Music
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LANEGAN’S VOCAL POWER IS THE PERFECT FIT FOR THIS DOWNBEAT ELECTRONICA Hitlist THE BEST ROCK, POP, JAZZ & FOLK*
✽✽ A Band called Quinn Widescreen indie electropop from Ms Quinn and her cohorts. The Dive, Glasgow, Thu 20 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Soulsavers See preview, left. Oran Mor, Glasgow, Tue 25 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Katy Perry Kissing girls and liking it is just part of this Yank pop princess’s repertoire. Barrowland, Glasgow, Fri 21 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers, Ming Ming & the Ching Chings, French Wives and Sol Diablos A cunning local line- up, headed by folksome indie mob Woodenbox. Corinthian, Glasgow, Fri 21 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Bill Callahan Smog by any other name doing his beguiling deadpan countryisms. See 5 Reasons, page 39. Stereo, Glasgow, Sun 23 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Trembling Bells Sonorous psych folk quartet who have played beside their heroes like Fairport Convention over the festival season and paraded the spectral Carbeth album. Stereo, Glasgow, Wed 26 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ We Were Promised Jetpacks, Broken Records, Sparrow & the Workshop and Some Young Pedro To mark the first, incredibly successful year of The Mill, some of the highlights form the last 12 months are gathered up to play a proper shindig. Oran Mor, Thu 27 Aug. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Aly Bain & Phil Cunningham Folk’s dynamic duo roll out their fiddle and accordion and fine line in homely patter. Guild Theatre, Greenock, Fri 21 Aug; Queen’s Hall, Dunoon, Sat 22 Aug; Eastgate Theatre, Peebles, Sun 23 Aug; Albert Halls, Stirling, Tue 25 Aug. (Folk)
Joint effort
When Mark Lanegan brings his growl to bear on Soulsavers’ cinematic electronica the results are nothing short of stunning. Doug Johnstone meets the team
Gravelly voice-for-hire Mark Lanegan loves a good collaboration, from Isobel Campbell to Queens of the Stone Age to fellow grunge veteran Greg Dulli, but how did he come to team up with English production and remix duo Soulsavers?
‘I’ve been a big fan of his for a long time and we had a mutual friend,’ says Rich Machin, one half of the outfit along with Ian Glover. ‘We’d finished our first record and I was talking to my friend who said he would pass Mark a copy, it might be something he’d be into ‘cos he was a big fan of electronic music. Five weeks later I got a call saying he was really into it and was up for meeting. We hung out to see if we would get along, if there was any kind of connection, and straight away it seemed like something that would work pretty well.’
Pretty well is an understatement, because the duo collaborated brilliantly with Lanegan, first on 2007’s It’s Not How Far You Fall, It’s the Way You Land and now on third album Broken. The new album features an all-star cast of guest vocalists, including Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Faith No More’s Mike Patton, indeed so much quality did they have to hand that they ended up not including Will Oldham’s contribution on the album at all. Throughout it all, though, Lanegan is the focus, his incredible vocal power a perfect fit for the downbeat electronica which this time round contains more soul, country and gospel in the mix. As time goes on, Soulsavers sound less like a production team and more like a rock’n’roll band having a rare old time.
goes by,’ says Machin. ‘We did some touring in the run up to making this record, and I guess we soaked a lot of that up and it tended to come out that way.’
Soulsavers aren’t just a rock’n’roll band, though. There is a real cinematic sweep to Broken, an impressive musical ambition, which goes a long way to creating a wonderfully evocative and coherent piece of work.
‘I enjoyed making this record much more than the last one,’ Machin admits, ‘simply because I was allowed the chance to indulge myself with a few things I’d never had the chance to before, like working with a real orchestra. It was great being able to realise the sounds I had in my head.’ Machin and Glover are increasingly in demand for soundtrack work, as well as having plenty of their tunes pinched for high-profile American TV shows and movies. The two instrumentals on Broken certainly indicate that their future could easily lie in that direction, and it’s an aspect of what they do that Machin has loved since the start.
‘Instrumental music is something I’ve always been a big fan of,’ he says. ‘I love a lot of old Italian film score composers, I grew up listening to Morricone and Bruno Nicolai. And I also love more modern instrumental bands like Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky. There’s something really amazing about that stuff if you get it right.’
A description that could easily apply to Soulsavers
themselves.
‘What we’re doing has naturally evolved as time Oran Mor, Glasgow, Tue 25 Aug.
34 THE LIST 20–27 Aug 2009