The Somatics
By Andy RobertsAndy Roberts heads round to The Somatics' house for a cuppa and a chinwag about their debut platter, local themes canal spotting and how prog will be cool once they release their new album...
It's a sad fact that some of the music world's biggest hypes burn brightly then fade faster. The fabulous world we call pop is always full of the latest band that will change your life. Of course, some do but the shocking majority do not last the distance enough to make a life-changing mark on their would-be fans.
Despite all the hype and press froth, bands like Hear'Say and Steps etcetera never leave you with anything of lasting substance once they've done the decent thing and split. The same could be said for a squillion and one indie bands that the NME has hyped as the next best thing. All good unclean fun it may be now, but will you still really be playing that garage rock album in ten years time? Somehow we doubt it.
There are honourable exceptions to this kind of thing of course. Some NME hypes really do leave you with something lasting, long after they've faded annals of rock history. Late nineties sensations Ultrasound definitely fall into that category. Their expansive double-disc, triple-LP, record company accountant defying debut album 'Everything Picture' was one of those albums that certainly merits dusting off now and again.
Back in March 1997, Simon Williams, the man behind Fierce Panda Records - and a man not afraid to put out the odd record for Leeds bands down the years, said:
"I see Ultrasound as the latest in the long, lost tradition of great English bands that is slowly coming back, what with the likes of The Verve, Radiohead and Spiritualized. It's clear that this band is going to be around for a lot longer than 18 months."
Though he wasn't quite right with the length of time they were going to be
around (the band called it a day in October 1999) he was right to bracket Ultrasound in that category as a great, now long-lost band. A massive reason for Williams saying lovely things like that about Ultrasound was that at their very heart, they had a mercurial guitarist/songwriter straight out of the classic rock textbook called Richard Green hard at work, penning stunning songs and liberally dashing them with thrilling guitar dynamics.
Earlier this year, the city pricked up its ears and heard to its delight that despite Ultrasound being no more, something arguably greater in an understated way was quietly taking shape in Leeds with Richard at the helm.
On the 27th of May, an eponymous album by a band called The Somatics was
released that had Leeds, and the talent of the former Ultrasound man was plastered all over it. Richard takes a more prominent role in his new band, sharing vocal duties with angel-voiced bassist and missus, Stephanie. Affable drummer Bruce Renshaw completes the trio.
"I don't know if I even know what happened now..." Says Richard quietly of the reasons for Ultrasound ending. "It seems like quite a long time ago now. It just went pear-shaped I suppose"
He's reticent to talk about old times and well he might, for why should we be sat in Richard and Stephanie's living room with a nice cup of tea and talking about the past when there's a damn fine record of more recent times to be discussed?
Maybe it's because though there are things that distantly relate them, delightful instrumental invention being one, 'Everything Picture' and 'The Somatics' are two different albums. The latter seems more melancholic yet
uplifting rather than just plain uplifting, lithe and wiry rather than somewhat overblown and most definitely colder - or is that just the wintry Leeds streets on the artwork?
"We recorded it last November at Loco Studios in Wales, it was really dark and incredibly cold. There wasn't any real heating either." Explains Richard.
"We had to climb into sleeping bags at times just to keep warm at times." Says Stephanie almost shivering as she recalls those recording sessions a year ago.
The shots on the front of the album give it a real wintry feel too, with shots of the band far in the distance walking the eerily deserted streets of Hyde Park in Leeds on a chilly New Year's Day. Anyone who knows Hyde Park has got to be intrigued by the album with the empty streets of Leeds staring up at you from the record shop racks.
"We got really lucky with the pictures." Says Richard. "Just before that was taken there was a whole load of cars in the street and then suddenly loads of families came out got into the cars and drove off so making the streets look really quiet. The houses are really interesting, you can imagine the sort of dramas that have gone on within them through the years."
The Somatics have gone a long way to put the region on the map, with their music on the record not just on the outside packaging. Just like Ultrasound had a majestic song called Aire & Calder.
"It's the last commercial waterway" Says Richard of the inspiration for his former band's song.
"It isn't the cleaned up version of a canal that tourists go on, the industry has always been there and it's got a really strange feeling about it."
"You f***ing canal spotter!" Howls Stephanie.
Along with a sprinkling of Wakefield references, 'The Somatics' has its own song with a local theme called LS2 9LZ that conjures up the sheer atmosphere of where they now call home. Closing with the line: "From Burley Park to Woodhouse Moor / I pound the beat back home", it's a joy to behold.
"I really liked the way that Morrissey mentions places and landmarks in Manchester and elsewhere. It just makes thing s that much more vivid I suppose. It obviously means a lot more to people in Leeds but that kind of thing never seemed to matter with The Smiths" Richard explains.
"Frank Sinatra was good at it too!" Interjects Bruce.
Stephanie: "It's a lot less boring than someone standing there saying how messed up and paranoid they are!"
The album foxed a lot of critics on its release with too many of them left scratching their heads when it came to musical touchstones or to put it another way, going through the lazy journalistic motions. In our opinion, for what it's worth, the sound is utterly distinctive, cold but warm, sparse yet rich, fractious yet harmonious but above all intriguingly ace.
Richard: "There's been all sorts of conflicting reviews and all manner of strange references made. Hue & Cry was probably the most bizarre one!"
"We were just laughing our heads off when the record company sent us the press cuttings," laughs Stephanie, "We've had everything from 'best band in the world' to 'psychedelic hippie b*****s'!' I've been racking my brains trying to work out what we are. It doesn't seem to matter what you are until you're asked the question. You just have to be categorised - that's a punk band, that's a metal band..."
"They'll get it eventually...!" Bruce says assuredly.
So if it's like this now, how are they going to get on with what The Somatics have in store for us next?
"We're planning on doing something that is very progressive, maybe more like a rock opera. The next album's going to be a series of stories." Explains Richard.
So more like prog-rock then?
"Well rock's all about progression, if you didn't have it bands would stand still yet people categorise things as 'prog' in a bad way. 'Sergeant Pepper' and 'Pet Sounds' were both progressive albums. I've got records that some people would class as prog - Genesis, even a couple of Yes albums though I think I listen to them in a kind of morbid fascination more than anything else. But every band should be about progression, you can't keep making the same sounding music."
You can hear the progress that they've been making tonight at Joseph's Well. We of course implore you to go along, Stephanie promises it won't be the usual gig-going experience.
"We're going to do something a bit different to the normal three bands. Some
people putting on gigs don't think about the evening as a whole. We just try to get together a few people who make it into one night, instead of three separate bands. We'll put on artwork, like we had last week at The Corn Exchange, slide projections, that kind of thing. We just want to make the whole night flow, the music in between, that kind of thing. We want to build up the atmosphere and not let people drift off to the bar between bands."
This even extends to the stage show - The Somatics like to play with big multicoloured lamps behind them, the kind you might find in a Grandma's living room and with old style microphones to boot. It looks fantastic.
"When we get really big it will be brilliant to play stadiums lit by thousands of those lamps." Muses Richard.
Progressive rock shouldn't be played anywhere else of course. For tonight though, we'll more than gladly settle for Joseph's Well.
