| Gravenhurst are a folk band. Of a sort. Well, Gravenhurst is one man (Nick Talbot) with a few helping hands, so a folk man. You may hear them referred to as post-rock, and they’re sort of that too, though that’s not the whole truth. Jazz? Yeah, throw some of that this way. Gravenhurst, who return this month with ‘The Western Lands’ pluck delicately but decisively at stringed instruments and then spin things out into the ether with a psychedelic loom. In a busy folk-revival scene they’re the ones nuzzling against the ozone layer over sometimes stormy clouds. The album itself is as immaculate as anything he/they have previously committed to tape, and in spite of being defined by disparate lightweight instrumental and sometimes vocal strands there are some very immediate moments. ‘She Dances’ is Sonic Youth’s more recent form via Shack back to The Stone Roses’ embryonic early days, ‘Song Among The Pine’ and the delectable ‘Trust’ are pure Low and ‘The Collector’ is the Cocteau Twins and Electrelane with their heads out of a speeding train’s windows, in slow motion. We grabbed a few virtual minutes with Nick to find out where his head’s at before he drifted off into his own twilight ether… Where are you now? What can you see?
I'm in bed with my laptop. I can see the other end of my bed, a postcard for the documentary 'The Mindscape Of Alan Moore' which is stuck on my wall, and a can of cider which I am drinking.
What was the last thing you ate?
A piece of bread with some butter on it. The butter was hard because it had been in the fridge. I served the butter like cheese, in massive slabs. I now feel bad inside. Both physically and spiritually.
What is the next album you intend to buy?
I've been watching 'Solitary Life', the BBC documentary about Richard Thompson, on You Tube. There are some fantastic stories surrounding his solo debut 'Henry The Human Fly'; that it originally only sold 8 copies (and a friend of my manager bought two of them), that it was the 'fastest deleted album' in the Warner Records catalogue, that the critics hated it at the time but it was recently voted into the Top 20 Guitar albums of all time in Mojo magazine. If we ran a poll of The Best Guitar Albums With The Worst Cover Artwork then Thompson's 'Henry The Human Fly' would automatically be number one. Anyway, that's my next purchase.
What was the last movie you saw?
The last film I saw was Hellboy, which happened to be showing on Channel 5 when I was in a friend's kitchen heating up some soup this evening. I've seen it a few times before, and it's disappointing; a wasted opportunity. They tried to fit too much in; it feels like the first installment of a six part HBO miniseries – which is what it should have been. There just isn't enough time to do justice to Mike Mignola's characters. Obviously Del Toro's a gifted director, he's proved it with Pan's Labyrinth; perhaps he'll go back and do another Hellboy film and get the pace right. We have seen time and again how hard it is to adapt comic books to the screen. Producers assume it is easy because they see both as 'pictorial', but that's a red herring. Comic books are an autonomous medium and are no easier to adapt than novels; Hollywood has barely scratched the surface. Batman Begins is the best comic book adaptation so far, but even then the fight scenes were cut too fast – presumably to ensure an R-rating. Like so many, I have low expectations for the film of Alan Moore's Watchmen that is currently in production.
What are you most looking forward to?
I have a new Fender valve amp turning up tomorrow. FUCK YEAH.
What do you hate the most?
I am trying to get away from hate. Not in a pacific or pious way; I just think that hate feels like a pretty retarded emotion; a knee jerk response. If you peel back the layers of emotion you might find something more complex and interesting. It might even be more frightening than hate.
What was the last thing you liked that you saw on TV?
Probably South Park. South Park rarely fails to deliver. Other than that, I am waiting to see what Matthew Hollness (Garth Marenghi/Merriman Weir et al) does next, he's fucking brilliant.
Where or how do you feel most comfortable?
In bed, asleep.
What would you class as your most defining moment?
I sincerely hope it hasn't happened yet. I'll leave it up to someone else to define it.
What are your plans for tonight?
It's 2am already. I should probably go to bed now. ‘The Western Lands’ by Gravenhurst is out now on Warp Records
www.gravenhurstmusic.com
www.myspace.com/gravenhurst
James Berry for Crud Magazine 2007©
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