Payne's Pretzels

SITTING IN A SMALL DRESSING ROOM somewhere in the bowels of The Sage, it was time for a chat about the band and the evening’s event. Normally The Sage conjures imagery of the Northern Symphonia, folk and other eclectic music styles. However, tonight was all about fast rock, a first to the venue according to the helpful sound engineer.

Billed as ‘The Futureheads and Friends Christmas Special’, the evening saw four local bands supporting The Futureheads on 19th December 2008 to round off the forty four live dates they’ve played this year. The evening didn’t turn out as the band had originally intended “It was supposed to be like a festival”, Jaff explained “The other hall was booked but we’ve managed to still get a fair few bands”. Forty Four dates may seem a lot to you and me but compared to the past hauls done by the band, it’s simply another day at work. “It certainly helped our popularity in America, we ended up touring their for nine months”, referring to when Decent Days And Nights featured on the The O.C in 2005.

We then got on to having a chat about the band itself and their record successes. Their highest rating single was a cover of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love, from their debut album. “She left a message on our answer phone, saying how much she liked our version”, Jaff said with pride. “We’re doing a cover tonight, Paul McCartney” revealed Jaff. Asking about the aspirations of the band and the possibility of a number one single, Jaff was not so optimistic – “It’s hard to sell records these days, you have to sell more with downloads. “You can make £5 from an album when you sell it yourself”, which lead onto the music piracy debate.

Like most musicians, Jaff had a strong opinion. “It’s a funny one, there are two different arguments, If people only download music by the big bands, record labels don’t have the money to spend on the small bands but the other thing is, music is an art form. If people get into a band, they’ll come and see them live. Ultimately, it’s up to the fans on whether they want the band to survive”. The band founded their own record label in 2006 after being dropped by 679 Recordings, part of the Warner Brothers Group.
The ever-knowledgeable Wikipedia claimed that the Futureheads nearly broke up after the relative failure of their second album. Questioning Jaff about this, it turns out Wikipedia might not be strictly true. “Going from selling 250,000 copies to only 20,000 is hard. We were dropped by Warners but had offers from other major labels. We decided to do it ourselves.”

On asking whether this was a full record company or just for the purposes of the band (often referred to as ‘vanity labels’) – “We wouldn’t sign anyone else, maybe after the band have split up”. Posing the question, is everything well in the Futureheads camp? We discussed the contemporaries of the band, and comparisons such as Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs (“like a huge version of us”) and Maximo Park. All were founded at a similar time and have similarities in both their sound and influences. However, Franz have had the hit singles the Futureheads lacked, while Maximo have focused on albums that have climbed the charts. Listening to Ulysses and comparing it to Walking Backwards (the most recent singles from Franz Ferdinand and the Futureheads), it’s clear which of the two have progressed the most.

Ferdinand realised they had to shake things up for their third album and have successfully achieved this goal, while the Futureheads have stayed with the same fast moving, guitar driven pop-punk mix that can be found on all their previous records. Later into the interview, Jaff talked about the music he was listening to: “I Don’t listen to any modern music these days – AC/DC and Bruce Springsteen. ‘70s Rock. Led Zeppelin, that sort of thing”. Picking up that this may be a fellow Springsteen enthusiast, it transpires we both saw The Boss last year in London, albeit at different performances. “I think you got the better set list”, referring to the 28 songs and three hour set The Boss and E Street Band belted out last June. (Only enthusiasts would enjoy the next part of our chat about the wide ranging set lists, members of the band and who is really important in the world of E Street.)

Arriving back at The Sage later in the day, Hall One was decked out with a simple stage. It became obvious that the chairs were still there, but some room for standing at the front was made. Throughout the main set, a small group gathered to have a mosh around to everything the band blasted through. The event team around Hall One seemed unsure what to do with this, and decided to let them get on with it. Good job that F**ked Up weren’t chosen to headline – leaving them to their own devices would result in one trashed concert hall.

The support bands were a mix from Verve-inspired pop music to the same post-punk stylings of the event’s main performers. All being local friends of the band, the continuity was obvious between sets. They did the job of building the momentum for what was coming later as the hall gradually filled up. The headliners managed to produce a storming set of seventeen songs that opened with Walking Backwards from their most recent album. The material included plenty from their album, This Is Not the World (2008) as well as smatterings from News and Tributes (2005) and The Futureheads (2004).

If you already have prior knowledge of the band, no doubt you will know Radio Heart, which according to Jaff was “written in 20 minutes and recorded in an hour just before we headed out on tour”. With a jolly sing along chorus, the topic of “a girl who likes nothing but listening to music” provided a great anthem for the audience, four songs into the gig. After this, the band continued with some of their lesser known songs, all of them in a very similar style until we suddenly hit Wonderful Christmastime. Continuing on from a previous number, and not mentioned on the set list, it took both the audience and myself by surprise. They managed to do a fine cover in their own style. Soon after, Hounds of Love arrived and this is where the band truly shone. Their musical skills were finally on show for all to see, no wonder Kate Bush left them a message.

The audience went wild and it provided the climax to the evening.
Although the support bands were the usual standard and the middle of the set became bogged down in generic pop-punk songs, the Futureheads know how the please their home crowd and they managed this successfully. They’ve become the masters of fast moving, three minute rock songs but where next? Jaff said that after all the holiday festivities were over, they would be record making once again.

Let’s see where Sunderland’s second finest export can do now.

Originally published in Palatinate Issue 702