The Art of Longevity

Inspired by recent collaborations with some of America's coolest indie A-listers (Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig, Danielle Haim, Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver, James Mercer, Jamila Woods) Bruce Hornsby has been prolific in recent times, making a trilogy of albums beginning with the ‘return-to-form album’ Absolute Zero (2019). This trilogy is a real display of Hornsby’s musical prowess and curiosity – a mix of progressive, avant garde pop and contemporary classical works. Completing the trio of albums, Flicted, Hornsby’s 23rd studio record, is a collection of songs built from ‘cues’ for his music to Spike Lee’s films (Bruce and Spike have been collaborating since the early 90s). The album features some phenomenal side players including the producer Blake Mills (on guitar) and yMusic, a Brooklyn-based chamber sextet that lends lush arrangements throughout. Indeed as Bruce hints during our conversation, more is to come from his sessions with yMusic. “I’m a lifelong student and I’m way more interested in getting better as a musician, a vocalist and especially as a writer. I’ve been getting nasty letters ever since my second record saying “how dare you change”, but my silent response is “you haven’t heard anything yet.”Perhaps all ‘pop’ musicians of longevity should aspire to Bruce Hornsby’s musically borderless, ‘post-genre’ way of working. “My art of longevity is not giving a rat's ass about what’s popular, or whether I’m popular but to please myself and to grow, evolve, change and expand…on and on”. When it comes to music, and Bruce Hornsby, whatever you do, don’t call it a comeback. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

We spoke to Joey Burns on the eve of Calexico's recent European shows in Brussels and London. Calexico play bigger venues in Europe than they do on their home turf, despite inventing a sound that conveys that land so evocatively. Indeed, it was music journalist Fred Mills who captured the band’s sound so perfectly with just two words: “desert noir”.  What a cool subgenre to have invented. Since most music writers lazily throw in all the various tex mex music flavours in describing Calexico’s sound, Joey is happy to clarify:“We are connected more with mariachi and cumbia than say tex mex or tejano or norteño which has a different connection to a different tradition. For the most part we are mariachi, cumbia. I’ve never felt like I’ve mastered anything, but I’m lucky enough to play with some of those that have”. Calexico is touring as a septet, with Burns and partner/drummer John Convertino accompanied by Sergio Mendoza, MARIACHI LUZ DE LUNA, upright bass virtuoso Scott Colberg and the brilliant guitar player and singer Brian Lopez. The set combines magical mariachi of the highest possible standard, yet when the band chooses to (as on the thrilling Then You Might See) they jam out extended plays of true sonic power in the style of Radiohead or James. In combining those elements the band’s singularity is astonishing. I can usually pinpoint exactly how I discovered a new band of longevity and for Calexico it was a recommendation from the late, erudite Robert Sandall, BBC Radio 3 presenter of Late Junction and one time Head of PR for Virgin Records. He told me I must listen to Feast of Wire three times. He was very specific about it. I remain entirely grateful to Robert. There is nothing quite like a recommendation that sticks. Not only did that one tether me to Calexico for life, but the ‘listen three times’ rule is something I have adopted as a tactic in my own recommendations. I implore you, thrice discerning listeners. It is well-known that beautiful things often come in threes. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

When your host purchased The Divine Comedy's Fin De Siècle in 1998, I couldn’t quite penetrate it at the time. Listening again to the record in preparation for this conversation with Neil Hannon  I have to say, I missed out. As Hannon describes himself, the album was “a musical hallucinogen". Essentially a sombre affair in which Hannon exercises all his fascinations with troubadour influences, Scott Walker, Jacques Brel, even Charles Aznavour. Oh, and Faith No More. And why not? Despite its rather avant garde nature, the album plays host to The Divine Comedy’s biggest hit and probably best known song, The National Express. Why, I wondered, would a pop star like Neil Hannon possibly be travelling around the country by coach? (you’ll have to listen in for the answer). The Divine Comedy perhaps never made the ‘A List’ of the 1990s British music boom. Hannon’s journey was not that of Oasis, The Stone Roses or Blur, or even more kindred spirits, Pulp. But, Hannon still had three solid years of full-on fame. As he describes it:“The heights and the valleys are shallower in my experience than Suede or others. But, I looked through my old diaries recently and the difference between one year and the next - suddenly I didn’t have a day to myself for the next three years. It drove me mad, but I came out the other side”. With that quote, Neil Hannon captures his very own successful recipe for longevity - namely don’t get too carried away. However, that gentle roller coaster ride has rolled on, largely down to Hannon’s ability to write very good songs. Those songs and Hannon’s independent, self-reliance has seen The Divine Comedy mature very nicely indeed. Despite the industry’s ebbs and flows since his debut album Fanfare for the Comic Muse in 1990, Hannon still gets asked to do interesting projects (writing the music for a Willie Wonka prequel), still goes on successful tours (pandemic permitting) and still gets played on the radio (now & again). I asked Neil if that really is the secret to longevity in pop music - on top of everything else - to be able to knock out great songs?“I feel like it might be. You never quite know. I sat in the control room in Abbey Road while the orchestra played their part on Our Mutual Friend. I remember thinking well, that’s the best thing I’ve ever done. “After Regeneration [2001] I knew I had to change things or I’m doomed. I have to make the record that makes me happy. I went back to the source - pure 60s orchestral pop with layers of golden age British pop. It got me back on course. It was easier after that. To know you don’t have to go looking - just do what you do - and an audience will come”. The amazing thing about bands of longevity is how new audiences keep on coming. No doubt a benefit of the streaming era, always on music, playlists and discovery algorithms. But good songs are the essential ingredient and Hannon has a bounty of them.  As a "musical entity, a singer-songwriter", Hannon is a rather distant pop star.“I’m not sure I was ever really a pop star, though at one point I did read the manual, so I knew what I was doing”.Sounds like it. Full article at https://www.songsommelier.comSupport the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

After her fourth album The Fall in 2009 proved to be a departure from the well known blend of blues-jazz-country-pop, Norah Jones received a fan letter:“After I made The Fall, I received the sweetest letter from a fan in Argentina, but it was also criticising me as well. It said “I’m a really big fan but would you please go back to singing the ballads, because you do that better and I really need that from you”. It was a sweet letter but I decided then, you are never going to please everyone”. As Norah prepared to release a box set 20th anniversary edition of her quietly colossal debut Come Away With Me, I invited her to talk with me on The Art of Longevity with the aim of exploring just how far she had come in the intervening 20 years, musically speaking. After all, when an artist achieves the sort of success Jones did with a debut record, there is no point trying to repeat it. Instead, with each new album since, she has moved forward, while collaborating with some of the world’s finest instrumentalists and producers. Genre blending was on the agenda from the off, yet Norah has continued to play with more different styles in such a way as to be a true alchemist. Do such talents pose a dilemma, I wondered? Was The Fall and then Little Broken Hearts a deliberate rebellion against the mould? Yes and no seems to be the answer. Jones was always a creator without boundaries, it was simply her massive early following (including the author of that fan letter) that placed certain expectations on her music. Our own fan letter to Norah would contain a somewhat different narrative. Never go back, keep moving forward and go even closer to the edge. Let’s see where she travels next. Read the longer article at https://www.songsommelier.com/podcastsSupport the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

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/