Bright Young Things
I meet Britain’s most exciting new band in the very unglamorous setting of a closed café, upstairs in Manchester’s Student’s Union. Just beginning a month long tour that will see them supporting Hope Of The States, The Bellrays and The Ravonettes, London based Razorlight have come a long way for a band that only formed in the summer of last year.
‘I met Johnny and we thought, “Ok, let’s put something together”. Chris is an old friend of Johnny’s and Carl is an old friend of mine - me and Carl come from this really small town in Sweden and we’ve known each other for 6 years. He’d just come over and I asked if he wanted to join and Johnny told me about Chris. We started playing (as Razorlight) in early September,’ says guitarist Bjorn Agren.
As well as the Swedish born Bjorn, the band comprises of Johnny Borrell on vocals, Carl Dalemo on bass and Christian Smith on drums and have managed to gain a fair bit of attention in the last few months, being dubbed by one music paper as, ‘the band of next year,’ but is all this attention too much too soon?
Bjorn: ‘No, it’s not too much, it’s the perfect amount. I mean all the songs are pretty much written and rehearsed. We rehearsed in this warehouse space on the outskirts of north east London about 4 or 5 times a week, pretty much from last September to May/ June this year.’
Chris: ‘We spent a year just getting perfectly prepared to be a huge band. We’re ready. If it happens, it happens, if not, we’ve already had an amazing experience. Even if it stopped now, I’d still be laughing. It’s been great.’
As all things London seem to be fashionable at the moment it can’t but help that before forming Razorlight Johnny could be found kicking about with The Libertines and his writing style at least could be compared with the poetic passion that the lyrical coupling of Barat/ Doherty posses.
Chris: ‘Most of our songs actually don’t sound much like them. They’re wicked; we all love them as people and musicians. They’re a good band and great people.’
Bjorn: ‘It’s probably the London influence, I mean we all live in London so there are certain people and things about that we all run into.’
Why do you think that London seems to have become the focus in the search for the next big thing? Has the scene improved over the last few years?
Chris: ‘I wouldn’t say it was particularly good now, I just think people are getting bored of dance.’
Bjorn: ‘That’s what’s good about it – people are actually going to check out bands. That’s the feeling I’ve been getting from the people who’ve lived there for years.
Chris: ‘It pisses me off this whole ‘new rock revolution’, there’s not a revolution in the slightest – it’s just that sales are up a little bit. There was a dip in the market and now that the dip has picked up, rock’s picking up a little. I reckon there were loads more great bands 10 years ago.’
The talk of new bands and over hyping brings us on to the subject of those Lycra clad lovelies from Lowestoft…
Bjorn: ‘We supported The Darkness last year in a one hundred capacity venue in London. It was on the rocks.’
Chris: ‘It’s not going to last. I like them – I don’t really like the music but I like them and I like their attitude. I think with our music – we just have more depth.’
Bjorn: ‘I think The Darkness are more appealing to kids. That’s the thing with the music they play – there’s always a certain number of people who really like it who are just your usual football loving blokes. There are a lot of bands right now that are, I don’t know the expression, but it’s like a one horse tick. They have one thing and they do it really really well but that’s what they do. We just have good songs, no frills and we’re not afraid to take the songs in different directions.’
This fearlessness and burning ambition led to this summer’s blistering debut single, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Lies’ being recorded at Toe Rag studios, better known as the place where The White Stripes ‘Elephant’ was produced. However, for second single, ‘Rip It Up’ due out on November 3rd and the album, due out early next year, they chose to record with the legendary Steve Lillywhite at a different location.
Bjorn: ‘Liam who runs Toe Rag is totally amazing at capturing a live song being played by a band but we wanted the possibility to expand on the tracks and if we’d recorded there we wouldn’t have had that.'
Chris: ‘If we recorded at Toe Rag it would have just sounded like a really tight gig and we wanted more dynamic. It was limited; we wanted a bigger studio with more potential, a different place, different atmosphere – somewhere new. Steve Lillywhite’s not been doing that much stuff recently, David Bowie, PJ Harvey as well as others have wanted him to do stuff. He hasn’t produced an album since he’s been working at Mercury. He just really wanted to do us and we gave him a shot and it worked.’
Bjorn: ‘So far so good, it’s gone really well. We’ve got a great engineer as well; everyone in the studio’s really good. We just looked at what each song needed, and if it didn’t need anything more than what we do live then that’s what we kept it at. It represents the song in the best way.’
Chris: ‘No weird stuff just cut to the chase. We wanted a variety to the songs – some of which sound more live.’
While they may now have more experience in the studio, the longest Razorlight have been on tour is a week stint with Jet earlier this year. With a month ahead of them and three different bands to support, the problem of how to stay healthy and vaguely sane is one that Chris, at least, has put some thought into.
Chris: ‘You’ve got to keep up your strength, eat good food. That’s why I’m worried about these guys coz they have a tendency to eat crap. I can only do what I do, I’ve got a bag full of organic food, nutrients and supplements but I can’t watch the rest of them.’
Bjorn: ‘We go for sludge when we’re on the road! I try to eat properly and sleep properly – not party too much. You’ve got to balance it. I got ill a bit more than half way through the last tour but it’s ok for me, I can just stand still on stage and play guitar. It’d be a lot worse if the others got it. Me and Carl can get away with just standing if we don’t want to use that much energy on stage, we can actually conserve it. But Chris can’t and Johnny needs his voice. You can do a few gigs if you’ve got a shot voice but it’s hard.’
Chris: ‘We’re incredibly sober and majority straight edged – we do very little drugs and sometimes we drink but as bands go we’re really grounded and happy.’
Bjorn: ‘I might go off the deep end for a while but you can never tell. If you’re in a bus in Europe for two months then who knows what can happen. You can try to stay mentally healthy but you never know…’
And there we leave it with the promise of meeting up at the end of the tour to see if sanity has been persevered and limbs are still intact. You pray they do make it as with that much ambition, talent and damn good tunes, Razorlight are a force to be reckoned with and very likely to become the brightest, sharpest, young things around next year. Time to rip it up indeed.