“You should be able to bottle that feeling that you got, the excitement of a new Big Flame record when you were about 16..."
THE FREE FRENCH ARE the latest musical nomenclature of the multi-faceted Rhodri Marsden. Perhaps still best known for his role in the marvellous Keatons, who attempted gamely (but vainly) to bounce the spirit of the Fall, the Shrubs and similarly glorious alt-others into the moribund 1990s ("Resividistish" being the should-have-been singalong hit of every summer), Rhodri has been playing in "Peel darlings" Gag for ten years, as well as playing guitar and bass in the now defunct Zuno Men (Walthamstow genii who even more gamely, and even more vainly, tried to find a way in for post-Ron Johnson pop in the mid-to-late 90s). After writing choons for the short-lived Kopek - see below - Rhodri has eventually turned into a solo artiste, the Free French, a five piece on stage but all his own work in the studio (South London, as we now feel compelled to point out to some of you). Rather, though, than being the kind of "tricky" stuff that you might expect from the above c.v., "their" first album "Running on Batteries" is actually a travel through pop history, trying (and mostly succeeding) to play off the tension of yer Guided Missile types with the sophisticated singalong skillz of many a more traditional songwriting talent. Rhodri is also known to random websurfers across the globe as the curator of "timewasting.net" and, more specifically, the bestest Ron Johnson web site in the history of Ron Johnson websites.
In the tradition of Trembling Blue Stars' "Her handwriting" or Steward's "Horselaugh on my ex", the whole record owes much to documenting in passing the breakdown of a relationship, albeit with some green shoots of hope (as to the next one) in perhaps the poppiest song, the jaunty first 45 "Do you come here often ?" Whilst most songs revolve around the balancing of harmonic keyboard laden guitar pop and a quirkier, er, "angular" (sorry) post-Keatons "sound", the album is also not afraid to deviate from the power pop thing altogether, hence the extremely mellow vibe of "Let's stay up forever", or the much more jarring, feral guitar buzz of the closing "Trial separations" (that was the second single). The storming title track would appear to have every conceivable ingredient for a single too, its insistent guitar reminding us (and only us, it seems) of the Buzzcocks' "Sixteen".... Other highlights include "From the seashores", "Cotton buds" ("can we divide 2,000 days / in calm and scientific ways / leave without a parting gaze") and the throwaway but tune-crammed "Unconditional". The album throughout showcases some surprisingly and occasionally unfeasibly high pitched vocals, where tasteful ("My next album for dogs only").
After witnessing the Free French five at the Water Rats, where the smartly dressed band on the stage in the back thrilled most of the punters and so prevailed over the noise levels of the ever crowded front bar, we decided to track down Rhodri in what has become the latest example of us bothering a musician with better things to do - but as ever, he was ineffably polite, articulate and entertaining.
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i wanted to talk about the keatons first. not least because the word "resividistish" can still make grown men glow... is that where your musical journey started ?
i lived in dunstable, which was just a cultural fucking backwater, the sort of place good things gravitate away from. i remember seeing stump on "the tube", going out and buying a ron johnson compilation lp, just being blown away by that it didn't seem to give a hoot for protocol at all, and then doing "glottal stop" fanzine and through that meeting a lot of people, and then me and steve [of the keatons] got really matey and i moved to london in 1989 and it just happened. the keatons ended up being a band that if you went to see them often enough, you ended up being in the band...
i suppose the keatons weren't really part of any scene at the time, because all the ron johnson stuff had already happened...
the ron johnson thing had died about '87, and the keatons got their first single out in 1989. we'd kind of reached that level where we decided what bands were on the bill with us. i remember the first gig we did in 1990, with pregnant neck and headbirth, a kind of death by milkfloat from stockwell, and it did feel like - new decade, this is it, a new quirky pop scene... but of course no one liked it at all, it was all very much shoegazing, slowdive, that was the way it was going, so it wasn't part of a scene. we were more akin to the glaswegians, really - dawson and the stretch heads.
having said that, i remember one amazing gig at the lady owen arms [sadly missed islington venue], we had the keatons, shrug, dawson, dandelion adventure, archbishop kebab... and the boo radleys - and we put the boo radleys on at 7 p.m. because it was their first london gig!
thrilled skinny [utterly irrepressible and at one point almost unavoidable luton power punksters who managed brilliantly to get oi-influenced songs on to a slew of otherwise rather precious indie pop compilation tapes in the late 80s] are the other band to mention - the band who got us touring england. it seems unbelievable to think that in 1990 the keatons did a hundred gigs, whereas the free french have done, like, 8.
but we had a horrible tour of germany in about may 1995 where no one was enjoying it any more. there were lots of arguments about money and shit, because there wasn't any. so i left the keatons, and got married that year and enjoyed being domesticated for a bit.
meanwhile there was gag, and the zuno men ...
i'd started with gag in about 1992. the zuno men were haemorrhaging members rapidly, so i did guitar and bass and i seem to remember keyboards for them.
... and then kopek...
me and kev [burrows, also of the keatons, gag etc] were looking for something to do that wasn't gag, and i was kind of writing songs towards the end of the keatons that were never used. so i thought "let's use some of these" and formed a band called kopek, it was kind of dual guitars, more intricate, less straightforward than the free french ended up being. but it was just one of those things, it never took off. "no one phoned".
...and the free french, eventually.
i never liked writing lyrics, so that was always the barrier. but throughout the late 90s i was accumulating recording gear and still looking for a singer and a lyricist. so eventually i just got on with it, and i did "from the seashores". people have said to me that song, that chorus "believe this little lie", it's so simple, but so kind of evocative, and that's when i realised if you have confidence in what you're writing... on the first mixes of every song the vocals were just subliminal, because i didn't want anyone to hear the words, but over the months they got louder as people said "actually, the lyrics are quite good". everything i do now, the vocals are much more in the forefront.
and some of the lyrics are pretty painful to listen to.
there's only a couple that get me still. i probably struck quite a good balance at that stage between the lyrics being suggestive and not overt, but since i got more confident i've started getting less and less oblique and more writing kind of stories.
the album is a soundtrack to...
a crisis...
...a period of someone's life, and it is quite affecting.
i was doing the album and i finished it about 6 to 8 weeks later, by which time my wife had moved out...
the end result was that you've made this record which sits really well as a self-contained pop album. was there any temptation to say "that happened, that was part of my [musical] life", and now on to the next project ?
it's great that it comes across as a cohesive unit of 12 songs, but as always with these things, they're long and slow births, the nature of putting a record out is that it always takes ages. but it's not a contrived, "this is a song about rhodri getting divorced"... yes, it is tempting to say, i've done that, now i'll do something different. but people really liked it, and i'm getting so much encouragement from people, and i think the songs for the next album are much better. so obviously people won't like it as much...
was there any part of you that was intending to, or conscious of, doing an album that mixes lots of different things - sixties, post-punk, new acoustic, mid 80s indie...
so many of the songs are just based around people. i started getting really matey with kev hopper [bass player from c86ers stump, and now musical saw virtuoso extraordinaire] about the beginning of last year, and "let's stay up forever" was really because he's into such a beach boys / high llamas type thing, and that's the most overt attempt by me to actually go out on a limb and try something. but i still think it sits quite nicely. it's not desperately contrived, but it was certainly an effort i made, and i just thought the sentiment of enjoying someone's company so much that you don't want to go to sleep, i just think that's a really kind of nice idea.
a lot of the songs have this tension between the vaguely keatons-esque, faster paced, music, and the much more melodic "slow burn..."
with "running on batteries", the way it was done i'd always wanted it to appeal to keatons people and gag people. when i was in kopek, i knew that by doing songs with kev [burrows] they'd end up being fucked up, just by him being involved. he has an extraordinary slant on putting music together that's just breathtaking. so when it was apparent that kev wasn't gong to be involved in the free french, i still thought, i want to try and fuck it up a bit, so there was always me trying to make that effort not to make it too slick, so i think that's the only driving force behind what it sounds like, it's just a contrast between me writing a very sweet song and then trying to record it so it doesn't sound like... david soul.
and you did everything ?
it's all done at home on a mac, yeah. no-one else was around to do it with me. i was just thrown back on my own, and getting loads of encouragement from friends of mine...
what's your favourite song on the album?
"cotton buds". i just can't believe it's me, that i came up with it. if i'm feeling a bit shaky about a gig, that song always sounds great and it's the only song that's actually about my wife leaving. i get shivers whenever i hear it, i really do, and it's no one else's favourite, either...
what about when it came to choosing the singles?
i was doing the album and i finished it about 6 to 8 weeks later, by which time my wife had moved out...
the end result was that you've made this record which sits really well as a self-contained pop album. was there any temptation to say "that happened, that was part of my [musical] life", and now on to the next project ?
it's great that it comes across as a cohesive unit of 12 songs, but as always with these things, they're long and slow births, the nature of putting a record out is that it always takes ages. but it's not a contrived, "this is a song about rhodri getting divorced"... yes, it is tempting to say, i've done that, now i'll do something different. but people really liked it, and i'm getting so much encouragement from people, and i think the songs for the next album are much better. so obviously people won't like it as much...
was there any part of you that was intending to, or conscious of, doing an album that mixes lots of different things - sixties, post-punk, new acoustic, mid 80s indie...
so many of the songs are just based around people. i started getting really matey with kev hopper [bass player from c86ers stump, and now musical saw virtuoso extraordinaire] about the beginning of last year, and "let's stay up forever" was really because he's into such a beach boys / high llamas type thing, and that's the most overt attempt by me to actually go out on a limb and try something. but i still think it sits quite nicely. it's not desperately contrived, but it was certainly an effort i made, and i just thought the sentiment of enjoying someone's company so much that you don't want to go to sleep, i just think that's a really kind of nice idea.
a lot of the songs have this tension between the vaguely keatons-esque, faster paced, music, and the much more melodic "slow burn..."
with "running on batteries", the way it was done i'd always wanted it to appeal to keatons people and gag people. when i was in kopek, i knew that by doing songs with kev [burrows] they'd end up being fucked up, just by him being involved. he has an extraordinary slant on putting music together that's just breathtaking. so when it was apparent that kev wasn't gong to be involved in the free french, i still thought, i want to try and fuck it up a bit, so there was always me trying to make that effort not to make it too slick, so i think that's the only driving force behind what it sounds like, it's just a contrast between me writing a very sweet song and then trying to record it so it doesn't sound like... david soul.
and you did everything ?
it's all done at home on a mac, yeah. no-one else was around to do it with me. i was just thrown back on my own, and getting loads of encouragement from friends of mine...
what's your favourite song on the album?
"cotton buds". i just can't believe it's me, that i came up with it. if i'm feeling a bit shaky about a gig, that song always sounds great and it's the only song that's actually about my wife leaving. i get shivers whenever i hear it, i really do, and it's no one else's favourite, either...
what about when it came to choosing the singles?
as far as the singles, i was vehement that "do you come here often ?" was a single, even though no one else really thought it was right. and someone said that "trial separations" was the best thing on the record and it was an astonishing song, and i just think it's ok, but i was pushing for "cotton buds". "unconditional" was the other one that people liked. but i think that "unconditional"'s the most straightforward thing on the record, it's a bit of a joke as i was listening to this finnish band called ultra bra who are one of my favourite bands, a 15-piece eurovision pastiche, every song sounds like a eurovision winner. astonishingly crafted songs, and i sat down and said i want to do a song that ultra bra would be proud of. it's not quite there, but that was what i was thinking...
apart from ultra bra (!) what other influences ? people are reading all sorts of things into the album: buzzcocks, jam, scritti politti, prefab sprout, xtc...
apart from ultra bra (!) what other influences ? people are reading all sorts of things into the album: buzzcocks, jam, scritti politti, prefab sprout, xtc...
yeah, xtc - what is that about ?... i don't have any xtc records...
this was what we've got at in the past, by saying that we like the free french more than bands that many see you as influenced by - to us, xtc are a part of pop that time forgot, and you assume there must be a reason for that.
they have some wonderful moments, but people say his [andy partridge's] voice is like my voice and i just can't hear that at all. he's got a really annoying voice! i've heard some really great things by them but i don't listen to them. prefab sprout, i do listen to immensely. you can probably hear that, and i've started listening to steely dan a lot and when people say "you can actually hear steely dan in your music", i'm just like, fucking hell, this is really terrifying, i'm supposed to be continuing the lineage of ferocious ramshackle indie pop and here i am sounding like fucking "aja"... [editor's note - do not worry - the free french sound NOTHING like steely dan].
we know you're really into quite a few current bands, though we missed HOST when they supported you the other week. i do like your description of them as the gang of four with "more smiling and less funk"...
they're astonishing, they've got boundless enthusiasm, they're effortlessly great, they have a thing and i don't know what it is, and i don't know whether anyone else can see it, but i can see it, shirley [shirley lee, singer outta spearmint] can see it and we're putting out a record on hitBACK [up until the free french, hitBACK was spearmint's label] by them.
i just wonder if there's any parallels with the early 90s when you see a band, you want that band on your bill...
totally, of course...
you've also obviously had a lot of encouragement from toby slater.
toby, i really like him, he's very intelligent, he's been through the music business stuff, he was in catch [sort of a britpop hanson, though you might have missed them if you blinked in 1997] and they had a top 20 record, and then got spat out the other end, he decided to put on interesting evenings of stuff ["special school"] and the free french don't fit particularly well into that because we don't adapt well to an acoustic or stripped down set-up, but i support everything that toby does, although he does sometimes go a bit nearer the middle of the road than i would...
and your other current favourites ?
kev hopper, when we can get him out of the house, keith john adams (former zuno man), [tooting's] montana pete...
what about the mainstream press ? even though the nme really liked your first single, your album won't get looked at, but they decide they can justify six pages on the vines...
i'm not at a stage where anyone is going to offer paragraphs of critique on what i've done, and the most i can expect is a review will say something which will prompt someone to go and investigate. in that way the reviews are kind of redundant, but i'm not really getting any anyway. jim who does our press just has a really tough time.
but the fanzine, e/zine scene at least provides a second layer beneath the magazines and papers who are likely to ignore 98% of stuff....
anyone showing any enthusiasm or making an effort is clearly a good thing. it's a slow process and it's very small scale, but then again the keatons always operated in a fanzine environment anyway - it doesn't offend me that i don't get 200 hits a day on the site.
this was what we've got at in the past, by saying that we like the free french more than bands that many see you as influenced by - to us, xtc are a part of pop that time forgot, and you assume there must be a reason for that.
they have some wonderful moments, but people say his [andy partridge's] voice is like my voice and i just can't hear that at all. he's got a really annoying voice! i've heard some really great things by them but i don't listen to them. prefab sprout, i do listen to immensely. you can probably hear that, and i've started listening to steely dan a lot and when people say "you can actually hear steely dan in your music", i'm just like, fucking hell, this is really terrifying, i'm supposed to be continuing the lineage of ferocious ramshackle indie pop and here i am sounding like fucking "aja"... [editor's note - do not worry - the free french sound NOTHING like steely dan].
we know you're really into quite a few current bands, though we missed HOST when they supported you the other week. i do like your description of them as the gang of four with "more smiling and less funk"...
they're astonishing, they've got boundless enthusiasm, they're effortlessly great, they have a thing and i don't know what it is, and i don't know whether anyone else can see it, but i can see it, shirley [shirley lee, singer outta spearmint] can see it and we're putting out a record on hitBACK [up until the free french, hitBACK was spearmint's label] by them.
i just wonder if there's any parallels with the early 90s when you see a band, you want that band on your bill...
totally, of course...
you've also obviously had a lot of encouragement from toby slater.
toby, i really like him, he's very intelligent, he's been through the music business stuff, he was in catch [sort of a britpop hanson, though you might have missed them if you blinked in 1997] and they had a top 20 record, and then got spat out the other end, he decided to put on interesting evenings of stuff ["special school"] and the free french don't fit particularly well into that because we don't adapt well to an acoustic or stripped down set-up, but i support everything that toby does, although he does sometimes go a bit nearer the middle of the road than i would...
and your other current favourites ?
kev hopper, when we can get him out of the house, keith john adams (former zuno man), [tooting's] montana pete...
what about the mainstream press ? even though the nme really liked your first single, your album won't get looked at, but they decide they can justify six pages on the vines...
i'm not at a stage where anyone is going to offer paragraphs of critique on what i've done, and the most i can expect is a review will say something which will prompt someone to go and investigate. in that way the reviews are kind of redundant, but i'm not really getting any anyway. jim who does our press just has a really tough time.
but the fanzine, e/zine scene at least provides a second layer beneath the magazines and papers who are likely to ignore 98% of stuff....
anyone showing any enthusiasm or making an effort is clearly a good thing. it's a slow process and it's very small scale, but then again the keatons always operated in a fanzine environment anyway - it doesn't offend me that i don't get 200 hits a day on the site.
it just must get to you when there are labels which will put out some fairly derivative guitar pop, say, and it will sell several thousand and it will get reviews in all the right places, just because there seems to be a network in place for that.
it was great that hitBACK put the record out, and at first that was all i wanted, but having said that, like you say, people have been so positive about it that i did imagine in my heart of hearts that "do you come here often ?" would do something - the zuno men had a mark radcliffe single of the week, for christ's sake - but i don't know what it takes to make people sit up and take notice. obviously a great deal of luck, i don't think the fact that i was in the keatons and the zuno men and gag is going to help, i dont think the fact that i'm on spearmint's label helps... spearmint are absolutely ignored despite having just put out one of the finest albums about lost love ["a different lifetime"] that you will ever hear...
it was great that hitBACK put the record out, and at first that was all i wanted, but having said that, like you say, people have been so positive about it that i did imagine in my heart of hearts that "do you come here often ?" would do something - the zuno men had a mark radcliffe single of the week, for christ's sake - but i don't know what it takes to make people sit up and take notice. obviously a great deal of luck, i don't think the fact that i was in the keatons and the zuno men and gag is going to help, i dont think the fact that i'm on spearmint's label helps... spearmint are absolutely ignored despite having just put out one of the finest albums about lost love ["a different lifetime"] that you will ever hear...
yeah, "sweeping the nation" must have been years ago now...there was a lot of buzz then...
shirley's an inspiration. when you see someone that's 10 years older than you who's just as enthusiastic about stuff and still writing great music and putting it out to not much acclaim but seems undaunted by that. it's just a shame. spearmint had that time, about '97, yes, when "sweeping the nation" came out and "a trip into space" a few months later, and that was when XFM were playing stuff that was good or interesting or you might not have heard, and i would have really benefited from that, had the stuff i was doing been 3 or 4 years earlier. it's easy to say that - if i was around in 1979, like scritti politti putting their own photocopied sleeves together and selling 20,000 records - people were shifting enormous amounts back then, and now if you get a sales return from pinnacle that says you've shifted 500, you go out and have a party. basically i'm dependent on hitBACK to put money up for another record... it costs little to record because i do it all at home. it would be great to be in the position of someone like momus who can just sling something out...
before we go, we can't not mention your ron johnson site, which is legendary...
i got asked to do it by some fanzine, my love for ron johnson, and i actually managed to get all 34 records on ron johnson, and then it was like, what shall i do now ? take photos of all the fucking sleeves, scan them and write about each one, and then i can just put it to bed.
it was a very rich time... you should be able to bottle that feeling that you get, the excitement of a new big flame record when you're about 16, i can't even remember what it feels like... and the last bogshed peel session, i was almost crying; "they're going to play four songs i've never heard before"; it seems so obvious that bogshed were fantastic.
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And because we know we're not the only ones who agree, we (as opposed to you lot) can't think of a better note to end on. Thanks very much to Rhodri ... ILWTTISOTT
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