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Shortly after receiving the attention of Dreamy records,
Graham Darnell promptly moved from London to Glasgow.
In any other circumstances this might have seemed a
trifle strange.The fact that it's Dreamy, however somehow
makes it all seem perfectly fine.
Despite a couple of tracks from Dreamy's 'Head In The
Clouds' compilation and his quietly released 'Popwish
EP' Never, "Maybe Not Even Then" is Graham's
first full feature length album to date.br>
Situated in lyrical style and delivery somewhere between,
Elliot Smith, Prefab Sprout and that unrepeatedly eighties
phenomenon, The Dream Academy, Never, And Maybe Not
Even Then is a strangley bouyant tragic fantasy of loss
and speculation. Lazy, lanquid - with the both the smell
of newly cut grass and the fumes of the bustling smokey
metropolis the album evokes the purr of a city in motion,
where the underground heaves and meetings are short
and where the traditional English tea-time is timed
out with cigarettes and always endlessly imminent. Yes,
it's about as quirky and English as they come.
Never, And Maybe Not Even Then showcases not the blossoming
songsmithery of a true pop talent , but the inadequate
futile attempts of a humble man to stem the flow of
time and the shuffling proximity of London's busy-life-styles.
Fireworks and fish-fingers, brain-storms and bus-rides.
Self-depracating, of course, but far from inadequate.
If you like Nick Drake as performed by a whispering
John Shuttleworth - you're sincerely going to love it.
An impossible album, even by Dreamy's standards.
Intrigued, and moreover curious as to the heartbroken
stable of troubadours that has become the Dreamy rosta,
Crud decided to ask Graham himself about the album.
Crud: Great album title. How did it come about?
Graham: Thank you. I think it's a Croatian saying.
I used to play in a ramshackle football team called
Red Star Acton. It comprised of some Brits and various
Eastern European types, mainly Ukrainians and Yugoslavians.
We had a particularly bad goalkeeper, a certain Mr Melnik,
of whom we were quite proud in our own ramshackle way.
But on one occasion, while patrolling his area exceptionally
hopelessly, one of our Croatians couldn't stand it any
longer and shouted, 'Melnik, when will you be a good
goalkeeper? I'll tell you when: never, and maybe not
even then.' It became a bit of a catch phrase.
I was reminded recently that Mr Melnik did on one occasion
make an impossibly good save, at which point our same
Croatian friend came up with: 'Even a blind chicken
can find food.' This would have been a contender for
the title of the next album if I hadn't learnt even
more recently that it has already been used.
 Crud:
There's a superficial or surface pessimism about the
album; superficial because there seems a deeper, perhaps
more sincere vein of hope. Excluding things like train
disasters, and serial murders do you generally see the
upside of most tragic circumstances?
Graham: I'd say there is something to be valued
in heightened emotional states almost independently
of whether they are immediately pleasurable or not.
However, I certainly wouldn't intentionally court misery.
I guess that, if there were such a thing as an emotional
calculus, melancholy and its complex brethren might
be found to be strongly related to love, but what would
I know? I certainly have hope, along with most people.
Crud: The album shares with The Santa Sprees
album 'Keep Still' a celebration of sorts of the 'moment'
- in whatever shape or form in which it passes. Would
you agree?
Graham: Any connection with Santa Sprees is gratefully
welcomed. I love their work and strongly urge everyone
to become acquainted with it. But I think I have, in
this album, tended to be more concerned with the moment
than they. While I think there are certain narrative
leanings that we both share, I would say that Anthony's
lyrics exhibit a diversity that escapes such categorisation,
while I would have to admit to it as a strong theme,
for this album at least.
Crud: How would you describe your musical history?
What got you started? What brought you here?
Graham: I think I've wanted to write songs since
around the age of 13. I suppose I have a tendency to
want to make things. And that works in other fields,
not just music. But writing and recording a song is
a manageable amount of work that can be done by a single
person in a reasonable amount of time. Admittedly, I
do seem to be able to while away many hours at it without
getting bored. And attempts to work in other areas tend
to result in various forms of failure born from naive
enthusiasm and very little skill. So, I guess music
really has turned out to be my main thing. And I do
rate music highly in comparison to other forms of creativity.
So, anyway, I'd been writing some songs as a low-level
activity on and off for quite a while. Then I finally
got a 4-track and coincidentally inherited an old Hammond
organ, recorded some stuff and gave a copy to Chris
Healey from Arco at one of their gigs. I'd got to know
him a little through his brother Nick, and I just thought
he might like to hear my stuff, since he'd just done
me the honour of playing me his. A few months later
I got a phone call from Tracy, who runs Dreamy Records,
asking me if I'd like to make some records. Since then,
I've been doing as much as I can. And Chris has continued
to be very encouraging, and a welcome musical ally.
We now play together quite often - Arco (Chris Healey,
Nick Healey, and Dave Milligan) are my live backing
band, which is great, and I also help out with some
extra guitar at their gigs.
Then there's Anthony and Katherine from Santa Sprees.
We have kept up some sort of musical dialogue for a
good number of years now, from swapping tapes to discussing
the science of lyric writing. They've definitely been
an inspiration. I played some guitar and did some backing
vocals for them when they came over from Japan for a
couple of gigs. That was wonderful. I hope we can do
it again some time.
Crud: Any particular albums that have inspired
you or threaten to inspire you? How do you feel about
the Eliot Smith, Belle and Sebastian comparisons? Barking
up the wrong tree? Or are we just barking mad?
Graham: I'm not overly acquainted with either
of those artists' work, although I have heard their
stuff from time to time and might stand a chance of
recognising it in a blind tasting. Tracy (at Dreamy
Records) plays me Eliot Smith sometimes (she's a huge
fan), and I don't really want to dismiss it, because
I understand he has a hard and complex story to tell,
but I never really feel inspired to go and buy any myself.
I rarely go for that simple acoustic singer-songwriter
stuff these days, although, saying that, I am a big
fan of Will Oldham in all his guises. I'm very picky.
Something really has to infect me musically, intellectually,
emotionally, or preferably in all these ways, before
I can truly say that I like it. It's great when you
really fall in love with an album and play it to death
for a few weeks, use it up, then move on: the teenager
model. But that kind of enchantment has been pretty
rare recently.
As far as direct influences are concerned, I know they
must exist - no one writes in a vacuum - but nothing
really springs to mind, so I'll pass on that, if you
don't mind.
Crud: Is your move away from London in any way,
shape or form connected to the 'difficult' subject matter
of the album. There's a feeling that London and the
city has in some way compromised you at some point in
your life; that it's been both the source of joy as
well as a great nuisance. Is this the case?
Graham: Is that really all there in the album?
I did live in London for 15 years before going to Glasgow
for a while. But it was only really practical things,
like the size and the public transport that ground me
down. I'm back now, and I'm currently writing this on
the tube. It's taking me an hour and a half on a bus
and two trains to get to a point in West London where
I might be able to start thinking about travelling to
Reading for a gig at The Happy Robots Festival. 15 years
of that takes its toll. I had the opportunity to move
away for a while, so I took it. I just think it's unhealthy
to live all your adult life in one place.
Crud: As a philosophy graduate how do you feel
about the term 'autobiographical' when referring to
many of your narratives or the personal nature of your
songs? Do you believe there's anything a writer produces
that can be deemed 'autobiographical' or subjective?
I'm thinking about certain theories of authorship that
claim any narrative of any sort as soon as it's produced
becomes 100% mythology...
Graham: Philosophy is annoying; you rarely get
to the end of such questions. Some days I have some
fairly strong, old-fashioned Cartesian leanings, so
I'm rarely keen on removing the subject from my worldview.
I think it makes sense to talk of individuals, each
having privileged access to their own history and states
of mind. But they are always accessed through a complex
of interpretative strategies that are more often than
not held in common or arrived at through personal, familial,
economic, or other forms of social relation. It's tempting,
almost for the sake of theoretical simplicity, to place
a subject's interpretation of their own life no higher
than anybody else's. But I personally wouldn't go that
far.
Clearly there are elements in my songs that can be,
and probably should be, viewed as autobiographical.
But these tend to be expressed in the second-, rather
than the first-, person and slosh around in a sea of
fantasy and naïve-indie-Mills & Boon romance. It seems
to me that songs necessarily monkey around in the territory
between writer and listener. They're so condensed; you
snatch a few images or references from your own view
of things, real or imaginary, and hope they make some
kind of interesting brew for someone else. Of course,
you're working within a strong inter-subjective framework,
so a complete failure to communicate is unlikely. But
you also want to leave space for the listener to rewrite
their own version of a song in terms of their own experience
and imagination.
Anyway, I think I'm more interested in the way it seems
possible to forge an almost inexplicable sense of an
author or a songwriter through an acquaintance with
a body of work rather than through a detailed inspection
of particular lyrics. At a certain critical mass you
just seem to know them in a way that is similar to the
way you might know a half-remembered friend or lover.
Crud: Which exerts the greater controlling force
in song writing: rhyme or reason?
Graham:
Reason mostly,
But rhyme,
Sometime.
Crud: I was a little surprised by the production
on the album. It seems almost conventional when compared
to the lo-fi nature and content of some of the songs.
Is this something you're completely happy with? Who
was wearing the producer's hat?
Graham: It was all self-produced at home. I just
see arrangement and production as part of the adventure,
so I wouldn't like to hand that over to someone else.
About half the songs on the album are quite old, and
their treatment stems partly from that and partly from
a bald lack of talent and experience in this area.
Crud: Why the German reprise of In Der Heiligen
Nacht?
Graham: It's a Swiss Christmas fairytale. I came
across it when I was working in Bern a couple of years
ago. I liked it and I thought it was appropriate, so
I threw it in there. I also quite like the idea that
it's a little semi-secret space in the album, which
you can unlock if you care to. Full marks for mentioning
it though. I think most people just try and pretend
it's not there. Either that or they think it's just
too ridiculous to bring up in sensible conversation.
Crud: There's something rather compelling about
the robust American dialogue during the close of The
Best Spectacular? In fact it seems to reflect the entire
awe-struck psychology of the album. How did this come
about, and who is the yank?
Graham: He's a bloke with a very loud voice who
used to hang around a New York train station platform
with his mates. I was there visiting a friend for a
couple of weeks and used that train station almost every
day. Anyway, I finally gave in to temptation and secretly
recorded him. Since his monologue was clearly audible
from the street I figured it was public property and
wrote the song around those two clips. I'm quite happy
with it.
Crud: What is it about Dreamy and the no-shortage
of broken hearts. I'm thinking not only of Arco, but
tracks like Remember It Good, which seems palpably lump-in-throat?
Is there a common connection or thread?
Graham: Well, we're not all breaking each-others
hearts, if that's what you mean.
Crud: What's your state of mind with regard to
'Graham' at the moment?
Graham: New music, new possibilities, new adventure,
new crappy organ from a second-hand shop.
What a guy. What an organ...
Interview and report by A. Sargeant for Crud
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