Interview with Alternative Ulster, December 2003
19th of December 2003, 11:34 am
Born To Be Wilde
'Protestants are not popular', scorns the Hindley blonde in the Noel Coward smoking jacket. 'The Jews may have murdered Jesus Christ, but we murdered'' Jamie Manners pauses for a beat, perhaps reflecting on the tendency of history to repeat itself, ''Oscar Wilde'.
Those arriving in the Waterfront Hall's bar en route to tonight's concert by The Fureys reel from the sucker punch of Manners' lyrical invective. The art terrorist lounge act they have stumbled across, as if across a landmine, is The Vichy Government. 'If Michael Stone gets in the Louvre, we don't care', Manners continues. If a lynchmob is forming amongst the Aran jumpers, Andrew Chilton doesn't care either. The inscrutable keyboardist performs with all the apparent vigour and enthusiasm of a clockwatching data input clerk. It doesn't seem to concern him that his urgent lo-fi synth-funk is as dangerously offensive to a traditionalist diddle-dee-dee sensibility as his collaborator's pointed profanity and situationist tirades.
Two weeks ago The Vichy Government supported Damo Suzuki in the incongruous setting of a working men's club in Leeds. 'We were definitely behind enemy lines on that bill,' says Jamie. 'There were leftover hippies everywhere: dangly wooden earrings, enormous beards without moustaches, Crazy World Of Arthur Brown t-shirts. And there was a wake taking place in the club members' bar next door. The toilets in that bar weren't working, so for the entirety of our set we had bewildered locals clad in black, scuttling across the back row to access the toilets.' The situation would hardly have been ameliorated by Jamie taking to the stage in a Luftwaffe uniform and announcing 'Hello Manchester!'
Attendances at Vichy performances have been bolstered by this reputation for compulsive car crash viewing. It should probably frustrate a band so serious about its music and politics that a substantial proportion of the audience is only interested in rubbernecking at the carnage, but Andrew is dismissive. 'That doesn't bother us. Confrontation is a significant part of our performance, but we're confident we have the songs to back it up too. We're not deliberately inaccessible and people who come to our gigs with open minds are generally converted. Besides, uncomfortable contexts make a welcome change when you're used to playing with Manics tribute bands in Cambridge and Human League tribute bands in Camden. The worst thing about the Human League clones is they think we're one of them.'
Whether in distancing itself from Romo casualties, or the 'six counties of solid turd' that constitute Northern Ireland and its culture (Orange Disorder), little Englandism (Rivers Of Your Blood), vacuous careerism (Secretarial Elite) or what Jamie describes as 'the usual slop of angstpunk and American indie rock influences that pervade every other wretched band in Belfast,' The Vichy Government is defined more by difference than affiliation. The strategy is reminiscent of the arrogance and aloofness of the nascent Manic Street Preachers: 'Don't fall in love,' they warned, 'Cos we hate you still.' It's difficult to rationalise the evangelical loyalty of Vichy subjects when their Government derides them as 'Generation-Wank-Yourself-To-Sleep' (How To Become A Cult Figure).
'I can see how it might appear like that,' says Jamie. 'If you come to see us or stick on the album, you're entering Vichy World. After years of having had people bark orders at me, it's a half hour glimpse of a parallel universe where I'm calling all the shots for once. So while I Control Discourse is sung in the persona of The Spectacle, Rupert Murdoch or whoever, it's also about how Vichy works. You are entering Vichy World, Population Two. But if I give the impression of thinking that I'm better than anyone else, I can assure it's totally at cross purposes to what I'm trying to do, which is simply transcribing what I see in the world. I think it's good for pop singers to be prophets, but it would defeat the point to make exceptions for myself, and I'm just as much a part of Genertation-Wank-Yourself-To-Sleep as anyone else. If I'd been born ten years earlier, I could have ended up a Linkin Park fan too.'
Unfortunately, prophets are usually only heeded in retrospect. Even for a sympathetic mind, it requires significant suspension of disbelief to imagine the Vichy worldview insinuating its way far enough into mainstream consumption to register even on the radar of the current UK indie market. 'But people do come to us,' insists Andrew. 'The idea that we should be following any recognisable career plan is just bollocks. There are more than enough bands trying to make a name for themselves by sounding like Radiohead and Coldplay. I don't believe there is any such thing as innate commercial viability. Look at Eminem: who would have thought it would be commercially viable to make records about killing your wife' You can market anything.'
Despite such faith in the inherent anarchy of capitalism, unceremoniously dispatching twelve songs in the form of Carrion Camping, an album whose pencil box production values are matched by a hastily handwritten tracklisting, still looks like commercial suicide. It's also horrifying to learn that this is not a demo, but represents the definitive recording of such Bontempiclash anthems as Portmeirion and Make Love To The Camera.
Andrew refuses to consider any further studio polish. 'Carrion Camping is as spartan as it could possibly be, out of the necessity that set us in this direction in the first place. We could have recorded the songs with fuller arrangements and higher production values. It would have been different, and certainly more expensive. We just wanted to get down what we'd done over the past year before moving on. We're still proud of every single note, every drum pattern, every syllable of the lyrics, we stand by everything we've done, but it's better that bands do something and move on, try something new, rather than remain preoccupied with trying to establish themselves by treading water with their musical style.'
Jamie promises that a new song about the War on Terror, The Reichstag Is On Fire, will sound like 'A-Ha driving an ice cream van'. Once can presume that the ice cream van is packed with explosives. At the Waterfront gig, Jamie dedicates it to ''everyone who was killed on September 11. Including the 35,000 people who died of starvation.'
Reichstag's appropriation of the London's Burning nursery rhyme is as sinister as the lullaby verses of Death On The Instalement-Plan. Jamie blames Mary Poppins for these skewed infantilisms.
'A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Matching spiteful lyrics to unpleasant, aggressive music would be too unsubtle, too Slipknot. And I could no more write a happy love song than I could fly a helicopter. Motown and Chic are massive influences for us but we're textbook misanthropists. Still, I think it makes a good blend. It's also a happy coincidence of how we write, the division of labour. I do all the words on my own and Andrew does all the music. I might have a musical motif in my head, but then Andrew will write something totally different that gives the end result of a more interesting song. People kept saying we ripped off The Streets, who I'd never heard, so I bought the album and had to write Death On The Instalment-Plan to get it out of my system. It's 100 percent autobiography but it's a Mike Skinner pastiche. Then Andrew comes up with this frail, music-box verse that sounds like David Sylvain circa Forbidden Colours: the last thing I'd have used, but it works. You can see why The Levellers or whoever end up being so shit, because it's very hard to mix politics and pop music. I think The Style Council and the Pet Shop Boys pulled it off. But in most cases, either the lyrics end up a jarring syntax, as with Richey Manic, which spoils the beautiful simplicity of great pop, or you dumb down the message to the point where it no longer means anything.'
When a term like 'genius' is slapped on every goon who picks up a guitar and strings two chords together, it too loses meaning. How then to describe the unique charms of The Vichy Government'
'We're the Etch-a-Sketch of music,' suggests Andrew.
'What does that mean''
'What do you think''
-Jennifer Love Wabsnazm
Those arriving in the Waterfront Hall's bar en route to tonight's concert by The Fureys reel from the sucker punch of Manners' lyrical invective. The art terrorist lounge act they have stumbled across, as if across a landmine, is The Vichy Government. 'If Michael Stone gets in the Louvre, we don't care', Manners continues. If a lynchmob is forming amongst the Aran jumpers, Andrew Chilton doesn't care either. The inscrutable keyboardist performs with all the apparent vigour and enthusiasm of a clockwatching data input clerk. It doesn't seem to concern him that his urgent lo-fi synth-funk is as dangerously offensive to a traditionalist diddle-dee-dee sensibility as his collaborator's pointed profanity and situationist tirades.
Two weeks ago The Vichy Government supported Damo Suzuki in the incongruous setting of a working men's club in Leeds. 'We were definitely behind enemy lines on that bill,' says Jamie. 'There were leftover hippies everywhere: dangly wooden earrings, enormous beards without moustaches, Crazy World Of Arthur Brown t-shirts. And there was a wake taking place in the club members' bar next door. The toilets in that bar weren't working, so for the entirety of our set we had bewildered locals clad in black, scuttling across the back row to access the toilets.' The situation would hardly have been ameliorated by Jamie taking to the stage in a Luftwaffe uniform and announcing 'Hello Manchester!'
Attendances at Vichy performances have been bolstered by this reputation for compulsive car crash viewing. It should probably frustrate a band so serious about its music and politics that a substantial proportion of the audience is only interested in rubbernecking at the carnage, but Andrew is dismissive. 'That doesn't bother us. Confrontation is a significant part of our performance, but we're confident we have the songs to back it up too. We're not deliberately inaccessible and people who come to our gigs with open minds are generally converted. Besides, uncomfortable contexts make a welcome change when you're used to playing with Manics tribute bands in Cambridge and Human League tribute bands in Camden. The worst thing about the Human League clones is they think we're one of them.'
Whether in distancing itself from Romo casualties, or the 'six counties of solid turd' that constitute Northern Ireland and its culture (Orange Disorder), little Englandism (Rivers Of Your Blood), vacuous careerism (Secretarial Elite) or what Jamie describes as 'the usual slop of angstpunk and American indie rock influences that pervade every other wretched band in Belfast,' The Vichy Government is defined more by difference than affiliation. The strategy is reminiscent of the arrogance and aloofness of the nascent Manic Street Preachers: 'Don't fall in love,' they warned, 'Cos we hate you still.' It's difficult to rationalise the evangelical loyalty of Vichy subjects when their Government derides them as 'Generation-Wank-Yourself-To-Sleep' (How To Become A Cult Figure).
'I can see how it might appear like that,' says Jamie. 'If you come to see us or stick on the album, you're entering Vichy World. After years of having had people bark orders at me, it's a half hour glimpse of a parallel universe where I'm calling all the shots for once. So while I Control Discourse is sung in the persona of The Spectacle, Rupert Murdoch or whoever, it's also about how Vichy works. You are entering Vichy World, Population Two. But if I give the impression of thinking that I'm better than anyone else, I can assure it's totally at cross purposes to what I'm trying to do, which is simply transcribing what I see in the world. I think it's good for pop singers to be prophets, but it would defeat the point to make exceptions for myself, and I'm just as much a part of Genertation-Wank-Yourself-To-Sleep as anyone else. If I'd been born ten years earlier, I could have ended up a Linkin Park fan too.'
Unfortunately, prophets are usually only heeded in retrospect. Even for a sympathetic mind, it requires significant suspension of disbelief to imagine the Vichy worldview insinuating its way far enough into mainstream consumption to register even on the radar of the current UK indie market. 'But people do come to us,' insists Andrew. 'The idea that we should be following any recognisable career plan is just bollocks. There are more than enough bands trying to make a name for themselves by sounding like Radiohead and Coldplay. I don't believe there is any such thing as innate commercial viability. Look at Eminem: who would have thought it would be commercially viable to make records about killing your wife' You can market anything.'
Despite such faith in the inherent anarchy of capitalism, unceremoniously dispatching twelve songs in the form of Carrion Camping, an album whose pencil box production values are matched by a hastily handwritten tracklisting, still looks like commercial suicide. It's also horrifying to learn that this is not a demo, but represents the definitive recording of such Bontempiclash anthems as Portmeirion and Make Love To The Camera.
Andrew refuses to consider any further studio polish. 'Carrion Camping is as spartan as it could possibly be, out of the necessity that set us in this direction in the first place. We could have recorded the songs with fuller arrangements and higher production values. It would have been different, and certainly more expensive. We just wanted to get down what we'd done over the past year before moving on. We're still proud of every single note, every drum pattern, every syllable of the lyrics, we stand by everything we've done, but it's better that bands do something and move on, try something new, rather than remain preoccupied with trying to establish themselves by treading water with their musical style.'
Jamie promises that a new song about the War on Terror, The Reichstag Is On Fire, will sound like 'A-Ha driving an ice cream van'. Once can presume that the ice cream van is packed with explosives. At the Waterfront gig, Jamie dedicates it to ''everyone who was killed on September 11. Including the 35,000 people who died of starvation.'
Reichstag's appropriation of the London's Burning nursery rhyme is as sinister as the lullaby verses of Death On The Instalement-Plan. Jamie blames Mary Poppins for these skewed infantilisms.
'A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Matching spiteful lyrics to unpleasant, aggressive music would be too unsubtle, too Slipknot. And I could no more write a happy love song than I could fly a helicopter. Motown and Chic are massive influences for us but we're textbook misanthropists. Still, I think it makes a good blend. It's also a happy coincidence of how we write, the division of labour. I do all the words on my own and Andrew does all the music. I might have a musical motif in my head, but then Andrew will write something totally different that gives the end result of a more interesting song. People kept saying we ripped off The Streets, who I'd never heard, so I bought the album and had to write Death On The Instalment-Plan to get it out of my system. It's 100 percent autobiography but it's a Mike Skinner pastiche. Then Andrew comes up with this frail, music-box verse that sounds like David Sylvain circa Forbidden Colours: the last thing I'd have used, but it works. You can see why The Levellers or whoever end up being so shit, because it's very hard to mix politics and pop music. I think The Style Council and the Pet Shop Boys pulled it off. But in most cases, either the lyrics end up a jarring syntax, as with Richey Manic, which spoils the beautiful simplicity of great pop, or you dumb down the message to the point where it no longer means anything.'
When a term like 'genius' is slapped on every goon who picks up a guitar and strings two chords together, it too loses meaning. How then to describe the unique charms of The Vichy Government'
'We're the Etch-a-Sketch of music,' suggests Andrew.
'What does that mean''
'What do you think''
-Jennifer Love Wabsnazm