The Wombats have defied all UK press scepticism (and cynicism) to become one of the country’s biggest indie pop bands. Big streaming audiences, huge social media followings and a multi-generational fanbase now pretty much guarantee the Wombats will hit no. 1 on the album charts, as new album ‘ Fix Yourself Not the World ’ has proved. They also secure headline festival slots and sell out shows and tours, not just at home but even in the USA. Having come to know and admire the band’s songcraft on ...
Mar 04, 2022•57 min•Season 3Ep. 6
In a warm and whimsical conversation with Yan (Scott Wilkinson) of Sea Power , I learned to appreciate just what this unique band has achieved. With the recent name change, I might suggest the band wears its status as National Treasure with a certain irony. But over the course of two decades the band has made a batch of fine songs, really solid albums, award winning soundtracks and plays sold out, highly renowned live shows. Sea Power also had some hits in the early days but the band's true supp...
Feb 24, 2022•42 min
From the earliest beginnings of 1983’s The Hurting to the band’s huge 1985 LP Songs From The Big Chair, Tears For Fears songs captured sadness, ambition, pain - confessional levels of emotional honesty. All this conveyed with the magic touch of songwriters who were also not afraid to get weird. But as the 80s music scene spun out of control so did Tears For Fears, famously making one of the longest, most tortuous and expensive albums in history in The Seeds Of Love. The aim was flawlessness but ...
Feb 18, 2022•44 min
After the release of a ‘best of’ collection Everything Hits at Once in 2019, Spoon are back at long last with brand new material - the album Lucifer On The Sofa - a raw, rollicking rock album (complete with new players on lead guitar and bass) recorded as near-as-dammit live. It is an antidote to Spoon’s previous (superb, but far more produced) Hot Thoughts (2017). In 30 years, the band has come full circle in the best possible way. Their first record (“not my favourite” says Britt) Telephono wa...
Feb 11, 2022•41 min•Season 3Ep. 3
When it comes to longevity, Feeder keeps coming back around, and the guitar-rock scene is all the better for it. It was back in January 2001 that “Buck Rogers” reached number five on the UK chart (the song remains a radio standard even in its 21st year). Grant Nicholas originally wrote the song to impress producer Gil Norton in the hope he would be persuaded to work with Feeder. Buck Rogers contains a big guitar riff and stream-of-consciousness lyrics about being jealous of his rival’s brand new...
Jan 11, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 3Ep. 2
When Suzanne Vega played a short residency at New York’s exclusive, super high-end Cafe Carlisle in 2019 (for the second time in her career) she wanted to put on a show, something special: “I thought, let’s make a show out of it. I wanted to make it like an old style revue, since it’s a small and very upper crust place with out-of-towners and locals as well, from all over New York. So I thought we’d make it about New York songs. It seemed to go down really well. I heard the elevator boys talking...
Dec 17, 2021•42 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Discovering a band all to yourself is the best type of music discovery there is. One day in the mid 2000s as my wife and I wandered along London’s South Bank, we were stopped in our tracks by music the likes of which we’d never heard before - jazzy, rhythmic, with a haunting steel drum but also with an element of ‘indie’. There, were four very young men (then in their late teens) busking with a confident authority - more a private performance than a busk, and with quite an audience too. That ban...
Oct 21, 2021•40 min•Season 2Ep. 6
If one of the secrets to longevity in the music industry is simply taking your time, then Danish alternative rock band Mew are grand masters. Formed in 1995, the band took eight years before a major label deal came along, and with it, international success (the superb breakthrough album Frengers). It did not lead to a rush. Some 26 years into the band’s career, Mew has released just seven studio albums - one every four years. That’s not something Spotify would advocate as an operating model for ...
Oct 07, 2021•41 min•Season 2Ep. 5
When I sat down with Steve Berlin, the Los Lobos sax player and de facto spokesperson, I was a little more than intrigued. To most people around the world - outside of North America anyways - Los Lobos remain the La Bamba band. How wrong we are. There is a very common thread with the artists we’ve had on the show - and with longevity - every one of the artists (except so far, Laura Veirs and Maximo Park) had a very big song: James, Turin Brakes, Gary Numan, KT Tunstall… But Los Lobos is the most...
Sep 17, 2021•1 hr
On The Art of Longevity, Fin Greenhall explained the ideas behind Fink's new project IIUII : an acoustic retrospective of some of the band's (and fans) favourite, biggest songs. “I’m a better singer now than I was in 2005, so I feel I can do a better job of singing these songs. As a band we are much more loose, grounded and subtle than we used to be - comfortable with who we are”. As such, the idea behind the project is to do a better job of those songs by bringing experience to bear as the song...
Aug 30, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Is it possible to make your best record 33 years into a career? That’s what may just have happened with Canadian legends Barenaked Ladies and their 2021 release Detour De Force. The album covers most of BNL’s styles (i.e. a long list of genres) and is a masterclass in songwriting. It starts out with three BNL bangers, before settling into something more reflective, but typically varied and never boring. When I spoke to Ed Robertson for episode 2 of season 2, he himself seemed pleased with the re...
Aug 13, 2021•55 min•Season 2Ep. 2
On the Art of Longevity Series II, Episode One, KT Tunstall tells me that albums can feel like a ‘flash in the pan’ despite all the work that goes into them. But albums like Wax (her latest, from 2018) will stick around in the ears for a long time to come. KT Tunstall was the classic ‘overnight success’ i.e. ten years in the making, having busked her way around the St Andrews and Fife scenes since the mid 90s. It all ‘began’ with that performance of ‘Black Horse & The Cherry Tree’ on Jools H...
Jul 27, 2021•48 min•Season 2Ep. 1
The Coral is a band revered on the music scene - a real artist’s band. They are very accomplished musicians who first got together at school in the small Wirral town of Hoylake. The band members bonded over their many music icons, from The Beatles and the Small Faces to Acker Bilk and Del Shannon. Listening to a record by the Coral is a dizzying fairground tour of Liverpool’s music hall pop heritage mixed with American West Coast psychedelia and a lot else besides. Sometimes all in one song. Yet...
Jun 26, 2021•52 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Music critics have tried to classify the music made by North East England’s Maximo Park for the past two decades, eventually converging on the term ‘art pop’. Yet Paul Smith, the band’s singer and main co-songwriter (with guitarist Duncan Lloyd) describes their music thus as: “Odd but still pop music. Weird but anthemic. Music with a literary influence but also immediate - in some ways primitive - music that tries to slap you in the face a little bit, but twangs its way back to being pop. We try...
Jun 25, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 6
When you’ve been getting away with it as a seven piece band for nearly four decades, with 22 albums behind you - something’s got to give when it comes to longevity. Especially when, in the case of James and Tim Booth, you’re on yet another roll. The band has made another vital album (All The Colours of You) despite the backdrop of a global pandemic and, in Booth’s case, an unsettling period on the run from the increasingly virulent wildfires encroaching on his family home in the Topanga Canyon o...
Jun 13, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Success came relatively quickly to Gary Numan, when his single ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ rose to the top of the UK charts in May 1979. Without a chorus and clocking in at nearly five and a half minutes, it was an unlikely a hit record as you could imagine. Its parent album, ‘ Replicas ’, released the month before, went to number one in the album charts, as did its successor, ‘ The Pleasure Principle ’, released only a few months later. This album featured what is perhaps Numan’s best known singl...
May 10, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 4
There’s no such thing as a critical review for any of Laura Veirs ' 11 albums. But how does Laura measure her own success? The answer is, she doesn’t stop to think about it, much. Instead, as one project gets done, she’s into the next. A prolific songwriter and increasingly accomplished musician, Laura is constantly moving forward with all the restless energy of a fast flowing river. Perhaps it’s because her albums really are like statements of parts of her life. Not many artists are brave enoug...
Apr 29, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Nile Rodgers has seen and done it all. He has collaborated with the world’s top music stars including Madonna, David Bowie and Duran Duran and Daft Punk. The Chic Organisation created by Nile and music partner Bernard Edwards created a string of monster pop hits between 1977 and 1983, when they wrote and produced eight Chic albums, two for Sister Sledge, along with one each for Diana Ross, Debbie Harry, Johnny Matthis, and Sheila B and Devotion. Everybody knows at least a dozen Nile Rodgers song...
Apr 13, 2021•59 min•Season 1Ep. 2
In the Art of Longevity, a new podcast from The Song Sommelier, we take a whistle stop tour of a classic band or artist’s career, but we break a few of usual ‘media interview’ rules (well, we break all of them). Ultimately we reflect on learnings, wisdom, battle scars and wounds and ask “what really defines success”. It’s a question many fans and fellow musicians and all aspiring musicians want to know answers to. Brett Andersen from Suede once said that all successful artists have followed a si...
Mar 03, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Dylan Jones, long time editor of GQ, writer and father, picks out his favourite New Romantic tracks as part of his “Sweet Dreams Festival” fantasy setlist. Dylan Jones has been Editor of the UK fashion and lifestyle magazine GQ since 1999. Alongside that he has become an established author and journalist of culture and politics. Since Jones joined GQ, the magazine has won numerous awards. Dylan himself has received the Mark Boxer Award for lifetime achievement, honouring him not only for his wor...
Nov 14, 2020•33 min•Season 1Ep. 3
What more can be said about U2 as a live entity? Well, maybe look at it from a personal perspective - in this case, U2’s performances’ impact on the life & times of Paul Smernicki, music manager (Hyyts, Swim School, Magnum House) and long-time label executive. And at one fleeting moment, a potential addition to U2’s management team. Starting with Zoo Station from Achtung Baby, the opening trio of Paul’s very own U2 Fantasy Setlist is full of bangers including the monster songs ‘Streets’ and ...
Sep 08, 2019•32 min
In our first podcast - yep that’s right - we’ve done a podcast (well everyone else has, so why not us!) lifelong Dylan fan, and long term TSS collaborator, David Freer, guides us through some of Dylan’s mystery, while adding something of his own. Support the show Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/
Aug 07, 2019•31 min
