The Art of Longevity

The Coral is a band revered on the music scene - a real artist’s band. They are very accomplished musicians who first got together at school in the small Wirral town of Hoylake. The band members bonded over their many music icons, from The Beatles and the Small Faces to Acker Bilk and Del Shannon. Listening to a record by the Coral is a dizzying fairground tour of Liverpool’s music hall pop heritage mixed with American West Coast psychedelia and a lot else besides. Sometimes all in one song. Yet it sounds like no other band except The Coral. Funny then that some 20 years after their debut, The Coral has made an album that sounds more like themselves than anything else they’ve done. ‘Coral Island’ is themed on the romantic ideal of the faded seaside town. The band has had an ongoing obsession with the sea since day one, but Coral Island is different. The band collaborated with artist Edwin Burdis to actually build the island and once it became a physical thing, the band’s imagination was stretched further to bring it to life with stories, characters and poetic interludes narrated by the Skelly brothers’ own Grandad. The album is an end-to-end modern classic, yet the band’s singer James Skelly told me he expected the album would linger in obscurity, but it reached number two on the UK album charts and has received critical praise across the board. It’s probably their best record so far and if it’s too early to tell, then let’s say Coral Island is a potential masterpiece. It’s nice to see a band as good as The Coral come full circle over the course of two decades.   When the band was elevated to the top of ‘Britpop’ mania in 2002 with their song ‘Dreaming of You’ and their Mercury Prize nominated debut album, they had a great time basking in the limelight and usurping industry etiquette (a Freddie Mercury impersonator stood in for them at the Mercury Prize ceremony). However, The Coral also lost touch with reality. When they released a third album of spooky psychedelic jams, they thought it might get to number one (like their second album ‘Magic and Medicine’). It was perhaps an act of subconscious self-sabotage. A self-correcting mechanism. But at the time it’s just what the band wanted to do, though their judgement was somewhat skewed by skunk. In episode 7 of The Art of Longevity, James Skelly walks me through the rest of this remarkable band’s story in a conversation we both thoroughly enjoyed, partly because I was very impressed by the combination of working class ambition, humble wisdom and complete dedication to artistry. There is no doubt when you hear James’s account of the band’s character and history, that The Coral would work their way through the mangle of the music industry and come out of it relatively unscathed. And, creatively speaking, even better. In particular though, it’s the songs. Skelly and co do not lack a way with melody. As I put it to him, he could write Coldplay songs all day long, but then there are these things called minor chords...and The Coral never minded a little darkness and spookiness mixed in with the melody. No need for them to call Max Martin in to help write the next few hits (though I suspect Max is a fan). As James says himself, in The Coral’s early days he would kill for a song. Some 20 years in, he’s no longer in need of such morbid thoughts. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

Music critics have tried to classify the music made by North East England’s Maximo Park for the past two decades, eventually converging on the term ‘art pop’. Yet Paul Smith, the band’s singer and main co-songwriter (with guitarist Duncan Lloyd) describes their music thus as: “Odd but still pop music. Weird but anthemic. Music with a literary influence but also immediate - in some ways primitive - music that tries to slap you in the face a little bit, but twangs its way back to being pop. We try to make it accessible, if only to ourselves”. Only Smith could describe Maximo Park’s music in that way and it’s perfect. No wonder perhaps, since he has practiced since the band’s early days when Smith wrote his own marketing copy for early gigs (‘unruly pop’ was one elevator pitch from Maximo’s early days). With his art school background and literary leanings Paul Smith can express himself through music more than most - the thinking person’s pop lyricist if you will. While I worry that Maximo Park may be limiting their audience to the world’s intellectually curious (and possibly Northern sympathisers), the band’s most recent album ‘Nature Always Wins’ was a number two charting record. While some of the band’s previous albums have been statements of feeling - often political or raging against the machine in some way - their most recent outing seems more expansive and personal at the same time, while musically melding all their influences and styles into something of the perfect embodiment of Smith’s own definition. While Smith has worn his emotions on his sleeve lyrically before, Nature Always Wins has seen him hone the craft but be more pragmatic too. There might not have been a better song about the parental relationship than ‘Versions Of You’, nor indeed ‘Baby, Sleep’. To say they are both great examples of parent pop would just add more Maximo music theory into the mix!After two decades on the British pop scene, Maximo Park is very much evolving. The band has been brave enough to step outside their trademark melodic hooks and catchy choruses to make a song like ‘Child Of The Flatlands’ (let alone make it the album’s lead single, something that brought to my mind The Police and their 1981 gloomy lead single ‘Invisible Sun’). The song is a step away from the emotional yearning or intellectual playfulness of previous singles to something more personal, reflective and deeper. The song was inspired by a walk Paul Smith took on the North East’s industrial path. That bleak, abandoned beauty of the industrial wastes close to their homeland has inspired one of their best ever songs. When it comes to longevity, the band has stuck to the art and put its trust in partners (Prolifica and PIAS these days) to get their records to public, yet the desire to be accessible has always been there. From Paul Smith’s point of view, gratitude to the early days of decent record company advances and tour support (WARP records in those days) allowed the band to simply focus on the music, song-by-song, album-by-album and tour-by-tour. A Northern work ethic combined with the art school sensibilities hasn’t done them any harm over the years. However the modern way is a necessity too: hence in 2021 a YouTube Premier of Nature Always Wins, presence on socials, playlist meetings and radio edits. After all, in Paul’s own words “We were lucky to be in the spotlight and over the years, the light may brighten or dim, but we’ve still managed to stay in it. We’re not daft”.Humble to the last and doing just fine. It won’t be long before National Treasure status is suitably assigned. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

When you’ve been getting away with it as a seven piece band for nearly four decades, with 22 albums behind you - something’s got to give when it comes to longevity. Especially when, in the case of James and Tim Booth, you’re on yet another roll. The band has made another vital album (All The Colours of You) despite the backdrop of a global pandemic and, in Booth’s case, an unsettling period on the run from the increasingly virulent wildfires encroaching on his family home in the Topanga Canyon of L.A. I wanted to find out just what has driven James on, through a prolonged pre-breakthrough struggle in the 80s, a break-up in 2001 and what must have been many creative ups and downs in-between. One has a sense of Booth as shaman, a leader of his merry band of brothers (and now sisters, with the addition of percussionists and vocalists Deborah Knox-Hewson and Chloe Alper). And leader too by divine inspiration, of James’ devoted audience. A cult, but one with entirely positive vibes. James creates songs from jams, that’s how they work: nobody controls it. For James, it’s all about inviting the muse to descend and join together with the band’s four core jamming members (Booth, Saul Davies, Dave Banton-Power and bassist founder Jim Glennie). That’s perhaps why uber-producer and electronic music god Brian Eno (who has turned everyone down from The Red Hot Chili Peppers to REM) put in a request to be that muse and produce the band’s 1992 masterpiece Laid. ‘Honour thy error as a hidden intention’ was a card drawn from Brian Eno’s oblique strategies deck in one session, but James already lived by that particular axiom. From day one in 1983, the band had a philosophy and pact to always take risks - whether that be creating new songs from jam sessions to walking out on stage in front of the crowd before finalising the set. James’ are driven to experiment, and it’s remarkable that such fully formed songs as Beautiful Beaches, Sometimes, Say Something, Fred Astaire or Sit Down came from short improvisations. Then again, the band will jam over 100 pieces of music and zone in on the best 10-15 to make an album, setting the quality bar high. As such, the band has survived members coming and going and the music industry  changing beyond recognition - such that their last single to chart was Getting Away With It in 2001. That unsuccessful single slow-burned its way to become one of James’ anthems and their third biggest song on streaming, typically atypical James. As Tim Booth enters his sixth decade on this earth, he is of course the polymath one might expect - teaching transcendental dance, writing a novel, acting a little here and there and meditating throughout. But as All The Colours of You beds in as another vital James album, Booth and James' three other core jamming members were already due to be in Scotland working on the next 100 jams that might lead to album 23. Let’s hope the muse lays in wait. Tim Booth spoke with Keith for The Art of Longevity, ep. 5!Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

Success came relatively quickly to Gary Numan, when his single ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ rose to the top of the UK charts in May 1979. Without a chorus and clocking in at nearly five and a half minutes, it was an unlikely a hit record as you could imagine. Its parent album, ‘Replicas’, released the month before, went to number one in the album charts, as did its successor, ‘The Pleasure Principle’, released only a few months later. This album featured what is perhaps Numan’s best known single, ‘Cars’. He went out on a national tour to promote that L.P. yet still found the time to write and record his next album, ‘Telekon’, released in September 1980, which also reached the number one spot. Three chart-topping albums and a national tour in less than eighteen months! It’s a hell of an achievement, matching the The Beatles’ first three album releases no less. Numan crowned off this period with three shows at Wembley arena. Not surprisingly, the twenty-two year old was burned out and he announced that these were the last dates he would play.He continued to release albums, though – and, in fact, returned to playing live quite quickly – but his career shifted into a slow decline, despite the high quality of albums such as ‘Dance’ and ‘I, Assassin’. The constant mockery by the press and Radio 1’s steadfast refusal to play his singles meant that by the late eighties, Numan had mislaid his artistic vision as he struggled to write the kind of songs he thought people wanted to hear.In the early 90s, though, encouraged by his wife, Gemma, and inspired by Depeche Mode’s ‘Songs Of Faith And Devotion’, Numan decided to write the kind of album that he wanted to hear. The result was ‘Sacrifice’, which was an unarguable return to form, a trend he sustained on the subsequent albums ‘Exile’ and ‘Pure’.1997 saw the release of a double album of Numan covers, called ‘Random’, with artists such as Damon Albarn, The Orb, Pop Will Eat Itself, and Republica paying tribute to Numan’s songs. Around this same time, acts like Nine In Nails and Marilyn Manson were including Numan covers in their live sets. Suddenly, Numan, long scorned by the British music press, underwent a critical revaluation. Over the last fifteen years, Numan has released a further five albums, including his new release ‘Intruder’. The albums have achieved higher and higher UK chart positions, with 2017’s ‘Savage (Songs From A Broken World)’ reaching number two. Throughout this time, Gary has continued to tour, with his concerts attended not only by the die-hard ‘Numanoids’ from his early successes but also a whole new generation of fans. Next year, it looks as though, forty-one years after his ‘farewell’ concerts, Gary will return to the stage at Wembley Arena. It has been an incredible career, forged by both Numan’s musical talent and his tenacity and determination to succeed. In an hour long conversation for The Art of Longevity, Gary tells lifelong fan and Electronic Ears presenter Fenner Pearson, all about it. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

There’s no such thing as a critical review for any of Laura Veirs' 11 albums. But how does Laura measure her own success? The answer is, she doesn’t stop to think about it, much. Instead, as one project gets done, she’s into the next. A prolific songwriter and increasingly accomplished musician, Laura is constantly moving forward with all the restless energy of a fast flowing river. Perhaps it’s because her albums really are like statements of parts of her life. Not many artists are brave enough to put out their first LP as a concept album, but that’s what her debut The Triumphs and Travails of Orphan Mae was. Her rise to fame came with 2004’s Carbon Glacier, the first of four records steeped in and themed on, nature. Carbon Glacier was earth, Year of Meteors was sky, Saltbreakers was sea and July Flame was...guess what? Fire. If you have never heard July Flame, you’ve been missing something truly special. But here’s the thing...Laura Veirs made her masterpiece in the aftermath of being dropped by a major label (Nonesuch, despite two very decent - and critically revered - albums, with them). And it sold better than anything she’d released up to that point. Sometimes creative peaks are met with commercial peaks and when that happens, the world opens up to artists. It was the beginning of a fruitful independent career with a successful album of children’s music Tumble Bee right after July Flame (still brave then). For Laura Veirs the album is the thing - the perfect expression of music as an art form - at least on vinyl. Each album she makes is a complete work, hence those rapturous reviews. The trials of Orphan Mae was a bold opening act, but for Laura Veirs the journey continues…continually brave...album by album, and the song economy be damned! We’re with her all the way.Lookout for our forthcoming artist retrospective on Laura but for now, listen in on what makes her tick and how we might have even nudged her into the next project. Whatever it is - it will be four or five stars in all the papers.  With thanks to Mick Clarke for artwork and Andrew James Johnson for editing. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

Nile Rodgers has seen and done it all. He has collaborated with the world’s top music stars including Madonna, David Bowie and Duran Duran and Daft Punk. The Chic Organisation created by Nile and music partner Bernard Edwards created a string of monster pop hits between 1977 and 1983, when they wrote and produced eight Chic albums, two for Sister Sledge, along with one each for Diana Ross, Debbie Harry, Johnny Matthis, and Sheila B and Devotion. Everybody knows at least a dozen Nile Rodgers songs, and who can say that these days?In 1981 he worked with a little known Australian band, an “opening act” in Nile’s words, that he discovered while watching another collaboration of his at the time, the Canadian band Spoons. After meeting the band backstage after that show, Nile was delighted to find out that this band and its extremely charismatic singer warmed up their live show by singing their own version of Yum-Yum, a song from his solo album Adventures in the Land of Good Grooves. The bond was established for Rodgers’ first real 80s pop collaboration: what would become the monster smash hit Original Sin by INXS. As with much of Nile's career, one thing led to another. ‘Original Sin’ was much admired by Duran Duran who then requested he work with them on the next stage of their career and musical transformation. In our conversation, Nile tells me what it was that he so enjoyed about working with Duran Duran and how it became a partnership over a longer period of time (across both the Arena album, the 1986 classic Notorious and then Astronaut after the band’s reformation as a five piece). How does a virtuoso player have such a knack for a hit? Part of Nile’s secret sauce is his self-made belief systems, including the ‘DHM’. The Deep Hidden Meaning. It was the DHM that connected Nile deeply with the lyrics to Original Sin (which he tweaked to “dream on white boy, dream on black girl” to reflect the story of Beverly and Bobby (his mother and stepfather). At the centre of his belief system though, is work. A work ethic that has seen Nile (in his own words) have more failures than successes. Yet the failures mattered too. For one thing, his solo work was admired by Bowie and, as mentioned, INXS. But once he’d worked with Bowie, he knew things would be different no matter how successful the outcome. Nile’s virtuosity, self-made belief systems and work ethic paid dividends commercially for almost every artist he and the Chic Organisation worked with (particularly up to the mid-80s) and in many cases helped boost their careers. But here’s the thing...Nile’s job description (in his own words) is problem solver...whether it’s helping shape the big vision or tweaking minor but critical detail (that Original Sin lyric for example). Someone counted that he has worked on 18,585 recordings, which even for Nile Rodgers sounds unfeasible. And that audit doesn’t include his work pre-Chic! How can that even be possible? It is because Nile continues to be a serial collaborator, a “worker bee” and one very effective problem solver. Listen in and find out some of his working secrets and those great little stories. Many thanks to Andrew James Johnson for edits and original music and Mick Clarke for the cover art, as everSupport the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

In the Art of Longevity, a new podcast from The Song Sommelier, we take a whistle stop tour of a classic band or artist’s career, but we break a few of usual ‘media interview’ rules (well, we break all of them). Ultimately we reflect on learnings, wisdom, battle scars and wounds and ask “what really defines success”. It’s a question many fans and fellow musicians and all aspiring musicians want to know answers to.Brett Andersen from Suede once said that all successful artists have followed a similar journey, comprising four stages: the struggle, the stratospheric rise, the crash, and then the renaissance.  In this first episode, Keith Jopling talks with Olly Knights of Turin Brakes about the band's two-decade career: their beginnings, early success, creative peak and commercial crash, and the slow but steady rehabilitation of the band as they prepare for album no. 9.  Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

Dylan Jones, long time editor of GQ, writer and father, picks out his favourite New Romantic tracks as part of his “Sweet Dreams Festival” fantasy setlist. Dylan Jones has been Editor of the UK fashion and lifestyle magazine GQ since 1999. Alongside that he has become an established author and journalist of culture and politics. Since Jones joined GQ, the magazine has won numerous awards. Dylan himself has received the Mark Boxer Award for lifetime achievement, honouring him not only for his work on GQ but for his career in journalism. Jones was appointed OBE in 2013. A man of impeccable taste, he also happens to be a Song Sommelier fan too, so we invited him onto The Fantasy Setlist podcast. Sweet Dreams is Dylan’s latest and 10th music focused book. Dylan has been on a fascinating journey documenting the period of New Romanticism and “the decade that taste forgot”, reclaiming the period as one of great bohemian and entrepreneurial spirit. As such, we asked him to reflect on his revelations in writing it and also talk about his favourite tracks of the period. Plus of course a few musings on what a ‘Sweet Dreams Festival’ line up might look like. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

What more can be said about U2 as a live entity? Well, maybe look at it from a personal perspective - in this case, U2’s performances’ impact on the life & times of Paul Smernicki, music manager (Hyyts, Swim School, Magnum House) and long-time label executive. And at one fleeting moment, a potential addition to U2’s management team. Starting with Zoo Station from Achtung Baby, the opening trio of Paul’s very own U2 Fantasy Setlist is full of bangers including the monster songs ‘Streets’ and “Beautiful Day’, but listen on. From an exquisite live recording of A Sort Of Homecoming (from the Unforgettable Fire), Paul’s choices take us somewhat deeper into the U2 cannon - lots of early tracks, just a couple of fabulous B-sides and one or two unusual moments including The Edge’s track Heroine (sung by Sinead O’Connor on the record, but by The Cocteau Twins’ Liz Fraser in Paul’s ‘fantasy’) and U2’s mostly forgotten Christmas song. The subjects we talked about include tips on how to play Wire on guitar (hint: don’t bother trying) and how going to gigs from bands you love will always be worth more than sofas. In Paul’s view, U2’s Boy album is one of the greatest debuts of all time, which is something you might dispute, but only after spending some time listening to the album!  Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/

In our first podcast - yep that’s right - we’ve done a podcast (well everyone else has, so why not us!) lifelong Dylan fan, and long term TSS collaborator, David Freer, guides us through some of Dylan’s mystery, while adding something of his own. Support the showGet more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/