6 Home news The Stool Pigeon December 2006 Garden gnomes rejoice as “ More like Marion return crack free ad-lib than Words MARK FERNYHOUGH more than enough celebrity kudos for our Picture HEIKE SCHNEIDER-MATZIGKEIT assailant and, within seconds, Jaime’s soul best bib and has been stolen five times over via a IN the nineties, Jaime Harding’s ludicrously cumbersome telescopic lens. reputation for attracting trouble was well The rest of us trudge off into the distance, known: the skinny Marion vocalist’s laughing heartily like they do at the end of Tucker ” kidnapping and ransoming of garden an episode of Thundercats. DAVID HOPKINS gnomes for crack is an often recounted To recap, during a brief period in the smug industry anecdote. Today, as the mid-nineties Macclesfield’s Marion were fter a lengthy get-to-know-you discussion second blacked out car in less than three poised to become kohl-smudged stadium A on the merits of various metal bands, I minutes pulls up menacingly alongside us, giants. Striking an icy shadow over a lager, ask the master of the ‘drone tone’, one wonders whether much has changed. lager, lager-obsessed climate, their top 10 Alexander Tucker, to respond to the folk “Jaime, I thought the Russian mafia had debut album, This World and Body, boasted label that his hypnotic, layered guitar and finished with you,” whispers guitarist Phil dark amphetamine-fuelled tunes by the vocal music has been tagged with. While Cunningham, eyebrow aloft. bucket load, all of which were sung by he acknowledges that he went through a Wandering down the street with Belle Jaime in a yearning sci-fi croon that major “John Fay phase”, he suggests that and Sebastian is never this perilous. encompassed more drama than a week’s his use of technology, especially loop Fortunately for our interview, there will be worth of Eastenders. With that, plus a pedals, goes against the roots of traditional no impromptu beheadings. Instead, a chap bearded guitarist named Beard, how could folk. He considers his work to be a rather of considerable girth climbs out of the they fail? In short, Morrissey handpicked loose, modern interpretation based on “not shadowy hearse to enquire if we’re famous. them to precede him on stage. Lesser having any proficiency” and “coming from Through Primrose Hill’s residential groups would have been destroyed, sent to a place that uses feedback, noise and sound landscape, it’s not the ghosts of the madness, pecked to death by locusts to create your own world”. He adds, after wilderness years that stalk Marion, but following one of Mozza’s ill-fated joking about a totally unfulfilling three stocky paparazzi vultures. I point towards ‘blessings’ - music’s answer to an Egyptian weeks of classical guitar lessons at school a translucent Jaime and confirm that his curse. Marion just heroically giged that, “If you give me a guitar with normal song was once employed as a soundtrack to themselves to death. It gets worse: “Ian tuning I don’t know what to do with it.” a Citroen ad starring Bobby Brown. This is McCulloch used to come into our dressing hat may be the case, but with a down- room and steal all our cheap drugs,” T tuned guitar or electric mandolin in his complains Jaime. hands and effects pedals at his feet, you “We toured and toured our first album could argue that he has too many ideas for years,” winces Phil. “Then as soon as floating around in that centre-parted head BLOOD RED SHOES Mean it when they say, “NO!” we stopped, our record label gave us one of his. And that’s part of the joy of his latest week to write and record the follow up.” effort Furrowed Brow - it’s a far more direct pretty much represent This is not the only example of Marion and cohesive album than its largely “PANIC AT THE DISCO everything I hate about being hampered by record company improvised, rambling predecessor, Old Fog. music,” spits Blood Red Shoes’ drummer Steven Ansell of the ineptness. “Our b-sides were always the Alexander agrees, explaining that it was band that personally requested the Brighton duo for their opening best songs because we were left alone to simply a case of being “able to just sit down act at Brixton’s cavernous Carling Academy. “They’re like a write them,” Jaime explains. “We did a and focus on the music” in a studio, rather corporate, packaged-up, stylised, poster boy product to sell to people who buy into it. I don’t find any human track for our first album called ‘Wait’ and a than recording at home with “cardboard connection; they’re big business, and from what I can tell record exec wanted us to add an ‘Every all around me, domestic stuff and traffic”. that’s all they are. It’s really sad that they’re represented in a way Breath You Take’-esque Sting bass line to it. alking me through the intricacies of the where people think it’s this really meaningful thing, when it seems That won’t be happening this time around.” T methodical way he recorded it - the to me that it’s quite the opposite.” A facial hair-free line-up of Marion laying down of numerous guitar tracks in “We’re gonna play it,” guitarist and co-vocalist Laura-Mary have returned in 2006, upping their game real time to give a “sense of locomotion” - Carter adds, a few days before the gig happened. “But we won’t by borrowing Haven’s sticksman, Jack two things become clear: first, that I don’t sell our t-shirts really expensive, like them.” Mitchell, although one assumes his father really have a clue what the hell he’s talking “I like the idea that we can be in that world a bit,” Steven nods, band haven’t traded him in for some of about when he uses words like ‘membrane’ “and people’ll come over and see us and be like, hey, they sell their t- Jaime’s half-inched garden ornaments. and ‘technicolour’ in reference to his shirts at nine pounds. How come Panic at the Disco... Hey, why? They’ve returned to a host of sold out gigs music; and, second, that Tucker is like Maybe a few people’ll ask a few questions because of that. That’d be pretty cool.” and upbeat reviews, making you wonder some sort of weed smoking, metal- “Also... Brixton Academy!!!” Laura laughs. where Marion’s followers were back in ’98 obsessed, home counties incarnation of Blood Red Shoes are two sussed punk kids who make a lean, when their Johnny Marr-produced second Leonardo Da Vinci. urgent noise you can dance to. They hooked up when Steven’s old LP, The Program, bombed so horrifically. prolific artisan to say the least, when he band, Cat On Form, split two years ago, and were offered a gig “A bigger question is where the hell A mentions that, “It’s still a surprise after their first jam session, which is why they never had time to were we?” ponders Phil, who now splits his recording and playing - I feel like I’m add a bassist or a sousaphone player to their line-up. A 100-ODD time between being guitarist in Marion having to catch up with ideas a lot of the SHOWS AND THREE LIMITED EDITION 7”s LATER and another obscure Manc group entitled time,” I can well believe him. Along with and they suddenly find themselves feted by the mainstream music New Order. his constant painting, illustration, and industry they always seemed determined to operate outside of. Jaime is more specific about his band’s part-time gilding of sculptures in order to “But we’re just doing exactly the same thing,” Laura says. “It’s downfall. “Drugs,” he sighs softly. pay his rent, he’s already started work on just play anywhere, like always, except NOW WE’RE BRS: doing that sole music HOMELESS because of it.” “For years me and Jaime lost contact,” the next record. “The work I was doing says Phil, regretfully. “So it’s great that last week is for the fourth album, I EAGERLY AWAITED we’re working together again.” suppose,” he says. “It’s definitely going to “I bought an acoustic guitar in be much more massively layered - very ---- Prague, and stopped off in Hungary and warm, big and bright. One of the new EXTRA!! THE NEXT CHAPTER IN THE STORY “Y’know, I grew up in Horsham, Budapest - the best city in the world,” songs is quite poppy in a way.” where my only access to music was reading the NME or Kerrang! and going to Our Price,” Steven says. “So all explains Jaime. long with that revelation, he mentions the bands I liked were mainstream, obvious, radio bands, and I got into the music that I now like through those In the more familiar setting of a swanky A that a new track is to feature drums, bands. I heard The Smashing Pumpkins, and then I heard Nirvana, and then I heard Sonic Youth, and then I London hotel bar, Jaime has no qualms which he gleefully describes as being heard Blonde Redhead, and then you start getting into a lot more interesting, underground stuff. But I got in there with disrobing into some more photogenic “quite Boredoms-esque”. Then he delves through being into MASSIVE, million-selling mainstream bands - buying their records from a chain shop trousers. An 83-year-old female hotel back into bewildering technical talk about and reading about it in the Rupert Murdoch-owned press.