Kelman Press

Interview 2006.

If George Orwell had been alive today and writing 'Down and Out in Paris and London', he would have loved Kelman. Their music encapsulates the broken dreams and drunken madness of living in the capital, a soundtrack to smoky pubs, dank bedsits, and smoke cigarettes. Since forming in 2003, risen from the ashes of the mighty Baptiste, they’ve played a handful of gigs, mostly with a stripped-down, often slow and forlorn sound that’s only recently been expanded beyond guitar and drums with the addition of Paul Ragsdale on keyboards and melodica, who also makes up the band’s lack of a bass player. I can hear echoes of the Tindersticks and Smog in their work, but also the Clientele, the Dirty 3, Sophia and Nick Cave, a lush, emotionally contemplative music. It’s a grown-up, intelligent music, one that doesn’t pander to latest headline in the broadsheets or the NME.

We’re sitting on the first floor of an east London pub with brothers Wayne and Marc Gooderham, singer/guitarist and drummer respectively, along with the afore-mentioned Ragsdale. Outside Farringdon is grey and cold; the station nearby bustles with people in their rush hour waltz, while in the square there’s the sound of revellers and a palette of colours emanating from the other pubs. It seems a fitting kind of setting for Kelman’s music.

One early demo included a cello player, who added a baroque sound to their tracks. Mostly though, their sound has remained as stripped down as possible, avoiding layering and utilising just sparse drums and guitar lines, enhanced by only the slight amount of overdubbing and reverb – to which recently Ragsdale has added his keyboard and melodica lines. This inclination towards discarding the superfluous includes an abandoning of any effects pedals too – “just because there’s only three of us, and there used to be only two of us…so it’d just be silly, I think if you started putting the effects in,” Wayne tells me over a pint. “Where you would stop? So you might as well say let’s not use any, and see what we can do.”

As for the cello player - was she a full member, or just paid for that session?

“No, she was a member”, recalls Wayne, “but she was never free to do anything. But that’s OK because we wanted something stripped down.”

“We have the odd limitation to keep it…as simple as possible, really”, Marc contemplates. “That was the original plan, and then we’ve added the keyboards.”

“Yeah, I think the organ’s taken over…”, interjects Paul.

“It’s taken over the whole fucking thing”, Marc says to laughter from the others.

The keyboards have added a new dimension to the sound, adding a richer and fuller aspect live, as witnessed particularly at a recent set at the Hoxton Bar and Grill, where they were on the same bill as a truly dreadful prog metal band who were playing in front of a large screen showing bombastic footage from the terrorist attacks of 9/11 (Kelman, by contrast, played against a sober red backdrop). The venues’ environs – chandeliers and plush seats – fitted their music far more than playing the Walthamstow Standard on a Tuesday night, however.

W : “I mean those nights are depressing, but…it sounds arrogant but we do know we’re the best band, and that happens with most gigs we play – in fact with almost every gig we play. But that’s not because we’re so great, it’s just because everyone else is shit! We all believe in the music that we do, and the main thing is that we have an integrity that a lot of bands don’t have.”

As with any band eager to escape playing the usual hackneyed progression of toilets in London, Kelman’s impulse remains to play the more cerebral, unconventional places. Venues like the Hoxton Bar and Grill, or the Tate Britain – where I recently saw some bands.

W : “Yeah, of course, who wouldn’t? You’d have to be an idiot if you want to play the Bull and Gate or the Pleasure Unit rather than the Tate Britain.”

There were some especially bad ones at the Pleasure Unit.

M: “They just put together bands and there’s no real thought towards it.”

Do you feel frustrated having to play those places?

“Yeah, but it’s hard enough to get gigs anyway…”, Marc considers.

“But it shouldn’t be”, Wayne interjects. “You get these promoters who are putting on nights and they’re so up themselves and they won’t even give you the time of day really – we know that we’re good enough and that we can hold our own against any of the bands they put on….”

P : “You just find yourself playing with two heavy metal bands and then a synth band….”

It’s this desire to stretch out beyond the confines of most bands that informs much of what Kelman do. With the front covers of their releases, Wayne states, “we’ve got our standards within the band that everything’s got to be right”, referencing Factory Records’ unique album artwork from the 80’s with bands like Joy Division and New Order. “Nowadays bands just don’t give a shit about artwork”, he adds, “but the priority is still the music”.

This idiosyncratic aspect and desire to avoid clichés to what they do includes even the title of their songs – “I’ll try as hard as possible not to call the song after the chorus, or have the title mentioned in the song.”

Outside of Kelman, it led Wayne and Marc long ago to set up Uptight, an unpretentious once a monthly club in central London which features the kind of music that informs their life and music, and which they wanted to hear on a dancefloor. It’s still going strong after more than five years, and regularly has queues round the block to get in.

Anyway, enough said. Anyone whose done the gig circuit in London, and who has a desire for originality, will understand.

The addition of keyboards has filled the sound, though not to the detriment of the lyrics.

M : “The sound’s changed quite a bit now…not that we’re getting heavier, but I think we’ve found that playing together is kind of warmer and fuller…”

“We don’t just put keyboards on there for the sake of it, though”, adds Paul. “We don’t start every song with it...if an instrument fits then we’ll put it on, like with a glockenspiel…”

Or the melodica, which he plays frequently, and which was used by one of their heroes New Order, who they also admire lyrically. Wayne suddenly breaks out into the lyrics of 'Thieves Like Us': “’I’ve lived my life in the valleys / I’ve lived my life on the hills / I’ve lived my life on alcohol / I’ve lived my life on pills’…Bernard Sumner is one of the most underrated lyricists, and better than Ian Curtis - you can put that in your article! I can’t relate to his lyrics”, he says, shaking his head. “I mean, I can relate far more to something like 'Thieves Are Us' than ‘a loaded gun won’t set you free’ [from Joy Division’s ‘New Dawn Fades’].”

I tell them that I keep confusing the melodica with a harmonica…

W : “Harmoniums are a bit more gloomy sounding. Nico used a harmonium….”

She also did some amazing albums – 'The Marble Index' and 'Chelsea Girl' especially…

”I prefer 'Chelsea Girl' – I see that as the tail end of the Velvet Underground.”

Are the Velvets a big influence?

“Yeah”.

M : “The main one really.”

And I can hear elements of Smog and Tindersticks also, especially with the lyrical concern…

W : “Not being able to get your leg over?” (laughter)

No. The more morbid side of songs.

W : “Well, I definitely think we’re influenced by those bands. But all those bands go back to the Velvet Underground…”

I think there’s an element to it in the muted drums – similar to Moe Tucker.

M : “Yeah well, I also listen to the Velvets and the Tindersticks…”

The influence is there in the padded drums and Mo Tucker style percussion, but it’s not necessarily conscious, the way you play drums similar to them – it’s just what’s more fits the sound…

M : “Yeah exactly.”

Anyway, fuck the music comparisons: Kelman shouldn’t be looked at just in relation to other bands. That’s trainspotting rather than appreciating a band for who they are. What the band are big on, though, is literature. Named after the Scottish writer James Kelman, there’s a cerebral nod to literature throughout much of Wayne’s lyrics.

“Yeah, well I mean, ‘The Happiest Man Alive’ is a quote from 'Tropic of Cancer' by Henry Miller”, Wayne expands (“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive”), sipping from a beer. “I think we’re more of an intimate kind of band, so it seems more literate, because you can hear what we’re doing with the singing, so it comes across as more literate.” He discusses artists and realist film makers such as Mike Leigh excitedly, as well as in the influence of writers like Nabokov, Joyce and Martin Amis – “I like the way Amis constructs his sentences.”

It’s not hard to see how a novel like 'London Fields' would influence the band, with its evocation of smoky pubs and darkened streets.

The frequently sparse arrangements, often subdued and unobtrusive, work as a mechanism for focusing on the minutiae of Wayne’s melancholy lyrics, with a rich vein of literary influences, observations and descriptions.

With your lyrics, do you really feel like you want to get them across? Or do you think lyrics should be more kind of oblique and coded? I’m thinking of early REM for example, with the way that the lyrics are something that you almost have to decode…

W : “I don’t really think as much as that, it’s just that the tune always comes first – and once you’ve got a good tune, you’ve got a good lyric to fit the mood…yes, sometimes it can be oblique and sometimes it can be fairly literate – whatever fit the songs, really.”

And do you really believe that people should listen to lyrics more in general?

“Well, not necessarily”, he considers. “The music is always first. I can listen to a song for years and not get round to listening to the lyrics properly – and then all of a sudden, “oh THAT’s what he’s singing!” So I don’t…obviously I’d prefer it if people do listen to the lyrics, but not everyone does.”

It’s fair to say, however, that the majority of bands neglect good lyrics at the moment. This isn’t to include the wave of shoegazing and post-rock bands that dominated in the early 90’s, where texture took precedent over music and often the lyrics became an instrument in themselves, the experimental aspect of the music becoming a focus far more than any narration. Much more conventional mainstream indie rock, on the other hand, never had this interesting angle and thus had a greater duty to provide something interesting lyrically. Think of the banalities of Coldplay, Oasis, et al. Kelman, on the other hand, have far more in common with the likes of Smog’s Bill Callahan and Leonard Cohen, brilliant poets who painstaking – often harrowingly – document the highs and heartbreaking lows in life, right down to the stains on jeans, remembrance of failed relationships, and the unmade bed that appears on the front cover of their new single. “I’m on the way down / I can read the signs”, intones Wayne on ‘The Happiest Man Alive”, their last single and debut release. Are lyrics a neglected art form, in Kelman’s view?

“Oh, definitely – it’s a dying art form”, says Wayne straight away. “But I like songs with throwaway lyrics as well – I don’t think every lyric has to be…profound. It just has to fit the music at the time, and sometimes you want to say something that might make people think, and other times you might want to say something that will just make people punch the air. But I’ve never sat down and said ‘Let’s make people cry here’ or ‘Let’s make people laugh here’ – it’s just whatever fits.”

Wayne’s bittersweet lyrics run the gamut from frustrations with dampened hopes, failed promises of adolescence to loneliness and dreams of a brighter future, as typified by a title like ‘A New Career In A New Town’ – despite the cold and loneliness conjured up in that song’s narration. Alcohol, that social lubricant, features frequently, in lines like “peel the clothes from my drunken frame”.

“We like a drink. It’s just the times when things happen more than anything, really. So yeah, when your sitting on your bed, or at your desk, nothing will really happen when you’re totally straight, but then if you go out for a few drinks or whatever, then things get interesting” Wayne ruminates.

It’s true of course, there’s no getting away from the fact that so much great art is the result of intoxins or alcohol. Kelman’s songs detail – sometimes sordidly – the highs and lows of intoxication.
“’Your hand on my neck / I’m down on the tiles / Too much to drink / I can’t raise a smile’ [from ‘Undone’] – that’s a sort of joke verse, kind of, someone vomiting while his girlfriend’s helping him and he can’t get it up. She’s not laughing about it.”

Should 'Fucked and Far From Home' be read literally from the title, or is it more referring to a state of mind?

“No, it just means loneliness. Have you never heard of that expression? It’s an old Irish expression. I just ran through a dictionary of phrases and quotes and it just fell open – 'Fucked And Farm From Home' – it’s an Irish term meaning loneliness. And so I just wrote it down, thinking that’s a great title for a song. And for what it means...so it comes from that title. Other people might have a different interpretation of it.”

On the song Wayne ruminates, “I know that every ideal / crumbles in our world”. The tone isn’t defeatist however, more one of defiance.
“You have your ideals and they never come to…you know, they just fall apart. You realise that you’ve got an ideal of something, and then you realise as you get older that you’re never going to get it…that the ideal doesn’t exist.”

You mean generally, or more specifically, for example in terms of getting a decent job?

“Well, anything – you’re never perfectly happy or the ‘perfect person’ so you are always compromising…that’s not necessarily a bad thing…well, it’s fucking awful, isn’t it? (laughs)...well, it’s everything isn’t it?”

With the last line of ‘Undone’, “I never wanted anything that’s easy” – you don’t want to do anything by half?

“That’s just putting yourself in a situation where...you know you’re not going to conquer it or anything, but you keep putting yourself in stupid situations, and that’s just a way of saying that I never wanted anything easy.”

But in a way you’re still happy that you’re put in that situation?

“Not necessarily happy, no…but you just keep doing it.”

But at the same time you wouldn’t have it any other way?

“Yeah, because you’re striving for the ideals that keep tumbling.”

At least you’re still trying, though - that’s the point?

“Oh yeah, of course – see, I don’t think they’re negative songs really. They’re more kind of realistic…it’s kind of kicking against the pricks a bit”, he says smiling.

Do you hate in that case like the kind of clichés like “kitchen sink drama”?

“I don’t know if our songs are ‘kitchen sink drama’. You’re the only one who’s ever said that…not that I’m putting them down,” he smiles

Then there’s the line in ‘Some Things Never Work Out’ in which Wayne intones, “horoscopes lie, they just fuck up your life”.

Is there anything specific when you say that, or is just the general day-to-day life that the horoscopes serve as a metaphor for?

“Well no, see it’s more sort of semi-specific. You shouldn’t put too much importance in horoscopes…if you read your horoscopes religiously – this is just me personally speaking from adolescence - you’ll clutch at anything, any glimmer of hope, and a horoscope is one of those. And you’re reading them, and then you think ‘oh great’, and then if you reach the end of the day, and it’s been a shit day, and the horoscopes said it wouldn’t be, then you get fucked off; and then you read your horoscope the next day, and it says it’s going be a shit day, and then your fucked for the rest of the day! So I reached the point where I had to stop reading them”, he laughs.

I’ve never had any success with horoscopes at all.

“Well, I mean, it’s more of a sort of a joke line.”

It’s easy to get the impression that the band linger on the morbid and defeatist. But it’s more a kind of realism tempered with optimism, together with a black humour. Salvation is always at hand. Despite it’s title, their new single 'The Heart is a Useless Ally' – out in early April on their own Liner imprint (and on their myspace page as well) - is their most upbeat song so far, accompanied by a line about waiting for the train “at 5:30 in the morning”. When I put it that the line uses the example of a 9 to 5 existence that the protagonist in the song is trapped in as a more broader example (or a metaphor) of being stuck in a rut, resigned and straight-jacketed by the monotony of the working week grind or whatever else, Wayne has his own take on it: “It’s actually about waiting for the train to start running so you can get out of the situation that you don’t want to be in…you know, and you’re heart should be helping to work it out. It doesn’t, and you end up in the same situation as you’ve been in before...but it’s a pop song!”

Most of your songs aren’t upbeat.

“But this one is. We want to be played on the radio. We don’t have many upbeat songs, so it’s nice to have one...as a song, it works as a single. In any case,” Wayne argues, “they’re general normal preoccupations that one has…but I mean, those are the sort of things you want to express, don’t you?”

But not every band has the same sort of themes?

“Maybe other bands are happier."

Wayne is prepared to concede, “it’s more that the songs are autobiographical”.

“Well, it’s what goes on, isn’t it?” Marc interjects. “Everyone goes through it, but some bands don’t choose to write about it – that’s what makes the songs real and us different from other bands.”

W : “It’s just what happens…”

The band enthuse about the single – “I think after mixing it, it sounds really fresh”, Wayne agrees, and mentions for once the keyboards are high up in the mix, illustrating Paul’s new role in the band not only as musician but as producer – his initial role before joining the band. Wayne is quick to point out, though, that “because there’s only three of us, they all sound like Kelman songs.”

“And everything’s recorded live,” considers Marc, referring to the organic feeling that comes across from the recordings.

After that, they’ve also got their debut album looming on the horizon, planned for around June / July release – “it’ll be about eight or nine tracks long…about half an hour long”, Wayne assures me. Much of it has already been tried out live, and you get the feeling that they know exactly what to do with the songs once they’re in the studio.

“It’s quite a compact thing really…a short album”, Paul muses.

W : “We try to keep them all within three minutes. With Baptiste, the songs went on for ages…but this is a whole different approach, we want to keep it simple and intimate. Plus, because it’s just the three of us, the half hour thing just sums us up a bit more.”

Amen to that. As we get ready to leave, Wayne offers as a parting shot, “We don’t care really if people don’t like us because we’re not hip...we don’t want to be part of any scene whatsoever. We’d never want that – it wouldn’t do us any favours”. A couple of drinks inside us, after the interview we stroll through the cobbled-street square in Farringdon, and I think of all the writers who have lived here, using the city as their inspiration. Kelman have more in common with these literary dwellers, these poets documenting the tales of the city and all it’s endless dramas, than anything currently on the front of the mainstream press.