If all music artists of longevity have a good book in them, then Belle and Sebastian are more bookish than most - something that’s always been present in the band’s lyrics of course - wry observations of everyday life, spun into song in a way that seems natural and effortless, though is probably the result of hard graft and fine craft. It was a listen to the band’s latest offering ‘A Bit of Previous’ that had me intrigued enough to thoroughly anticipate and enjoy a chat with Stuart Murdoch. Belle and Sebastian’s 10th full studio album is a joy - an example of a band of longevity (in this case 20 years) enjoying and expressing yet another creative peak. Yet it is also different from their previous albums - more driving pop, ‘big’ choruses and a good dose of blue-eyed soul thrown in for good measure. That’s the remarkable thing about longevity - bands with as much about them as Belle & Sebastian are bound to pick up new fans along the way, and meanwhile their frighteningly loyal fan base ‘the Bowlies’ will always follow them. ‘A Bit of Previous’ was meant to be recorded in California in the spring of 2020, but that plan was thwarted by, guess what? If, as Stuart Murdoch’s liner notes for the record suggest “Corona probably came 46th in the list of entities most influential in the writing of this record” - then surely the pandemic loomed large over how the record was eventually made. Towards the end of 2020 Murdoch & his merry band (there are seven of them) abandoned the notion of going to the US and instead converted its own rehearsal space in Glasgow into a makeshift studio and got to work, with unhurried resignation. How full circle can a band come? Belle and Sebastian’s very first recording sessions were at Cava Studios on the edge of Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park way back in the mid 90s, which happened as a result of them winning Beatbox, a competition funded by the Department of Employment. Their prize was three whole days at Cava to record a song. Murdoch was determined to use the allotted time to record an entire album though - the end result being the band’s debut Tigermilk. That first album was originally given a limited release of just 1,000 copies by Electric Honey, Beatbox’s associated record label (the album was subsequently re-released in 1999 by Jeepster Records). Of course, the deal was to have a limited print of CDs, but again Murdoch insisted on vinyl. Those changes of plan have been Stuart Murdoch’s modus operandi since the inception of Belle and Sebastian and I was curious to find out just where that self-belief came from. His answer was suitably self-effacing, and charmingly vexed:“I got really ill with M.E., but roundabout that time I had spiritual feelings as well - so illness, god, and discovering I could write songs. That was like a lifeline to me, so I’m not sure it’s self belief but more determination. I was just determined to use my time - because of my illness - in a focused way”. Yet Murdoch’s approach throughout the evolution of Belle and Sebastian has remained eccentric. Without a doubt, longevity is a far greater possibility if a band is driven by single-minded, quixotic decision making.“We’re lucky in that we never really had hits, so no label was ever pressuring us in that way. I wish we had some of that pressure in a sense. I’m never comfortable, I’ve been bitching, in a semi-comedic way, since 2003 about why we can’t be bigger than we are”. But once you have a following, no one can really knock you back”. Seems like a bit of previous has been enough to see Belle and Sebastian through. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

When Teenage Fanclub formed in 1989, times were unusual in music, and not in a good way. It was pre-grunge, pre-Britpop and the charts were still in the grip of mass-produced pop (much of it naff) as many 80s bands were struggling to remain relevant (Depeche Mode being the exception). Yet something was afoot across the musical axis of the Eastern Seaboard, Washington Seattle, and Glasgow. Maybe it was something to do with areas of high precipitation joining forces to rain on Stock, Aitken & Waterman’s parade. The peak of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Yo La Tengo, Jesus & Mary Chain, The Vaselines…and very much arriving at that time, The Fannies: “When we first arrived there wasn’t really a scene, no context to speak of, we were working in a vacuum”. They were at the very beginning of the resurgence of guitar music - the age of Creation Records and Oasis, Sub Pop and Nirvana - a decade of legend making stories in which you’ll find Teenage Fanclub playing a series of rather important cameos. The band consider themselves lucky on several counts. For one, they have never had a hit, no big signature song. And therefore, no albatross. From their earliest days, once they’d made an album, A Catholic Education, they felt as if they’d already made it - having created an album on their own terms - no label and no strings attached.How indie can you get?Except of course, the band had a good run with major labels, first with Geffen in the USA and then later with Columbia Records, after Sony Music had acquired most of Creation. Given their huge influence and reverence among their rock & roll peers, it’s easy to ponder could/should/would Teenage Fanclub have been so much bigger, commercially speaking.“We did okay, just not compared to the likes of Nirvana”. But Teenage Fanclub never succumbed to music industry cliches. No massive rise to superstardom? No problem:“We weren’t disappointed because we weren’t planning to be the biggest band in the world. We’re better off being thought of as underachievers”.And so no big dramas, no drug-fuelled implosions - not even much in the way of musical differences (though founding member and principal songwriter Gerrad Love departed pre the making of new album Endless Arcade). Other than that, the band is tantrum-free and as friendly as they were from the very beginning. Indeed, the essence of Teenage Fanclub can’t be easily captured by lazy narratives about commercial or creative peaks, as such. Although they’ve made a trio of fine rock & roll albums in Bandwagonesque, Grand Prix and Songs From Northern Britain, the band has found equilibrium since 2005’s Man Made - making consistently excellent albums every five years since, self-funded and always critically lauded:“We're not trying to pretend to be the band we were in 1989, but we have the same intentions, we still feel as excited about it as we ever did”. It’s only a band. It’s just what we do”. Long may Teenage Fanclub continue to defy rock & roll conventions, all be it through low expectations and increasingly lovely records. Now that’s a way to achieve longevity. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

Steve Mason first made his name as one quarter (and the frontman of) the Beta Band, one of the most critically lauded acts of the late 1990s. They mixed disparate genres like hip-hop, folk, dub, house, psychedelia to create something beautifully cohesive and arresting. Their tastes were so eclectic and their desire to make music so compelling that they ended up with something that took the DNA of the past and spun it into something wholly new. In that regard, there was a creative parallel with Super Furry Animals. Their first three EPs in 1997 and 1998 set out their musical agenda “to put a nuclear bomb under britpop” so convincingly that they were always going to struggle to meet the ludicrously raised expectations around them. When Eamonn Forde sat down with Steve for The Art of Longevity, Mason explained that the band’s self-titled debut album in 1999 was rushed and they spent their interviews ‘promoting it’ by saying how much they disliked it! The use of ‘Dry The Rain’ in the 2000 film High Fidelity was one of those rare moments where music in a movie can escalate the artists profile more than any other medium, and The Beta Band was suddenly bigger in the US than they were in the UK. Hot Shots II 2001 should perhaps be treated as their debut album proper and is the record Mason is most proud of. However, Internal tensions, politics and mounting pressure meant that Zeroes To Heroes in 2004 ended up their final album before the whole enterprise collapsed in on itself. Mason had already been issuing solo work, notably under the King Biscuit Time name, while the Beta Band were still operational and then evolved into the more electronic, but short-lived, Black Affair. It was the writing of ‘All Come Down’ that led to the career-vivifying Boys Outside album and its companion sub album Ghosts Outside. This was the first time Mason released music under his own name and thereafter he released a new album roughly every three years. Mason talks about his circuitous career – from being in a band but feeling like the pressure of it all was solely on his shoulders to operating under pseudonyms and finally venturing out under his own name. There are common musical threads, but he has found an approach and an audience where he can move at his own pace. Presented by Eamonn FordeSupport the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

The Wombats have defied all UK press scepticism (and cynicism) to become one of the country’s biggest indie pop bands. Big streaming audiences, huge social media followings and a multi-generational fanbase now pretty much guarantee the Wombats will hit no. 1 on the album charts, as new album ‘Fix Yourself Not the World’ has proved. They also secure headline festival slots and sell out shows and tours, not just at home but even in the USA.  Having come to know and admire the band’s songcraft on their previous record Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life In 2018, I’m fascinated by The Wombats’ story. How did the band defy the critics and cultural trends (indie has hardly been in cultural favour for the past 20 years) to become every young bands dream: independent, popular, commercially successful and on a seemingly unstoppable creative roll? The answer is multi-faceted of course. The band is a close knit, collaborative unit of multi-instrumentalists, all trained in music and sound production at Liverpool’s LIPA. They have ridden a wave of ‘pop as the new indie’, adjusting their sound to be something way beyond their early post-punk/grunge guitars of the early 2000s. At the core of their success are those songs - catchy, bouncy, poppy earworms - some of which have topped 100 million streams. When I was reading through the reviews for The Wombats’ latest album Fix Yourself, Not the World, it was The Guardian’s Alexi Petridis who put it best:“Scroll down the Wombats’ Spotify page and you come to the section headed “Fans also like”. It features a selection of their mid-00s contemporaries, fellow strivers in the league of what was cruelly dubbed “landfill indie”: the Pigeon Detectives, the Kooks, the Enemy, Scouting for Girls”.In my conversation with Dan Haggis of The Wombats for The Art of Longevity, I didn’t want to be the one to bring up the phrase landfill indie but I didn’t have to...Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

In a warm and whimsical conversation with Yan (Scott Wilkinson) of Sea Power, I learned to appreciate just what this unique band has achieved. With the recent name change, I might suggest the band wears its status as National Treasure with a certain irony. But over the course of two decades the band has made a batch of fine songs, really solid albums, award winning soundtracks and plays sold out, highly renowned live shows. Sea Power  also had some hits in the early days but the band's true supporters are its core fan base, who buy all their records and see them live repeatedly, religiously you might say. Those fans, and the band's creative momentum, have pushed Sea Power to get better and better. 2017’s album Let The Dancers Inherit The Party was a fine record, with across the board four star reviews. Yan: “It did okay, not as well as some people might think. It didn’t do an Ed Sheeran or anything like that”. Well it looks like that might change with new L.P. Everything Was Forever, an amalgam of everything the band has done and have ever sounded like, wrapped within some genuine quality songwriting, the sort that can be achieved only after a band has put in its time working together as one. As we published this episode, Sea Power is vying for a number one position on the UK album charts, with their main rival being...the ginger genius himself (who said the band can’t sell as much as Ed Sheeran?). That might say more about the chart than it does about the popularity of Sea Power, but it’s a remarkable achievement nonetheless. Yan himself is less sanguine about all this than he was when the band formed:“I thought we were destined to do really well. That the world would fall gently at our feet”. Perhaps the world is. Just a gentler and longer fall than the band expected. Everything Was Forever should be the start of a new journey for a band with a new name.“I saw this album as both the last record and the start of anything new, if it is going to happen. Getting the best of our influences over the years, before we move on to something new or, just stop”. It's pretty clear that the music scene is better off if that new something does happen. Whether we are British or otherwise, we could do with Sea Power. More at https://www.songsommelier.com/podcastsSupport the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

From the earliest beginnings of 1983’s The Hurting to the band’s huge 1985 LP Songs From The Big Chair, Tears For Fears songs captured sadness, ambition, pain - confessional levels of emotional honesty. All this conveyed with the magic touch of songwriters who were also not afraid to get weird. But as the 80s music scene spun out of control so did Tears For Fears, famously making one of the longest, most tortuous and expensive albums in history in The Seeds Of Love. The aim was flawlessness but the result was a flawed masterpiece, an album that literally exhausted the band (at least as a duo) until a reformation 15 years later. When they came back in 2004 with Everyone Loves a Happy Ending. Roland Orzabal describes that record as “Seeds Of Love’s little brother…it was lighter but the songs lacked the emotional honesty”. But now Tears For Fears are back. In this streaming age of always-on music, when most artists are terrified to take a month off, let alone a year, let alone 18 years, Tears For Fears return with brand new album The Tipping Point. It comes at a time when their music is back in vogue (a gentle groundswell has seen more than 140 versions of Everybody Wants To Rule The World dropped onto streaming services in the past decade or so, urging the song towards one billion streams).The duo has always navigated an intriguing relationship, often distanced from each other. Yet the two troubled souls that grew up together have come to accept each other as brothers, musically speaking. In the band’s early years, it was Curt who sang the hits and appeared to be the frontman and pop star of the band, with Roland the “backroom boy” (his words). Yet Roland stepped forth to dominate on The Seeds Of Love, his “musical Tourette's” allowed to run amok. But a recent revelation is how Roland has learned to listen to Curt again. "When I saw were he was coming from the process of making the record became a joy. I felt the wind was blowing in our favour". It is Curt’s self-critical leanings that stepped-in on The Tipping Point, firstly to throw out most of a batch of songs written in a ‘songwriting camp’ (a fascinating and tragicomic scenario in a way given the songs written as a duo). Second, to step forward once again as co-lead singer and a co-writer in Tears For Fears as a duo, not a committee of songwriters. The band is even enjoying their time in the music industry’s fickle spotlight together once again - from Zoom calls to accepting the Ivor's lifetime award. “Curt and I have both got something to say and they are very different things”. And here’s the rub. Tears For Fears are back into the culture at a time when many of their 80s peers, from Duran Duran to Gary Numan to Aha, are in fine form, making great records and sounding fabulous live too. After the two years we’ve spent at home, the contagion we now need is to see legends playing truly great pop songs with smiles on their faces. Forget 2004, the happy ending is happening right now and long may it last. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

After the release of a ‘best of’ collection Everything Hits at Once in 2019, Spoon are back at long last with brand new material - the album Lucifer On The Sofa - a raw, rollicking rock album (complete with new players on lead guitar and bass) recorded as near-as-dammit live. It is an antidote to Spoon’s previous (superb, but far more produced) Hot Thoughts (2017). In 30 years, the band has come full circle in the best possible way. Their first record (“not my favourite” says Britt) Telephono was released on indie label Matador, yet Spoon soon found themselves in a dalliance with a major label for their second outing A Series of Sneaks (1998). While that did not end well, it turned out to be the making of the band in a way, Spoon’s true beginning. The bitter experience of being dropped gave the band its first big song, the naming-and-shaming ‘Laffitte Don’t Fail Me Now’ (featured heavily in The Song Sommelier collection ‘Stick It To The Man’), the second song we discuss on the podcast. Almost two decades later the band was back on the Matador label and in a happy place - having consolidated their unique sound on a run of brilliant LPs. The most indie of bands was somehow destined to make their best work while signed to an iconic indie label. I’m glad to say that Spoon’s hot streak doesn’t end with 'Lucifer'. The album is a fine addition to an outstanding catalogue, already receiving those glowing 4 & 5 star reviews. “It fits perfectly as number 10” in Britt’s own economic language. It does indeed. Not only that but the title track and album closer is something different entirely, an inspired (by the pandemic in part) and momentous stroke of genius from a band at the peak of its powers. The only downer on a thoroughly enjoyable career-spanning conversation is the fact that poor old blighty is losing out big time, yet again. Spoon is touring extensively in the USA but has no immediate plans to come to Europe. That doesn’t stop me trying to persuade them however. In concluding our chat with the suggestion that Spoon comes over to London in 2023 (the band’s 30th anniversary year) to do not just a show but a residency, I’ve set to work on the very idea…watch this space. Meantime, check out the impressive new record and back catalogue of my favourite - and your new favourite - indie band. Ladies & gentlemen this is…Spoon, as brought to you by Britt himself!Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

When it comes to longevity, Feeder keeps coming back around, and the guitar-rock scene is all the better for it. It was back in January 2001 that “Buck Rogers” reached number five on the UK chart (the song remains a radio standard even in its 21st year). Grant Nicholas originally wrote the song to impress producer Gil Norton in the hope he would be persuaded to work with Feeder. Buck Rogers contains a big guitar riff and stream-of-consciousness lyrics about being jealous of his rival’s brand new Jaguar (with a CD player) and whatever else came into his drunken head. Including drinking cider from a lemon.Having a bona fide top five hit was never going to put Grant Nicholas under any pressure to repeat the trick. Songs just pour out of him and while not all of them are as catchy as Buck Rogers, Nicolas knows his way around a melody and a soaring, anthemic chorus as well as any songwriter in the business. When we spoke on The Art Of Longevity I asked Grant how come he hasn’t often been asked to write for others (he has only a little, and I hesitate to suggest he could do more, not wishing to worry Feeder fans we’ll lead him astray). It remains an option, always. Feeder may not be fashionable but they have made it through the music industry mangle - achieving chart success, playing arenas and having made a bunch of very good albums (with Comfort in Sound a genuine rock classic). These days it’s all about the joy of new songs and playing to the fans. Nicholas and his co-founder member/bassist Taka Hirose soldier on as Feeder through thick and thin, yet they operate with an enthusiasm and energy befitting of any up & coming rock band blossoming for the first time. Where a lot of their contemporaries have fallen by the wayside, Feeder stayed on the bus, and it turned out to be a magic bus!Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

When Suzanne Vega played a short residency at New York’s exclusive, super high-end Cafe Carlisle in 2019 (for the second time in her career) she wanted to put on a show, something special:“I thought, let’s make a show out of it. I wanted to make it like an old style revue, since it’s a small and very upper crust place with out-of-towners and locals as well, from all over New York. So I thought we’d make it about New York songs. It seemed to go down really well. I heard the elevator boys talking about it after the show so I knew it must be good”. Who knows if the Carlisle Hotel elevator boys knew who she was before those shows, but there can be no doubt about Suzanne Vega’s mastery of the craft of songwriting, and of performance, something that comes together perfectly for Suzanne’s current project “An Evening of New York Songs & Stories”. The show comes complete with Suzanne the songwriter but also the raconteur and the ‘show-woman’ (complete with top hat) - something she never expected to become when she was starting out in music at the beginning of the 80s. After all, as a child, she hated being looked at. My chat with Suzanne starts with the concept of storytelling through song - but also between the songs, and why that’s so rare on the music scene these days. We explore the early years of course, and the various lives of some of her greatest songs, like ‘Tom’s Diner’ and ‘Marlene On The Wall’. I wanted to know if she still felt that a song should be an essentially sad thing and I had to ask her about one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard and a personal obsession for 35 years - her song Ironbound/Fancy Poultry, from the 1987 classic album Solitude Standing. I was excited to hear about the prospect of a new album of brand new Suzanne Vega songs in 2023 and she is to begin the European leg of the New York Songs & Stories tour early in 2022 (pandemic permitting) - whatever you do don’t miss it. In a world in which music is in great abundance, what Suzanne Vega does is as rare as things can get. Hats off to you Suzanne!Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

Discovering a band all to yourself is the best type of music discovery there is. One day in the mid 2000s as my wife and I wandered along London’s South Bank, we were stopped in our tracks by music the likes of which we’d never heard before - jazzy, rhythmic, with a haunting steel drum but also with an element of ‘indie’. There, were four very young men (then in their late teens) busking with a confident authority - more a private performance than a busk, and with quite an audience too. That band was Portico Quartet and we were just two of many thousands of early adopter  fans from those early South Bank busks outside The National Gallery. We bought a copy of the band's very first, self-pressed four-track CD for £5, one of 10,000 sold I recently discovered. When I spoke with Duncan Bellamy (drums and the hang steel drum) and Jack Wylie (sax) for The Art of Longevity, Jack told me:"We'd go off to buy big stacks of blank CDs at Maplins, and we bought this burner machine that could do eight at a time. I think we managed to do 200-250 a day. As a student, it meant we could make a living without working in a bar. It was great fun”. I put it to Duncan and Jack that they would have to achieve 10 million streams to make the equivalent revenues now (20 million if splitting revenues 50:50 with a record label). Who’d have thought that, as part of establishing an early following as an instrumental band, you could create your own perfectly viable business model as well? For the Portico Quartet, those early years of ‘struggle’ were more like an exercise in building a cottage industry. From those early days, the Portico Quartet’s rise was as meteoric as it gets for an instrumental band. In 2008 came the Mercury Music Prize nomination for their full debut album ‘Knee Deep in the North Sea’ and one year later the band signed to Real World Records, the independent label owned by Peter Gabriel. That came with a huge leap in the maturity of their sound (2009’s Isla) and a full stop to the days of busking. As a fan, observing the band’s musical development has been a truly remarkable experience but don't take my word for it, listen to Duncan and Jack's take on things...Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/