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January 1995, Ink19 New Music Magazine
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"Drew, why is Alison Shaw calling my house?"
"Um, oops. Um, I guess I accidentally gave the Cranes' publicist the wrong number. Sorry. Um, what'd she have to say?"
That was the first attempt at an interview with Alison Shaw from the Cranes. I never did get to talk to her that day and I was really bummed 'cause I thought I had just missed what would probably be my only chance to talk to one of my favorite bands. The Cranes, composed of Alison Shaw on vocals and bass, her brother Jim Shaw on drums, piano, and guitar, Mark Francombe and Matt Cope on guitars, have played with my emotions through their music more than they will probably ever know. Their music is filled with contrasts, both in sounds and feelings. In some songs, beautiful strings of melody compete with pounding drums and wrenching guitars, resulting in a sound that manages to be both stark and lush simultaneously, like a beautiful light that's almost too bright. Other songs are quieter, but they all have a mournfully beautiful quality about them that stops your heart. And over all that are Alison's signature vocals, which are fragile, childlike, and comparable to none. If the music hadn't already melted your heart, Alison's voice surely would.
Luckily, I was given a second chance in November. The second attempt was successful... sort of. We had problems with the phone line, sections of the interview tape are blank (?!), and shortly after I finished transcribing the tape broke. So much for making millions off a bootlegged interview....
What have you been doing since Forever?
After the Forever album we were touring quite a lot. The tour for that album ended last November and we started to record Loved in January. Afterwards we were writing the music for a film. We finished that in the summer and that's out now. It's been in a few film festivals and it's going to be on TV in England in January.
What's it called?
The film's called Scarborough Ahoy! It's an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams story and it's been set in England. It's like a short feature film — it's only about 35 minutes long cause it was for a student graduation film from the national film school. But when the film was shown for its first time there was lots of interest and the film was sold straightaway. I think the director's going to be pretty successful 'cause everybody's interested in her, so it's quite a good thing to work on. In the past, quite a few people have mentioned that what we do sounds quite filmic, so it's quite interesting to actually work on a film.
Are you going to be releasing the soundtrack music?
A couple of songs from Loved are included in it; "Shining Road" is the end title song of the film, and "Beautiful Friend" — there's kind of a version of it in the film, but not the same as on the album, and there's some other kind of incidental pieces of music that ... There's one piece that might go on the next EP as kind of like an extra track or something, but I don't think we'll release the soundtrack as a whole.
What is your next EP going to be?
It's probably going to "Beautiful Friend" but we're still deciding at the moment.
How did the tour with The Cure come about, after Wings of Joy?
Well, it just came about actually because apparently Robert and Simon had our album and some singles and things that we'd done before that time and apparently they just liked the album and so they just asked us if we'd like to do the tour.
Well, that's nice.
Yeah, it came as a real shock — we had no idea that they'd even heard of us. It was an absolutely brilliant time for us. We just had the best time ever — we loved the whole thing. They were really kind and helpful to us all the way.
Had you toured much before you went on tour with them?
We toured in Europe a few times, kind of like club tours and things and we'd just done a little five-date tour of the east coast with Belly. That was the first we'd been to America. A couple of weeks after that we stared The Cure tour. It all happened really suddenly. It's pretty extraordinary, really, to be flung into that situation and we didn't know what to expect. We thought that we'd be sent home because we weren't going to be good enough, because we couldn't imagine being able to do it.
How were you received?
Pretty well, really, on the whole, 'cause I think luckily the people who went to see The Cure are the kind of people that might be interested in us anyways and so I think people gave us a fair listen. Obviously, in a great big crowd there are going to be loads of people that are not really gonna be interested in us, but we felt that people did give us a fair chance and they listened to what we were doing and we got a pretty good reaction in most places.
You toured with Slowdive, too, right?
That's right, we toured with them in Europe a couple of times.
Do you know what their plans are right now?
I think they've got an album coming out in the new year.
What are your tour plans for Loved?
We're just about to start a European tour next week. We're starting in France and going to Italy and Switzerland and Holland and Germany and stuff... Scandinavia. The American tour's gonna be next year starting in the end of January and going through February.
Do you know who you're playing with?
In Europe it's the Pale Saints. Except we're not sure about America yet...
Bring 'em along.
Yeah, we'd like to, we'd like to. I hope they can do it. See, we were going to ask them but I think they've just played a few dates in America by themselves just now so I'm not sure if they would want to come back again so soon, but if they do, we'd like them to.
Who do you get to do your artwork?
It used to be the same person all along — he's called Robert Coleman — and he did all of the early stuff and Wings of Joy, and then he didn't do the Forever album, but he did the Jewel EP sleeves and things. He can't always do it 'cause he's got lots of other things that he works on, so we have kind of a mixture of people lately. The sleeve for Loved we sort of did ourselves in a way.
Who do you think influenced you vocally?
Um... I don't know, really, 'cause when we first started we used to try not to listen to other things and try and find a sound that was our own and I don't know who I would directly compare it to, really. There are singers that we like...
But not one that you sound like?
Not really that I can directly say, "That person was the reason why we do what we do," 'cause there isn't really anybody like that. It's a combination of groups, really. Pretty much the sort of music that we like are things from Mute Records or 4AD Records in sort of a general sense, and also we like folk music and stuff from other countries and stuff that's got sort of a feel of someone else's life or someone else's world. I really like Flamenco music at the moment.
Loved seems a little more forceful and dancier than your first two albums. Why is that?
We didn't really have a particular plan for it, but when we started writing songs we found that we were leaning towards things that did have a bit more of a beat. Like the first two songs we wrote for the album were "Rêverie" and "Lilies." "Lilies" is quite a noisy song. It has kind of noisy guitars that come in for a while and then it all drops out and there's a space and then the guitars will come back in again. To me it felt like everything was moving along at a fast pace and suddenly you were thrown into a big space and it kind of made me feel a bit disoriented when I first listened to it and that's what I sort of wrote the words about — being disorientated and not knowing where you are or how you got to be in that place and feeling a bit alone. But other ones like "Rêverie" and "Pale Blue Sky" are about sort of appreciating a moment of happiness or of moving forward. I think a lot of the songs on the album have got a theme of moving forward even though you're not quite sure where you're going to, but of not wanting to stay still, of wanting to go on.
Why are the only lyrics included the ones for "Lilies"?
What I usually feel is that... because often the words are written in relation to the music very closely, it doesn't seem to make much sense when you separate them out because, like, sometimes a phrase, if you just kind of print it on the page, it doesn't make as much sense as if when it's spoken in a certain way or against a certain piece of music which twists the meaning. So sometimes I don't really want to write it down because they weren't written to be read separately, they were written to be heard within the song. I might just print it all sometime, but I don't know. We usually kind of shy away from it for some reason, I'm not sure why.
When I read lyrics is I'm listening to what I'm reading at the same time, I'm just curious as to what they're saying.
Yeah, I guess that's true. People go on at me all the time about it [Laughs] so I'll give in one day, maybe on the next album...
Any interesting tour stories? Did you wreck any hotels or anything?
Um... [Laughs] Not that I can remember, no. But once in our very early days in England we accidentally wrecked a dressing room, but we didn't mean to. It just happened. 'Cause first of all Matt was sick all over the place — it was really horrible 'cause he was really drunk.
And then the damn tape went blank again. Ahh, well. The most interesting thing you missed is that the Cranes have many videos out and are hoping to release them as a collection soon.
© Ink19 New Music Magazine, January 1995 |
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