The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

“Our greatest stage joke ever was when I said, ‘I’m sweating like a rapist,’ and Thomas said, ‘I sweat much more than this when I rape.’ It was at a 14s-and-over show as well. Some people pissed themselves. Some people went, ‘BOOO!’ I laughed so much it took me three minutes before I could start the next song. It was the wrongest joke. But everyone knows it’s just a joke… I suppose.”

Well, yeah… I suppose. Henry Dartnall, singer and guitarist of Oxfordshire’s finest scary-young-fogey post punk pop group Young Knives (they’ve recently removed the ‘The’) has somehow got from my question about the anger and intensity that his band generate onstage to this somewhat disturbing anecdote, and I’m non-plussed. Henry’s brother and Young Knives bassist Thomas Dartnall, aka The House of Lords, isn’t helping me out. Drummer Oliver Askew (how great are these names? Oliver Askew) remains similarly schtum. Before I change the subject, I find myself going back about 10 minutes, to an exchange provoked by the one subject that makes all rock and pop groups of the 21st century run away in terror, as one would from a rapist… I suppose. I was asking them about a song on their forthcoming, as-yet-untitled second album, due for release in March 2008. It’s called ‘Turn Tail’, and it’s an epic thing with an orchestra and words that go: “This ship is sinking / We’re all slaves on this ship / We will not reach the shore.” I remark that this sounds quite like a political comment.

Henry: “Yeah. I suppose it is. But it doesn’t sit very well with us ’cos it almost sounds too much like we’re making a comment.”

But your lyrics are packed with comment about the emptiness and frustration of small-town British life!

Henry: “We don’t have strong opinions on anything. We’re of that generation that’s quite confused about what we think. We’re neither left-wing nor right-wing. We’ve been taught at school how to be objective in our arguments. Empathising with both sides of the argument and never coming to any kind of conclusion.”

Thomas: “We’re not from the generation who go out and have riots.”

Henry: “I once went to a march and just got offended by it. It was an anti-BNP march. It was one of my first times in London and I wanted to go on an anti-racism march… but it wasn’t an anti-racism march. It was more like a ‘you’re not allowed to think what you want’ march. It just felt very wrong. In the songs we try very hard to make comments but never actually commit to anything.”

The thing is… I love Young Knives. And not just the music, the lyrics, the clothes, the whole what-if-Billy-Liar-had-formed-the-Gang-of-Four?-ness of them. I mean, also, that they’re nice fellas to spend time with. They exude that tight, band-as-gang thing without making intruders feel stupid or excluded. They’re bright and funny and have good taste. They effortlessly make cheap suits and specs and bad hair and a cartoon Englishness look charismatic, and they stand out of the environment - which, today, is a trendy bar in Notting Hill - in a natural, unforced way, like a great band should. I like the way Henry fixes you with intense eye contact and talks incessantly, and House of Lords looks boyishly shy but amused, content to heckle his brother, and Oliver says almost nothing, a solid drummer presence. But… when, exactly, did England become a country which has no shame about telling rape jokes, yet is deeply ashamed of owning up to even the most timid opinion about the state of the world, and quite prepared to blame its schooling and its ‘generation’ for its lack of commitment?

I’m not blaming Young Knives, you understand. Just pointing out that this most quintessentially 2007 English band really are most quintessentially 2007 English. Which is alright… I suppose.

We’re here to talk about Young Knives’ latest single ‘Terra Firma’ - a hit, surely, by the time you read this - and the album that it previews; the follow-up to their brilliant Mercury-nominated 2006 debut Voices of Animals and Men, which poked and prodded at provincial wage-slavery, thwarted aspiration, sexual frustration and the difficulties inherent in being, as mini-hit single ‘The Decision’ put it, “abstract and mild”, and which came on like Gang of Four, Graham Greene, Pere Ubu, The League of Gentlemen and XTC all being forced to live out their days toiling and seething in a garden centre in Loughborough. It was exciting, hearing someone cut to the essence of post punk and lace it with angry-young-man kitchen-sink drama and comic horror, and a surprise when people got it, and went out, and got it.

But the Young Knives’ label is the ambitious Transgressive, who are now supported by the financial muscle of Warners; plus our three intrepid pop surrealists are in their early thirties and have partners and no day jobs, and have been doing this for eight years. A step up to pop’s high ground seems not unreasonable. So Gang of Four’s Andy Gill has been replaced as producer by Dirty Pretty Things/Snow Patrol/Belle & Sebastian/Delgados producer Tony Doogan, and the Young Knives have been given some of that Stadium Indie sheen, as ‘Terra Firma’ attests. But, in case you’re thinking it’s all gone a bit Kaiser Chiefs, there won’t be too many other choruses on the next Now That’s What I Call The Most Mundane Student Shite In The NME Chart Zane Lowe Coolest Hottest All-Temperature Sexless Laddo Indie Rock In The World comp that go “Fake! Rabbit! Real! Snake!” and are about, as Thomas explains, “that Freudian jouissance thing about seeking the unattainable, like the perfect orgasm, or something.”

To continue this theme of surplus value - of too much pleasure becoming nothing but pain - Young Knives are considering calling their second album ‘Superabundance’. Britain could be described as a superabundant society, where even the poor have an iPod and we’re constantly told we’ve never had it so good, yet… no fucker’s actually happy and it feels as if we’re on the edge of disaster. But, of course, Young Knives aren’t making any political comment, nope, no sirree.

Henry: “It has a resonance with some of the things we’ve sung about. It’s a term applied to mass consumerism. It reminds me of food mountains. It sounds like a political statement, though it’s not meant to be.”

The album is not quite finished, but Transgressive’s Toby L gives me a sneak preview before the interview. And, even on one listen, it’s… Big. Potential Big singles in ‘Fit For You’, ‘Up All Night’, ‘Light Switch’ and ‘Turn Tail’; Big Ideas in the album’s best tracks ‘Light The Fire’, ‘Current of The River’ and ‘I Can Hardly See Them’. But these are balanced by the eccentricity of ‘Flies’ (a House of Lords solo excursion which immediately reminds of Alex James’s ‘Far Out’ on Blur’s Parklife), proposed hidden track ‘Long Cool Drinks by The Pool’, and the definitively subversive ‘Counters’, which mixes ‘angular’ indie with spacey Pink Floyd-iness, and sounds utterly rousing… until you realise that it’s about suicide. Henry plays me another track the band want to include called ‘Rue The Day’, and bugger me if it doesn’t sound like The Stone Roses. Everything about the new album sounds rooted in key English art rock classics - Syd Barrett, Fairport Convention, Robert Wyatt, XTC, Blur. With the comedy definitely turned down and replaced by a harmony-drenched, psych folk melancholia, and an overall feel of fear of our superabundant, consumerist future, it sounds like the first great pop rock album in support of moderation and tradition since The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society. But, then again, I’ve only heard it once. So I’ll calm down now.

And actually, now I come to think of it, there has been another album like that in more recent times. Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish. I ask the three if they see a resemblance. And, of course, Henry answers. “Yeah. That’s probably one of my favourite albums, though I haven’t listened to it for years. Do you mean the attitude? I suppose we’re quite… we do hate a lot of people. We’re miserable about things.”

Who do you hate?

“When we were writing the last album there was a lot of stuff that came from the people we met where we worked. And now it’s the same… like Mike Skinner writing about beating his manager up and how much you get on a rider. We’re writing about coming into contact with a lot of people in the music industry and how we quite like leaving that and going back to our houses.”

Young Knives do not like London. They feel uneasy with the trendy young (okay… not-so-young) metrosomethings of the music biz. And the most refreshing thing about them is their blunt honesty about their lives and aspirations, because they realise that their creative heads are the interesting bit. When I ask their ages there’s no hesitation when they answer that Henry and Oliver are 32 and Thomas is 30. Henry has actually been married for 10 years. When they talk about their real lives, the Henry/Thomas sibling double-act kicks in, they see the self-deprecating humour in everything, and you just want to sit back and let them talk.

Henry: “We’re like Roxy Music. They were 30 when they made it. (Actually, Ferry was 27 and Eno 29 - smartarse ed.) Time’s passed so quickly. We’re late developers, probably.”

Thomas: “I got my first pube the other day.”

Oliver: “I have lived in London. And I’m glad I left.”

Henry: “I don’t think I could. I’ve always lived where it’s a bit muddy. The only town I’ve ever lived in is Aylesbury. And my wife does stuff with horses and I don’t want her to be unhappy. We’ve got our studio in a garage with carpet on the walls on the outskirts of our village, and you just get on with it because there aren’t many distractions. It’s quite insular, though. The three of us do just hang around with each other and write songs. We don’t take days off. It just feels like such an opportunity… it’s not like work. I’ve had a working life…”

Thomas: “Six years? A working life? Go tell that to somebody at the ex-miners home!”

Henry: “But what I mean is we didn’t go straight from school to a pop band, where you expect things to happen. We don’t expect anything to happen for us. If we’d made loads of money from the first album, this album would be shit. Once you’ve made money, what are you gonna do? Are you really going to hang out with these two cunts in a garage?”

Thomas: “But it’s about staying passionate about it. There are people who are doing alright and everyone thinks they’re brilliant but they continue to bring out good albums. Like Radiohead. You know the new Radiohead album’s gonna be brilliant and he’s a multi-millionaire. There’s no real reason. He hasn’t got to kick against the odds. Unless you count being short and a bit ugly…”

The word ‘ugly’ is exactly what I’m trying to avoid when I frame a question about the Young Knives look. Particularly as the shot of the three standing in a field in their just-not-quite-right old school suits on the inner sleeve of Voices of Animals and Men is probably the best picture of a band since the sleeve of Dexys Midnight Runners’ Don’t Stand Me Down. Despite being the most knowingly odd-looking group this side of Sparks, Young Knives insist, of course, that it’s all a big accident. Nevertheless, their discourse on fashion gradually becomes a good old righteous rant, which is surely what we all want.

Henry: “It’s very weird because I don’t know what the look is. I mean, what I’m wearing today came from Sainsbury’s. It’s probably just the way we wear them. The whole tweed thing… I own two tweed jackets. These two don’t have any. We didn’t come up with a look. It was what I was wearing to the office. Green cords and ties with pheasants or fish on. When we were younger and had no money that’s what we did. Jarvis Cocker wore clothes from charity shops so we did.”

Thomas: “There was a point where I was always seeing bands in t-shirts and jeans - Stereophonics type-bands - and they looked like Blue Peter presenters.”

Henry: “It’s just putting a bit of theatre into it. I think going too glam is a bit of a mistake as well. The Kaiser Chiefs in gold suits and fob watches. It’s all a bit bling and loadsamoney for an indie band.”

Thomas: “Plus we can’t really rely on our dashing good looks.”

Henry: “It’s what I want to see. I want to see people looking awkward and a bit out of place. That’s our essence… a bit out of place. And always feeling slightly awkward with the current crop of bands. It’s funny that we’ve got where we are. We’re being played on Radio 1 and I would’ve thought most people would have turned off to it ’cos we’re too out of place. Like somebody they wouldn’t connect with.”

Thomas: [whispered, through gritted teeth] “Unlike Jack Peñate.”

Henry: “Yeah, but he’s only about 20. You would’ve done the same at his age. You look a bit like him.”

Thomas: “No I don’t.”

Henry: “What was that band we heard on the bus?”

Oliver: “Scouting For Girls. That is so bad.”

Henry: [sings] “‘YORE LUVV-ER-LEEE!.’ It’s the worst thing in the world, isn’t it? Before you know it, some band that’s supporting you is doing…”

Thomas: “Who are you talking about?”

Henry: “I dunno… maybe The Holloways? And you think…”

Thomas: “You’re bitter!”

Henry: “I’m not bitter! But, it’s like, you’re not surprised, and very surprised, in the same breath. Good luck to everybody… I’m not slagging anybody off. I just hate all modern music.”

Thomas: “What we don’t have is that thing of… relaxed cool. The Velvet Underground had it, obviously. The Strokes have it. Kings of Leon have it. That effortless, hip, tunefulness.”

Henry: “Radio 1 - there’s so many cool things happening, but… they run the pop industry, what makes and breaks. It’s just horrible the way it works. And it’s frightening when you get close to it, because everything feels like make or break.”

And there’s the nub of the crux. Young Knives have got close to it - ‘it’ meaning the embattled music industry; ‘it’ meaning commercial success - and now everything, for them, for the first time, feels like make or break. They’ve been doing this since 1999, they’re broke, they’re on the cusp of possibly changing their lives… and they’re not 100 per cent convinced it’s a good idea. In the album that may or may not get called ‘Superabundance’, they’ve made a poetic, occasionally raucous, often magical album about seeing something on the horizon, sailing towards it… and wondering, as you get closer, if the big open sky ahead is The Promised Land or The Abyss. And you can forgive them for not wanting to make it a State Of The Nation address because, in the end, they’re not trying to speak for us… just for themselves.

What was that old folk song from days of yore? “People ringing up / Making offers for my life / I just wanna stay in the garage all night.” The more things change, etc. Of course, The Clash weren’t big on rape gags. But that was the generation that went out and had riots instead… I suppose.

More content of interest...

• Knive to see you to see you knive as Oxford trio cut 13 movies (Posted in 015 March 2008 | Moving Images)
• Young Knives Superabundance (Posted in 015 March 2008 | Long Players | The Stool Pigeon Review)