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Interview conducted
in May 2004
NEXT RELEASE:
"Particle & Waves" |
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| |  | |    | | By Bertrand Hamonou | | Photos Janne |
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With their seventh wonderful and quiet album, Cranes are coming back to tell us stories. Alison Shaw inspired herself with scientific readings, where physics and waves gave her the title "Particles & waves", and she tells us more about this both sunny and cold album, which is all about science and French. It's also the chance to talk about their fifteen year long career.
You're back with a brand new album, "Particles & Waves" which is a follow-up to "Future Songs", with quite the same atmosphere in it. It looks like it's definitely the new musical direction for the band, and it's not like what you previously did a while ago with "Loved" and "Forever"?
That's true, it's quite spacey and atmospheric, that's right. There aren't so many guitars than before, but there are some. We used a lot of synths and keyboard sounds for this album, drums and percussion too. It's some kind of extension to "Future Songs", but without following them.
Why such a title for the new album, "Particles and Waves"? Does this record have something to see with physics and science?
Yes, absolutely. I started to read a few books and tried to understand physics and all that stuff. My brother started to read them years ago, and it didn't interest me before, but suddenly it seemed very interesting to me (laughs). The whole album isn't about these readings, but some songs are inspired but particles and sound waves.
What does the enigmatic title K56 mean?
It was the working title that Jim chose and I'm not sure what he meant by it (laughs). And it became the final title of that song.
The first track on the new album is pretty strange. It sounds like it's made of two different songs put altogether. Is it actually the case?
It's all one song. Jim recorded some outdoor sounds from the garden, and then he closed the window. You can hear it on the record. And then there's a lot more guitars coming, like a second phase in the song. The idea was leaning on the concept that you can make sounds disappear just by the way things are positioned, and things become visible according to that theory. It was some kind of a joke, really, we were pretending to make the song disappear! (laughs)
Jim sings the song Every Town on the new album, as he previously did on "Population Four"? Do you encourage him to do so?
At the beginning, this song wasn't to be on the album. Jim did record this song and another song two years ago, or maybe longer. We were listening to some old stuff one day and I really liked this song, so I decided to let it on the album. Jim occasionally sings Cranes songs, he probably did four so far. I like this song and I like the fact that it's unusual for us to have a song that's not sung by me.
Can you tell me more about the song Particles and Waves. Why did you decide to sing that song in French?
Just because of the rhythm of the vocal melody I thought of sounded better to me in French. The lyrics are improvised, just like a little story, but a little bit of a nonsense too (laughs).
By the way, what's your relation to the French language, as for this song and for the album you recorded in 1996, "La Tragédie d'Oreste et Électre" which was based on "Les Mouches" by Jean-Paul Sartre?
When I was at school I studied some foreign languages like French, Spanish and German. I read a lot of stuff in French as well, actually I can read it much better than I can speak it. I enjoy reading Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, for instance.
This new album is very appeasing and quiet. Even more than your previous album, "Future Songs", was. Is it something you did on purpose, because you're not interested in using the same schemas as before?
Well, we just started to play the new songs live at a warm-up show the other day, and they're actually quite noisy when we play them live! But you're right, the tempo of the album is downbeat, but I feel it's still optimistic. Everybody goes through different phases, and we don't feel like shouting with drums very loud, but as I said, there are a lot of live drums on the album. I think the couple of tracks at the beginning of the album gives the impression it's very quiet, but it's just very downbeat really.
What happened to the tracks that you wrote and recorded in 1998 for an album you once entitled "It's a Beautiful World"?
Actually, a couple of tracks ended up on a 7" single called "The moon city", that was released in Spain on Elefant Records in 2001. We just thought the songs weren't moving forward enough to be included on a proper album. Moreover, there were not that many songs to make an album at that point, maybe five or six. So we just ditched a few songs, waited another year and then we started to write for "Future Songs".
You're going to tour Europe to promote this new album. What's the set list going to be like?
Each night we will be playing four or five songs from the new record, and the rest will be from all the different albums.
Why did you wait until last year to release your first live album? Why didn't you release one when you toured with The Cure, for instance?
Yeah, we probably should have done one when we were touring with The Cure, that would have been good, but we never made a good recording. I remember one night in Brussels, a proper engineer came and we tried a lot of expensive equipment to record the show. But we played really badly that night (laughs)! We played all the songs at double speed that should have been, because the drummer was playing very fast. It wasn't a terrible show, but the recording didn't sound right. It's quite hard to get a good recording live that actually represents the band, because we didn't want to sound like a bootleg, but on the other hand we didn't want to sound like a studio version of songs, but not quite as good. You have to find a real balance.
What are you the most proud of when you think about everything you've accomplished with Cranes?
Well, I don't know. Probably the fact that we've made some albums, and we've managed to go this long ago, and it's not easy as a full time job, I have to say (laughs). There's just Jim and me by the way, not the rest of the group.
After all that time in the "music business", is it still possible to discover records that still move you?
A friend has just told me about a group called Her Space Holiday, which I really like. I like Four Tet too. I don't buy records every week, but I do it when I find something that I like. We get given quite a lot of records these days, you know people send things to hear. I've got friends in San Francisco, who actually designed the album sleeve, and they know what I like, so they send me new things to listen to.
Your band has been around for more than fifteen years now. Do you have any idea of what you would have done for your living if you hadn't had any success at all?
I was doing a degree in Hispanic Studies, and I might have gone to South America. I had a dream to go to Peru, and I might have done some voluntary work, I don't know what, but I was thinking about that.
Which Cranes records would you recommend to someone who discovers your music today?
I would probably say one recent one, probably the new one, and for the old ones, I would say "Forever" or "Loved".
Have you ever listened to records of a band called Múm, from Iceland, which singer sings with a little voice, a little bit like you?
Yeah, I've got some of their records, I like them too. Well, I don't know, maybe it's a little bit similar, I'm not sure. | | | | | | | |
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