After realising one of last year's classiest songs, UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH are out to damage 1998
"I'm interested
in capturing a mood that isn't just despair or depression. It is melancholy but somewhere
in there it can be quite beautiful."
Unbelievable truth are that rarest and most precious of
bands. They delve into your deepest, delicate, saddest, most personal emotions and find a
place that is warm, and, as singer Andy Yorke says, quite beautiful.
"Stone", quietly released late last year by the
Oxford trio was one of 1997's most stunning, eye-opening moments, an acoustic, powerfully
heartfelt song. Their musically intimate live performances (recently with the likes of The
Sundays, Beth Orton and Tanya Donelly) evoked the exalted likes of REM, Jeff Buckley, and
Nick Drake. And after listening to their album such comparisons are easily justified. It's
the most astoundingly brave, fulfilling debut album you're likely to hear, soaring into
places no British band has ventured for a decade (since Talk Talk's flawed "Spirit Of
Eden").
Unbelievable Truth demand attention for reasons way beyond the fact that Andy is Thom
Yorke's younger brother.
Unbelievable Truth are Andy, Nigel Powell, who drums, plays some guitar and arranges the
songs and bassist Jason Moulster. Their journey here has not been the smoothest. It was
while in Moscow, 1992, on his degree course that Andy discovered for the first time that
he was able to write songs. "Being away from Britain
allowed me to do that without feeling self conscious about it."
He had written
songs before at school, "kids stuff, not genuine
music", but was now convinced. He wrote to Nigel, who had been in his
school band and when back in England things came together. In 1994 they were offered a
large publishing deal and Andy left for Moscow again.
"I was too young, a little lacking in self confidence
and felt things were happening too fast. I wasn't all that happy with the music at that
point. It helped me to go away for a year and do something different, fend for myself in a
strange country."
Since his second return, things have run easier. Confidence in the music has grown. "Especially live," Andy says. "I didn't used to enjoy playing and it's become slightly less
demanding on the audience. We used to play gigs with no drummer at all. Some people got it
and were caught up by it, but most people went away thinking 'What was all that about?
It's insipid and miserable'."
Now on stage, the band are an incredibly involving experience and, at best, it's close to
spiritual. Often Andy will be just accompanied by Nigel on guitar and it's a startling
showcase for Andy's incendiary vocals.
Andy, in his quiet, thoughtful speaking voice, says, "We
write in a way similar to how we play live, instrument swapping. People take different
roles. On some of the strongest songs, like on 'Finest Little Space', I had nothing to do
with the song, I just wrote the lyrics and vocal line."
Meeting Unbelievable Truth, it's clear they operate as a unit. Andy and Nigel finish each
others sentences, while Jason says little but nods a lot. They admit they talked idly
about trying to do this in the "faceless" way dance music acts have. "But it doesn't work," Nigel admits. "We want people to hear what we've done and, unfortunately, will have
to sell it. Our motto is just to keep our dignity."
This is the only time direct family comparisons can be made. Andy has an even more
introverted attitude towards being in the public eye than his brother.
"Obviously we have the benefit of seeing what Radiohead
have been through, the things they've had to encounter," he explains. "I think we're quite preoccupied by not wanting to compromise
ourselves. I admire what The Verve did with their video on 'The Chart Show'."
Nigel continues. "We want to be a band and musicians
and not celebrities for whom the pinnacle of their career would be to appear in The Sun
-that's quite odious to all of us. If there is a dignified way to sell 12 million albums I
hope we find out. I doubt there is." He pauses and then adds: "I think there probably is and to sell two million."
Which brings us back to their incredible album which sounds like no one else around at the
moment -and is extremely hard to pin down. There's some of the folky experimentation of,
say, Jeff Buckley, and the anguished troubadour soul of Mark Eitzel. But it's not as
simple as that.
Andy says: "Talk
Talk would be fair as an influence and an American band called Hugo Largo, they made two
great albums then disappeared. We may have aspired to make an album sounding similar to
those bands but we found we didn't fit into that mould. The basis of what we do is
basically classic songwriting, letting the songs come through," he
pauses, smiling wryly.
"Not wanting to sound like one of Ocean Colour
Scene."
Sounding like Ocean Colour Scene will not be a problem. Against the backdrop of most
guitar music around, they are unfashionably unique. Take a song like "Same
Mistakes", simple brooding strings, strummed acoustic guitar, distressed vocals
building to a gloriously anticlimatic chorus, or the mesmerising agoraphobic anthem
"Finest Little Space". It's what all those lost late nights were missing.
"A couple of people have tried to set us up as an
antidote to Britrock," Andy recalls an early press release. "It's very easy to define yourself by what you're not, much easier
than by what you are. We are well out of step with what's happening. It was hard for us
getting a record deal."
Nigel adds: "That idea is weird because the music we
play to me doesn't even feel like guitar music. There's a lot of acoustic guitar there but
it isn't tied to one instrument. We like to keep things simple. We couldn't have made a
mood album, the songs couldn't have been stretched out and washed over.There's no
horrendous distorted vocals or long, languorous sessions of the cello and a wine bottle
being tapped with a lobster claw."
"The big loud guitar thing smacks to me of insecurity.
You're letting nothing breathe, you're not sure enough in the song or the singer to let it
out. I believe in strength through clarity."
Andy nods, "I agree. You can get much more feeling
through like that. On the surface what I write about is personal and can sound
depressing..." "...but there's a real sense of looking at your unhappiness and
confronting it," Nigel says, before adding: "I wouldn't say we were depressing, it can be incredibly
uplifting."
This is the Unbelievable Truth. Taking the beauty from sadness. The most remarkable new
band of 1998.