Rob Harvey—The Music—Interview by Samson McDougall
Leeds boys The Music erupted onto the scene in 2002 with their eponymous debut, home of the instant smash The People. The single swirled and buzzed with such vitality that many of us old enough to remember were caught up in a vortex of pulsing rhythm and excitement. The follow up tour and Big Day Out appearances did nothing to quell the hype machine and these somewhat unlikely lads looked like toppling the world with an invigorating brand of rock music you could dance to—and dance we did.
Seven years down the track The Music are touring Australia again, this time the world must feel a very different place. Though their subsequent albums met with decent sales and their tours with relative success, there remains a nagging air of untapped latent force surrounding The Music thus far. With atypical and well documented substance abuse destruction The Music slipped silently into a proverbial nether-region between sensation and self-disintegration. Frenetic front man Robert Harvey explains from his homeland that it’s countries like little old Down-under that provide much of the impetuous for keeping at it.
“In England now, I’d like to think people haven’t forgotten about us but people have moved on. Over here the new thing comes along so quickly, it’s very much a trend based society. Even the more alternative music channels and radio stations are not that far from the mainstream as they would like to think they are, it’s a shame really. When we come to places like Japan and Australia it makes us feel like we’re doing something relevant, like what we’re doing still has a point.”
Harvey’s traditionalist views on measures of achievement in the music world are surprising given that their music over the years has been largely conjured from outside of the square, experimental even. “I like any music where they’ve worked hard and mastered their craft, especially in that traditional way of making music with a guitar and writing good songs with attention to detail. That sudden freak propulsion to stardom that seems to be happening now is crazy. I prefer real people and the common man, ‘cause I feel like that’s what we do.”
No strangers to evolution of sound and reinvention (arguably a transition from rock to electro-pop music), The Music have triggered mixed reactions from their fans, labels and critics alike. Harvey tells me that in this band the writing process is not, often through necessity, a democratic one yet the development of their sound is an important process for the sanity of the band as a whole. “The last record was pretty much me and Adam [Nutter, guitar]. We had a vision and it was a strange time within the band ‘cause we needed to get a record together quickly; the dynamic of the writing changed. The normal writing had lost a lot of its excitement so we wanted to bring some technology back into it. The first record was a little bit straight edge, a bit too rock, so we tried for a more electronic feel. This time the writing involved a lot more talking about things and me and Adam following the vision rather than just having jams. It felt like a challenge and I was sick of sitting around the house, sick of staring out the window. I needed to get out and meet people.”
As headliners for the inaugural Big O university tour of Australia’s east coast, we hope we will bear witness to a return of the spark that welded The Music into our collective consciousness some years ago. “Now I feel like I don’t want any separation between what we do and what the audience get out of it. I want it to feel like we’re one, a union. If it gives five people a reason to forget about work or just to feel good then we’ve achieved something. We’re really buzzing about a return to Australia. It’s great to tour in countries where there is still a belief in what we do. Last time in Australia we even played encores, which we never do, just because the crowd wanted us there—that’s a good feeling.”
The Music play The Big O, Monash University Clayton campus, Thursday 26 Feb 2009.
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