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09 October 2010
What better way to spend a cold October eve than a transatlantic chat with a musician who’s so up-and-coming, it’s not even funny. Andrew Morgan’s album ‘Misadventures in Radiology’ (Broken Horse, 2004), which has received rave reviews across the board, will no doubt be denting those end-of-year top tens. I hooked up with the enfant terrible of classically inflicted chamber-pop to talk nuns, stadiums, the American Election and Dire Straights… Interview by David Jenkins, November 2004.
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So, How’re you doing these days? What is your job? Can I go back a bit and ask a question about your musical background? I want to know if you’ve had any classical training? No Dire Straits I hope? Sultans Of Swing? I know it’s a while back since you recorded it now, but your album, Misadventures in Radiology, I was wondering what the title was in reference to? Listening to the album, the lyrical content seems quite pessimistic. On your website you mention that the follow-up you’re working on is influenced by Nietzsche. Are you a pessimistic guy? Are you going to retain the same sort of sound as Misadventures…? So do you think it would be a good album to own on vinyl where you can’t physically skip through? Could you see yourself hitting the big-time and playing the songs from Misadventures to a stadium crowd, as they do have a kind of sing-along quality to them? OK, a bit off the record now. Sorry, that’s “off the record” as in off Misadventures as opposed to the old street saying. You say on your website that you’ve travelled around a lot, lived in many States, even in London. Where do you call home? OK, this may sound crazy, but do you have a radio show in America called “Desert Island Discs”? What would be your desert island disc? And why is that? Just before Pink Floyd? Like you do. This could be a cold, dark island if you wanted? Do you have any plans to come to Europe to play any shows? Well, I look forward to it. Last question, non-music related, are you looking forward to the Election? Do you think he can? It’s a really close race over there. Over here, realistically, we only have one party to choose from at the moment. The opposition, the Conservatives, keep making faux pas and it almost feels like we’re in a dictatorship. Thanks very much for your time.
Oh, I’m great. I’m having band practice at the moment and just working on the follow-up to Misadventures in Radiology. I’ve also got my job, so it’s all pretty hectic at the moment…
Oh, I wait tables at a coffee shop in Chicago which is really cool. It’s a place where they put on lots of shows and I’ve played there a few times but it’s just really cool.
I guess when I was very young my parents got me piano lessons. My brother and I were taught by this nun who used to whack you on the knuckles if you messed up, so that didn’t last too long, and my parents weren’t too pleased about that. So I switched teachers and had this really nice Icelandic lady, but for some reason I gave up because at the time I was more into sports and running around playing football/soccer with my friends. I started to play the guitar when I was fourteen and I picked up the bass when I went to college. I restarted the piano on my own later on, but I’ve never had any rigorous programme of musical training. One thing though, my sister plays the viola and she was classically trained. So my sister started playing Mahler and Beethoven and I would sit on the couch and listen. I also had a lot of influence from my older brother who would play records like Pink Floyd constantly. For a lot of people in the States it's like when you hit sixteen years old you had to own all the Pink Floyd records as an unwritten rule.
Funnily enough when I was learning to play the guitar I had to play that song of theirs…
Yeah, we had a lot of Straits around the house too.
Oh, it originally came from a title derivation of a song on the album, which was first called ‘X Ray Shame’, after the lyric. It’s a song I wrote for one of my roommates whilst I was a sophomore at university in Kansas and it was written at a tremendously awful time. In the end I never ended up giving it to him. Years later I pulled it out and, you know? The title, I think, is a metaphor for morbid introspection. It’s a thing that I shared with this friend of mine at the time, just the capacity for relentless dissection. It’s also to do with my family -- being surrounded by medicine. I come from a long line of doctors, my great grandfather was one, my grandfather was one, my father was one, so you know? My best friends are all medical students so I’ve really grown up with all that around me and they’ve been a huge influence. It has many of levels of personal meaning.
No, not really. Some people describe me as baffling because I'm a complete optimist and a complete pessimist all at once -- having this dialectical push and pull of forces. The Nietzsche album is not actually my follow-up; it’ll be my third album. The follow-up is going to be more of pop record. We’re working on a more pop record, heavily influenced by The Beatles and The Smiths.
Let me just light a cigarette… I keep wanting to go back to misadventures, but at the same time I want it to sound different. The songs on that album were all four to six minutes long and because we’re going for that pop sound I want the songs to be shorter, you know, two and a half to four and a half minutes? I think there’s going to be a thematic consistency though. With misadventures I wanted to make an album that you could fall asleep with -- the songs blend into each other and I really like that feeling. I really hate the whole iTunes and iPod revolution because all they do is split up the songs. They separate albums that were never meant to be separated.
Yeah, I love that idea. Absolutely. But where as the first album was more old fashioned, more of a soundscape, the new one is going to be shorter and sharper, less washed over. There won't be very many intros, outros, codas or reprises or anything like that, which was purposeful on the first album. This one is not going to be easier in its arrangements; it’s just going to be more immediate sounding. Misadventures was a bit more of a delayed scenario where the gratification of one song would maybe take some time to come through. If Misadventures was influenced by Sergeant Pepper, then this one’s more Revolver. Man, I could talk all day about it because it’s so much in my head. More unexpected, you know? Instead of brushes for the drums, I want to use hotrods, sticks, mallets, sleigh bells, tambourines, maracas. There’ll also be more electric guitar this time. Not fuzzy but clean sounding.
I’ve never thought of doing that, I don’t know. No, not for a stadium. Watching the Guns N’ Roses videos when I was twelve, the whole idea of a stadium show in the daylight just repels me. I prefer it when bands stay in one city for more than one night at a more intimate venue, kinda like a crowd spread across days? I think it would, you know, take the intimacy away from the record. I think it’s maybe because I feel weird playing outside anywhere. I don’t really know why that is. Do I want a bigger audience? Definitely. It was made with an audience it mind. Records that got me through the night like Kind Of Blue, X/O, Ok Computer, it’s back to that idea that I wanted Midadventures to be more of a bedtime record.
Oh, OK.
I lived in Oxford for a year and I spent time in London across that year, I went down on the Tube and saw lots of concerts and things, you know? London left an imprint upon me. I’m a very visually stimulated person and London, I can honestly say, is the most beautiful city in the world. I grew up in Kansas and went to university there, left for New York City, then I went to Los Angeles for a while, then I went to Chicago and loved it. It was the closest approximation of where I wanted to be. I still call home Kansas because that’s where I was brought up, but Chicago is home now too, it’s where my job is, all my friends are, you know? I tried to settle in New York City, but it’s really impossible.
Oh, yeah, I think so.
Kind Of Blue by Miles Davies, without a doubt.
It’s a record that’s been an endless source of fascination for me. My brother turned me onto it when I was about eighteen or nineteen, just before I went to college.
No, this was after Pink Floyd. Ha ha. After he got bored of Pink Floyd and he got into Jazz.
Being a younger brother I was often told what to listen to. After that I took it up to college with me and it was the first thing I listened to at my first night away. It’s one of those albums I could listen to all day, every day. There’s one song on there, All Blues, the first twenty seconds of that song is what I want all my music to sound like. Working on the pre-production to this album, I just had that first twenty seconds on the stereo over and over and over again. I made everyone who worked on the record listen to it. When I was working at a university in Chicago, I would have an hour lunch break and I found this Mexican restaurant where they had Kind Of Blue on the juke box and I’d go in there every day and listen to the entire album. So if I was on a desert island, that would be the album I would take…although I never really listen to it in the sunshine, so I might switch to Beach Boys if I could smuggle that along.
Oh Ok, ha ha, it’d be an island off of Greenland.
It’s actually supposed to be in the works right now, this guy in London is working with the label in Manchester and they’ve confirmed a date with Kevin Tihista in London on 2 December. I hear he's been getting some good reviews in Uncut and Mojo. The plan is, or was, for me and one of my bandmates, the violinist, to be Kevin’s backing band and open the show for him. But, with the money side of things, they’d want me to come over and play six or seven dates and this would only be four or five. Yeah, I’ve got my fingers crossed over that one, I can’t wait to see London again. We’ll try and make something happen, I’m sure.
Oh yeah. I voted last night because I have to do a postal vote. I checked Kerry / Edwards in my box and I’m really excited to have sent that back. It’s a constant source of discussion with my friends and I. It’s good because people are taking a real interest and looking at issues. After the debates on television we were all really excited -- I’m really hoping with everything I’ve got that John Kerry wins it.
I think so. They say it’s a close race on networks like CNN and they’re not even a veiled Republican network, so…It is interesting that this time, a lot of newspapers and TV stations that have been traditionally Republican are now endorsing John Kerry. Also, all they polling that they use doesn’t tap into cell phone usage, so in a way the younger generation are being discluded. Also, the way the music community, especially the hip hop community are mobilising to vote is just really great. People realise how serious it is and anyone who’s voting really want their friends to vote as well. I mean, I hate getting big group emails from people who say “you should do this”, but before the election I’m going to write and call all my friends and try and get them to vote, I’m not going to tell them who for of course.
I can’t believe he’s running un-opposed. The public outcry against him following Bush must have had some effect? That’s shocking. I have a lot of hope right now, if Kerry gets elected, I’ll be really happy
Thank you and have a lovely week.