Mar. 30, 2003
It's not an invasion yet. But yet another wave of limeys has secured a beachhead on American shores.
And like the first British juggernaut of the 1960s, this next wave has come to regenerate pop culture with a classic kind of rock, one that harks back to an earlier, simpler time — in this case, the '60s, '70s and '80s. OK, while those decades were far from uncomplicated, they certainly predated the dominance of hip-hop, which is the key ingredient left out of the music these new lads are into.
"If you're not expecting it, our music can be a bit of a shock," says Robert Harvey, singer of Leeds-based the Music. The four-man band of school chums, all barely in their 20s, is descending from the attic with a sound that boomers could easily appreciate: voluminous, driven guitars, heavy drums and classic rock melodies. Think Led Zeppelin with some '90s Jane's Addiction thrown in for good measure.
They couldn't come at a better time.
With the accelerating revival of garage rock, the doors could now be opening for bands like the Music and their countrymen such as Fiction Plane, the London-based band that draws from '80s rock. But more on this band later.
The fact is that there are many more of these guitar-heavy bands storming America, including the Libertines, who hail from the same rock lineage that gave us the Kinks, the Sex Pistols and the Jam. Also hailing from London is Feeder, a fuzzed-up pseudo-industrial band now preparing for the May release of its follow-up to last year's intensely personal "Comfort in Sound," a response to the suicide of drummer Jon Lee in January 2002.
Perhaps the strangest of the bunch is Liverpool's the Coral, whose eponymous debut on Sony has it being compared to the eccentric '60s prog-rocker Captain Beefheart.
"There's a move back to guitar-based bands in the last couple of years, and the Strokes' success has certainly helped open that door," says Nic Harcourt, music director and host of "Morning Becomes Eclectic" at Santa Monica, Calif.-based public radio giant KCRW-FM.
"The American audience has always liked its music a little more muscular than perhaps some of the music that's been coming out of England, but I think that's shifting."
The proof can be found in the Music's Capitol Records debut, which "lives up to all the fuss," according to Vanity Fair, and continues to receive overwhelming praise from critics everywhere. For Guitar Player magazine, the album signals that "psychedelic guitar is alive and well." Rolling Stone, meanwhile, trumpets the album for its "stentorian cries of Led Zep and U2 driven by the block-rockin' beats of heavy electronica."
Harvey, who was raised on the music of Motown, says if people think his band is paying homage to the gods, they're wrong. He offers up a story that is a virtual algorithm for making a garage tremble and annoying the neighbors:
"We were really young when we started. We just bought pedals and amps and guitars, and we just wanted to make weird noises, you know, and different sounds started coming out," says Harvey, a scruffy 19-year-old with long hair and a penchant for flared trousers.
Fiction Plane vocalist Joe Sumner is looking for a more conscious, political audience. He's a young English version of Bono for public radio — at least for now, anyway.
The 24-year-old vocalist has relocated from London to New York for the next year in order to push "Everything Will Never Be OK," his band's MCA Records debut, which has Billboard hailing "great songs, insistent melodies, ace playing."
But Sumner knows it's the audience that ultimately determines whether a young band such as Fiction Plane even has a future. "I'm definitely fearful that either nothing will happen, or terrible things will happen," he says with a chuckle. "Right now, we're pretty much living in a car."
It's unlikely Sumner has to worry about finding a place to crash, since his dad is Gordon Sumner, better-known as Sting. But never mind about that. Fiction Plane already gets some airplay on "Morning Becomes Eclectic" despite the DNA.
"That's a black mark against him for me. I'm not a big Sting fan," Harcourt says, adding that "he's a step away from Vegas, you know. He has not done anything that's touched me for a long, long time. So when I was told that this was his kid's band, I was really kind of surprised by how much I liked it."
As a singer, Sumner has been described as a chip off the old block except with a stronger voice. But singing ability isn't all he's inherited. Sumner is also an articulate songwriter who's conscious of his world, as if Julian Lennon had inherited his father's poetic gift and his political courage. He's also got a slightly disturbing obsession with morbid subjects.
"Death is such a strong thing to bounce ideas off of. It's just a very extreme starting point. I'd like to get into more subtle ones, like maybe deal with life," he chuckles. "Maybe next time that will be my starting point."
"You add that dimension to the band and the fact that they're all such great players, all of a sudden you've got this kind of dynamic that is reminiscent of early U2 records," says Jock Elliott, marketing director for MCA Records.
"People are definitely taking to the stuff we've been playing," Sumner says of the music off the album, which was produced by David Kahne, who has also worked with Paul McCartney. "The song that really works without fail is 'Wise,' the last song off the album.
"We always play it last and just completely spaz out because it's not such a song-song, it's more like a big ominous marching orchestra thing," adds Sumner. "We really rock it out. It doesn't matter if we break all our strings."
As with any new generation, this new branch in the growing tree of British rock music is part of an evolution, not a revolution. Like its forebears, it's sort of the same but a little bit different — and a better fit for its time.
BY SANDRA BARRERA
Los Angeles Daily News
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