The Art of Longevity

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 extreme example of a longevity outfit with a big song - the band had no other hits at all. Taking nothing away from La Bamba - a fine record and a justified number one in ten countries back in 1987. But stop right there. Try Googling, as I did, “Los Lobos, greatest American rock band” and there are more than a few articles examining that hypothesis, for good reasons. Built around the soulful songs of drummer Louis Perez and lead vocal and guitar player David Hidalgo (throw in a few rollicking rockers by Cesar Rosas) Los Lobos make solid, classic Americana-rock, but from a Latin point of view - and a deep rooted connection to traditional Mexican music: cumbia, boleros and norteños. Finally, throw the city of LA into the mix and you have the Los Lobos agenda, musically speaking.

It’s not surprising that Los Lobos have made a record of cover versions of seminal LA songs (The Beach Boys, Jackson Browne, War, Percy Mayfield) but what is surprising is how long it took to come up with the idea to do just that.

“We have a sixth sense of when to do stuff, somehow the muse talks to us. It's important for us to have a boundary - an idea - not just another Los Lobos record. The main thing for us is longevity and being able to do what we do and to answer to nobody other than ourselves, we have such gratitude for that. We have no obligation other than to move forward with our music”.

Now that is an agenda for lasting the distance. Yet Steve and I have fun with one idea - for Los Lobos to soundtrack a Netflix (or HBO, or AMC) production of Jaime Hernandez' genius Mexicana soap opera Love & Rockets. What a collaboration that would be.
Somebody get Ted Sarandos on the line...it’s Steve Berlin calling, from Los Lobos...

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We spoke to Joey Burns on the eve of Calexico's recent European shows in Brussels and London. Calexico play bigger venues in Europe than they do on their home turf, despite inventing a sound that conveys that land so evocatively. Indeed, it was music journalist Fred Mills who captured the band’s sound so perfectly with just two words: “desert noir”. What a cool subgenre to have invented. Since most music writers lazily throw in all the various tex mex music flavours in describing Calexico’s sound, Joey is happy to clarify:

“We are connected more with mariachi and cumbia than say tex mex or tejano or norteño which has a different connection to a different tradition. For the most part we are mariachi, cumbia. I’ve never felt like I’ve mastered anything, but I’m lucky enough to play with some of those that have”.

Calexico is touring as a septet, with Burns and partner/drummer John Convertino accompanied by Sergio Mendoza, MARIACHI LUZ DE LUNA, upright bass virtuoso Scott Colberg and the brilliant guitar player and singer Brian Lopez. The set combines magical mariachi of the highest possible standard, yet when the band chooses to (as on the thrilling Then You Might See) they jam out extended plays of true sonic power in the style of Radiohead or James. In combining those elements the band’s singularity is astonishing.

I can usually pinpoint exactly how I discovered a new band of longevity and for Calexico it was a recommendation from the late, erudite Robert Sandall, BBC Radio 3 presenter of Late Junction and one time Head of PR for Virgin Records. He told me I must listen to Feast of Wire three times. He was very specific about it. I remain entirely grateful to Robert. There is nothing quite like a recommendation that sticks. Not only did that one tether me to Calexico for life, but the ‘listen three times’ rule is something I have adopted as a tactic in my own recommendations. I implore you, thrice discerning listeners. It is well-known that beautiful things often come in threes.

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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 Holland (2004) - an old fashioned breakthrough moment. As remarkable as she came across working with just the guitar and the delay pedal, she was simply doing what she had been for the previous 18 months - busking her way through it. Except this time, it was on UK national television on the only music show that mattered.
What followed was a version of the classic Art of Longevity career curve: the stratospheric rise, the pressure drop and the years of wrestling between her own creative instincts and the commercial demands of the industry. But through it all KT understood that the record labels' job is business, while what she does is make art, and that attitude has seen her navigate the industry mangle to come out the other side stronger, more rounded as an artist and, if you listen to Wax, still making platinum grade pop-rock. Meanwhile, KT will always be on the music scene thanks to those immortal songs from her debut. She has come a long way from the rainy streets of St Andrews to the arid canyons of Topanga. It seems like she has much further to go.

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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 to make it accessible, if only to ourselves”.

Only Smith could describe Maximo Park’s music in that way and it’s perfect. No wonder perhaps, since he has practiced since the band’s early days when Smith wrote his own marketing copy for early gigs (‘unruly pop’ was one elevator pitch from Maximo’s early days). With his art school background and literary leanings Paul Smith can express himself through music more than most - the thinking person’s pop lyricist if you will.

While I worry that Maximo Park may be limiting their audience to the world’s intellectually curious (and possibly Northern sympathisers), the band’s most recent album ‘Nature Always Wins’ was a number two charting record. While some of the band’s previous albums have been statements of feeling - often political or raging against the machine in some way - their most recent outing seems more expansive and personal at the same time, while musically melding all their influences and styles into something of the perfect embodiment of Smith’s own definition. While Smith has worn his emotions on his sleeve lyrically before, Nature Always Wins has seen him hone the craft but be more pragmatic too. There might not have been a better song about the parental relationship than ‘Versions Of You’, nor indeed ‘Baby, Sleep’. To say they are both great examples of parent pop would just add more Maximo music theory into the mix!

After two decades on the British pop scene, Maximo Park is very much evolving. The band has been brave enough to step outside their trademark melodic hooks and catchy choruses to make a song like ‘Child Of The Flatlands’ (let alone make it the album’s lead single, something that brought to my mind The Police and their 1981 gloomy lead single ‘Invisible Sun’). The song is a step away from the emotional yearning or intellectual playfulness of previous singles to something more personal, reflective and deeper. The song was inspired by a walk Paul Smith took on the North East’s industrial path. That bleak, abandoned beauty of the industrial wastes close to their homeland has inspired one of their best ever songs.

When it comes to longevity, the band has stuck to the art and put its trust in partners (Prolifica and PIAS these days) to get their records to public, yet the desire to be accessible has always been there. From Paul Smith’s point of view, gratitude to the early days of decent record company advances and tour support (WARP records in those days) allowed the band to simply focus on the music, song-by-song, album-by-album and tour-by-tour. A Northern work ethic combined with the art school sensibilities hasn’t done them any harm over the years. However the modern way is a necessity too: hence in 2021 a YouTube Premier of Nature Always Wins, presence on socials, playlist meetings and radio edits.

After all, in Paul’s own words “We were lucky to be in the spotlight and over the years, the light may brighten or dim, but we’ve still managed to stay in it. We’re not daft”.

Humble to the last and doing just fine. It won’t be long before National Treasure status is suitably assigned.

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After 25 years in the music business, both as a major label priority artist and as a jobbing musician, Ed Harcourt still has big ambitions.

“My greatest achievement would be to write a song I would never get bored of singing”.
Cards on the table, Ed Harcourt’s two instrumental albums made between 2018 and 2020 (Beyond the End and Monochrome to Colour) got me through the pandemic. Well, they certainly helped. But Ed didn’t sing on either, so it comes as something of a relief to have Ed Harcourt back in the world of songs. Not only that, but his best batch of songs for a while - held together on a cracker of a new album El Magnifico. It is quite possibly the best album he has ever made. The question is, will enough people get to hear it?
Harcourt was first signed to Heavenly Records, which was subsumed into the EMI empire of old, where he was a priority UK artist for a while - thrust into the eye of the needle. But the chart positions never came, the pressure mounted, and, inevitably, Harcourt moved on into the second phase of his career as an independent artist. These days, his view of ‘the industry’ is understandably jaded.
“I went a bit mad. I had been institutionalised. I felt done. It still feels like a rollercoaster, but I can’t do anything else”.
His solo albums as an independent artist have impressed critics and fans - especially Furnaces (2016) - but commercial success has been elusive, and Furnaces left him burnt out and in need of a change (hence the ‘neo classical phase’ that followed).
Harcourt remains an active collaborator, however, producing albums for Kathryn Williams and Sophie Ellis Bexter, whom with Ed co-wrote on her last three albums. He is now working with emerging artist Roxanne De Bastion. In many ways, it is surprising he is not more in demand as a producer, although by his own admission, he will never be motivated to do anything within a million miles of what you might call a trend. Meanwhile, he tours with cult Ohio indie band The Afghan Whigs and is waiting for some film score projects to drop. But, for an ambitious artist, is that success?
“Success is working. Just making music all the time. I am proud but dismissive. Something will come, but I just don’t know what, yet...”
Harcourt now makes music with the battle scars of an artist who has been through the mangle. He rode the hype cycle - signing a five album deal to a major, experiencing the fallout from that, and steadily rebuilding to a place where he can always make music for himself.
In particular on El Magnifico, there is a bouncy, upbeat ‘single’ in Strange Beauty, while Deathless is a throwback to the classic days of album songs - a centrepiece if you will. Broken Keys is reminiscent of Elvis Costello during his 70s heyday, while Into The Loving Arms Of Your Enemy may well be Harcourt’s best song so far.
In fact, it might be the song Ed Harcourt never gets bored of singing.

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