Long-View is a new band with enough advance warning. Their debut record has
been out a while, July 2003, in the UK. British music lovers here in the USA
have been hearing good things about this Manchester band for a long time, and
probably downloaded many of the tunes. Even though they have been playing for
over three years now, only now are they having an American release. It's been
worth the wait. The first song "Further" introduces their brand of universal
rock to our shores. With Coldplay and Snow Patrol doing well here, it's no
wonder that Long-View have been thrust upon the crowded scene. They are played SXSW
and impressed just about everyone. I saw them at the Viper Room during their
first LA show and they were amazing.
The band are Rob McVey (vocal/guitar), Matt Dabbs (drums), Doug Morch
(guitar), and Aidan Banks (bass guitar). They are all over England but met up in
Manchester in 2001.
Some of the songs like "When You Sleep" and "In A Dream" have a more
aggressive sound that suggest some of the shoegazer bands. "Still" is an amazing
song that sends shivers through my body. It promises, "Good times are coming."
This band definitely has what it takes to find an audience. It sounds sincere.
They may be for this year what bands like Snow Patrol and Keane were last
year. This may be one of the great records that we are still talking about in six
months. They seem concerned with making a mark in America. There has already
been one successful tour in March and April 2005. They are returning in June
with the band Embrace. I spoke to Rob McVey recently.
****
AL: How did you meet the rest of the guys in the band Long-View?
Rob: When I was 19 I moved from the south of England to the north, to
Manchester to start a band. I went on me own. I had that romantic vision of starting
a band there. It worked. I met Matt who was studying at Music College there.
And Aidan and Doug were hanging around. I was doing a music degree as well. In
England, you get a little money from the government. That is how I removed
myself from suburban southern England. I was pretending to be studying music, but
what I really wanted to do was meet musicians and start a band. Manchester is
a good place for that.
AL: Did you move to Manchester because it was "Manchester" or was that just
where you were accepted to college?
Rob: Yeah, I moved there because it was "Manchester." There are so many
bands from there. Bands like Joy Division, New Order, Oasis, Doves, Elbow, so many
band that I loved. I wanted to go to Manchester because of that history, but
I also wanted to get away from the south as far as I could. Manchester was
very northwest.
AL: You didn't like suburban England?
Rob: It's not so much that I didn't like it. It was because you have to be
surrounded by musicians and venues if you want to start a band. Suburban
England doesn't have that. You have to venture to the bigger cities. When you write
music you find so many interesting things to write about in the suburbs. There
is a sense of hope out there in the suburban dreariness. Half of Britain
lives like that. You have those sorts of people. You have a McDonalds and a
Woolworths and shops and schools. But there are no venues. It's very typical and
comfortable. I am very uncomfortable with comfort. I grew up an hour outside
London.
AL: When did the band start to happen?
Rob: We were playing around Manchester as a three-piece. We were playing tons
of shows. We had residencies. We were trying to make money. Matt and I would
get 25 pounds for playing in a club till two in the morning on a Wednesday. We
would play just anything. All the time I was writing songs. I was going
around putting up posters for extra members. A person, Ben Durling, spotted us from
Nude Records. I was 21 years old at the time. We were signed to Nude Records
and then the record company went bust. He became our manager. A year later we
got the final member in the band, Doug. Then we started to gel. We did four
shows and then we were signed again.
AL: You played with Elbow a lot in the early days?
Rob: Yeah. Guy from Elbow was at a lot of our first shows when we were a
three-piece. I didn't know who he was. But Manchester is a very small place and
you bump into people all the time. Elbow was unsigned at that time too. I
actually met Doug, from Long-View, at an Elbow video shoot. Elbow had all their
friends down for the video shoot. That is how I met Doug. You find liked minded
people there in Manchester.
AL: The first single "Further" came out in the UK three years ago.
Rob: That's right. We released it as a demo. When we got the fourth member we
had a bunch of songs, so we decided to spend some money to make a demo. That
first version of "Further" was the demo that we were signed on. It was a
four-song demo that had "Further" and "falling For You" and two other songs.
When we got signed we thought it would be cool to put out the demo, because we
had recorded it ourselves.
AL: The album came out a whole ago in the UK. It's only coming out now in
America.
Rob: It's been out in the UK for a year and a half. The story with America is
that we were playing a show with Elbow in Manchester. Matt Pinfield from
Columbia Records came to the show. We were having coffee with him the next
morning. When you are in a band that is how it works. You never know when these
albums are going to come out elsewhere. You never think about going Transatlantic.
It just took that long for America to catch on. We didn't have to play one
show in America. Matt Pinfield found us and signed us up. That was more real than
playing a showcase to a bunch of corporate types.
AL: Matt Pinfield is known in America for being a host on MTV. Now he is like
an A&R guy. He can fit in over there in the UK because he looks like a
football hooligan.
Rob: Yeah, I didn't know who he was. He should be wearing a Celtic shirt.
He's a good guy. He was a fan of the band. It took a year for the American deal
to go through.
AL: Your band started at the same time bands like The Strokes, The White
Stripes, and The Libertines were getting a lot of attention in the media. What do
you think about them?
Rob: That's a good question. We weren't really part of that. I think that
The Strokes have some good songs, but many of the spin-off bands from that were
just rubbish. It was just all style. It was weird to get signed at that period
because all the record labels were trying to hunt down all the new Libertines
or the new Strokes. We were against that. We wanted to write songs that were
real to us. And "NYC Cops" was not real to us. The Strokes are great
songwriters. Many of the bands that were part of that scene weren't. When we got
signed we wanted to not record an album in that sort of fashion. The White Stripes
recorded their album at Toe Rag Studios in London. It was all about trashy
sounds. Although they did it well, most bands did it badly. The whole trend went
that way. We decided to go to Seattle to do our album. We wanted to sound like
something that was akin to a scene. We wanted to transcend the scene by using
the best sounds we could get.
AL: How do you write the songs in the band? How does the process go?
Rob: Where do songs come from? Sometimes they fall in your lap. You think
"God, that is a real song." The songs usually start with an acoustic guitar and
an idea of a sentiment. A good songwriter captures a sentiment. That's the art
of it. The talent is spotting when a feeling happens and trying to reflect on
things you see around you. A song starts with me on acoustic guitar. Then I
take it to the band and we exaggerate it, to emphasize the point of the song.
It's important to create something that you are connected to.
AL: What are you songs about? Are they about your life or catching general
feelings that are in the air?
Rob: You try to be inspired by what is around you. I like how John Lennon
tried to put into words what everyone was thinking. It's a talent to translate
what everyone felt. I can't say that we do that successfully. But what we do is
find a sentiment and nail it down. Whatever that may be: nostalgia or hope.
But to do that with things we know about, like with suburban England, or that
sense of nostalgia when the seasons change, or with the feeling of loss. I think
that music and art should deal with sentiments. That is what we are trying to
do. Hopefully it will be something inspired. We are not trying to invent
ourselves with a gimmick. We are not a novelty band.
AL: What is a good example of that?
Rob: I read an article recently that said the Kaiser Chiefs were searching
for inspiration in their shallow lives. Like most other bands they were creating
something new. I didn't agree with that at all. I think that you have to
write about what you got and what is inspired. It might be boring but at least
it's inspired. It's far shallower to create some scenario to write some music
about. Bob Dylan once said "The world doesn't need anymore songs, unless you
have something to say."
AL: Will your next record be different?
Rob: I am really proud of the first album. I wrote Mercury during a certain
part of my life. I was 19 years old when I started and 22 years old when it was
done. I had a lot of hope. I was young and na•ve. I wanted that naivety to
come across in the record. There is a kind of beauty in the passing of those
late teenage years. For the next record I would like to be inspired by what is
happening in my life now. I have traveled around the world. I know so much more
now than when I wrote Mercury. I want to write about whatever pain that I feel
now. I think that the record will be darker. One song we have done is called
"Coming Down." It was something that we worked on in the rehearsal room. We ha
ve just started thinking about the next record.
AL: How has the first tour of America been?
Rob: It's been amazing. It's a young country. We have seen so much.
Everything from seeing a person get run over by a car to having our gear stolen. We
had our crew locked up in prison. It was amazing going to these places like New
Orleans and Dallas. There is certain similarities with England and parts of
America. It's been a new experience. We had all guitars stolen in Dallas. There
is a buzz in the air.
AL: How did the remixes happen?
Rob: That happened naturally. A guy named Ulrich Schnauss made it. It was by
friends of the band.
AL: And Depeche Mode?
Rob: We did a cover of the song "Stripped." We thought that we could add
something to that song. We put it out as a limited edition. It was funny. One of
the papers didn't realize that it was a Depeche Mode song and slagged us off
completely. They said something like "McVey's lyrics have slipped tremendously
on this song." I had a good laugh. It was a vehicle for our second album. The
sound change was good to put it through a cover version rather than one of
our own songs, and being laid bare. By doing that song, it let us move towards
how we see our direction going. We could do that without giving away the crown
jewels.
AL: What do you think of people putting on Long-View records as come down
music after a big night out?
Rob: When I used to come home from parties I used to put on shoegazer stuff
like Ride or Slowdive or Verve. These are albums that I love. Whatever people
want to use my songs for I am into it, as long as it's not for a doormat.
AL: What is this summer going to be like?
Rob: We are going to be touring America. We might play some shows with
Idlewild. We played Glastonbury last year. We are going to concentrate on America
for a while.
By alexander laurence
