Home

February 24th, 2009

Man, I’m tired. Been working flat out writing new material. Got a whole bunch of new stuff but I’m moving flat at the end of the week which is a day less of recording time. I hate been interuppted when the tunes are flowing. 

What’s been happening recently…? Some images… Colin and I, 5am at Glasgow airport, flying down to London, you can see the sunrise from the plane as we curve across the earth. Beautiful. Snow on the streets of London but none in Glasgow. Felt kind of topsy turvy. The amazing architecture in London. Different decades, centuries and architectural styles all mingling together in one of the most amazing cities on earth. Weather starts getting a bit warmer. Walking about Glasgow. A toddler humming ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain’ as he plays in the grass in the face of the first warm sunshine to hit our skins for months. Sounds like the most beautiful tune I’ve ever heard. Puts a massive smile on my face as I pass by, reminds me why I love music so much. New songs, lots of hard work writing and recording. Colin’s flat as the evening comes on after a long days work. Slight hint of spring in the air walking home through the park in the half-light. Usual self-analysis of where my life is going. Guess it’s not just a teenage thing I’ll grow out of. Morality, mortality, metafiction. I need to read more. I’ve lost my hunger for reading. Or perhaps I’ve just been too busy. Nah, fuck that, If I sit and watch tv I should read a book instead. Need to find something that I really want to read though. Sometimes your life feels like it’s hurtling out of control. Sometimes I kind of like that feeling. Sometimes I don’t. Still. Better than it being immobile. As long as you have a feeling of potential. That’s also one of my favourite things. The excitement you see in potential. In a song, a person, an idea. Right now, I’m potentially getting hungry so I’m going to stop writing and go make some food. Spin on that!

Top 5 Ipod tunes at the moment

We Are The People - Empire Of The Sun

French Navy - Camera Obscura

Summertime In England - Van Morrison

From A 1st Floor Window - Attic Lights

Moment Of Surrender - U.2.

Cheers,

K

• Comments (1)

January 26th, 2009

Ouch! My head. My body. I’m not sure what time I got home last night but my January booze ban has come crashing down. I blame it on Cerys Matthews.  She played Celtic Connections last night and we went along to sy hi. Show was reat. I’ll never get used to how amazing her voice is.

Noel got up on stage to play tamborine with her for the last song. You would never know he had been drinking at an all day Burns supper. Stunning tamborine playing. Award winning! Was kinda funny though as the song was coming to an end and Cerys walked off stage to a round of applause while the band continued playing and Noel, lightly sozzled, standing in his Guns’N'Roses T-shirt, suddenly found himself centrestage and to his horror, the centre of attention. We were killing ourselve slaughing. You could see the panic on his face.

After that, it all gets a bit blurry. We ended up backstage for a bit then at the Festival club till God knows what time in the morning. I think I’ll phone Tim and see if he knows how I got home.

Top 5 Ipod tunes today are

Darko - Booka Shade

Lullaby - The Cure

Isobel - Bjork

Rikki Don’t Lose That Number - Steely Dan

1979 - Smashing Pumpkins

Cheers,

K

• Comments (0)

January 23rd, 2009

Signed up to twitter. I’m not normally one for jumping on internet fads but this seems quite user friendly. (It means i can send stuff from my phone and not worry about powering up my decrepit computer. - Always a good thing.)

Our ABC gig for Celtic Connections was great. Playing to a full house and backed by a string quartet, the band were really kicking off on stage. Some nights you can feel it happening. The moment the string section kicked in on Wendy I felt like I was starting to levitate. You could see the audience responding almost immediately. Waves of strings hitting me from the big speakers at the side of the stage. I felt like a spectator at someone else’s gig and the mesh of sound around me was incredible. Felt like My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’ performed by a chamber orchestra. Granted, I am prone to exaggeration, but it felt great.

Spent most of January huddled over my recording desk writing songs. My decision to keep off the booze this month has led to increased productivity.  I wonder if I’ll last to the end of January? Cerys Matthews is playing Celtic Connections in Glasgow on the 25th Jan and I think we are all gonna troop along, see the show, then maybe grab some drinks with her afterwards. There’s no way I’ll be able to resist a wee drink that night. It will probably be the first time I’ve been out on the town in 6 months. I have a plan though, to make sure I start going out more often. Jamie and I have DJ’d once or twice and I think we are gonna start doing it regularly along with our friend Iain from Urusei Yatsura. Given that I spend most of my life hunched over a guitar or a recording desk, DJ’ing will be a good reason to go out to nightclubs. (Which I normally get a bit bored in - unless I’m catastrophically drunk!) When we get some venues sorted I’ll let you know.

January is a strange month. I end up feeling quite contemplative. Lately, I realised I’ve been missing my friend Johnny. On a new song we’re working on, the lyrics are about him. He is living and working in Japan right now. They are kinda based on his emails and the magical way he writes about the place. It’s a cool song. Jamie came up with the main part of it musically. It’s a killer riff. Maybe it will find it’s way on to our next record? Now when I think about it, I imagine Johnny listening to it in Japan. Maybe I’ll send him a copy if we get it finished.

I watch Youtube more than normal tv these days. I found the video for the Tom Waits song Downtown Train. There’s something hypnotic about him in it. I love the way he moves his body. It looks so natural yet so choreographed at the same time. Buster Keaton meets Nureyev. Like the archetypal tragic clown, they way he slides the hat on to his head, the way he bows and salutes, his poise under the window, like a puppet on a string. If Philip Marlowe was a rock star maybe that’s how he’d shuffle around saying his Long Goodbye, cooly wooing his femme fatale as Lou Reed watches from a fourth floor bedroom. Tom Waits is more than a songwriter. He is an extraordinary presence in sound and vision. A feral David Bowie. I can watch that video again and again. He uses his body like an instrument, deft and graceful, yet ugly and contorted at the same time. It’s beautiful. They should have just made the whole video about him.  Cool as the back alley cat that he is.

Maybe I should brush up on my dance moves? Jamie and I should get some Tom Waitsesque moves worked up for our DJ sets. To paraphrase Adam Ant, ‘(Public) Ridicule is nothing to be scared of.’

Top 5 Ipod tunes this week are

Hang On Siobhan - The Walkmen

Someone Great - LCD Soundsystem

O’l 55 - Tom Waits

Random Rules - Silver Jews

In Between Days - The Cure

 Cheers,

Kev

• Comments (2)

December 8th, 2008

‘One thing I never could stand about living in Santa Carla. All The
Damn Vampires!’ - Lost Boys

I remember, repeatedly asking my pal in primary school to tell me the plot of this movie again and again coz it sounded amazing. I couldn’t  concentrate at school for thinking about things like that. I never saw the movie till secondary school but it lived up to myexpectations. Any film that contains the line,

‘My own brother! A Goddamn bloodsucking vampire!!! Wait till mom finds out!!!’

…has got to go down in the list of classics.

Vampires are kind of cool. Like Santa Claus. Now that, is a crossover movie that’s yet to be made! It could be John Carpenter’s greatest moment! I like the way mythical figures kind of come alive when they dominate your thoughts.  Songs are real (I hope). And a song is as real as a story or a myth. They are all just creations of the humam brain that  don’t ‘physically’ exist as such. Yet a song is real because it can have a profound effect on your emotional life. So Vampires and Santa Claus are real too? Maybes? In some way. Especially if they are locked in combat over our skies in some whacked out B-Movie.

I love Christmas time. Jamie and I just recorded a cover of Shakin Stevens’s ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ for an online Advent calender. I love all the Christmas songs. I love the tackyness, l love the naivety and the unbridled festivity of it all. I’m a sucker for xmas. I’m so glad, in that respect, that we’ve got a xmas song out now. In classic Attic Lights fashion we didn’t get round to sorting it out till December which means our poor record company don’t have the time to promote it properly (xmas singles have to be planned months in advance) but i’m just glad it’s out there. Still, youve gotta be true
to yourself and if we werent so chaotic about doing things it probably wouldn’t be half the fun. And we have the dangerously sexy Cerys Matthews on it as well. Rock chick extroardinaire. Attic lights are caught in her spell. What a woman!!!  You can download it from our website myspace and itunes…. I think? And all profits go to the charity Cash for Kids so please download yourself a copy.

When it comes to Christmas songs though, Silent Night has got to be one of the most beautiful melodies ever written. It always makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and a wee lump rise in my thoat. I remember seeing this cartoon on tv when i was about 4 or 5 years old and Silent Night played over this parable, told by an older rabbit to a younger rabbit about human beings, who had so many wars that they wiped themselves out. There’s a scene where the last two humans shoot each other on opposite sides of the trenches. It totally got to me. It’s strange to think that maybe all the great lessons I’ve learned in life come from things as simple as cartoons or songs or movies. That’s why I find it so hard to differentiate between what’s supposedly high art and low art. Those terms are bullshit to me. That cartoon shaped
my mind as much as Astral Weeks by Van Morrison or a James Joyce novel. But Christmas is linked in my head as a time of peace and wonder. And since I still love being constantly amazed at things..(you could reasonably surmise that I haven’t grown up yet, ) Christmas feels like a natural state of mind to me. (Shit, I’m starting to sound like the voiceover in a Steven Speilberg movie) Do you believe in magic? (to quote one of my Dad’s favourite groups The Loving Spoonful) Yup. I totally believe in magic. Not ‘hey presto’ kind of stuff, but the power of ideas and art to shape your internal world. Totally. If it feels magical then it is magical (read ‘Promethea’ by Alan Moore!!! all 5 books!!!)

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promethea

Oh yeah, and it’s illustrated by country legend Hank Williams’s nephew. Beat that!

There must be something about the festive season where people just relax that wee bit too much. To be blunt,  two of my pals have, independantly of each other, lost control of their bodily functions in the last few days. Partly due to imbibing too much alcohal and partly due to a dodgy curry. One of them shat themselves in the park and the other pissed the bed one night. Gross, you may say. Frankly I find it hilarious in the extreme. Now, actually doing it is mildly amusing. But the fact they both have the confidience and self-assurance to come out and admit it to their pals. That’s the best bit for me. I think, while perhaps the generations before us broke down a few barriors of social inequality, we are breaking down the only barriers left. Dignity? Fuck it. Who needs it? I’m not squeemish. Unless you are eating bananas, in which I case i need to leave the room or I might vomit. But I love the candidness of  it. I love the trust and lack of pretension in people. In casual conversation being unafraid to admit to losing control of the bladder or whatever. Don’t worry, I’m not some toilet fetishist or anything. It’s more the arch liberalism of it. Of being able to talk about anything with your pals these days, whether they be male or female. (you thought they were both guys right? Shame on you!)

That’s enough of my incoherent ramblings.

Top 5 Ipod tunes this week are….

If I Needed Someone  - The Beatles

Jane of The Waking Universe - Guided By Voices

Just like Christmas - Low

Love Lockdown - Kanye West

A Little Soul - Pulp

Cheers,

Kev

• Comments (0)

November 19th, 2008

It’s been a whirlwind few weeks on tour. I think I am just getting over tourhead. The past couple of nights I’ve been sitting watching telly and then roughly about 8.30/9ish I start to get all fidgity and can feel my body preparing itself for a gig. Except I don’t have a gig. It’s a wierd feeling. Don’t quite know what to do with myself in those moments. I’ve started reading ‘Revolutionary Road’ which Tim recommended to me. He spent most of the tour engrossed in the book and if he likes it I probably will too.

In Manchester watched Big Trouble In Little China in Jamie and Noel’s room. Hadn’t seen it in years. Hilarious. I need to get more John Carpenter movies on DVD. (I remember being traumatised as a kid when I sat up one night and watched The Thing.’) Perhaps my favourite memory of the tour however, is finding Colin in what he proclaimed to be ‘the greatest pub I’ve ever been in!’ I walked in to meet him in a Manchester pub and found him in hog heaven, nursing a Whisky and Coke whilst sitting in on an over 60’s Karaoke day. Two nuns were currently on stage singing a duet. I burst out laughing then had to suppress my laughter as I drew some powerful glares from the clientelle and probably also ensured I go straight to the bad fire when I die. I don’t think you are allowed to laugh at nuns or something. By this point of course, the entire congregation of pensioners where in love with Colin and had adopted him as one of their own. I left him to it.

Don’t think I’ve ever been remotely inspired by a political leader in my lifetime but Barack Obama seems to have brought a feel good factor to the whole world. His victory speech almost moved Noel and I to tears as we sat up late watching it n a London hotel room. I’m usually incredibly cynical about politicians and while part of me expects him to be inevitably corrupted by the job, there’s no denying the massive cultural and psychological shift his election has caused across the globe. I like being inspired. I hope the Obama feel good factor lasts for a while longer.

Favourite moment of the tour. I went a run in Bute Park in Cardiff, running up the side of the River Taff on a glorious autumn morning and saw massive, pink, glittering Salmon leaping upriver across waterfalls and viaducts in the morning sunlight. Truly tremendous. I don’t think I’d ever seen that before.

Now it’s November in Glasgow. Christmas will be on us soon. It’s grey outside but not too cold. I like this time of year. Feels like a change is coming. There is something simultaneously sad and comforting about autumn bleeding into winter. I suppose if we lived in a country where it was summer all year round it wouldn’t shape our mental state in the same way. I love the change of the seasons. And perversely I love it when a cold snap hits the air. It can bring you down a wee bit for sure, but you need to be brought down every so often. It means you can go back up again. Especially when you get the first taste of spring in the air. But that’s a long way off yet. Right now, I’ll just let my body and mind get used to the oncoming winter. And you should to. Winter only comes once a year. There are subtle things to enjoy about it. Especially if you’ve got the right tunes on your Ipod.

Top 5 Ipod tunes this week are,

Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks

This Is The Day - The The

On Call - Kings of Leon

Song For Mutya - Groove Armada and Mutya Buena

Eisler On The Go - Billy Bragg and Wilco

Cheers,

K

• Comments (0)

November 8th, 2008

In Manchester at the Central Library. A quiet oasis in the mad sound and fury of the tour. Last night’s gig was probably the best of the tour so far. The audience were great. Really up for it. I think I need to stop drinking for a day or two though. I don’t think my body is happy with me. Our day off in Manchester should give me some respite from the constant over-indulgence. The tour is different from previous tours we have done where most bands keep to themselves. This is kind of like a big hippy commune on wheels. In my over-excitable imagination i am comparing it to Dylan’s legendary Rolling Thunder revue of the 70’s. But that’s probably just my over-excitable imagination at work. Paul Heaton and the guys in his band are always inviting everyone into their dressing rooms and Cerys Matthews and her guitarist Nikolai are great crack. The atmosphere is tremendous and Noel is even joining Cerys on stage everynight to play percusion. Nikolai persuaded us all to go for a meal in a mitchellin star Indian restuarant in Wolverhampton. The food was spectacular. Worth every penny.

Top 5 Ipod tunes on the road are

Fire - Cerys Matthews

At My Most Beautiful - REM

Someone Great - LCD Soundsystem

Inspiration Information - Shuggy Otis

Madame George - Van Morrison

Cheers, K

• Comments (1)

October 22nd, 2008

‘You’ve been avoiding my gaze boy! At luncheon you couldn’t tear you’re eyes from mine. This evening you barely looked at me. What did he say to you?’

Uncle Monty -  Withnail and I

So many people I know pepper their conversation with quotes from movies. It’s mostly people my age. I haven’t noticed it in the older generation. But I do it all the time. Pop culture has infiltrated our daily lives to such an extent that we/I have conversations littered with movie references that we expect the people we are talking to to understand. I started thinking about this the other day when we were watching a DVD of Hamlet in the tour bus (in case that sets of your pretention detector, it was the only dvd we could find) and i noticed so many lines in it that we use in everyday life. ‘Neither a borrower or a lender be’ ect.. So I guess it’s not a new thing.

Walking about the city the last week or so I keep thinking I see people I know then as I get write up to them I realise it’s a stranger. It keeps happening and apart from the mild embarrassment of staring at a stranger in recognition as you approach them, it’s kinda odd. Maybe i’m daydreaming too much. Wouldn’t be the first time. Like when I was younger and wanted to be in a band and have a record out and stuff. I’d daydream about that all the time. And now i’m in that situation… and i’m still daydreaming about it… even though i’m in the middle of it… I’m still imagining how things are gonna be, even now, if my daydreams are focused a couple of weeks in the future rather than years.  My parents were right. My head is, and always has been, ‘In the clouds.’ Ever since I was a kid, if my immediate daily life wasn’t utterly captivating I’d wander off into dream world.  I created this vast, bizzare, imaginary world at primary school where i used to sit and daydream every day and not do any work and live out a wild fantasy life through an alter ego called John Woodhouse (don’t ask me why I chose that name, must have heard it on TV or something.) I’ve never actually told anyone that before. Feels a bit wierd putting it in a blog. But I was daydreaming to such an extent that my parents were called up to the school as I wasn’t doing any work for months. At least now my fantasy world and really life are intersecting. Although that may be a dangerous thing. It’s a wonder I ever get anything done.

Shooting a video in a coupla days for our next single. Our friend Jack is directing. We like to keep things in the family. It should be fun. You hear that, Jack? It better be fun! None of your fancy pants directorial strops now!!! I’m on to you, Cocker!

I still haven’t got that sought after new album that’s gonna blow my mind. I know there’s something out there. Just need to find it.

Top 5 Ipod tunes today are…

Atom - British Sea Power

Milk - Kings of Leon

Dinosaur Act - Low

Big Time Sensuality - Bjork

Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town -  Pearl Jam

Cheers,

K

• Comments (1)

October 12th, 2008

I can feel myself getting sucked back into the world of the TV again. Having spent the last year and a half only getting reception for channel5 I now find myself turning into a couch potatoe in my new flat. My flatmate, ‘The Monster’ bought a didbox so now I’ve got access to myriad channels. And I’ve remebered how easy it is to turn into a big vegetable. Like last night for instance. When I sat up till 3am watching reruns of Red Dwarf on the Dave Channel. What a pointless waste of time. It was so much easier to just sit and watch than get up and go to bed. I could feel myself reverting to my student days of late night Tele.  Will need to make sure that doesn’t happen though. I don’t want to lose my newfound lust for doing things.  This week will see a self-imposed TV ban that should ensure I spend my evenings hunched over ‘The Conduit’ writing songs and being all creative and shit.

It’s true that life is always much more enjoyable when you are active and making things happen. You feel like your making life worthwhile when you get off your fat arse and be pro-active.  Need to get back to that mindframe again. TV is evil!  (Except for watching Boxsets and DVD’s on the tourbus! That’s the only time I don’t feel guilty about watching the screen for hours on end.)

The albums out at long last. It’s a fucking great feeling. I’m too scared to go into record stores though and look for it. What if someone I know sees me admiring my own record? The embarrassment! The humiliation! Then the world will realise that my humble exterior masks a degree of self-absorption they could never have guessed at. (Though I’m sure some ex-girlfriends would probably say I never hid it that well!)

Ally and Franny have just came back from Japan. Ally only went to make me jealous. He knows I really want to go to Japan. I am convinced that he had no real interest in going there. He just wanted to spite me. I know you are probably thinking ‘That’s a long way to go and a lot of money to spend to make someone jealous..’ But I’m sure of it. I know him! When I asked him what it was like he was very subdued in his responses. As if… as if he didn’t really go…? Hhhmm.. Perhaps that means he didn’t actually go. He probably went to Saltcoats instead and lived in a B&B for 2 weeks. Yeah, thats it. Thinks he can fool Kev Sherry does he??? Not on my watch!!!! Not on my watch!!!

Played in Manchester last week after a midnight drive down to the city. All of us hungover and sleep deprived in the dressing room. The support band was in the hallway outside our door, warming up and doing vocal exercises when suddenly a song burst into life over the PA system out front. I guess they were playing a CD to warm up the crowd. Colin, jokingly shouts out ‘Goany fucking keep it down out there!’ at which point, the support act outside the our door, shut up. I thought this was incredibly funny but Colin was moritified and went out to apologise to them,  explaining he was shouting at the PA system. As he was coming back into the room, before the door was fully closed, he saw the rest of us laughing at him and shouts at us ,’Ya Fucking Cunts!’ Now, bear in mind, if you are the other band standing outside our drssing room, that’s the last thing you hear as the door closes. As soon as he said it, Colin’s face went white as a sheet and he ran back out the door to apologise to them again and explain it was us that were the ‘fucking cunts’. By this point I was on the floor laughing and unable to breathe properly. Hhhmm. Maybe you had to have been there?

I need to update my ipod so I’ve got some new and exciting thing to listen to for the forthcoming tour. Suggest some albums for me to buy people…

Current Top 5 Ipod tunes are…

I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From - Kings of Convenience

Consolation Prizes - Phoenix

Another Day - Jamie Lidell

Some Guys Have All The Luck - Camera Obscura

Hells Bells - AC/DC

Cheers,

K

• Comments (0)

September 16th, 2008

I remember a few years ago I saw British Sea Power supporting The Flaming Lips on the Yoshimi tour. They didn’t really do it for me at that particular gig and I never paid them any mind since then. However, Blue gave me a loan of their most recent album ‘Do You Like Rock Music’ and it’s one of the best things I’ve heard in ages. Certainly one of the best British albums I’ve heard in donkeys. I’m now gonna have to buy their entire back catalogue. I was jogging through Kelvingrove the other day, listening to my Ipod when the track ‘Waving Flags’ came on and I had one of those moments when the music just overpowers you and you start feeling like your flying. A sort of musical levitation. By the end of the track I was sprinting rather than jogging. It was fantastic. All hail British Sea Power. My new obsession.

Looking forward to moving into a new flat. I’ve decided to move in with my mate Andy and I suddenly realised how much I’m looking forward to a change of scenery. I’ve been in my current flat for about a year and a half so I have been getting restless. A change will do me good.  It’s a refreshing thing to wake up in a new room every morning. I tend to get quite frustrated when every day I wake up to the same things or in the same place. I suppose I’m a natural itinerant. Plus, I always seem to write a batch of new songs whenever I move flat. It must be having new surroundings around me. So that will be good… if it happens… I suppose that’s all down to ‘the muse’ though. It’s a much more spacious flat so there will be plenty of room for all the crap I manage to accumulate and can’t bring myself to throw out (for ‘throw out,’ read, ‘tidy up.’)

This weekend, for the first time in my life, I had a complete and utter memory blank of my exploits on Saturday night. Getting back from London (with, in my defence, having had very little sleep the two nights previously) I went to a party with a couple of beers and my trusty bottle of Buckfast. It’s been a while since I’ve drank the dark brown nectar but I figured it was high time I re-indulged. I arrived at the party…. and that’s it. Next thing I know I’m waking up in bed the next day. I keep meeting people and asking them what they were doing on Saturday night only for them to reply that they were at the same party and were talking to me. Perhaps this is a sign that I should lay off the Bucky? Or perhaps I was spiked or summat? Who knows? Regardless, I’ll need to watch that.  It’s always kinda freaky when you lose your memory.  Especially if you are Guy Pierce in Memento. Which would be even more freaky. So, bearing in mind that Saturday night did not leave me saddled with a 15 minute long memory and not on the trail of my wife’s murderer then it can’t be that bad. So I say, Break out the Bucky!!!!!

We jammed Game Of Pricks by Guided By Voices today in rehearsals. It sounded excting. I hope we do it as a cover.

It’s been raining all day today in Glasgow. I think summer is over. I like autumn. But the crisp, clear, dry autumn. Not the pishing wet, mucky autumn. I’m waiting for that first day of autumn when the first cold snap is in the dry air, you dig out the wooly jumpers and walk about and everything smells and feels fresh. Gallus.

Top 5 Ipod tunes today are

No Lucifer - British Sea Power

Waving Flags - British Sea Power

Strawberry Letter 23 - Shuggie Otis

Get The Message - Electronic

Hope There’s Someone - Antony And The Johnsons

Cheers,

K

• Comments (0)