Fyfe Dangerfield: I’m Not Britain’s Answer To Timbaland
Fyfe Dangerfield tells us about his new record, 'Fly Yellow Moon'.
Joe O'Sullivan chats to Guillemots-frontman-turned-solo-artist Fyfe Dangerfield about his new record, 'Fly Yellow Moon'.
You’ve played several low key shows solo over the years, why has it taken so long for an album to be released?
It didn’t take long for the album to be completed, I just didn’t really get around to recording until last year. I did two solo shows at the end of 2006 but that wasn’t to launch a solo career, I just like playing acoustically. That was mainly playing Guillemots songs, only one song I played there is on this album, Don’t Be Shy which is the oldest song on the record. These are songs I wrote last year, some on the road, all at different times. Firebird was written when I woke up during the night and couldn’t sleep. Most of the record was done in five days, last Christmas. Half the record was mixed over the Christmas period, the rest have been finished off over the course of the year. There’s a special edition of the album that will be released with a bonus disc, that has another ten songs which were also recorded in that five days.
Do you think with the music industry the way it is that this will become more prevalent? This idea of releasing an album with a bonus disc, extra tracks and what not?
I don’t know, it was very much me who was pushing for this bonus disc, it wasn’t label pressure at all.
How does this album differ from your work with Guillemots?
It’s just… simpler. It’s more about the songs because every time I get in the studio there’s that temptation to just play everything there. Now I’m starting to talk about this record, it makes me want to go bury my head and y’know, make loads of weird instrumental music! With Guillemots it’s always been more about how the song sounds than the song itself in a weird kind of way...
In terms of production?
Yeah, on both records, in different ways. A journey in terms of how things sound. With this it was more just “record some songs”.
Would you say with Guillemots, you’re more… I’m not sure calculated is the right word, more thought processes?
No, no, it’s not calculated! The emotional thing goes through anything I do, sometimes I wish we weren’t so much like that – but we are. We’re all very much about how music makes us feel. It’s far from being calculated, it’s the opposite, certain sounds just make you feel something and that’s what gets us excited. Losing yourself in that. I’m not really explaining myself very well… With Guillemots, we’d spend ages trying to mix things and get them to sound a certain way. With this, we just played, that was it.
Would you say this is a lo-fi record then?
Yeah, a lot more so. There’s two tracks that we spent a bit more time over, Setting Sun and She Needs Me. It’s probably not lo-fi by that definition but to me it is. [Discussion about Neutral Milk Hotel and the merits of demos takes place. Fyfe's so indie.] With this record, we know on loads of these tracks that we could have mixed them better, we literally just played. But when you listen back to it, if we did that, it’d lose some of that spark. There’s something about putting a song down in five minutes that is of that moment.
Yeah, if you go back and you over analyse it you can take away what made it special in the first place.
We’ve definitely made that mistake with Guillemots in the past, especially with Red. With this, I didn’t want that to happen.
With Red, you spoke frequently about an RnB tack to it. Have you tried to push this record in a certain direction, to a certain style?
I want to do a lot more stuff like that but I think I’ve realized while I love making music like that, I don’t enjoy singing it. So I’m really starting to try and write songs for other people. I think I probably will do that in the future, there are certain tracks that manage to combine it. Stillness Is The Move by Dirty Projectors, for instance. I’d never heard anything by them before, it’s amazing! Like RnB with an African guitar but it’s not at all contrived. With Big Dog and Red, we had a lot of fun doing it and I think it sounds really cool but as a singer, I’m not comfortable singing it, nor very good at it. A B side we did, You Can Look But You Can’t Touch, that was great y’know? Arista’s boyfriend at the time, I wrote him a rap with lines about cake and stuff haha! We enjoyed doing that but I can see why people were confused by the record. I do think there’s things we are better at…
It was quite a departure from the first record.
Yeah but subconsciously or otherwise, as soon as you’ve done a record it’s hard not to react to it. We had the option of doing something that sounded the same or y’know, screw it, do something that will confuse people! I don’t think we really realized just how well the first record went down. Even though we got Mercury nominations, we just picked up on how people kept calling us quirky, which pissed us off. We don’t turn up to the studio in clown costumes y’know? So for Red we tried, in photoshoots etc, to look as normal as possible, really boring haha. You just have to not think about what others expect of you visually. With the new Guillemots record, we’ve been meeting up and playing for hours. We literally have 40 or 50 songs that we can play, we’re still figuring them out. Improvising then cutting them down and streamlining them.
With Fly Yellow Moon, have there been any outside influences? The three tracks on your Myspace all sound very different from one another.
Yeah.
On Faster Than The Setting Sun, maybe I’m reading too much into this but I heard a possible Twilight Sad influence?
I’ve heard the name but don’t really know them… [discussion about Twilight Sad ensues. Fyfe promises to give them a listen.] Well, with that track I really wanted to sound wavery and uncomfortable. I tend to like my voice being loud, it’s not a voice that cuts through music but… there was no specific influence on this record, no. It was about catching moments.
What about Bernard Butler? Did he have a big impact?
Well he mixed Setting Sun and She Needs Me, it was good working with him. It came about – I was happy with how they sounded but a few other people said they could sound better. I said “fair enough, let’s give it a go”.
So why him particularly? Had you been impressed by his work before?
Yeah, a combination of things. Nothing really that he’s done recently, I was really into Suede as a kid and I love the McAlmont & Butler stuff. Years ago, I sent him some demos and he got back to me, said he liked them but we never worked together, had sporadic contact…it was interesting, he uses old techniques.
Red wasn’t as well received critically as Through The Windowpane, something I gather was a palpable blow to your confidence. Do you anticipate any thoughts critically to this record and would their opinions matter as much this time round?
I’d hope not. I think… it’s very hard not to want to know what people think. It’s stupid to pay attention to them as they’re either negative which gets you angry or positive which inflates your ego, neither of which is a good thing. The Red thing, it was a confidence blow but I can understand the criticism looking back at it. We weren’t trying to make a follow up to Through The Windowpane, we wanted to make a little chocolate box of pop songs where everything sounded different. That really seemed to annoy people, I remember the NME – well they hate us anyway. They were saying how with Big Dog, I’d woken up and thought that I was Britain's answer to Timbaland. I don’t think that! I was just having some fun! It’s a really English thing, “oh you think you can do that now, do you?”. I’ve always found that kind of weird but I try not to think about it too much. In my head, I can already think of ways people will slag it off but I’m really proud of it. It’s an honest record and it’s as good as I could have done for what it was at the time.
Bearing in mind what you’ve said about Red, was the flow of the album a more important consideration for you this time around? The chocolate box aspect of pop songs or whatever, was there any internal disagreement on the tracklisting?
Oh yeah, there was a big disagreement between me and my manager but I was very adamant. It was about starting the album with When You Walk In The Room actually, they felt that the first thing people would hear would be me screaming, y’know? There is a sequence to the record, other people have commented on it.
You strike me as someone who still believes in the concept of ‘the album’…
There’s a journey definitely. It starts off with this eruption of happiness and then gradually moves through something calmer and deeper into difficult times and then comes out with this big joyous thing.
Is this your prime focus now or does it bear the dreaded ‘side project’ status?
It’s both. It depends how things go. We’re going to be doing a fair bit of promo for it but I’m also… to me, my heads in the new Guillemots record. So it’s weird flitting between the two.
Bearing in mind we’ve just come into 2010, what would you say is the album of the last decade? This is where we test just how big your ego really is…
[Laughs] I’m so terrible with these sorts of questions! I have listened to so much music from this decade but I can’t think of one in particular that stands out. I think the Knife record [Silent Shout] for me is a favourite. That was quite an interesting one. I mean, I really couldn’t say as it depends so much on what mood I’m in. But that album opened my mind, sound wise. I love the way they play around with the pitches of voice, make it very ‘icy’ sounding…
So ‘Silent Shout’ would be your recommendation to our readers?
Yes, I suppose it is.
Brilliant, thanks very much for your time and hope you had a great Christmas and New Year!
Same to you!
Fyfe Dangerfield's debut solo album 'Fly Yellow Moon' is out this week.
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