by Devin Birse (@devvvvi.b)
If releasing a debut is an intimidating affair then releasing a debut after announcing the end of your much beloved previous band is probably a crushing affair. Especially if said band was Black Midi, perhaps the oddest hype band to come out of England in recent memory. The group's screeching mix of noisy prog with gonzo humour and math rock riffing attracted a fanbase so rabidly fervent that the intensity of the band's live performance would often be nearly outpaced by the intensity of their audience.
It's for the best then that Geordie Greep has hit the ground running with his debut, The New Sound, a dense yet inviting album that seeks a middle ground between avant-rock intensity and breezy pop schmaltz. It’s an impressive album, easily managing to glide from intense passages of math rock riffing into Latin American-infused pop and grandiose theatrical epics. All are delivered with a sharp wit and poetic lyrics that prove Greep as a lyricist worth bending a focused ear to.
With such grandiosity, and his band's reputation as ‘difficult’ music, it could be easy to assume Greep to be standoffish, or as often accused, pretentious but he’s nothing of the sort. Rather Greep is an inviting presence, one whose clear love and joy for music, both including his new album and beyond, bleeds through our conversation. While raw accessibility wasn’t necessarily the goal going in with The New Sound, straight straightforwardness was and it shows both in the album and Greep as a speaker. His vision for the music he wants to make going forward appears clear and often precise.
It's interesting then for an artist so clear in their vision to make an album about failure. The New Sound is above all else focused on control, specifically men thinking they have control, often desperately grasping to control the people they encounter, yet always falling apart into pathetic failure. A week after the interview was conducted, I saw Greep perform at Rough Trade East in London where he walked out to the theme from The Long Good Friday, a film entirely centered around a man rapidly losing control. Make no mistake, even though failure appears his obsession on this album, Geordie Greep is very much in control.
That was perhaps what became most apparent throughout our conversation, his confidence in his vision. He admits that Black Midi had a slight need to keep things esoteric but with The New Sound, he finds as much joy in cheesy crooner pop and Broadway musical theatrics as he does in Brazilian rhythms and rock in opposition guitar noodling. More than anything else he makes clear that The New Sound is an album that doesn’t toe the line between these sounds but instead seeks to bring them together. It’s a sonic vision that in anyone else's hands could appear entirely comedic but instead, it ends up like its creator. Enthralling, eccentric, and unpretentious.
[This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity]
photo credit: Yis Kid
Devin Birse: I know it's a bit of a standard one, but how are you feeling about the album? It's coming out in about a week. You've described this as being, at least from what I remember in an interview, the happiest you’ve been with an album you've released so far.
Geordie Greep: Yeah, it's exciting. It's still exciting. I was very reassured and quite happy with the response to ‘Holy, Holy’. It was a song that before release I had heard hundreds of times and still really liked it, but had no real perspective on whether anyone else would like it. I showed it to my friends, and they were into it. But you know, it’s different when it's people that don't know you. And it's a completely new thing. It's the first single. It's the first track under this new name, my own name. So I didn't know exactly what to expect, but people were really into it. The response has been so positive and really enthusiastic. So with the album. I doubt that it will be worse, you know. I think if anything on the album goes further down the same sort of sound and songwriting as ‘Holy, Holy’. And does so with even more nuance, approaches, influences, sounds, and everything. So, I'm optimistic. I think it's gonna be good. I'm really excited.
DB: I think that optimism is very well founded. I've given the album a few listens through because I’m writing up a review on it, I think it's great. I actually wanted to ask about ‘Holy, Holy’. Because, of course, you did a lot of gigs before the album was even announced. I don't think ‘Holy, Holy’ was played at any of those gigs. Am I right?
GG: You're correct. Yeah.
DB: Was that on purpose? Did you want to save that as the lead single so there was any footage or recording of it?
GG: Yeah, I just think it's one of the songs where you need to really sell it in a performance. And if it was performed badly, it's less forgiving than some of the other songs. Some of the other songs you can kind of do in a rough way. Kind of play it with not so much panache or whatever, and they’ll still be okay. But with 'Holy Holy' it's got to be super tight with a lot of enthusiasm. Basically, I knew that people would have to hear the recording first before hearing it live. Because it would mean that the crowd was on our side. That, and you might as well keep one thing in the chamber when you're playing these live shows. And the recording is just very well done, so why not?
DB: Are there any other tracks on the album that also take a particular level of panache to play live?
GG: There's a lot of stuff with discipline and with tempos right? Where you're playing a live show you're excited. You start doing little riffs, playing fast, and start doing all these things that sound really good on stage but might not sound so good to listen to. I feel like there are some songs that are a bit less forgiving. Like to get that song to work like it does on the album requires quite a lot of discipline for it to work properly. You just kind of have to play it really straight. You can’t start doing a load of riffs and speeding up the tempo and stuff. So maybe ‘Terra’ has a similar sort of thing. I feel like compared to ‘Holy, Holy’ that’s the one that's the most you have to be faithful to recording. Most of the other songs you can adapt them in some way or not.
DB: I feel like what drew a lot of eyes to 'Holy Holy' was the lyrics which I really enjoyed. You often talk about films and books as inspirations for your lyrics was that the case for this album also?
GG: Not necessarily in terms of a direct inspiration or adaptation of anything. With this album. I was trying to be more straight up, there was less of an emphasis on being faithful to influences or portraying things. It was more about just getting through the songs. All the songs were more based around, having a couple of good lines and then working around those lines. The writers that come through the most are people like George Simenon, who’s a Belgian writer of crime and thriller stories, and people like Javier Marias.
DB: You’ve talked a lot about this album being inspired by nightlife, and the people you meet out and about at night. I was wondering if there are any particular locations in the real world that you wanted to evoke with the sounds and the characters of this album.
GG: Not necessarily like, I've been trying to avoid the particulars of letting it become a pastiche or to say anything about any particular one place, or any particular kind of scenario. It's more meant to be semi-general. More about the actual themes than the specifics of each story, or whatever. There's just this, this general theme of once we get to one AM, two AM, three AM interesting things happen. Interesting things are said. Interesting kinds of emotions are felt, or maybe portrayed not necessarily felt that strongly. I just think it's an interesting theme and something that isn't looked into too much in pop music, so why not?
DB: I guess, in a way, would you say that the stories of the album are meant to work almost within a world of themselves rather than within a kind of wider context?
GG: I just think this this album is more about the actual atmosphere, and more about the general sort of feel and the general sort of idea than any particular continuity, or story, or moral, or anything like that. It's more meant to be a set of songs that are portrayed as monologues, trains of thought, and characters in funny situations. But in each song, there's hardly ever a beginning, middle, and end, as was the case in the Black Midi songs I've written. They've always been like the story starts here, then this happens, and then there's a climax, and it’s the end. That doesn't already happen on the album. They're more transient scenes.
DB: That kind of aligns with the sensation of wandering around at night. When you encounter these characters. There's not a set ending to that conversation. You just encounter them.
GG: Yeah.
DB: Back onto the album itself. I was really impressed by how ‘Blues’ works so well as an opening track. Was it constructed from the beginning to open the album?
GG: Not necessarily. There are multiple songs throughout the three Black Midi albums where we're trying to do a simple thing that steadily builds with manic lyrics. So even going back to the first one ‘BMBM’, and then stuff like ‘The Race’ from the third album, and stuff like “John L,” they’re the same sort of thing. A mounting instrumental with a manic recitation over the top. But I never feel like we truly nailed this approach, and with this song, I just wanted to try. I'd done lots of other songs already that were more kind of compositions and put through, and lots of chord changes and funny lyrics and stuff. But I wanted to do one song, which was much more based on just mojo and feeling, and playing with few musicians together, and getting the energy. So, we were just trying to keep the structure very simple. Just based around one riff, you know, and chords moving back almost like a blues. With vocals that start with a simple kind of theme, and just keep building and building and building and building. So, then the idea of having it open the album was very natural. Because it's kind of summing up the whole mission statement of Black Midi, my previous musical project, into one song. Essentially trying to boil that down into one thing directly and musically. So, then it's like almost saying, All right, that's 3. This is happy days. We've done it. This is like, I think, the purest distillation of it. Then with the second song, you enter something new. So, it's kinda like you have the overture to this era, and the second track, which is the first proper track, it's the first kind of new thing.
DB: You’ve talked a lot about working with session musicians in Sao, Paulo, Brazil. I remember reading an interview briefly that was the sort of like moment, in a way, for the album.
GG: Going to Brazil and working with local musicians there, and it being good, and it being worth doing, and it being exciting, and it being beneficial to the tunes was just all a theoretical thing. It was an idea that was very pie in the sky. Like oh, yeah, that'll be great but you never know right? It could also be a huge waste of money. It’s a sort of thing where so many bands, once they get session musicians in, and the big budget, and a big sound, it kind of seems to take away from the music. So that was my fear was, is this a red herring? Is this idea the wrong road to go down? Is it not gonna benefit a song enough to warrant this kind of approach? But as soon as we started playing the song, ‘Holy Holy’ with these guys it was just like, Oh, wait! This sounds brilliant! This is exciting! This is fun! What's quite nice on this album a few people have said is that, as you're listening to it even just instrumentally, you can hear the enthusiasm. You can hear that people are enjoying themselves playing the music. That doesn't necessarily make something inherently good. But it is a nice thing. It's nice when you listen to records and can tell that they're having a good time.
From that point on it seemed very straightforward. It was like, Oh, well, you know, how hard can it be to find people that are willing to play this music and interested. How can we bring the best out of each song by working with different guys and stuff. It was when me and Shank both knew that we had an album that would be good. It’s when we knew we had something that was worth doing.
DB: You mention in the press release that you want to follow this format of going to a different country and finding new musicians for each album. What country would you like to go to next?
GG: Well, there's a lot of options already kind of presenting themselves. I've been to Japan a few times to play, and I've been there just on holiday as well, and know loads of musicians out there. So that's a very clear option. Also, so much of my favourite music is from Japan. So, it's even in theory a way to work with some of the people that I've been inspired by for years and years. Also, of course, is America. I recently played for the first time in New York with this new American band. Guys I just met over there who I found on Instagram, brilliant players. So I just brought them together and said, “Let's do it,” and did one rehearsal, and it was amazing. It was great for shows, but it would be great to record something with those guys because they were fantastic. Also, it'd be great to record with my band in the UK. In Europe I'd love to go to, you know the far stretches of Eastern Europe and play with whoever over there. Parts of Africa, you never know like South Africa, Central. Puerto Rico, I've never been there, to play with these great musicians that started this whole tradition that became salsa music. I think the sky is the limit, really, as long as I can keep up the material, it's all to play for.
DB: I definitely get what you mean about the sky being the limit with this new project. The way you're taking it, talking about different musicianship and such. What I find quite interesting is that I feel like you as an artist get a lot of genre tags assigned to you. Especially during Black Midi's career you guys got kind of almost incessantly hounded with the post-punk genre tag. So I wondered how would you describe The New Sound both sonically and as an idea?
GG: I really hope, and this may sound very dumb or the opposite of how many people might receive the music, but I really hope that it comes across as unpretentious music. Because the whole approach is really based around kind of creating music that's influenced by all the music I like, regardless of whether it's cool or not. Basically, it's as much high culture, as low culture, as much highbrow as lowbrow, and as much kind of cheesy out their stuff as well put together, well thought through nuanced music. And as much silly stuff, y’know. I like AC/DC as much as I like Henry Cow right, or Ensemble of Chicago as much as I like Chick Korea. So, it's trying to bring all those different things together and put them on the same level. To have songs that can have something that's just good fun and has a nice feel, and then we'll do something quite heavy and quite technical or whatever. So that's my main kind of hope for now and for stuff going forward.
DB: What struck me when I listened to the album is, I very much viewed it as a kind of pop album. But one in the tradition of those very grandiose 60’s and 70’s pop albums. Stuff like Hot Buttered Soul by Isaac Hayes. Léo Ferré and the whole Chanson à texte stuff, Scott’s 1-4 by Scott Walker. These kind of very grandiose but crucially pop albums. If that makes sense.
GG: One hundred percent. Yeah, you know, you’re naming some of my favourite albums there. So, it's all in the in the same sort of tradition. Some people have been saying, was there an emphasis on making this music more accessible for this album? I wouldn't necessarily say so, but I think there was more of an emphasis on making it less intentionally obtuse. With Black Midi, it wasn't necessarily intentional, but there was often a thing of we've got to keep it interesting, or you've got to keep it interesting to be an esoteric kind of experimental band, or something or that like, do you know what I mean? Even subconsciously, there's this kind of obligation, right? If you get known as a cool band, it's like you need to stay cool. Whereas with this album, there are so many things that could be considered going down a super cheesy road, or a super uncool road. But who gives a shit at the end of the day, you know, it's just about what's good. If you listen to all these classic albums like you're saying, there are so many moments that are completely cheesy. The wrong decisions, in terms of what's cool or what's highbrow, or indie rock, or whatever. But they just didn't give a shit right? They just thought, “Oh, no, I wanna add in this instrumental break which uses a marimba, or accordion, or whatever, or adding this thing or that thing over time”. That's the stuff that you don't care if it's cool or not. It just sounds good.
DB: I think that shows a real confidence that bleeds into the record as well. Now that you're out of Black Midi, and you're playing more as a set band leader, do you find that you approach songwriting and playing differently?
GG: Well, it's the thing of like I can construct the songs more than ever just around the voice and the guitar. Throughout this album, there are more chord changes, more opportunities for big vocal moments, and challenging, interesting vocal stuff. It's more than ever built around the vocals. To the same extent, there are multiple songs that feature three-minute guitar solos. Which isn't necessarily the best idea in the world. But it's good fun, and it's something that I was just thinking no one does that anymore, hardly ever. If they do a guitar solo, it's usually like shit on purpose or something, or just all about free expression, like Neil Young. Which is great of course, that's amazing. But it's like y’know there's all sorts of ways to play a guitar, so why not try and do some old-school kind of melodic ones? But yeah, I think there’s way more of an emphasis on just pushing myself on those two things as much as possible.
In the context of the band leader sort of thing. It's quite different when you have this thing where you're working with musicians. Here's another thing I was thinking, this is quite, almost a separate little thing, but it's quite interesting. When you're in a band and you split it equally you're just doing a thing as a band, and the band is kind of representative of each of you as individuals. There's a slight self-consciousness from everybody where each musician will think, ‘Oh, well, I've got to play something that represents me. And that's cool because it's my band, and it's gonna be there forever.; And y’know ‘I can't play that, because that's not cool, or that's not good.’ But when you have session musicians you put the music in front of them and they play it. They're like, ‘Okay, well, I can try and play this in a cool way, but I can also just, play what's being asked of me.’ Great musicians, you put them in scenarios that they're not usually, doing or playing in ways that they don't usually play. Which often is great, because hardly any musicians know what they're best at, and hardly any musicians have reached everything they can do without someone telling them. I think it's, but it's quite good, I think, because oftentimes as a musician, you're like, ‘Oh, yeah, I want to do this, and I want to do that.’ Yet it's not necessarily the best thing that you could be doing. I don't know. It's just interesting, I think when you’re working in a way where you're not so attached to it, where you're not so precious about the stuff you're playing. Do you get what I’m saying?
DB: Completely, I did creative writing at uni and one of my lecturers would encourage me to do similar things like removing the ‘I’s’ from my poems. On that idea of pushing musicians toward unfamiliar places, did you find in writing the album there were any directions that you found yourself in that were unfamiliar to you?
GG: Kind of I mean, knowing that it would be people I hadn't met before playing the songs I had to make sure that the songs, were adaptable in that way. That different people could play them, and they would still stand up. So the songs were written with a kind of blanket view of this is the song, rather than this is the song to be played by this band. So I had to be a bit more clear in the songwriting of each section, each chord had to function, and having to be clear about that makes you think like, oh, well, this chord has to lead into this. It's just much more of a traditional way of doing things. Writing a song so it could be played by anybody right? So, it makes you think a little bit more about each separate element.
DB: Earlier you mentioned this kind of high art, low art, influence. Do you think there are any tracks in particular where you really lean into those sort of two axes of the more bizarro ‘cool band’ elements, and the kind of more traditional, cheesy band elements?
GG: Quite a lot of the tracks, to be honest, embody this sort of thought process for me. Maybe something like ‘As If Waltz’ where the core progression is almost the first thing. I didn't sit down and think, ‘oh, what's the very best chord for this? What's the coolest way to do this section of that section?’ It was very like, just like, oh, yeah well, obviously, you're gonna go to this chord and then go to that chord very like logical and very kind of classic. But then throughout you do have these bursts of noise coming in throughout the whole thing. You do have these kinds of funny effects. You do have this going into a waltz section. Which is kind of a post-modern thing to do, not the standard thing to do in this kind of song. You do have this huge climax with the guitar and the mellotrons going, and everything which is kind of a bit of both. It's kind of like. Something that's a classic like basically Pink Floyd sort of thing, which is, you know, very classic rock, not necessarily the most cool thing to do. Kind of the obvious cliche thing to do. But also, you know, in the context of everything before, it is kind of stupid, funny, and over the top. Then you’ve got the lyrics and stuff, which is a completely different song to what’s usually sung over this kind of instrumental, which is true for most of the songs in the album as well and gives it this thing juxtaposition. The thing is that I wasn't necessarily worried about making the music too cheesy, because I knew that once I did the vocals and the lyrics, it was probably going to end up in a non-cheesy direction, or at least a nonconventional direction. So I thought, that aided the vocals better because it would always make this interesting juxtaposition rather than just both being crazy on purpose.
DB: I found that stood out on the album. This sort of thematic dissonance. Where the lyrics play a little bit with the cliches of traditional pop and such, but then go in a different direction. If that makes sense.
GG: Definitely, yeah.
DB: This was going to be a duo album of both you and Shank. Though now his album is going to be released separately from this. Despite the fact that it's kind of split into two albums mow, “Motorbike” is still on the track list, and that's one of his songs. So how come that stayed on the track list?
GG: Just because I like this idea of not being so precious about it being my album so I have to do everything in the first instance because it's all these different people playing. Of course, there's a collaboration in the way of all these wonderful musicians who you can hear throughout the album, but also in another way of one track being sung by a different guy. It's not the first time that's been done. There are a lot of classic albums which start off and have different people singing on different tracks. One of our big touchstones for this album, of course, is the Milton Lô Borges Club da Esquina album. We would reference that constantly, as we were coming up with a vision for the album. Even when we had it as this hypothetical, that was kind of our main reference.
I think it's cool. I think it gives the album a variety. It's also this interesting thing of having this song where it wasn't my song necessarily, but I did play a big part in the arrangement of it. The final section, for example, and the whole kind of crazy part of the song and some of the lyrics we went back and forth on. So, it was fun to do something that was more collaborative.
DB: I think it works really well on the tracklist. It comes back to the idea of how it's structured. It creates a bit of a switch-up as well.
GG: Yeah.
DB: You mentioned Club da Esquina as a touchstone were there any other albums that served as particular touchstones for this one?
GG: People have mentioned a Donald Fagen thing, and of course, The Nightfly. I love that album, and I love the atmosphere. It's an album where it's made up of cheesy songs. Not silly, but y'know they're very cheesy songs in some way. But they're well put together, and the thing that comes across, the reason why the album is really good is the atmosphere. None of them are the best songs of all time. I think they're really good songs, but they're not, y’know as good as I don't know ‘Life on Mars’ or something. But it's this atmosphere of this consistent thing that's built up over the tracklist and by the end it's like a wash. That's what I was trying to do here. It was kind of influenced by the world of it, its locations, and the kind of atmosphere. As for other albums all sorts of stuff I can't think of so many particular ones right now. It's more micro-moments of music. I remember Pitchfork.com did an article about five years ago, maybe. Where they said it was like the top ten specific moments of music like top 10 ten of music. Which I thought as far as Pitchfork goes that was a pretty good article, because it's like that is an interesting thing that we've all experienced. Almost all this album is things where I would say, to Shank like. ‘Yeah, do you know the specific guitar in this song? let's try and copy that.’ Just tiny, tiny little things trying to recreate that over the length of the track.
DB: That’s an idea I really like. It's like also a personal obsession of mine, those thirty-second chunks where the music perfectly aligns. I want to talk about “Magician” and “Walk Up” because they were both originally Black Midi tracks and as a result have developed a bit of a cult reputation. “Magician” in particular to a massive extent. I remember seeing it played at a few shows and everything being like whoa this is the big track, this is their next big thing. Do you think they would have ended up like how they are on the album if it was finished with Black Midi?
GG: Well, to be honest with you when I came up with those songs initially in my head I had a view of maybe this isn't for Black Midi. This is for a different thing. But I pushed on with them in a live setting, because we didn't have so much finished material, and it was about playing stuff. It was cool, and we did go to a good place, and they were good live, I enjoyed it. But I always had half a mind on it would be interesting to try these in a different approach. Or at least try them for an album, or recording where I would be able to exert full control. Especially ‘Walk Up’. There are a lot of musical elements where if you're in a band format, and this is perfectly reasonable and perfectly understandable, there's a lot of stuff that would be like ‘Oh, nice! Sure! You want it like that? But don't you want it like this? Don't you want it to be more interesting here? Or more going on? Or you sure you want to go to that chords there?’ But I just had a very strict vision of how that song should be that actually, it was better to do it on my own. Basically, I was more trustworthy of that idea.
But for ‘The Magician’ I enjoyed it when we played it with Black Midi. It was great, and people really liked the song and stuff, and it was a good experience we used to play at the end of the show. It was a big grand and epic moment. But I just used to think that there's more to this song than the way of playing it. I thought we could. I could be more ambitious with it, and I thought, it's better with songs like that it's better to kind of do it in this with no pretense, just to have it as a solo thing, because then you can really just feel free to explore every funny thing you want to do with a song. All these ideas I had with adding textures to songs and bands throughout the song and changing sounds, so I don't know. It was kind of always in my mind that I would do those songs under my own name.
DB: So the album ends with a cover ‘If You Are a Dream’ I want to ask what was the reason behind choosing to end on a cover. You mentioned this idea of the atmosphere washing over you. It kind of feels like the final wave of atmosphere.
GG: I’ve loved this song for years and years. It's one of those classic songs, that Frank Sinatra in the forties stuff, but it's a very cheesy classic song. It's one of the few ones of those where I really like the lyrics. In most classic cheesy songs the lyrics are pretty crap. They're like super over the top, too syrupy, too silly even. It might be a great melody or a great song, whatever. But this one, I thought, is a beautiful lyric about all this kind of grasping, yearning kind of bleeding thing. I was listening to it again while I was coming up with songs and thinking how well it fits into them. It ran along the same themes as most of these songs so I thought, it would be nice to have on the album. I can't just sample it or something; let’s do a version of it, why not? It might lend itself particularly to brass band, a New Orleans or Salvation Army kind of thing. So I got a guy to do the arrangement for that and yeah, I just thought it was. It was something I’d never done before. Doing a cover on an album why not? It's not the first thing on this album. It's different from anything before on the Black Midi albums or anything so it's like another new bridge to cross. And it turned out pretty well as a sort of epilogue, as a sort of last gasp, as you say.