George

A new and better heart. I wonder if Suzy Mangion and Michael Varty have indeed grown such an enhanced organ for "A Week Of Kindness", their wonderful sophomore album. In truth, A Week Of Kindness is not that different from "The Magic Lantern", the impressive first release by the duo, still it manages to further expand the range of emotion expressed by their music in every possible direction: wonder, nostalgia, joy and regret, with a constant penchant for melody and harmony. What's more, if slowcore used to deny that concepts like "enjoyable" and "intense" could live together, A Week of Degrees seeks to celebrate such a wedding. Well-crafted yet seemingly effortless, borrowing from the past but somehow rooted in present time, A Week Of Kindness can build up massive tension and pain, then free them all in a slow, redeeming dance. We couldn't help but fall in love with it, and then asked Suzy Mangion was kind enough to tell us a little about George, memories and nostalgia.

I believe the first record has been in the work for a bigger period of time, yet this new one sounds as deep and intense as "The Magic Lantern",and a bit more varied. Has it been different working on new material after the praises received by your debut album? How long have you been working on "A week of kindness" and how did the songs came to be?

It's funny to answer now, as I'm well in the middle of recording the next releases. "The Magic Lantern" only took so long to record because we were cursed with problems - we lost most of the recordings among other things - and had to re-record it. "A Week of Kindness" was begun in 2003, before the first album came out, and was mostly finished that year. I let myself get slowed by things again unfortunately, and took a long time to organise the finishing touches like guest musicians and mixing. The variety is something I keep myself aware of, because I don't want to sound like I only have one tune for every album, like some bands. I'm afraid of seeming like I have few ideas, so I tend to try something new every time. Of course, there are some magnificent records by other people which keep a steady tone & pace, but generally I'm afraid of making something that would bore me. The songs on "A Week of Kindness" are a mixture of tunes written and recorded on the spur of the moment (such as "Week of Wonders" or "The Living Sound") to songs which are 7 or 8 years old now ("This Will Not Stop"). We used fewer guitars because I stopped playing guitars in 2003, but I did get a banjo, so that changed the sound. I suppose I'm just getting more and more confidence with recording, and especially with the way I use my voice and harmonies, and pushing myself harder with arrangements. But I'm trying to work more intensively now, and have recorded a quarter of an album this month alone.
Although I know there are some people with expectations, and I'd hate to disappoint someone, really I aim to please myself. It has to be a sound that I'm excited by at the moment.

The arrangements and the balance between instruments are very well crafted. Do you work much in the studio to achieve this perfect balance?

Thank you. I take a lot of care, I have a dislike of "over-egged" production which fills up all the spaces and sounds messy. Everything has to have a place and a reason for being used. My studio is in my home, it's a very small-scale affair and low-budget, but it means I have supreme control - HA HA! I can't write music notation well enough to arrange on paper, so I have to give collaborators these awful demos with me singing their part on it, in imitation of their particular instrument - there exist these awful versions of George songs with me pretending to be a cello or a clarinet.

When arranging a song, do you tend to add or to subtract?

I think I both add AND subtract. As in, I have the luxury to be able to build a song at home and record each layer before thinking about what I'd like next (though sometimes I have it all in my head first), so I add very slowly. But the element of subtraction, taking away notes that only "fill" and keeping arrangements down to a handful of parts, is always there. Vocal harmonies though, I usually add, add, add - though not always. Some songs, like "Fabula", I end up taking away extra vocal parts if I feel it sounds too busy.

Suzy's singing is a key element in bringing melody to George's music. Plus, there's quite a lot of vocal overdubs. How much are harmony andmelody important to you?

As I've just been talking about that, you can probably guess - a lot.
Harmony singing has been a big constant for me for all my singing life. It's the first singing I started to do in public, when I was about 13, 14, I used to sing songs by 60s harmony groups on the school bus with 1 or 2 friends every single day. I adore the sound, it's more than a sound, a kind of texture perhaps, which happens when voices play around one another in such a way. Most of the vocal music that has been influential on me uses close or elaborate harmonies, and most of the singers I love use it. Harry Nilsson, Mama Cass, The Beatles, Elliot Smith, Velvet Underground, Beach Boys, Abba.
As I get to grips with my voice even more as a professional singer, I like to try and experiment with instrumental harmonies as used by Cocteau Twins for instance, who I think were themselves influenced by Bulgarian voices, spell-binding and magically beyond my capablities. Nico has a mystical quality to me as well. Also, the simple harmonies on early Leonard Cohen songs. I also enjoy toning down though, and underplaying vocals as much as possible, for intimacy. That legitimises having a 10 part harmony on the following song!

Many have compared you to Low, but I believe that George's sound has at least two very dinstict and unique features: first - it's very English, and second - it manages to hold every emotion in the limited space of a three/four minutes pop song, making it all more accessible and - in my opinion - enjoyable. Are these two aspects something you struggle for?

I'm pleased you disagree with the Low comparisons. Obviously there are similarities - sadness, sparse arrangements, male/female harmonies. But we sound so different, our songs are so different! I do really like and admire Low, but it is a little silly that people see such superficial similarities.
There are always thousands of bands around with 4 guys - drums, bass, guitar & vocals - singing 4 minute pop songs, but even though they probably have more in common with their sounds than we do with Low, they're not constantly being compared to The Clash, for instance.
The Englishness is good - I thought I cultivated that, now I'm not so sure. The name George has an irony of Englishness about it which I liked. For many years I didn't feel English or British. My parents come from 2 different countries, most of my extended family is abroad, and I was brought up with a strange mix of cultures - Irish, Maltese & English - probably quite specific to my family. There weren't cultural reminders of my background where I grew up. I was born in Durham, in north-east England. Last week I read a piece in the paper about multi-cultural Britain, drawing maps of immigration & cultural distribution.
Durham was blank because it has no immigrant groups of a large enough number, and is one of Britain's least ethnically diverse regions. This confirmed so much I knew before. Practically everyone's parents were English when I was growing up, and most were from County Durham too, and their grandparents etc., generations back. When I moved to university, most people were from London and their backgrounds were so mixed, it was great for me! I grew up with a strong sense of otherness, that I wasn't really from here, but in Malta I seemed so English to everyone. Music certainly helped me to find an identity here, although ironically we're often more appreciated in Europe anyway. I see myself and my sound as more European, though my sense of humour and references are so specifically, oddly English, that I betray myself! I seem to be able to talk about minor, seedy British titbits like Terry Scott or Lestor Piggot, with Nigel Turner (Pickled Egg man) for ages, and am stuck when trying to explain to an American what these things are and why they amuse me! Most of my favourite music, writers and artists aren't actually English either. It's ok to be under-rated in your home turf though - think of James Joyce, kicked out of Ireland when they didn't like his "dirty books" but now he's like a national saint to them!

As for holding emotion - sorry for going one so - music to me is entirely about emotion, but about controlling it into a manageable and precise channel. There is no cold music for me to make. If I am cold about music then if I examine my thoughts, I don't really like it. There's no space any more for "quite liking" things. I love songs, I don't want to be too conventional, but then I want to express something quite simply and briefly. That's why I love pieces of differing short lengths too. I often get bored by long pieces of music - for instance there are some symphonies I like very much, and I love Wagner at times too, but I often get a sense of overlength and overcomplication which frustrates me as a listener. I like it when the correct sound has been pinpointed, so I like Debussy preludes or Carnival of the Animals.
If writing songs makes us more accessible then that's useful, though I feel for a lot of people we fall in the middle - not accessible enough for some dullards because we don't use 4:4 all the time, sing "baby I'm on my knees, please" and wedge middle eights into every song! Yet I sing jaunty songs with choruses, and that's not going to win over the electronica intelligentsia either. I struggle to make something that I will enjoy.

What's your relation to british folk music, old and new? Do you only draw from english tradition or also look elsewhere for inspiration?

You know, I don't think I own a single British folk record - I got Mary Hopkin & Donovan cds for my last birthday, but they're Welsh & Scottish and very Celtic. I don't think I have any relation at all, beyond the Pickled Egg bands I admire like Nalle and Big Eyes who obviously draw on that tradition. Hymns, piano practice pieces, film and TV themes I like... I've got American folk music, country, yodelling... I like Gainsbourg, Jacques Brel, Charles Trenet, Domenico Modugno, Francoise Hardy. As you can see, I'm bang up to date with all the latest fashions. Like I say, that English quality is really only a veneer. That's why I think it's so English - being English is not about being strongly rooted here, but rather more about having an affinity for the small things, like bird-tables, tea and biscuits, August thunder. It's more to do with the memory of things, for me. The Beatles are my only true and lasting bond with an English sound, but they have a particular style all of their own. I try and use a clear, folk sounding vocal though. Mainly because I like to "hold back" something when I sing, and want to have a sense of containing emotion rather than letting it all hang out, which so many singers do these days in a sloppy and unappealing way.

It seems to me that you are trying to tie together two different eras, the Old Britain and the present time. Your records may sound like something from the past but they feel very actual, like they are here today. How do you manage to do that?

As you can probably tell, my listening tastes are hardly current. My tastes in anything fall away from fashions. I have no desire to, in fact resent, the idea of being swept away and directed towards something just because it's new and everyone else likes it. I fall back and find my own way through music. There are some people making music today that I like, but the sound I'm trying to achieve will more than likely have been inspired by something much older. I love old recordings, there's a warmth to them. I love the flattened, compressed sound of an old jazz record. You can keep the vocals more like this by knocking the EQ right back, or recording onto cassette tape and transferring. I tend to use old instruments, I'm not interested in computer recording because I don't want to sound like everyone else. Using out-of-date sounds challenges me to be inventive with how I use them. This is probably what's keeping that Number 1 chart position just out of my grasp!

I used to think "A week of kindness" was quite a happy record until someone pointed up to me that it was really a sad album. Do you reason in terms of joy and sadness and try to balance the mix. Would you refer to George music in this way (happy/sad)?

Yes, definitely. There's no one or the other. Happy/Sad by Tim Buckley, by the way, is a record I like very much and drifts in and out of those feelings with pleasing ease.
I am one of those ridiculous people who cannot experience a moment of happiness without quickly being aware of how it must come to an end. This is not necessariily pessimism. I am in many ways a very happy person and quite jolly, but being melancholy seems to me to be joined to joy. For instance, I keep thinking about how loving someone inevitably means you will feel grief one day. Not to say you shouldn't love, or enjoy life, but the awareness is always in the background for me now. I'd agree that all George records have been very sad, don't be deceived by the old jolly-tune trick. It's hard to write a completely happy song without sounding inane - I love Stevie Wonder, and although he's managed with songs like "Isn't She Lovely" to convey happiness, "Happy Birthday" is quite difficult to take! I have, however, recently recorded a half-jokey song about tap-dancing which I feel quite happy about.

Although wordless, a song like "Vanishing Sounds of Britain" suggest a strong sense of nostalgia for old things. Is nostalgia something precious to you? What are the vanishing sounds of britain?

Nostalgia is a beautiful word, combining the Greek idea of homecoming with the word for pain, so it's an almost physical longing for one's home. I cannot emphasise enough how important ideas of memory and home are to me. Many people I admire use this sense of nostalgia in a way I find breathtaking. Not nostalgia in the vernacular good-old-days approach, but the impossibility of revisiting anything past. There's a quote, I think it's Shelley but I'm not sure, "we look before and after / and pine for what is not / our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought". My husband's just reminded me of the French radio station we like to listen to on holiday, Nostalgie, which seems to play "In the Summertime" by Mungo Jerry every morning.
My friend Mark Currin (he records as Shirokuma) told me about a record he'd found called "Disappearing Sounds of Britain Volume 1" and we thought it was a hilarious but magnificent idea. I can't remember what was really on it - I think clips of things like horses on parade or marching bands, cheering crowds! We made up this small tune on very small keyboards, and I used a wonderful old tape recorder I borrowed, which looks fantastic, to record the rewind of the song before onto "Vanishing Sounds of Britain". I then play a tiny clip of Paul Auster talking before making him vanish. He's probably my favourite living author and writes about people who vanish, so this was my self-indulgent joke. At the end of the tune you can hear a dictaphone recording of me asking Michael how to make a cup of tea, which is supposed to be something particularly British. The thing I like best though, is that he gets it completely wrong and muddles up the order of events - I say "boiling the kettle. What happens next?". He replies "pouring the water, and putting the teabags in the cup" which would make a very poor, and rather un-British, cup of tea.

You communicate with such a wide array of emotions and instruments with every song. Is there any element (musical, lyrical, or anything else) you feel it's essential for your sound? Something you aim to fit in every song you write?

Most songs I put harmonies in, but not all, and obviously some are purely instrumental. I like to have a surprise in every song, so I'll add a musical turn at the end of the song, or bring in an instrument halfway through which is not predictable. The most essential sound though would be perhaps, for me anyway, in two senses: one of having a few sounds, correctly placed; the other of holding back, in order to avoid sounding brash.

If you could pick up a different place&era to live in, where and when would it be?

I've been thinking about this all week and still can't decide! Avoiding all pragmatics about danger and dubiousness, there are many eras which interest me. The interwar years in Berlin, and its Cabaret scene fascinate me, but politically, what a horrific time. The late-60s psychedelic era seems fun, but only maybe because it has a glamourous gloss of otherness to me. I love the look because it is so "then". If I was "then" it would become "now" and I'd probably hanker for the 1940s. I think I'd probably just pick 1978-1983, the first 5 years of my life. I call them "the barley water years", for reasons I'm no longer sure of. I love pictures and objects and so one from this era, because the memories are so distant but almost there. And I'd love to be somewhere warmer and sunnier, probably in the Mediterranean, Malta but without feeling confined, yet still be able to come back and enjoy English summer with its haze and twilight.
So really I've just chosen to go back to my Nana's house, before school and life started pushing, sitting on the floor playing my toy piano. What a silly escape!

I quote from the pitchfork review: "George play music for being alone". Do you ever think about the way people react/listen to your music?

Well, I would hope people, when they like it, really like it alot. I want to make music like that which I love best, which isn't good for merely background music, because you find you have to stop and listen fully. There's not many records like that, but they're always the ones I like best. I don't want to make music that thousands of people "quite like", I'd rather make music which ten people love. It's probably not very social music, you don't put it on at a party and chat to friends. But then, I'm usually by myself when I make music, it's not a social creation. You probably listen, maybe on headphones, go for a walk, melodramatically, in winter time. Quite a few people have told me they like to listen when they're falling asleep. It's a soporific!

Finally: what does the album title refers to?

A collage novel by Max Ernst called "Une Semaine de Bonte" (A Week of Kindness). It is a very special book to me. His collages used what were even then out-of-date images, and forced them together to become alive in a very unsettling, haunting way. Because it has so few words you can construct your own narrative over them; they are silent stories, perhaps different every time you look. I recommend buying a copy of this magical book! Many of the songs on this last album are about days and time, and kindness too is a quality which I think is often lacking or under rated.

Salvatore

Links:

George@Pickled Egg: www.pickled-egg.co.uk/george.htm
George@indiepop.it: bands/george.htm