Crackout Interview

The Bucks based trio's first album, 'This is Really Neat', was recorded during a 6 week trip to Texas after which they embarked on their first UK headlining tour. Along the way they mastered the art of the three-minute punk rock sizzlers. The new album ‘Oh No' sees a new dawn in the Crackout story. We caught up with founder member Nick to find out more.


M-N: The album was recorded during 2003.....why the long delay in its
release?

Nick: The label were concerned it would be put out too close to Christmas and then it'd get lost amid the slew of 'Best of' releases that always seem to populate the release schedules at that time of year.

M-N: Do you always play as a 3 piece or have you other musicians on stage?

Nick: Just us 3.

M-N: The Robert Smith connection - what appeals about the early Cure records like '17 seconds' and 'disintegration' which obviously have affected your music?

Nick: They have written some beautiful songs.

M-N: Does the association trouble you in anyway?

Nick: Nope, unless persons claim we have deliberately set out to sound like them. A lot of people say Steven sounds like Robert Smith, but I think it has more to do with the fact they're both from the home counties and therefore just have very similar voices. They also both have voices that sound influenced more by jazz singers than your usual rock influences, to my ears anyway: the way they both phrase and their often improvisational approach to treating melody lines is very jazz, rolling up to notes and falling off them, playing around with the rhythm, keeping it loose.

M-N: What's the secret in writing a good catchy 3 minute song?

Nick: Get the La's album.

M-N: Can you explain the chorus of insect song (next single I believe)

Nick: It's a nonsense song. Steven thought it'd be good to write a song about
insects.

M-N: How do you see yourselves as having progressed from the first album and was the follow up a difficult one as in true tradition of the follow up?

Nick: We think we've progressed a great deal, and it appears to be most peoples' opinion too. The difficulty was trying to get rid of the inhibitions of feeling we had to do rock because that's what we did before. Pretty much a whole album was written after the first record and then was scrapped because it was too much like a hard-ish rock band trying to stay that way when they really weren't into that as much anymore. As soon as we let ourselves be ourselves it was easy, and the recording itself was so, so, easy....it helps having a great production team who you're very good friends with. Still we had some feeling of 'we better put a rock bit in here'; for the next album, I think, we will be totally ourselves with no inhibitions whatsoever.

M-N: Crackout is just a great name. Is it termed as in 'the beers' or
'part of the female anatomy in full view'?

Nick: I don't like the name, I suppose it is better than something worse than that though, but not as good as something better. It's nothing to do with cracking out the beers, if it was alcohol based and my way we'd be called
'Get The Flutes Out I Have A Nice Spot Of Bubbly In The Fridge.' And female anatomy ... no.

M-N: Conversely, something more imaginative than 'oh no' could have been better?

Nick: Now I have to disagree again - I like the album title. We used a lyric as the title for the first album, and so we did it again this time, and 'Oh No!' is repeated at the end of the first track on it. The choice was a bit inspired by the cheeky Blue Note album titles from the 1950/60s - like 'Good Gracious!', 'Finger Poppin!', 'Wahoo!', 'Hey There!', 'Into Somethin!', 'Out to Lunch!', etc. The use of exclamation marks is imperative.

M-N: What sort of music are you into to at the moment?

Nick: As a band we're listening to Paul Simon, XTC, Bill Evans, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Bill Frisell, Frank Sinatra, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wayne Shorter, the La's, et al.

M-N: What's your proudest musical moment to date?

Nick: When our press agent and booking agent were at the studio having a just finished 'Oh No!' played to them and receiving their responses. Suffice to say they were pleasantly surprised, and we had a fine magnum of Tattinger in the fridge too which definitely made it a better moment, maybe not prouder, but better without a shadow of a doubt.

M-N: Are you playing any of the summer festivals?

Nick: Good question. One would hope so.