“DOG IS GOD BACKWARDS / BUT THE DEVIL IS LIVED”
This has been the longest day. I am waiting to say goodbye to the post-man. Tomorrow can’t come soon enough.
I’ve recently helped to release Michael McLinn‘s album The Task At Hand via iTunes. Check it out. I also wrote the press release for it towards the end of last year, which summarises best why I continue to admire Michael’s output and am happy to help make it more widely available.
“Scratch the surface of Michael’s cool, calm exterior and you’ll find a flamboyant, anti-authoritarian extrovert lurking beneath. He wants to be a pop star, but he’s a punk at heart. His harp has a name and he calls his songs “the boys”. He’s one of British music’s originals and the release of The Task At Hand should delight both those who already know his work and those new to it.”
Next job… sort out all the usual PayPal stuff for mail order. You can read the full press release here.
Naomi’s band name proclaims her hatred of humans. Reviewing her ‘Pipedreams and Lullabies’ single back in DrunkenWerewolf issue 6, Hg was sceptical of this claim. When the opportunity arose more recently to interview her, he took the chance to find out whether or not his suspicions were justified…
I gather your name comes from the previous band you were in, Morbo Hates Humans. I like Naomi Hates Humans – its in-yer-face, confrontational nature – but you don’t seem particularly misanthropic. Have I mis-read you?
No, I think that’s fairly astute. When I decided to go out and start playing music live again I toyed with playing under my own name or something else but I couldn’t decide on anything. Nothing felt right. I had been vaguely known as Naomi Hates Humans back in the Morbo days and I thought it was quite funny and memorable so I stuck with it. MHH never really made it out of Bournemouth and by this stage I was living and playing in London so there were very few people around who knew the connection to my old band.
Divorced of its origins the name is confrontational, and quite a few of the early songs were as well but these days it’s just amusingly out of sync with the actual music. I also find the whole referring to myself in the third person thing quite funny as well. However, it does lend itself to lazy reviewers who find misanthropy in the songs where there clearly isn’t any. It’s been a blessing and a burden.
You’re associated with the antifolk movement. Movements can be often a source of collective strength, but equally occasionally a rather limiting millstone around one’s neck. How do you feel about being “antifolk”?
I don’t think of myself as antifolk any more. When I started going out on my own with just my acoustic guitar, I sought out the London antifolk movement because it seemed like it would be a good fit with what I was doing. I don’t think you can really call antifolk a genre as the bands differ quite heavily but as I understood it, it was a scene made up of like-minded musicians.
I made some good friends in that group of people but there never seemed to really be the collective spirit that I’d experienced in the DIY punk scene I’d been involved in in my younger days – down on the south coast. The whole all-for-one spirit just didn’t seem to be there, and for me, if you’re going to have a ‘scene’ that’s the most important part.
I also never felt very accepted in the group. For a little while I was putting on acoustic gigs at a place in Kings Cross and always had at least one antifolk type on the bill but the rest of the ‘scene’ would never come out to support the thing. I lost a lot of money on those gigs and that was the point that I just started to think, you know what, fuck you guys. Also, I’d started playing with the first incarnation of the band and my songs were starting to differ quite a lot from the early days when I stylistically really did fit in with the ‘antifolk’ thing. It just felt like the right time to cut my losses.
I get a sense that at heart you’re a punk, in that there’s a fairly strong theme of individualism (and occasional hints of anti-authoritarianism) running through your material. You seem “political”, with a small “p”. Is this fair?
I’ve been thinking about this recently, and in the beginning of Naomi Hates Humans (and MHH before that) I’d say wholeheartedly yes. Recently though, I think my lyrics have shifted to being more personal. It’s incredibly cathartic to go on stage and basically shout at everyone “this is how I feel/felt and it hurts and I’m going to tell you about it”. In many ways that’s a big step forward for me, to be that honest about my feelings but I’ve got a little caught up in it recently. I think I need to find a balance. No one likes a moaner. Except emos.
Some artists avoid cover versions, but you’ve embraced a rather eclectic range of them, including the “versus” album you did with Tim Holehouse. Do you see any common theme running through the covers that you choose to play?
For me, learning other people’s songs is a vital way to get better at your instrument and get ideas for your own songs. The guitar isn’t my first instrument (in fact it’s my third) and I didn’t really take it up until I was 19. I had some lessons in the first year of uni just to get the basics covered but other than that I’ve basically taught myself, in a rather haphazard fashion.
When I formed my old band I’d only been playing the guitar for a few months. It was learning how to play other people’s songs (by getting tabs off the internet, or working them out by ear, or even watching them on TV and trying to copy the shapes of their hands) that I learnt a wider range of chords and playing styles that I could then incorporate in to my own songs. I still rarely know what chord I’m actually playing.
After Morbo Hates Humans, you were a solo artist for a while but eventually started to gather a band around you again. Was this always the plan, or was being solo something you experimented with and ultimately found lacking?
I was solo for two years and it does make life easier from an organisational point of view. The decision to form a band came about because I decided to record an album with some money my grandparents left me. It seemed like a good opportunity to try to fill out the songs a bit. So I enlisted Sagar and Lewis. Initially they were just going to play on the album but we played a launch gig and I really enjoyed it, I’d forgotten how fun playing in a band could be so I persuaded the boys to stick around. We didn’t practice very often and the whole sound was quite ramshackle but it was good fun.
After we recorded the second EP, Sagar had to leave the band to concentrate on another band he was in. So Lewis and I asked Drea (who’d recorded and produced the EP) to join us on drums and my flatmate Josh to play second guitar and backing vocals, and now the band almost sounds like a completely different band again. And I love it. I think it’s important for a band to evolve. These days I consider ‘Naomi Hates Humans’ to really mean the band rather than just me.
You’ve got quite a focused web presence, using all the usual suspects (MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm, etc), as well as having your own website. It’s clearly something that you see as important. What advice would you give to other artists on this subject?
Well, Lewis, Josh and I are all web designers, in fact for the past year and a half I’ve been making websites at a record label, so for us it’s really important. I think the key thing, especially if you’re a new band, is to get some kind of recordings and get them everywhere you can on the internet. Obviously there’s MySpace, Facebook and Last.fm but there’s also things like thesixtyone.com and I’d say YouTube is also important.
The more places you are, the more likely it is that people will stumble across you and want to find out more. This is another way that covers can help actually, the fickle people of the internet sure do like it when they know the words to a song. The most watched video on our YouTube channel by a ludicrously wide margin is a video of us (me, Lewis and Sagar) playing Why Don’t You Do Right at a friend’s birthday party two years ago. But people who’ve seen that have also gone on to watch videos of us playing our own songs and then sought out the website and joined the mailing list.
Better Weird Than Dead is your own label. Was self-releasing a conscious, ideological choice or more of a pragmatic necessity?
A bit of both, but in reality no one was beating down my door to put my records out so in that respect it was very much a necessity. It was also an experience I learnt a hell of a lot from. Essentially, both my paternal grandparents, who I’d been extremely close to, died within a year of each other and they left me some money. Not exactly a king’s ransom, but enough to record and put out an album, which is something I’d been wanting to do for a while.
I kind of got so caught up in the whole idea that I really didn’t take care of the finer details. The recordings themselves were not great and littered with mistakes. We recorded and mixed 12 songs in 22 hours, 10 hours on the first day, then we went to a party all night, then recorded and mixed the rest in 12 hours the next day. Needless to say the quality suffered. I still really like the album but it could have been so much more. I also blew a lot of money on packaging.
Basically two years later, all the inheritance is gone and I still have 900 copies of the album in my flat. Lesson well and truly learnt. That’s a big part of why last year’s EP was an internet release, there is no money to do another CD. It’s something I really need to address this year because we have a lot of new songs I’d really like to get out there…
What are your plans for 2010 and beyond?
Well we’ve had a two month hiatus; there just wasn’t time to do much around the Christmas period. So we’re just getting back in to practicing now. I wrote four new songs in that period. I’d like to do another EP this year, maybe even an album; we’ll have to see how it goes. We’ve been toying with the idea of putting on our own gigs this year as well.
Away from NHH, I’ve recently undertaken a largely ridiculous plan to write a song about each and every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, in order, on a Yamaha keyboard I bought when I was 14. My friend Henri is going to play 80s-style guitar riffs over the top of them. We are called Mothers Opposed to the Occult and at the moment we kind of sound like a combination of Le Tigre, Bon Jovi and the music from Castlevania. I have no good reasons or excuses for this project other than that it will be awesome.
If all goes well, in twenty years’ time what would you like people to say when Naomi Hates Humans comes up in conversation?
Good grief! I’ve never been one for grand schemes. If at least a few people remember us fondly that will be good enough for me.
This interview took place in early February 2010 for DrunkenWerewolf magazine issue 11 (March 2010). DrunkenWerewolf is published bi-monthly and covers new and unusual acts who operate in a roughly acoustic/indie/experimental vein.
DrunkenWerewolf issue 12 is now available. Mail order here, or list of stockists for a free copy here.
We’re standing in the doorway, chatting in that indefinable, sludgy, yellow-brown light that comes from the mixture of moon and street lamp. I start to lose concentration. I can feel it gathering in the distance, a tsunami from a lunar sea. I feign ignorance, but bliss eludes me. This wave will break, whether I like it or not.
Conversation becomes difficult. I can feel my pulse racing and distraction dances before my eyes. Too stubborn for my own good, I decide to ride it out, but I underestimate its strength. It crashes onto my shoulders like a tiger and forces me to the ground. An undignified attempt to sit becomes a complete loss of power.
I open my eyes. He was standing on my right, but now crouches to my left. He knows the territory, so seems more bemused than worried. “You alright?” Hmm. Not entirely sure yet. Vertical’s an impossibility, but horizontal is uncomfortable. I drag my body against the wall. “Want some water?” No… space, time.
I shiver and realise I’m burning up, drenched in sweat. I run a hand over my cropped head, partly to double-check that I still exist. Fuck… “That was like Avatar,” he says. “Did someone pull your plug?” Ha, funny. Good. Funny is the only correct response. Anything else would imply an importance it doesn’t deserve.
I chuckle at my virtual life, suddenly dysconnected on a grimy street in the south-east corner of the Kingdom. I mumble some kind of unnecessary apology, more in reassurance than contrition. “It’s okay to be vulnerable,” he says. I consider his words and realise that it’s been too long since I felt any other way.
I coined the phrase “Dysunited Kingdom” (or at least, gave it that particular spelling) around this time last year. It was an almost throwaway concept at the time, purely to add a bit of spice to a press release that I was writing. It went down well and has been re-used occasionally in that context ever since. It alluded to something more than merely “disunited”, with a hint of “dysfunctional” thrown in.
The “dis-” prefix has Latin roots and literally means “apart” or “asunder”. In English, its usage before an adjective or noun implies reversal, the opposite of the word that follows. “Dys-” (Greek in origin) indicates something much more emotive: “lacking” in its most objective form, but more frequently veering towards “bad”, “ill” or “unlucky”… a sinister, malign force of misfortune and sickness.
I’ve repeated the trick numerous times, in writing both published and currently in draft. Dyscontented, dysconnected, dysillusioned… no opportunity has been spared. But I keep coming back to the incarnation that sparked it off. For obvious reasons during This Current Period Of Parliamentary Uncertainty, the initially mythical Dysunited Kingdom seems more substantial than ever.
I’m both fascinated and repulsed by politics. My views are instinctive, half-formed and utterly contradictory. I can move in the blink of an eye from expounding my firm belief in the need for government regulation as a force for collective(-ist) good, to being staunchly against any form of state intervention that impacts the individual’s basic rights to freedom and privacy. Dogmatic, I’m not.
I think that what I most distrust about politics, in its British form anyway, is its tribal nature. Left versus right, red versus blue… it’s like a football match. Or maybe, given the nature of our “first past the post” parliamentary system, a horse race. One winner, multiple losers. No wonder many people become apathetic and ultimately feel disenfranchised. Whoever they vote for, the Government gets in.
And then there’s this constant back and forth, the need for “strong government” that manifests itself in fifteen years of This followed by fifteen years of That. A pendulum that inevitably ends up right back where it began, only to do it all over again in an apparently endless cycle. It’s enough coping with my own mood swings, without having to suffer the effects of Westminster’s bipolar dysorder.
The Dysunited Kingdom was a wry comment that became an inadvertent prophecy. Fuck “strong” government. We need the politics of compromise and negotiation, because that’s how life works. We need people who have absolutely nothing in common to be forced to talk to each other and to make things happen. Better a Con-Dem Nation than this recurring ideological condemnation.
Party politics are boring, but politics as a whole becomes interesting as a manifestation of basic human relationships. When people start to accept that we will never all agree on major issues – that bullying and bloodletting solve nothing, that dialogue is everything – the Dysunited Kingdom might fade again from view and return to being a cute line at the top of a punk-rock press release.
Obviously this is a half-baked, half-crazed jumble of ideas; a playful diatribe, rather than a considered and well-reasoned philosophy. Take it in the spirit it’s meant… a first attempt at exploring a (ma)lingering oddment of capricious wordplay that suddenly seems to have a topical relevance. Ultimately, I think (/hope) it goes way beyond politics
There are many reasons why I write less than I used to. Some are significant, some are banal. This piece in the Guardian last weekend struck a chord. While I was never a civil servant, I was definitely a pin-striped corporate drone, stuck in a job that I came to hate with an increasing passion as the years passed. Writing was self-expression and escapism.
Nowadays, I flounce around the arse-end of our Dysunited Kingdom in a green velvet jacket and battered sneakers, like some demented spawn of the Third and Tenth Doctors. Writing seems less important. I’ve put this down to creative collaboration, the urgencies of freelancing and a more relaxed frame of mind less anxious to articulate every passing thought.
However, it seems that it’s nothing to do either with the Lying or the Which. It’s all due to the Wardrobe.
“Classic mistake,” she said. “You’ve become emotionally attached. I mean, I can see why I’d be attached to my Mercedes, but not that old thing.” “I happen to like ‘that old thing’”, I replied. (“And fuck your Mercedes,” I nearly added, before managing to hold my tongue in the interest of family harmony.) She warmed to her theme. “You’d be better off replacing it now. It’ll let you down eventually.” I considered my response. “So what?”, I replied.
Everything lets you down eventually. Entropy wears away the invisible fabric of the universal blanket, comfort slowly turning to decay. Things fail. Life lets you down, hearts stop beating, lungs fail to reflate. Maybe I am emotionally attached, but I’d feel like some kind of eugenics-inspired fascist monster if I traded my car for a newer model simply because of a few quirks. The quirks are what bind us together. They’re an affirmation of life.
My car is, inevitably, symbolic of broader themes in my life. I bought it when I took a career break four years ago. It was going to be a little runaround for six months until I got another job, company car obligatory. It was a small taste of slumming it. At the time I’d been driving a top of the range Audi A3, which cost considerably more money than I now earn in a good year. Buying a second-hand car for £900 was a conscious act of rebellion against my former life.
The new job never materialised. I realised that my life needed to be quite different. Sometimes I wonder whether the car taught me that lesson. I loved it from the moment I saw it. It’s black, like its predecessor. Its body shape is understated, mirroring the solid, pragmatic workmanship of its dashboard. It’s fifteen years old – and leaving the confines of full-time work, I too suddenly felt fifteen years old again – unencumbered, free, potential stretching before me.
I know nothing about cars… when I was buying it, my only two criteria were that it must have a CD player and must not sound like a rusty nail. However, those who appreciate these things tell me how well it has worn for its age, how sweetly the engine purrs, despite the fact that it’s approaching 150,000 miles on the clock. Its bodywork is past its prime, new battle scars emerging by the year, but then its owner has always had a thing about scars.
I’ve always named my cars. Or rather, I’ve articulated the name that they came with. It’s right there in front of you on the registration plate, you just have to squint a little sometimes. Or drive around for a while, get to know it better. I’ve never referred to a car as “he” or “she” – it’s always an “it” – but that doesn’t mean they don’t have personalities. My car is The Joker, a fun-loving prankster that hates routine and delights in upsetting the natural order of things.
The Joker and I have a long history of escape. We got to know each other on lazy drives to the beach during the summer of 2006, both of us returning home with sand in our boots. We cemented our relationship while driving around the north of England the following year, following the mad Irishman’s incongruous tour with the Royal Shakespeare Company. We flee the capital on a regular basis, heading down the M20 in search of fun, family and collaboration.
The honeymoon period is over. The Joker now treats me with the same careless disdain with which we both approached the world when our relationship was new. It is cranky and unpredictable. One day in the not too distant future I will drive it to a scrapyard and a man will give me £20 for its rotten carcass. We both know it. A new car will be purchased, a new personality will enter my world. Until then, we speed forward… as driven and restless as each other.
He’s full of fear and now she’s taken flight
The fear’s got so full that it’s claiming the night
So he twists and he turns and he frets and he burns
It’s always like this when they fight
If looks can deceive then his eyes are alright
For his eyes know the chance of the truth is so slight
It’s the same as the lies from the mouths of the flies
Telling him darkness beats light
I’m a chain male, forging links. A quicksilver smith, flowing and ebbing. My word is my bondage, though you’ll never tie me down. A dribbling riddler, the trade of all jacks. Black heart and red diamond; suite, booted and frequently flushed. Bone shackler, cagey jailer, dwarf star juggler, sinister and dextrous. Sleight of hand and slight of figure, I’ll run rings for red roses, ring the bells when you’re blue. Green irises are the windows I gaze through, paned daily by hydrargyric tears.
I stole this laughter from around my eyes and laid it on a page for you. Bathed crows’ feet in ink and let them walk over your body. Traced contours with a finger, mapping out your terrain. Kissed the purple stain where I pulled too tightly, the figures of eight where metal skated over skin. I described you in arcs, connected in circles. I ran like a river and never looked back… banking on precious metals, trading in goods and bads, monks and beasts, flippantly coined phrases.
