sound like Grace Slick doing a Jim Morrison impression.

But even if the Black Angels don’t necessarily cover any new territory, they lay it to waste with brain-scrambling guitars that come off like the lost soundtrack to a drive-in double feature of biker and slasher flicks. Dirty shit goes down to the music of the Black Angels. The music doesn’t embrace you as much as it props you up while the world spins into oblivion.

Phosphene Dream feels like a natural progression from earlier efforts, especially the album’s first two tracks, “Bad Vibrations” and “Haunting at 1300 McKinley”. The guitars still sound as though they’re howling from across a dark heavy woods one minute, then suddenly exploding in your personal space the next. It’s all very ominous and beautiful. But three songs in, something strange happens. “Yellow Elevator #2” is clearly the Black Angels with its fun house on the edge of the abyss feel, but goddamn if you don’t want to shake your ass on the ride. “Sunday Afternoon” is even more of a rave-up, something prior marches through the sludge might have left one wholly unprepared for.

While the band’s new focus is admirable, it doesn’t always feel like the right choice. “Telephone”, the album’s lead single, is an organ-and-guitar fuelled frenzy that lasts just two minutes. A recent appearance on Late Show with David Letterman saw the band add an extra minute of soaring harmonies, leading to a satisfying end. It’s a minor gripe, especially when Phosphene Dream is such a delight; but the addition of this finish on the album version of the song might have just about made it perfect.

8 out of 10

Shoegaze Legends Chapterhouse Tour and Talk to PopMatters

Originally published by PopMatters on September 29, 2010

They've fought a volcano to tour North America, so the very least you could do is turn out to hear first wave British shoegaze legends Chapterhouse bend nature to its will with howling guitars. Chapterhouse begins its brief journey on Friday, October 1. It may prove to be the group’s final act.

Because fame is fickle, especially in Great Britain, Chapterhouse was swept up in the early ‘90s as darlings of “the scene that celebrates itself” before being unceremoniously dismissed as pointy-headed navel contemplators by a hyperbolic media suddenly in thrall to Britpop.

History has been far kinder to Chapterhouse, whose legacy has survived thanks to a stellar debut (Whirlpool), a genre-defying sophomore effort (Blood Music), and an expansive career retrospective which left its fans longing for more. With their North American tour looming, Andrew Sherriff and Stephen Patman took the time to speak to PopMatters.

“Bar another volcano, we’ll be there,” says Sherriff, joking about the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, which left Patman stranded in Japan back in May just as the band was meant to begin the tour it is finally able to undertake.

“Although we were psyched up and really wanted to come out and do the shows, we were also quite tired, because there was an intense period where we had the Japan tour and the Scala gig in London as well,” Sherriff said. “It was quite full on, and in a way we had more time to be relaxed for this tour. We’ve been taking full day rehearsals rather than evening rehearsals, and we feel that we’re in a better state to cope with this now.”

The break allowed the band’s members to regroup and to reschedule their postponed dates, which features electronic artist Ulrich Schnauss at each of the seven shows, along with a different support act every stop along the way. The tour may not allow Chapterhouse to reach all its fans, but that it’s happening at all is something of a minor miracle.

“We’re in a situation where we’ve got to try to cram as many shows into a limited amount of time, and we don’t really have much flexibility there,” Patman says. “What’s there is set in stone. We’ve been getting a lot of offers to extend things out a little bit, but we’ve got to keep it pretty tight.”

Chapterhouse was formed in the late ‘80s by guitarist/vocalists Sherriff and Patman, along with guitarist Simon Rowe, drummer Ashley Bates and bass guitarist Jon Curtis. Following a tour with Spacemen 3, Curtis was replaced by Russell Barrett, and the band began releasing what have now come to be regarded as seminal EPs. Right around the time My Bloody Valentine first blended wall-of-sound guitars and dance beats with the Glider EP, Chapterhouse released “Falling Down” on the FreefallEP, followed later by “Pearl”, a swirling masterpiece built around samples of Led Zeppelin and Schoolly D.

Whirlpool (1991) is rightly considered the quintessential Chapterhouse release, and the standalone “Mesmerise” single which followed later the same year was cut from the same mid-tempo cloth as “Pearl”. While the band’s music to this point often integrated dance rhythms into the effects-laden shoegaze aesthetic, Blood Music’s club sound was something of a surprise. Though Sherriff and Patman express disappointment in how much of the completed album was mixed, it’s still a worthy follow-up to their debut full-length.

“We look back at the production of Blood Music and are not particularly happy with the way it was produced,” says Sherriff. “Basically nearly every track had a different producer on it.”

Those issues are being put to bed on tour.

“We’re not doing a great deal of material from Blood Music, but the tracks we are doing are addressing them in the way we wanted to do them at the time”, says Patman. “In all honesty, we were behind what was happening at the time, and we felt it was a movement and were into those things. But there was a lot of input from various things that might have driven us down certain routes, and it got a little bit overblown, the production just made it a little bit too bombastic. The nice thing about the place we’re in now is that we’re able to address the songs that we’re still proud of and present them in a way that we felt they should have sounded then.”

If not for Schnauss, Chapterhouse might not have reunited at all. The German musician has cited the band—and Blood Music in particular—as an influence on his own sound, and after covering the album’s epic closer, asked the band to perform the song with him at the 2008 Truck Festival in England.

“This was actually prior to us even considering reuniting,” Patman says. “Ulrich was doing a cover version of ‘Love Forever’ for a compilation. We got to know him, I’m not even sure how, but we kind of talked about possibly helping out with vocals and guitar on that. He put together the track and then we got together in the studio. Andy did some vocals and I did some guitar, and it kind of became part of the mix. And when the Truck Festival came along, Ulrich was playing and the guys putting it together, Sonic Cathedral, asked if we’d like to just go on at the end of the night and play that track as a bit of a collaboration. Since it was a no pressure thing, it didn’t really involve us doing much except for just working the song out a bit. We asked Simon (Rowe) if he wanted to come out, too. We just did it really as a one-off thing, and it wasn’t for another year or more before we were officially approached by Club AC30, who were a label and club over in London, who I suppose are focused on the whole Nu-Gaze thing, if you want to call it that.”

Club AC30, which in a sense celebrates the scene that celebrated itself, isn’t just a club night designed to bring the ethereal sounds of shoegaze into the present, it’s also a record label which profiles contemporary bands who work within the genre, like Exit Calm. Through Schnauss, Club AC30 forged a relationship with Chapterhouse, which led to the band’s first gig—during the Reverence festival in London—and the tour that was cut short by a volcano earlier this year.

“Even though we’ve been asked quite frequently over the years to reform, we’ve kind of really not had any particular drive to do it,” Patman says. “We figured we’d leave it all in the past. We’re all still really good friends, but it wasn’t something we’d really considered all that seriously. Yet when we were offered this, we thought it could be fun. If we could put together a Japanese, American tour and just basically have some good experiences out of it again, we just thought we’d give it a try.”

“We kind of basically decided that we would only play the ICA [London] if we did Japan and America as well to make it worthwhile all the rehearsing,” Sherriff adds. “We always said the only way we would reform is if we got to play Tokyo, New York, L.A., Chicago, those sorts of places. Not Hull.”

Sherriff says the band is playing together again in Chapterhouse for all the right reasons.

“We’re not trying to sell anything, we’re not trying to sell our egos,” Sherriff says. “We’re just out for the pleasure of playing again. And also, in the climate of so many new bands at the moment kind of embracing what we were doing back then, and also citing us as an influence, it seemed like a really good climate that if we were going to do this to do it now. We’ve all remained great friends, so to go back to something we enjoyed so much felt really good. It affirmed it was something that we should do just purely for the life experience.”

Patman agrees.

“We can do what the fuck we want,” he says. “The whole machinery of selling records means there’s a label behind you pushing you in certain areas. And that was an area of the band that we felt very confined by, and were pushed into bad decision-making. If anything, this makes it possible for us to do it exactly how it should have been done in the first place. And also we’ve gained a lot of years in musical experience. We’ve all been working in music since, and we’re in such a far better place.”

After the dissolution of Chapterhouse, the band’s members moved into different musical areas, with Sherriff, Patman, and Bates currently working in a team of four composers writing music for film and television. Bates is also a member of Tunng, while Rowe is a founding member of Mojave 3, something of a shoegaze supergroup with Neil Halstead and Rachel Gowsell of Slowdive.

Because they all remained friends, initial rehearsals for the Chapterhouse reunion went smoothly. And the time apart also allowed the band to bring its equipment into the 21st century along with its music.

“We had to actually buy [guitar pedals] again,” said Sherriff. “We’ve sold them or moved on. Well, I will say now that there’s a lot of what are called boutique pedals that weren’t available back then which sound really good. Back then we were kind of using a lot of digital multi-effects. We wanted this time for it to be a bit more like we initially wanted Chapterhouse to be. The set’s going to be mostly live. There’s a couple of tracks—“Pearl” obviously, and “Love Forver” that use sequencing, but the rest of them are completely live. We wanted to have more pedals rather than sequenced up multi-processors.”

“A lot of the sounds from back in the day for the band came from two specific multi-effects processors that came out,” Patman continues. “You kind of plugged your guitar through it and you had a lot of scope. But they were quite synthetic, and we kind of wanted to go back to basics and have a guitar plugged into some pedals plugged into an amp, and try and recreate what we were doing back then, but with much more rudimentary equipment. Like Andy said, there’s a lot more stuff out there that you can buy. Back in the early ‘90s it was pretty slim. You could buy your heavy metal pedal or your wah, but there’s so much more available to do that. We’ve kind of heavied stuff up a bit, made it more raw. Pressure from the label was constantly to keep things accessible, and it kind of drove us down a route where we had to clean ourselves up. We’ve kind of gone back to our roots and are doing it with a sense of a band just kicking it in a room.”

The live shows will serve as a celebration of the music of Chapterhouse, a band which like so many before and since saw its support in the press suddenly withdrawn in favor of a new scene.

“The press was going through a phase at that time, especially in the UK,” says Sherriff. “It was a transition in music, and there wasn’t anything happening in the mainstream of any consequence. There were a few bands doing things in the underground who were beginning to cross over, but there was a lot of pressure for journalists to kind of find the next big thing, and they jumped on a few bands thinking that might be the case. The shoegaze genre really didn’t cross over into the mainstream, and I think a lot of journalists were disappointed by that, so they reacted against it. But the English music press is notorious for that.”

Patman says the band’s fans knew better than to buy how they were presented in the tabloid music press.

“I think the people who came to see us live and bought the records realized that we were nothing like what the press portrayed us to be,” he says. “That was almost a caricature that suited them. And their motives for doing that, I don’t know. But we weren’t the band that represented shoegaze the most. We were quite rocky compared to some of those bands, and dancey as well. But I think we suited their purpose more than some of the other bands, so that’s what happened.”

The future of Chapterhouse is uncertain, though new incidental music is being created as part of a forthcoming DVD about the reunion tour. The tour, which begins on Friday, October 1 at Lincoln Hall in Chicago and finishes at Mezzanine in San Francisco on Tuesday, October 9, also includes dates in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Boston, Toronto, and Los Angeles.

“We’ve always treated this as a one-off thing,” says Sherriff. “It’s very unlikely that we’ll be returning to the States. If something came along that seemed like it would be fun, we might do it. But we’ve got no plans to do this any longer.”

The Rownderbout compilation, a highly-coveted two-disc set released by Dedicated in 1994, either sets the record straight or serves as a reminder to Chapterhouse about what the band might eventually do should it decide to record again.

“It’s odd really, because [Rownderbout] was put together without our knowledge, and the first thing I heard about it was when some guy mentioned it to me in a pub, and I was like, ‘Oh really?’ because we’d split up by then,” Patman says. “The one thing it did, we were writing a lot of material in the lead in to splitting up, and we ended up with a lot of songs which the label was not releasing because they wanted to have a hit single, and we were just not that type of band. And a lot of that ended up on Rownderbout, and that represents that side of us more.”

Sherriff sees some of those demos and unreleased tracks as a blueprint for where Chapterhouse not only might have once gone, but could possibly go one day in the future.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently,” he says. “But the downside is that we just haven’t had enough time really. To do these tours, we’ve actually taken them as holiday from work, and we’ve been doing a lot of rehearsals in the evening or at the weekend, which means we’re not getting to see the families and so on. It’s unlikely that we’ll be reforming as a band, but it would be nice to record some new stuff. We’ve always been intending to release a record that had some of the music that we made between Whirlpool and Blood Music, some demos, and it would be nice to re-address a couple of the songs on Blood Music and other periods that we felt weren’t recorded properly.”