March 2009 Archives

Manchester: "Sans puissance, le son n'est rien"

Manchester are a band who wear many of their influences on their sleeve - or, rather, in their name.

There's also very much of a Mancunian swagger in the voice of lead singer and guitarist Leslie Kervella, who I first met when she was pushing her way to the front of a VERY long queue for the toilets in the Pop In and proclaiming loudly, "Let me through, let me through - I'm pregnant!"

Now that she's given birth and found time for making music again, the first results of our labours are ready to see the light of day. Smoke Signals is about taking the not-too-subtle hint that it's time to move on, while Grip compares the act of making love to nothing less than climbing a mountain.

Rock on!

• Smoke Signals
• Grip

Have A Good Night 4, released today, is a collection of "lullabies" performed by such rising stars of the French indie scene as Mina Tindle (who will be supporting Beirut on their upcoming European tour), MiLK and Fruit Juice, and eliotE & the Ritournelles (who have teamed up with Rivkah on Wheel of Dreams, a charming little ditty for which I wrote the lyrics), together with a few international guests.

The idea for our song came from eliotE herself, who told me about a dream she often had as a child in which she could "choose" what to dream about using a kind of magic roulette wheel. When she came to me with the idea they already had a vocal melody, which she described as being "a bit like the Andrews sisters", and I tried my best to respect that as I came up with the words.

I got a sneak preview of some of the album's contents a couple of weeks ago when I attended a special kids-only concert held at a playgroup in Montmartre, Paris - hardly the most rock n' roll of venues, I admit, but my daughter and her friend loved it!

• Wheel of Dreams

Sometimes, you need to start afresh.

That's what I told OrangeColumbo, who recently suffered a hard-drive failure on his PC that meant he has lost several months worth of work, including his initial demos of some songs that we'd been working on together, and a hundreds of personal photos, and who knows what else.

I didn't really know what else to say, and I still don't - other than the fact that, since I learned the news a couple of days ago, I've been rediscovering many of the tracks we've written together over the years.

Old songs like Carousel. Great songs like Carousel.

We'll be back, my friend!

• Carousel