You have to wonder what art rock means sometimes. Is it just that their clothes are a bit absurd or the fact that they don’t sound like Coldplay? We’re fairly sure though that if anyone is art rock right now, XX Teens (formerly Xerox Teens until the stationer threw a wobbly, presumably before they started selling copier paper at gigs and undercutting their market) are. Stutteringly articulate, exaggerated, ridiculous, different to most and inherently destructive. They do not sell the term “performance” short either, their live gigs being the stuff of legend. And no matter whether they’re dealing in disco, new wave, electro, jazz, punk, psychedelia, 50s rock n roll or any extra-curricular ad-libs they generally sound like The Fall pillow-fighting with the B-52s, all without ever really repeating themselves. They’re blunt but effective. Their debut album ‘Welcome To Goon Island’ is a riot of expression and political diatribe. Rich Cash is their slurred mouthpiece and lets us know where his head’s at… Where are you now? What can you see?
I can see everything because I live on the twentieth floor. No one shuts their curtains, I used to like to watch people with binoculars, but I had to stop because I was wishing people would kill each other. You get good birds too; we’re too high up for the ordinary ones so you get the birds that eat the other birds, like sparrow hawks and eagle-y ones that hover around. I threw a sausage at one and it just looked at me. What was the last thing you ate?
A raspberry fool. I shared it with Will last night. What was the last album you bought?
I got two, one was ‘The Stanley Brothers Sing Bluegrass For You’ and the other one was ‘Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry’. The Stanley Brothers are brilliant, obviously, but the other one’s just insane. They do ‘Rock Island Line’ and Sonny Terry’s plays the harmonica like it’s glued to his lips forever and it’s the only way he can talk - and he’s got a lot to say. What was the last movie you saw?
‘My Brother Is An Only Child’ at the Prince Charles. I’d never heard of it but it was rainy and I needed somewhere to go. It’s about two brothers growing up in Italy in the fifties, one joins the communists and the other one becomes a fascist, I think it’s supposed to be about Romulus and Remus. One of them has a very pretty girlfriend but he dies, and then the other one looks after her and the baby. It’s good. What are you most looking forward to?
The greatest depression since the Great Depression. The bad thing is how people get so nationalistic, they had fascism in the 30’s and Brit Pop in the 90’s, -we don’t want all that again. The good thing is how you get lots of empty buildings to live in; I’m going to have two big houses, one for sleep and one for breakfast. What do you hate right now?
I’ve started watching people with binoculars again. Just talking about it made me do it. I just watched someone take something out the fridge. It’s duller than Big Brother but it’s addictive because you never know if something might happen. What was the last thing you liked that you saw on TV?
A friend of ours was on The Culture Show for making an animation. I watched it and I thought I recognised him but I didn’t pay attention. Then Anthony said –“Did you see Ed on TV?” and it all made sense. XX Teens were on The Culture Show once, but they only showed our feet. Where or how do you feel most comfortable?
There’s lots of tunnels near me and they all smell of salt, I like cycling through them. What would you class as your most defining moment?
XX Teens’ feet on The Culture Show. What are your plans for tonight?
Anthony’s getting married. He got married yesterday when we ate raspberry fools but he’s doing it again tonight in a beautiful old music hall. It’ll be great. ‘Welcome To Goon Island’ (Mute) is out now.
Relevant sites:
www.xxteens.co.uk
  
James Berry for Crud Magazine 2008©
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