mINtSOUTH.com

People can find comfort in the strangest of things. Music is one of them, as individuals look to transpose their emotions and experiences onto someone else’s work, creating an audio patchwork to wrap around their lives and getting happily caught up in a complete stranger’s rhythms, scratches and feedback.

Take the long-standing, alternative band Therapy? as an example. They are a band that, like it or not, provide the soundtrack to thousands of teens and/or twenty-somethings, offering a distinct voice to those frustrated and disillusioned with life, or just wanting to rock out. Enduring a major record label split and members quitting the band, they are still able to write material that rivals their back catalogue.

Well rehearsed in humouring interviewers with silly questions, mINtSOUTH met up with bassist Michael McKeegan and newest drummer recruit Neil Cooper to talk about the new album 'Crooked Timber', their fast-approaching 20th anniversary, rock ‘n’ roll philosophy and Def Leppard’s fictional pet dog.

The title track of your newest album 'Crooked Timber' was influenced by the work of the philosopher, Immanuel Kant. How did that come about?

Michael: "Andy’s always searching for lyrical concepts and, through our love of reading, he fell upon that quote. The way we interpreted it is that everything doesn’t have to be homogenised and necessarily about fitting in with your peers, so we thought the song would be a nice way of putting that across."

Have there been any other artistic pieces of work that have recently inspired your own?

M: "In terms of music, it’s not necessarily rock stuff that has influenced us, but more electronic."

Neil: "When we writing we were listening to a lot of German music - stuff like Can. The feel of a lot of their tunes is kind of ticking along and drifting into the same field as techno music. A lot of that type of song writing has bled into Crooked Timber – the song itself has a groove that goes on and on. We were enjoying doing that in the rehearsal studio, moving away from ‘here is the groove, that is the verse, here’s the chorus, here’s the middle eight’. It was more kind of, ‘Let’s play and see what comes of it.’"

Were there any pressures to get this new album out?

N: "Well usually there’s a time frame for each album, but for this record we’d just signed a new deal and asked to just put the brakes on and just spend some time, just the three of us rehearsing. We took ourselves up to Derby (which is where I’m from) and got away from the distractions, settled in a room and just went at it. Had a couple of pints afterwards, listened back and figured what works. It came together relatively quickly."

M: "Yeah, it was a nice position to be in – it was great."

I’ve been listening to a good deal of your b-sides with acoustic takes on your songs as well as the odd remix. Have you ever considered making a fresh release based on these styles?

M: "We do acoustic sessions. We’ve done some acoustic versions live... You’d probably need a concept to go along with it to do a whole album though."

N: "I think as with this album where we took it old school and took it back to what we wanted to do, the acoustic thing hasn’t really come into it."

M: "Never say never, but it’s not where we’re at just now."

Gigging experiences:

Worst?

M: "Worst I remember was a gig in Austria. It’s a great country and usually have great gigs there, but there was this one gig where guys were Sieg Heil-ing down the front. There was a big fight and it all kicked off. It was really fucking nasty."

N: "You know, you can do two gigs in the same place and they’ll be completely different. [To Michael] Do you remember that gig we did in Northampton? It was bizarre as we played and then the venue tried to have this club night afterwards, but the thing was the cross-over from us to the DJ bled through, so as we were finishing they were letting people in [for the club]. Someone threw a coin at the stage and it was just a horrible atmosphere. Usually it’s those people you ask ‘why the hell are you here?!’ that make the experience bad."

M: "Yeah, obviously there are those gigs that are a technical nightmares, where everything just breaks, but thankfully over the years you learn to come up with Plan B, so when all your strings are broken on your guitar you don’t have to just say goodnight! [laughs] I’ve seen bands do that."

Best?

M:" There’s been some really good ones recently. I really enjoyed Wolverhampton last night, which was brilliant. Over the summer we went to Bosnia and played a festival there for the first time. Played the Czech Republic which was also good. Oh, and Download festival was good this year... It’s good when you go somewhere for the first time, or haven’t been there for a few years."

If you could become the new soundtrack to a film of your choice, what would it be?

N: "We were talking about this the other day and one film we’re really is Dead Man’s Shoes – Shane Meadows [the director]. The things he also did in This Is England was great."

M: "Another one we mentioned at that time was David Lynch, who does some really dark, ambient stuff."

Would you consider linking your music in with other art forms?

N: "Well I don’t really wish we’d done it, but it would be cool to provide the music for a silent movie. To set up and play to what you see must be bonkers. I think as a band if you constantly think about what you could’ve done, you’re probably not in the right place."

Bit of a silly one, but if the Therapy? story was made into a movie, who would you get to play yourselves and why?

[laughs]

M: "Funny, cos we were talking about this the other day. Did you ever see the Def Leppard documentary on VH1? It was a sort of dramatisation?"

"It was brilliant, as they shot it in Canada and so all the road signs and everything were all wrong. Ricky, who’s on tour with us, went to see it with Joe Elliot and he was sitting there going, ‘I didn’t have a dog! I didn’t have a dog!’ [laughs] It must be such a weird experience, but the Def Leppard one was hilarious – quite kitschy..."

N: "...Ricky Tomlinson... he’d play me."

M: "John Malkovich!" [laughs]

What question are you sick of being asked?

N: "‘What do you sound like?’ Sofuckingargh! And the question that always comes up which is irrelevant in the scheme of things is the ‘Question Mark’ one."

M: "For twenty years we’ve been explaining that one... [sighs] Y’know at one point I started making up random stories, as I think people sometimes ask for answers that they already know."

N: "I think it’s good the way the question mark is so linked with the band, though. The Black Eyed Peas did a poster campaign with a question mark and so many people asked us if it was anything to do with us."

What’s next?

"Just tour right up to Christmas. We’ve recorded one gig and hopefully we’re going to get two more, then next year do some shows in Greece, Scandinavia, Australia and hopefully North America as the album comes out over there then. A live album will come from these recordings as that’ll fall on our 20th anniversary, then after that we’ll be doing shows to celebrate. Over the summer, we’ll work on a new album."