Cartoon Music For Superheroes: February 2009

We've been waiting since last year, when Pete Doherty said that he was working on a solo album, to find out when he would release it. And over the past few weeks, he's been revealing more information about it.

The album will be entitled "Grace/Wastelands" and will be released on March 16 in the U.K. and 8 days later in the U.S., on the 24. It will feature 12 songs, including his first single "Last Of The English Roses," which will be out a week before the album's release.

Guest appearances on the album include Blur's Graham Coxon, Dot Allison and his Babyshambles bandmates. "Grace/Wastelands" was recorded at Olympic Studios in London during 2008.

"Grace/Wastelands" album artwork

Here's the full tracklisting for "Grace/Wastelands":

1) Arcadie
2) Last Of The English Roses
3) 1939 Returning
4) A Little Death Around The Eyes
5) Salome
6) Through The Looking Glass
7) Sweet By And By
8) Palace Of Bone
9) Sheepskin Tearaway
10) Broken Love Song
11) New Love Grows On Trees
12) Lady, Don't Fall Backwards

Parlophone recently uploaded an interview/preview of the new album on youtube.

Clash Music Magazine interviewed Pete for a cover story on their 34 issue last month.

Here are three of the album's 12 songs, courtesy of Clash Music.
[MP3] Pete Doherty - Broken Love Story
[MP3] Pete Doherty - Lady Don't Fall Backwards
[MP3] Pete Doherty - Last Of The English Roses

And NME's "The Daily Download" blog is giving away another Pete track if you sign up HERE.

Visit NME's Pete Doherty news page for the latest news on Pete's solo release. He is currently featured on the cover of NME.

Courtesy of ShockHound

During Snow Patrol's trip to Los Angeles in early December, singer Gary Lightbody had a chance to chat with one of his heroes, Lou Barlow of Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr. They talked about the records that played a role in how they started their musical careers and of the only time Gary had a musician sign something for him - when Lou signed his guitar case for him in 1999.

Here's the great interview:

"We played with you in Dublin one time, do you remember that?"

Gary Lightbody, lead singer and guitarist for Snow Patrol, is chatting with Lou Barlow, founding member of indie pioneers Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr.

"I don’t," Barlow admits.

"I remember it ‘cause you guys are heroes of me," Lightbody blushes. "You signed my guitar case."

"I did?!"

"You’re the only person I’ve ever asked to sign something. You signed it: ‘Not the property of Loobie – Lou Barlow, 1999.’ So it wasn’t your property, but I swear to God if you want it, you can have it, if you want it back. [Laughs] I’ll just take something from your house. Like your toilet seat…or something like that."

Lou laughs. "Uh, I’m just taking that in for a second."

We’re sitting on the balcony of Barlow’s Silverlake home, taking in the vista with a scenic view overlooking Hollywood. Snow Patrol is in town in the midst of a series of promotional dates — including three jam-packed ShockHound free shows — for their new album A Hundred Million Suns. On the surface, one might wonder why we paired these two artists up for a co-interview. But as their conversation transpires, the bigger question is what took so long.

Since forming in Scotland in the late '90s, the part-Irish/part-Scottish quintet has often been compared to Sebadoh, while Lightbody unabashedly cites Barlow as major influence (“Whether or not you need to start legal proceedings…” he jokes). The Reindeer Section — Lightbody’s “supergroup” side-project with members of Mogwai, Belle & Sebastian and Arab Strap — was even formed at a Lou Barlow gig. Barlow, on the other hand, acknowledges that for years people would tell him “you gotta hear this….his voice sounds like yours,” but just didn’t get it until recently, when, of all things, Barlow attempted to sing along to Snow Patrol’s “Run” on the car radio. “And I actually could hit every note you sang,” he says, “and that never happens.”

While Lightbody and Barlow have met a few times in passing, this is the first time the two have had a real conversation, expounding on everything from their early inspirations to the challenges of retaining your credibility. In the end, Barlow asked him to return the favor: Lightbody signed one of Barlow's guitars, “This is not the property of Gary Lightbody.”

SHOCKHOUND: Gary, I was reading an interview where you talked about how American indie rock really inspired you to start a band in the first place. As a kid growing up in Ireland, what attracted you to American indie rock? How were you turned on to that initially?

GARY LIGHTBODY: I listened to a lot of hard rock and metal when I was a kid. There wasn’t a lot of music in Northern Ireland at the time. No bands came to play there because of what was going on in the country and nobody would risk it, so there wasn’t a live scene. I listened to Metallica, AC/DC, and KISS until I was about 12, then broadened into other stuff. It wasn’t really until Nevermind, I was 16 when that came out. There was like one record shop at the time and it was pretty much predominantly KISS records [Laughs] and folk singers like Val Doonican. It was slim pickings. It wasn’t until Nirvana [that] I got turned onto visceral rock music from the heart, rather than people doing it from the mechanics of it, the technical things, playing from the head. Then from Nirvana, a few years later, I got into Sebadoh. A mate of mine, the guy I started the band with originally, had Sebadoh III. I heard “The Freed Pig” and just went, “Okay, there’s somethin’ here.” It blew my mind. Then Bakesale was the biggest record. That informed quite a lot of our early stuff really, Bakesale. Whether or not you need to start legal proceedings. [Laughs] I certainly was enthralled by it and it probably rubbed off on me quite a lot. Thank God, you know, ‘cause I think up until that point I was singing like Eddie Vedder. So, Mr. Barlow here helped me.

LOU BARLOW: I actually know what you mean. It’s always important when you hear records like that when you’re growing up, ‘cause then you go, “I can just do this, kinda like naturally?” You know what I mean? With rock, you’ve always gotta be a rock singer. Then when I got into punk rock, it’s like you gotta be a hardcore singer. But the bands that came out of hardcore that started to sing in their own voices, those are the bands that I was like, “Oh, okay. I’m gonna sing like myself.” That’s, I guess, what you pass along. You have that empowering moment where it’s like, “Oh, I can just do this how I feel it.” You know what I mean?

LIGHTBODY: Yeah.

BARLOW: It seems like your voice totally has that quality. It just sounds really like…you. And there are so many things that sound so effected. Even just that post-Thom Yorke stuff, which is all cool, but there’s that certain affectation to it. It’s just so nice to hear something that doesn’t have affectation to it. I never thought about how maybe I had influenced anybody that way. I always thought it was like, “Hey, we sound like shit!” [Laughs] “And I’m gonna write a terrible song. I’m gonna write a really mean song about my girlfriend, woo! Record it on my 4-Track!” It was fine to influence that, it’s just kinda nice when you influence something that’s good.

LIGHTBODY: It’s also the freedom of it. The freedom that you guys had, and all of your records, it was just woeful and you just did whatever the fuck you wanted in any particular song. There was no template, and that’s something that certainly our first two records followed. We followed the no template, the empty template. [Laughs] If you can possibly follow a no template…

BARLOW: No, I understand that. That’s what I took from the Meat Puppets, Minutemen…no template. Like the bands that took punk rock, but it didn’t mean just power chords; it actually meant freedom. It actually takes [sometimes] hearing things that seem free to feel free yourself. That’s totally cool.

SHOCKHOUND: Lou, do you remember the first record that had a profound effect on you, that might have influenced some of the things you’re talking about…and inspired you to make music?

BARLOW: Oh yeah, the Ramones, of course. They seemed really natural. I mean there’s something so natural about the Ramones, and also because they ripped it down to this really basic power chord stuff, which I just went, “Whoa! They’re going right to the source!” It was really exciting.

SHOCKHOUND: What was the first Ramones record you had?

BARLOW: Rocket to Russia, probably. Then I went up, I went in the opposite direction. I got some horrible new records that they had just done. [Laughs]

SHOCKHOUND: Too Tough to Die or something?

BARLOW: No, that was actually their return to form. It was like End of the Century; which is okay, but it wasn’t the same livewire feeling to it. That was great. Then all this stuff like Meat Puppets. God, the first Meat Puppets seven-inch… they’re bizarre. This band that could be the craziest hardcore band you could ever hear, like totally falling apart and screaming at the top of their lungs, ending the song all at a different time…and then they would cut to something like a weird little country song. It was totally not distorted, and that was it. I was like, “Whoa, that’s incredible.” The template of no template for Sebadoh was the Meat Puppets, and the sea of music around that.

SHOCKHOUND: Gary, what was the first record that had that effect on you?

LIGHTBODY: Well it was Nevermind, because of exactly what Lou just said there, but to stripping it down to the barest form that I’ve ever heard at that time in my life, because the music I was listening to was so overcomplicated and so full of machismo and ego, Nirvana seemed nothing to that. I was just completely drawn to it, as millions of other people were. [Laughs] It made me start to write music pretty much straight away when I picked up a guitar. I still don’t have much skill on the guitar, but what it did make me do was write from instinct. Plus, Kurt was very…I speak like I knew him [Laughs], he was very forthcoming with bands that he loved, and very passionate about bands that he loved…like Teenage Fanclub and the Vaselines. Bands that I wouldn’t have gotten into without his nudging.

BARLOW: The Meat Puppets too actually. ‘Cause Kurt grew up in the same age as me, and the Meat Puppets had the same effect on him I think as they had on me. He totally brought them to a national level. He did the [MTV Unplugged] thing and there’s the Meat Puppets sitting with him playing. So, you can’t really go much further than that with promoting a band. Not promoting, that’s such a crass term, but just saying, “This is what I love. This is what fueled my sincerity in the music.” You know, just sharing it with other people.

LIGHTBODY: Yeah, I think there was a time when he could have said anything I would have just went out and sold my blood for it.

BARLOW: It always kinda shocked me how that actually worked, ‘cause I would always be like, “It doesn’t matter what bands you like, no one’s listening.” But it did actually make a difference. Like with Sebadoh…kids did listen to Sebadoh because Kurt wore a Sebadoh shirt for like eight hours at a Swedish festival in like ’91 or ‘92. [Laughs] People still say, “I found your band because he was wearing this [shirt].” I literally, I know he only wore this T-shirt for like half the day, and it just happened to be when people were taking a lot of pictures of him. It really did backtrack. I guess I would do the same thing when I was a kid. You take the clues you were given, especially back then before the net…when you had to just find the clues and find how you were going to get to this music and how you were gonna get a hold of it. It’s just amazing.

LIGHTBODY: Exactly…and definitely in Belfast at the time, there was no other path to it. You had to have someone send you stuff from Scotland. I mean Scotland is like 20 miles away across the sea [Laughs], it felt like a whole other place, ya know? There was already a thriving and extraordinary music scene over there, and Belfast is just catching up now…it’s like 20 years later. It’s ridiculous.

SHOCKHOUND: Gary, a lot of folks that are familiar with Snow Patrol from hearing you on the radio or from Grey’s Anatomy or wherever probably have no idea that…

BARLOW: Grey’s Anatomy? [Laughs]

SHOCKHOUND: Their music was [featured prominently] on Grey’s Anatomy.

LIGHTBODY: This is what we’re left with now. [Laughs]

SHOCKHOUND: A lot of people have no idea that you had these indie origins, as well as your eclectic musical tastes and inspirations. Has that been a challenge or concern for you to maintain credibility?

LIGHTBODY: No. What I try and do, what Lou has done for me and for many other people, and what Kurt Cobain did, is try and talk about the bands that I love as much as possible and hopefully people will get them along the way at some point. I definitely know that it’s had an effect on some things that I really like ‘cause I just keep going on about them until people start buying the records. It’s the only way really. I think keeping it to yourself is a crime. We hear so much music, and so much amazing music at the moment. It’s important to just keep talking about it as much as you can.

BARLOW: It’s really about the music. I mean, that’s cool. Like Snow Patrol, it’s amazing what it has ended up like, because it’s almost like adult contemporary stuff. I hear it on escalators, I hear it in supermarkets, and it’s actually amazing. It’s actually really great that way. The purity of the songs is what puts it there… Things can rub me the wrong way really easily, especially pop music. The Snow Patrol stuff, it’s amazing how I’ve actually just gotten into the band because I didn’t go through it like ordinary things — “Hey you gotta hear this. This guy really likes your record.” The reason that I got into it was because I just kept hearing it, because it’s become such a part of what floats around. It’s like a day-to-day thing for so many people. But the sentiments in the song are so pure. People kept telling me, “His voice sounds just like yours,” and I was like, “I don’t hear it. I don’t get it. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But, it finally occurred to me because one of the songs was playing in the car. That “Light up, light up” song [“Run”] was playing and I said, “I’m gonna sing this song,” and I actually could hit every note that you sang, and that never happens…I like how repetitive the songs are, too. I love that because it’s so rare, and that’s what makes it so easy just to feel it. It’s still simple. Especially the really big songs, it’s still very simple, and they communicate really well.

LIGHTBODY: They’re simple because I can’t play the fuckin’ guitar. [Laughs]

- Interview by Randy Bookasta