The Cliffs of Insanity

Not-so-fried Fish
Below the Ice

The other day I took my mother out to dinner.  As she looked through the menu, she called my attention to the steak and fish combo, mentioning that the way the fried fish portions were laid out in the photo, they looked like (to her, mind you) a fetus.

“I’m not crazy, look at this,” she said.  “Over here is the head, these are the arms…”

“I think you’ve snapped, Mum.”

“Go to hell.  What’s it look like to you?”  (Abrasion is a hereditary trait in the Pettigrew family.)

“Fried fish on a plate.”

“Forget it.  I wonder what the Turkey Special looks like…”

Over a decade ago, Shriekback excavated the area of post-punk avant garde with a dense groove.  When Barry Andrews, Dave Allen and Carl Marsh released their first mini-LP Tench back in 1981, there were many necks strained from the double take.  Each member brought with them elements of their previous bands (XTC, Gang of Four, Out On Blue Six, respectively) and created a funk-rock-noise amalgamation.  Drummer Martyn Barker was acquired shortly afterward, and the quartet released a few records that were crazed and mysterious (Care, Jam Science and Oil And Gold), as well as a string of heavily rotated club singles like “My Spine (Is the Bass Line),” and the only rock song which used the word “parthenogenesis” (“Nemesis”).

Marsh was the first to bail out during a 1985 tour and the trio continued with guitarist Mike Cozzi, releasing a smoother record, Big Night Music.  Soon afterward, disinterest began to take a toll on Allen, and he vacated.  The remaining band members recorded Go Bang!, an album aimed solely at the marketplace.  If there was any irony in recording a cover of KC and the Sunshine Band’s loathsome “Get Down Tonight,” it was certainly lost.  After they had written the band off, Barker and Allen formed the faceless AOR-ploy King Swamp, and Andrews started a band called Illuminati, whose only album remains on ice.

Eventually, Allen, in his new position as label chief at World Domination, thought the time was right for a new Shriekback LP.  Andrews and Barker agreed and the result, Sacred City, like most of their prestigious body of work, has moments of tense ambience, shimmering pop, screaming noise and jungle grooves.

But what’s this got to do with fried fish looking like fetuses?  Two things:  does this tried-and-true “comeback” story look more like that of the Buzzcocks, or the Sex Pistols?  And is their reunion just another stab at commerce or does it only look that way?

“Comeback?”  questions the terminally polite Andrews.  “Go ahead, use it,” he concedes.

Even with all the dinosaur/last gasp connotations?

“That may well be so, but fact is fact and here we are, so make of it what you will.”

“I don’t think that’s totally appropriate,” counters Allen.  “It’s acceptable, but whenever I hear ‘comeback,’ I hear ‘failure.’”

So you think of the Gang of Four’s recent reunion then?

“That’s a bit unkind,” he corrects trying to ease smears on his old band.  “I think of it as a continuation.  God knows where it’s going to go now.”

Allen bailed out of Shriekback the first time around after a neverending world tour left him drained, stifled and looking quite miserable.  These days his stage demeanor is totally animated and he looks like he’s even having (gas) fun.  Fun despite having to open Shriekback shows with his other group Low Pop Suicide and living on a $26-dollar-a-day touring allowance.

“I was disillusioned playing the same set every night,” he says.  “I was tired of having to appease fans with hits, and my personal life was in shambles.  I had to leave and go do things.  I remember telling you that whatever happened in my life, I had to do King Swamp, just to see if I could.  Now, I fell a lot more inspired.”

And Allen has provided his share of inspirations as well:  his terse bass lines during his tenure in Gang of Four and Shriekback predate all the new tattooed bass-slapping plagiarists that have sprouted up in funk-metal cliché bands in regional music scenes.

“Yeah,” he concurs.  “It seems that’s more like cabaret now.  And I was concerned about [being construed as a funk-metal band] to the point where I had discussed it with Barry before this tour and he felt the same way.  I was talking to Flea at Lollapalooza and he told me he learned everything about bass from the first two Gang of Four records.  But it sounds to me like he actually listened to Shriekback!”

“The time is really right for us,” says Andrews.  “Now we don’t have to wonder what the single’s going to be or what our place is in the market.  We’ve returned to the same principle we had when we made Care – if it’s exciting we’ll do it.”

Chinese water torture seems far more exciting (if not more fulfilling) than the truly tepid Go Bang!

“We have a light and frivolous side so we figured we’d make a light and frivolous record,” he counters.  “Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

Even at the expense of what you do best:  propulsive funk and dark atmospherics?

“I think you can trace Shriekback’s career in those two threads:  a dancey, noisy side and a dark, brooding bit.  There’s no shame in something different.

“I think it’s quite unfair to raise the banner of a sell-out album, which I believe is what you’re implying,” he says with a little annoyance.  “I think every time you make a record your motivations are complex, so in your implications that Go Bang! was made to be commercial, well, yeah.  And we were [trying to be commercial] on all the other records we made too.”

The latest LP Sacred City is a song cycle (the ‘90s term for “concept album”) featuring vignettes of city life.  Andrews’ original concept was intended to take the form of a written thesis or a movie, until Allen called him up to discuss reforming the group (actually, Andrews has created a video for the album which will be available shortly).  There is the foreboding darkness of “Below” and “3 am,” the steamy grooves rising from the street on “Beatles Zebra Crossing” and “Signs” and the noise overload of “The Bastard Sons of Enoch.”  For this LP, the band reassessed their energy and avoided the hard-driving funk synapses, aiming instead for subtlety.

“Yes, it’s a more subtle record,” agrees Andrews.  “In terms of some of the African-y grooves and brush rhythms and such, sure.  On “Bastard Sons” we had guitars being played with power drills and knives but at the end of the day, some of them didn’t make it through our filtration system.”

What is that filtration system?  Here’s a man who’s scored film music, played with XTC, Iggy Pop, Robert Fripp and still has the enthusiasm to get onstage and, ugh, shriek (sorry).

“I can’t sing like Aretha Franklin or Bono,” Andrews muses aloud.  “I can’t play keyboards like Rick Wakeman.  All I do is have ideas and an energy to want to make things.  The fact that it comes out in music is because I’ve been doing it for a while.”

Shriekback’s live line-up is augmented by the serrated violin stylings of Cat Evans and guitarist Cozzi.  Another tour may be in the works, and a new Shriekback LP may appear next fall.  Despite a hiatus from wild shamanic dancing and playing in front of people, Shriekback theorize that the difference between rejuvenation and adrenalin is merely in the spelling.

“Playing live is odd,” admits Andrews.  “You put on weird clothes, jump around, get sweaty and shout at people, and they behave in the most unnatural way.”

Are you apologizing?

“No, not at the moment.  I haven’t done anything terrible yet!”

Shriekback's 13th studio album, 'Without Real String or Fish', is currently available from the band's website.  If your mouse aim ain't what it used to be, just click the album cover below.  While you visit, be sure to sign up for the band's newsletter, as you will be provided with opportunities to nab yourself some rare or never-before-heard songs, freebies, and all the latest Shriek news that's relevant.

Shriekback's Finally, whatever you do, do not read this and then not share it with everyone.  Should you be the only happy member of your Ka-Tet? Nay! Be the precious petal we all know you are, and spread the good news to all four corners of the world! 

Still in its relative infancy, the old Shriekback.com, The Shriekback Digital Conspiracy, launched a campaign based on the idea that artists and their fans should cut out the middle man. As part of Throwback Thursday, here's what is said about that exciting time on Shriekback's Tumblr blog:

Since we're once again *having a moment*, let's take a look back to the genesis of our "by subscription" EP, which foretold the rise of crowdfunding 14 years ago. This was the announcement seen on the old Shriekback.com back in 2001. To those who contributed then and are reading this now, we thank you again for helping make Having a Moment a reality, and cheers to you all for your continuing support. Having a Moment is once again available for purchase. You need only go to our online store. Whilst there, pick up a copy of our new album, Without Real String or Fish!

Personally, I think the band should be getting a cut of the profits sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo enjoy. Once again, the Shrieks were way ahead of their time.  Here is the original "Fate" page mentioned in the above announcement.  In order to easily read it, click the image for full size.

Shriekback

Big Electric Energy

by Lesley Sly

They are tired of being cult heroes – Shriekback, the weird studio band, the unpredictable performers. Their new line-up, tour and album were the firt lap in a drive for wider acceptance. Head shrieker, Barry Andrews, maps out the course.

The Shriekback of old was, by their own admission, chaotic and experimental. They were machine-men, dabbling with drum computers and Fairlights, every song a loose sketch from backing track to overdub. And live, it was jam science.

But the Shriekback that stormed Australia with a high octane live set and the cruisy cocktail-style album, Big Night Music, in March was a different kettle of…fish. (Alas, little light was shed on their strange preoccupation with deep sea creatures in our post-gig interview).

They are now a band intent on cracking the mainstream, getting their powerful live sound onto vinyl and dispensing with as much machinery as possible in the process.

They’ve been streamlining the human element, too. When they hit the cultish London circuit in 1981 with the mini-album, Tench, they were six-piece. By the following year, they were three – Barry Andrews (vocals/keyboards; ex-XTC, Robert Fripp’s League of Gentlemen), David Allen (bass; ex-Gang of Four) and Carl Marsh (guitar).

Then came the albums Care and Jam Science and in 1984 they took on drummer, Martyn Barker, had their first chart single Hand On My Heart and followed up with the album, Oil And Gold, inn 1985.

In early 1986 they signed a new deal with Island and lost Carl Marsh. Another change was the approach to recording. The writing trio of Andrews, Allen and Barker decided to concentrate on the expansive, atmospheric elements of their music and go for an ‘all-played’ groove, augmented by their four-piece Big Live Band – Michael Cozzi (guitars), Steve Halliwell (keyboards) and backing singers, Wendy and Sarah Partridge.

For the Australian tour they added a percussionist and Barry left keyboard duties to Steve, bar the occasional solo.

The last time I saw the band live was at one of their first gigs in a seedy London pub. On stage this year, in the claustrophonic refectory hall at Sydney Uni, there was hardly a trace of the enfant terrible. Dynamic, controlled, structured rock’n’roll theatre, a new authority, no chaos.

In the dressing room later, Barry Andrews explained this new order…

Your live set is much more structured now. There are middle-eights, you all start and stop in the same places. You’re very tight and professional…

I don’t know about very tight and professional, but certainly more than we used to be. We do all end at the same time.

Remember the Greyhound in Fulham (London), one of your first gigs?

(Shudders) Christ Almighty. We have changed since then.

Do you think you’ve sacrificed spontaneity for structure?

Not really. It used to be a fucking mess. There was a good, wild, out-of-control energy, you know all those AAARRRRGH, post-punk screams. But after a while…it’s unchannelled and ultimately not satisfying when you do seven gigs in a row and only one of them is any good.

I think we are channeling that energy more and there are still areas of improvisation…freedom within that structure.

All the solos. I never play the same solo twice on Feelers, I’m always mucking around with the vocals, doing little improvised rants and stuff.

You get quite close to recorded sounds live…

Were you using Fairlight much on Big Night Music?

No. We’d decided it was going to be a low budget album and we weren’t going to use the Fairlight as much as we had on Oil And Gold. We also wanted to use more acoustic instruments, so that it sounded like a band in a room playing some music, all in time.

Towards the end of recording there was a particular sound on Underwaterboys that we couldn’t get on either the JP8 or the DSS1 and me and Gavin (MacKillop, co-producer) were tearing our hair out [er, figuratively speaking]. So we decided to chip inn out of our own money and get the Fairlight to do this sound. As it turned out we did do it within budget – we didn’t have to sell our cars or anything – and so we went round the tracks putting little touches of Fairlight on here and there.

You’ve always used machines to make music. Was the decision taken on this album not to do so due to budget or were you bored with that approach?

No, it wasn’t because of the budget. It was the first record where Martyn (drummer) had really found his feet and he had loads and ideas bubbling over. It seemed a bit irrelevant to haul in a Fairlight or drums computer and put it through its paces.

We were bored with all that stuff after a four-year romance with technology too. Also, some of the rhythms are so subtle like, Running on the Rocks – there no drum computer in the world can do that.

How do you write your songs?

Always from the rhythm. In the old day it was a drum machine and we’d build the songs in the studio a la Bowie and all that. But, that wasn’t a particularly cost-effective way of doing things and we also decided that we wanted the…thing to happen in music that you only get when you’ve played a song for a long time on stage.

On Oil and Gold there was only one track that was like that (Health And Knowledge) which, while it wasn’t a great groove or even a particularly great song, had this smoothness, a rotundity to it. We thought it would be nice to have a whole album with the edges worn off, with a nice ‘used’ quality to it.

Do you write together?

Generally, Martyn will put down a rhythm and we’ll all – me, Dave and Martyn – improvise around that. If there’s an energy to the groove we’ll just tape the drums on cassette for two minutes.

Then, I take that home and put it on my cassette machine which has a loop function and just sit there singing to it, record that on another machine and listen to it. I find that quite often good things come out when you’re just burbling off the top of your head whereas if you sat down and tried to write it, that critical part of the brain might be brought to bear on it and crush the idea before it grows. I then go through and make notes, wander round, have a cup of tea, read a few books, find a few weird words (laughs).  Then I do the whole process again until the thing starts to bed down into a structure, verse, chorus, etc.  Then, I take it back to Dave and Martyn and we work on chords and details.

Atmosphere is crucial in your music. Is sound important in the writing process?

I tend to find that the rhythm will suggest a certain kind of atmosphere. It will all be encapsulated in that rhythm. Once you’ve got the initial crystalisation of the song, it’s all police work from there on. Like, Shining Path…it was obvious from that rhythm and the title that it was going to be this huge, swirly, exotic druggie-opium vision. From there on we knew it was going to need bells, big chords, wind gong, etc.

No home studios?

Martyn’s making moves in that direction. Sometimes I think it would be a good idea but then…I used to do that with XTC. I used to sit in my bedroom with an Akai two-track machine, a Wurlitzer piano and microphone and write the whole thing. Then I’d go along with a song and try to impose it on the band and tell the bass player and drummer what to play.It had a kind of awkwardness to it because they were playing something which wasn’t quite natural for them. Sometimes it worked but now it works every time because we don’t add things to songs unless they do work.

So, when you record now you take complete songs in?

Yeah and we’re going to work that way on the next album. There’s a couple of new ones we’re playing already.

How long does it take to get a song together?

Maybe a day per song. But, once I take the verse and chorus along we just put a bit of intense energy into it, maybe an hour, and then I take it home and work on it again. Then we bring in the other players.

You use the Jupiter 8 for rehearsals?

What’s happened to that battered old organ you used for years?

It’s in my ex-wife’s cupboard. I go round every now and then and dust it off (the organ, that is). It’s a sweet little thing, and I can’t bring myself to throw it away but I can’t find any use for it anymore.

Was recording Big Night Music standard procedure?

It was exciting to work like that and if money was no object I probably still would…

Because there’s always the element of surprise when you’re actually creating the song track-by-track?

Yeah…the only track we did like that was Sticky Jazz and I think you can hear the difference…the textures change suddenly.

What about vocal treatment?

On Big Night Music I was getting into big whispering but the process of recording was mostly traditional. Occasionally I fed my voice through an AC30 amp wound up like fuck and recorded in a live room. On the end of Black Light Trap I fed it though Mike’s pedalboard with the distortion wound right up…and all these other knobs. I don’t really know what they do.

It’s your fifth album and seems like a summary of the rest. Do you agree?

No, I think there are areas left out…mainly the big noisy stuff. It’s like taking one of the themes of Shriekback, which is the big, dark, quiet cocktail band thing with more of the reggae influence. We’ve taken that and really explored it.

On the next album we’ll get into the big racket.

Using players and no machines?

Yes, I think so. It usually becomes apparent after you’ve been on the road a while what sort of album you want to make next. On this tour it’s become clear that everyone is excited about taking the atmosphere we get live and trying to record that and mess with it and see what happens.

Back to the whispering…you’ve said you’ll do more shouting next time. Isn’t the whisper part of Shriekback’s charm, a hallmark almost?

Well, for the sake of making an homogenous record…it always irritated me, about Oil And Gold especially, that you’re listening to a noisy track, you’re in party mode and then suddenly it goes all quiet and mushy and you have to leap for the turntable and get that track off.

When I want to listen to a piece of music I want an atmosphere and I think most people do. So, I would say…yeah, we’ll have a whispering-free, high-noise album. (laughs).

Why are you so popular here and often dismissed as an arty band in the UK?

There’s two things…if you’re not getting played on radio in the UK there isn’t really the gig circuit to establish yourself anymore. Also, the British psyche finds it a bit disgusting seeing this person up there on stage going ‘waaaah, look at me’. They like records and nightclubs and keeping it all under control.

For a long time in England we were making experimental, reflective, not grab-you-by-the-throat sort of records and people got a bit bored waiting for Shriekback to do something that would be devastating. And live, it was a shambles. We couldn’t take an audience like we did tonight. Now, we can take a cool audience and have them in a frenzy by the end because we’ve learnt the art of rock’n’roll theatre.

The soundtrack you’ve done for the movie, Slamdance…

It’s not a soundtrack, it’s just the song at the end. I’m looking at doing a soundtrack though…I’ve done a film music demo to a whole bunch of image from wildlife documentaries and films like Conan the Barbarian and Passage to India. So we’re going to go to LA and throw a few video tapes at a few moguls there.

Shriekback has its own sovereignty – it’s not something that each of us independently would do. I found doing the film music demo it was more one dimensional.

You’ve talked about having a magic power live that you don’t understand. Is that created because of the audience?

I think it’s there in rehearsal too, it’s just a smaller audience! It’s partly that with the band the sum is greater than the parts. I like working on my own but I prefer having other people around to bounce off and crash into.

What about your preoccupation with fish?

(Laughs)…What can I tell you?

Other projects?

Yeah…Martyn is writing his own songs which sound fabulously commercial, Dave is talking about doing an album with Jorgensen of Ministry and I’m making Super 8 movies at the moment.

Film seems to be quite a strong direction for me…I’m just assembling images and playing around with scripts.

Solo albums?

No. Shriekback is not entirely my vision but at least I can involve all my musical interests which is great.

In XTC I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, only that it wasn’t XTC. It was only after that that I started to look at my musical language…finding out why I liked certain kinds of music, and what moves me.

Do you listen to music for pleasure?

Yes…not pop. I used to have a clock radio which drove me mad because it would come on in the morning with this pop music and I’d wake up going ‘oh, the bass is good, drums are okay, what about the chorus’ and you go into all that.

I listen to old church music, nice gentle things.

This need for wider appeal…does Shriekback need more commercial success to reach full potential?

We are doing what we want to do, it wouldn’t be different if I had loads of money.

What is there left for Shriekback to do?

The next album – translating the live thing. And, getting our music to a wider audience. I don’t think there is anything hopelessly archane about what we do and I don’t see why it shouldn’t appeal to a lot of people. I think it’s a case of appropriate presentation.

And…I’m tired of being a cult figure.

THE BACKLINE

Martyn Barker (drums): I’m using a hired Yamaha 900 Series kit – 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 toms, 22" bass drum, 14" x 10" deep snare and Zildjian cymbals (16, 17, 18 crashes, Chinaboy and Swish both 16"; hi-hats are K Series (top) and Dynobeat (bottom); Camco chain bass drum pedal.

I’ve been using this kit on the American and Australian tours. In England I’ve been using a Gretch kit but I’m changing to Yamaha because I like the depth of the sound of this kit. You get a good natural sound, it’s very good live and as an all-round kit.

I’ve been using very thin crashes because Shriekback is a dynamic band so you don’t need any ride cymbals. The music needs good splash sounds…plenty of that.

The difficulty for me with cymbals is trying to change the sound all the time…in Underwaterboys I used coins to rub against Chinese cymbals which makes that off-beat sound. And in Nemesis the chorus has to be very dynamic so I use lots of splashes, lots of crash cymbals.

No electronic drums?

I used to use bits of Simmons gear and I use the Linn 9000 for writing. But for Big Night Music I used a real drum kit with percussion because it was easier and that was the direction the music was going in.

Mike Cozzi (guitar): I’ve been experimenting a lot lately and have just changed all my gear. At the moment I’m using a Gallien-Krueger amp as a preamp sending it though a Carver power amp. The main effects I use are a volume pedal, which I think is well under-used these days, and three different distortions, Big Muff, Boss overdrive, and the other is the distortion on the Krueger. I use various rack delays…everything is rackmounted.

I still use a Strat which I’ve had customised (added a Kahler tremolo and humbucker pickups). On the acoustic numbers I use a Hohner semi-acoustic 12-string.

Bass equipment: Music Man bass guitar through Trace Elliot gear, using 4 x 10 and 1 x 15 speakers.

Martyn: Dave has a custom-built bass which he uses for the slower moodier numbers which makes a deep, warm sound. But the Music Man is his main instrument.

Keyboards: Jupiter 8 and Korg DSS1 which wins heaps of praise from Barry Andrews: "We seem to be getting sounds which are as good as a Fairlight Series II. It’s helpful having the synthesizing part as a well as the sampler because you can really fuck around with those samples and make them sound interesting.

Sonic (July/August 1987)

Shriekback recently released their 13th studio album, Without Real String or Fish. It is available on their website. Click the album cover to be taken to their online store!

Shriekback
The World’s Second Best Pop Group with a Bald Singer
By Dave Segal (‘Creem’ June 1987)

“…Shriekback have opted to make a different kind of music – one which exalts human frailty and the harmonious mess of nature over the simplistic reductions of our crude computers.” – liner notes to Big Night Music. This thing called Shriekback is a strange beast. Trying to describe them gives me one hell of a headache. The new Shriekback music (it’s called Big Night Music but it could just as easily be called Small Morning Music) screws with rock critics’ rote jargon. If you wanted to be crass, you could label ‘em an intellectual funk band with gospel/cocktail lounge pretensions. Unlike most Anglo-Caucasians who funk around with black styles of music, Shriekback throw a skewered light on what, in pedestrian hands, can be a brain-numbing genre. You can attribute Shriekback’s uniqueness (no lie) to keyboardist/singer/lyricist Barry Andrews.

Andrews has full control of Shriekback now that Carl Marsh has departed with his Fairlights and drum computers for solo obscurity. Pared down to a trio (Dave Allen, he of the Zeus-like bass playing on Gang of Four’s first two LPs, and Martyn Barker on percussion toys), Shriekback have for the most part ditched Marsh’s vision of a “harsh disco reality” and gone for a rococo/eclectic sonic gumbo that’s as slippery to grasp as Eno’s skull in a bathtub. There’s a slickness to the Andrews/Gavin MacKillop production on Big Night Music, but don’t let that trouble yer noggin. It’s a good kind of slickness; Andrews has a Byrne-Enoesque aesthetic that enables him to craft exotic pop of excessive fussiness (‘Black Light Trap,’ ‘Running on the Rocks,’ ‘Sticky Jazz’) or of severe sparseness (everything else). You could call this The Soft Album without too much controversy.

Oddly, some of the songs sound better with the volume turned down. Perhaps because he can’t sing very well, Andrews often resorts to an intimate whispery delivery. Very nice and relaxing, this voice. And he’s a clever gump, too. It’s not by accident that wispy, gentle toons sit cheek by jowl with swollen brassy epics; and then out of nowhere will sprout a pretension-deflater like ‘Pretty Little Things,’ which sounds like Prince on helium and dexies. I tell ya, listening to Big Night Music is more fun than working in an abattoir on a humid day.

Andrews has the serene monkish demeanor of the Keith Carradine character in the Kung Fu TV show. Before Shriekback, he was in XTC from ’77 to ’79, and he also played with Robert Fripp’s League of Gentlemen in 1980. He’s a peace-lovin’, broad-minded intellectual dabbler wearing a black floppy hat and a long black coat. We had a civilized chat amid the delicately bubbling jacuzzi water inside a swanky Detroit hotel. Andrews proved to be more stimulating than a week’s worth of The Dick Cavett Show.

CREEM: Why did Carl Marsh leave Shriekback?
BARRY ANDREWS: He wanted to do solo things, really. Carl’s quite a self-contained sort of bloke I don’t think he ever found it easy working with other people. The band was becoming a two-headed beast that was tearing itself in half. Oil and Gold (released in ’85) suffered from that. A bit of schizophrenia between the Carl direction and my direction. I like things when they’re soft and vulnerable and maybe even a bit maudlin. I like a certain amount of crying into my Guinness.

Did Marsh’s departure cause a change in your sound?
Definitely, there was a sort of opening of the sluices. When Carl left, I felt like, firstly, I’ve got this huge canvas to work with on the whole record. It’s all gonna be my words, my tunes. So instead of it being this common denominator area we could inhabit with Carl, what the three of us could agree on was actually a bigger area because there were fewer things to filter out. I wanted to try doing something very simple and direct and emotional, like ‘The Cradle Song,’ Just trying out every option and seeing what’s possible. There’s a certain amount of experimentation that doesn’t work, but a whole lot that does. Normally we wouldn’t have even dared to try. Big Night Music is diverse. I don’t think anyone could complain about it being too homogenous. I think there is a coherence to it that we’ve never achieved on a record before, with the possible exception of Care (released in ’82)

Does everyone have creative input into the words and music?
I’m the sole lyricist. On the new album, Dave confined himself to bass playing, Martyn did a whole lot more than he’s ever done. He plays all the drums and does lots of percussion. So he’s actually responsible for quite a lot of the textures. I’m really responsible for the way the whole thing sounds and the structure of the songs. I can’t imagine collaborating with someone on a song. It would be like having somebody advise you while you’re having sex with somebody (laughs). There’s so much that just happens in your head. It’s quite a fragile process and it’s not something I could easily involve someone with.

Your lyrics have a stream of consciousness to them…
A stream of unconsciousness…(much laughter).

Sometimes it’s brilliant and at other times it leaves the listener baffled. Maybe they’re too oblique for universal understanding.
Maybe that’s a valid criticism. I don’t go in for any kind of broad political commentary.

You write more about personal things?
I don’t know if they’re even personal things, really. What I try to do is create an entity with sound that has not existed before. The songs are meant to be things you can walk into and walk around, that have their own kind of smell and atmosphere and texture. They’re not meant to be billboards or television programs. Or newspapers. The lyrics aren’t the point any more than the bass drum pattern’s the point. You might have a very good pair of kidneys but that’s not your whole story, is it?

If I asked you what ‘The Reptiles and I’ is about, could you tell me?
I can tell you what I was trying to do. It’s what it is for you definitely. That’s a nice fatuous answer, I suppose, and it’s what it means to me. And that’s about as far as it goes. I had this idea of using a lot of lists that I found in Webster’s Dictionary. A list of languages, elements, proverbs. I liked the idea of a bunch of verses that were lists. I was trying to create a nursery rhyme that would work in an adult way and would have that sort of darkness about it, that sinister kind of thing that the best nursery rhymes have. I’m really a little kid sitting at the foot of the great god Language. I’ve really got no command over it. I pretty much take what it gives me. I get excited by all the different ways people speak in the same way. I get excited about all the different cultures people can have, all the different ways of being in the world. It seems very rich and diverse and brilliant. And it inspires me.

Were you influenced by any writers?
I steal a lot. I’m a complete bastard for that. I’ll tell you the dead ones. I’ve ripped Shakespeare off something rotten. I’ve had my way with T.S. Eliot. Martin Luther King. The Bible. Certainly bits of the Koran. Complete verbal beachcomber.

At least you’re taking from great sources.
Oh yeah. That’s what they’re there for. To get crunched up and recycled. I don’t do it in any cynical way. It’s like doing a cover of a band’s song that you really think is a good song. It seems silly to wrack your brains when somebody else’s said it so well. I just rip it off. Shameless, really.

Have any current songwriters influenced you?
David Byrne’s approach – when I was a bit more uncertain about writing lyrics – he seemed to offer quite a good little cubbyhole to hide in, where you could get away without saying anything at all as long as it sounded all right. But on this LP, I got less and less satisfied with what you could do with that and more interested in what would happen if you pushed the thing up toward the light a little more. So things like ‘Cradle Song,’ ‘Reptiles,’ and ‘Gunning for the Buddha’ are like little narratives, stories, which I’ve never attempted before. Getting into the old Tin Pan Alley thing. People like Gilbert and Sullivan and the English music hall singers. Popular Victorian kitsch. Edwardian parlor songs.

Shriekback is often labelled an intellectual band.
It’s high time we burst that bubble.

Are you college-educated?
No. It was between making a choice of being in a rock’n’roll band or going to university.

Are you religious?
I don’t belong to a religion. I don’t have any faith, in that way. I do have a strong religious sense. It’s difficult to say without it sounding pretentious. I have a sense of awe of a kind of religious veneration or worship in the presence of what is around – people, mainly, the rush and energy of people and what they can do and build and keep going on and having babies. Just what it is to be alive. There’s definitely a force that moves us on in a mysterious way. I said to someone once that I feel about religion the way I felt about sex when I was 12. You know there’s something going on, but you don’t know what the fuck it is!

To read more about Shriekback's music and career, please visit their website (sign up for the newsletter for free downloads) and Tumblr. You can also join in our conversations over on Facebook. And, while you're at it, pick up a copy of their new album, Without Real String or Fish!

Happy Throwback Thursday, good souls!  I'm currently transcribing a rare article that looks back to the Shrieks' Oil & Gold and upload it before the end of the day.  In the meantime, enjoy this interview straight outta Belgium.

And if you have not yet procured Without Real String or Fish, what on Earth are you waiting for?  The new album is sonic brilliance that I'm certain will enchant you more with every listen.

Many of Shriekback's fans may be a bit cultish (pulls innocent face), but we know great music when we hear it. You can trust me when I tell you that Jam Science - the album released around the time this video interview was made - is an excellent album, and that Without Real String or Fish is an absolute triumph, proving the band are still mad musical geniuses.  Their ability to still provide relevant music that outshines their contemporaries is so evident, one cannot logically debate it.  Click their gateway logo to the left, to explore their store, and grab yourself a copy of WRSoF.

Dave Henderson gets intensive care from Shriekback

Barry Andrews uses long words but he's sincere, he believes in Shriekback as do his two cohorts. The room is airy and almost a million miles away from the group's new LP Care. There's a kind of urgency there, a plethora of ideas busting to get out and because of their diversity constantly struggling. It's hardly surprising really, after all, they all come from very strong and varied musical backgrounds. With pasts of varying stature Shriekback's first LP was an expressive and spikey start. Months in the studio - due to the high quality publishing deal the trio had secured - gave them the freedom to work as they wanted and throw ideas around.

"There was always a deadline looming in the future but nobody really knew when," forwards Carl.

Dave continues: "It took quite a while to get it onto vinyl because we didn't have any real commitment to getting anything done. In the end it was really just a summing up of that period."

Loose and rough as Tench was, it still didn't give anything away. The ideas were there, interest created, but no real statement of intent hit you in the middle ear. With 'My Spine is the Bassline' winning new friends for them, had they purposely attempted to take a more commercial tack with their music?

Dave: "It wasn't at all intentional. It just appeared to be going in a funkier direction and we just followed it that way. With the new album we just continued with that attitude and followed where it led. We don't sit down and write songs, we built them in the studio and we just travelled along the paths they took us."

Barry: "When we did Tench, there was a thing about not doing things that were commercial, but we always wanted it to communicate so that people could play it and get into it. We say that we didn't have to live with making music that was rubbish just so that we could live off it, we realised we could actually put out brilliant music and live off that."

But if Tench was inaccessible - it wasn't, but it was a lot less, say, mainstream (pun) than their later work - has their recent work been a conscious effort to get across to a wider audience?

Dave: "People haven't adapted to us. We know what we want to do and they're getting that from us. They haven't just clicked to Shriekback, we've set the ball rolling by getting our house in order, by accepting the fact that you don't have to sell yourself short to sell records and make money. There's no sort of secret message or hidden thing there. What we want is for people to play the album and for them to get the honesty and the communication from us. It doesn't have to be an album of potential hits and in the same way we didn't sit down and say 'Let's do "Lined Up" as a commercial single so that people will buy the album and hear all the weird shit', it just wasn't all that."

The honesty shines through in Shriekback, their unorthodox techniques allow them to come up with things that, if premeditated, would lack the power that they have. Their instruments are extensions of their bodies, claims Barry in a nother reeling cascade of anecdotes, and you can see this in their music.  It's personal, tribal even.  The inner sleeve bears witness with a collection of aids and accomplices written like's their gang, their team.

Carl: "That's just like an acknowledgement of how it works."

And the music too has the spirit of an organised outfit, which is dispersed through numerous people's attitudes and characters. And the tribe was in full flow on Riverside last year when with anarchic precision Shriekback performed a couple of songs.

Carl: "If we'd thought about what we were going to do on Riverside we would have made arbitrary conditions about what we could or couldn't do instead of just doing it. You have to make rules around the things that matter, not the little things."

But this trendy-right-place-at-the-right-time thing doesn't quite fit into Shriek-think.

Barry: "Maybe you'll get it right and the things that you choose to recycle are trendy that week, but that's much less important than the actual degree of conviction and commitment that you actually put into getting things over."

Carl: "It's like we've found when we've been playing live. What you play doesn't matter it's the way you do it, so the songs that we do are structured to express that."

The whole area of being hip is like a recurring virus. In whatever mode you place yourself, the onus will shift within a matter of weeks or even hours. In some cases it can take years to transcend the petty bracketing.

Dave: "I get the feeling at the moment that anything is honest and coming from a real love is definitely not hip. Some people, like Sun Ra and the jazz greats, are allowed to be really close to the earth and won't hear anything said against them. At the moment everything has to be really trivial and it has to come from hearing the right twelve inch this week and trying to copy it. It's like with Sun Ra if you've served your time and done 40 albums then you get your Golden Honesty Award."

With a mere one and a half albums under their belt Shriekback have got quite a hefty trek in front of them. As with all outfits of their structure they will inevitably go in and out of fashion at the drop of a hat. The thing that matters about Shriekback is that they are open to influence. Their music is a hybrid of their moods and experiences and for that it will always be fresh and intriguing.

As Dave confided later, they'd "love to release lots and lots of material but we would feel that we were swamping the market".

I'd love to see that happen as Shriekback are like a magazine rather than a group, a constant ongoing entertainment. A collection of people - fluctuating in numbers - who may not be hip but are always approachable.

Click the button to purchase Care and learn more about Shriekback.    

Lifted without regret from Shriekback's official Tumblr

BOSTON - The idea at first was not to play out; Shriekback, like the first edition of Public Image, Ltd., would simply be a studio group, leaving Gang of Four in the midst of an American tour. For Allen, it was too much of everything: too much drugs, too much drink, too much pressure.

Allen, who cheerfully says he is “on the wagon - permanently,” considered gigs dehumanizing: ”We said gigs are awful and they can’t work.” This was in early ‘81. A year and a half later, they played their first gig.

"It was gonna be hard work. It was a matter of transferring all this [studio] stuff to the stage," notes Allen, talking about the decision to make it live.

"It was a matter of fucking blind fear too," chips in keyboardist Barry Andrews.

So Shriekback - which in addition to Allen and Andrews includes guitarist/singer Carl Marsh and touring percussionists Pedro Ortiz and Martyn Barker - now has it both ways: they released their debut EP, Tench, on Y Records last year, have a new LP, Care, out on Warner Bros., and they’re enthusiastic about road work.

"A willingness to communicate," says Allen. "Tonight, for instance, was a good example of accepting that the audience wants to join in. A lot of gigs I’ve been to you’re left out. The other night in New York I went to Simple Minds and there was no attempt whatsoever to get me to join in."

"There’s some sort of interaction between us and the people," adds Andrews. "It’s surprising how few bands do that."

Shriekback is not the most obvious lot, not the latest happy-time English white funk band. Songs are written around a drum track. Allen adds the bass lines and the songs grow from there. Vocals - “anti-vocals” Marsh calls them - are often mixed into the middle, not over the top.

"There is a rule of thumb that all lead vocals have to be treated in a certain way because they’re vocals," says Marsh wryly. "Not like a little wanky percussion part that you can do what you want with. Voices have to be treated with some respect."

"Lined Up" is Shriekback’s catchiest tune (from melodic standpoint), but like New Order’s "Temptation," it’s involved as much with mood as it is with hooks. The rest of Care is even more moody. Shriekback favors sharp, heavy bass lines, chantlike vocals, the occasional textural synth or guitar swirl. Restrained, but tense; spacious. Shadowplay you can dance to.

"I’d kind of like it to be like a wildlife park," offers Marsh. "You wander around and there are all these things there that are diverse and beautiful and grotesque sometimes. You can draw the conclusions you like."

- Jim Sullivan for Record / August 1983

Care has been reissued on both CD - for the first time! - and limited edition vinyl LP.

Please visit our website and store to learn more about, and purchase Care, as well as find other great albums, tunes, and information.

Time is short, so don’t delay!

Last night, the Mother Unit knocked on my door and said "mail call!"  She came in and handed me a mail order catalog and a small white lined mailer with a customs label on it.  I knew right away what I was in for, but I took a deep breath and told myself to be patient and wait for tomorrow.

Well, tomorrow is now today, and I opened that bad boy up to find the shiny new Care CD by Shriekback!  I must say, I'm delighted with the album, now that it has finally established its rightful place in world of Compact Disc.  And I'm even more thrilled with the fact that it boasts among the bonus tracks, my favourite song by the Shrieks, 'Despite Dense Weed', along with the story behind how this malignant serenade came into being.  I've posted the story here before, as well as posting on You Tube when I uploaded the song from another collection.  But, I'm sharing again, because no one has the power to stop me.

This - if I may make so bold - little gem was only previously released on the Y Records Xmas album, which may not have found the Total Market Penetration it doubtless deserved, so here it comes again. Inspired partly by the novel Riddley Walker (Shriekback required reading) and also by an Acid experience in a forest in which Vivienne Kent and myself experienced being predators of a blood-thirsty, lupine/vampirish kind, and, from the top of a tree contemplated a cosy little family out for a stroll with a view to slaughter and dismemberment (their only possible use). Ah, great days - and they still haven't found the bones (joke).  Viv plays murderous viola on the end bit and the Tiny Green Garden Sticks rear their vicious little heads again.

SHRIEKBACK: OH POTENT concoction of the boyish Barry Andrews, a sensitive Carl Marsh, and the compassionate Dave Allen.  Their collective experience span the likes of XTC, Out on Blue Six, and the Gang of Four.  Together they weave the complicated fabric of their music by pulling threads through a variety of sounds and textures, and then utilising and building upon the naked framework of rhythm to create their tapestry.

Colin Moulding and I -little provincial rock-twinks that we were- got eyed up by predatory drag queens at the notorious Jungle Bar:’who you looking at? You never seen a queen put on her make-up before? Well you never seen one like this.’ This from an aged transexual preparing herself while actually standing on the bar. It was heady stuff for Moulding and I, fresh from sexually unambiguous Swindon, and we quickly averted our eyes lest non-consensual fisting ensue.