A russian-speaking graduate with a brother in the most critically acclaimed rock band of the 1990s release his own stunning debut album. ANDREW SMITH on the unlikely story of Andy Yorke.
The Unbelievable Truth's monkish singer, Andy Yorke, is one of the most polite, soft-spoken and reflective men you could hope to meet. But you can watch him turn into a cross between the Rev Ian Paisley and Travis Bickle from the film Taxi Driver if you know just two ludicrously simple words. Try it yourself if you ever bump into him, just as dozy french record company employee did earlier in the day. "Hello,Thom." Bang. Fireworks. Though the unfortunate fellow swiftly corrected himself, Yorke is still fuming hours later.
Because "Thom" is Thom Yorke, Andy's elder brother and singer with one of the most respected groups of the 1990s, radiohead. There have been many examples of siblings starting out in the same successful band, but few have achieved fame separately, wich is why, for the past six months, all anyone has wanted to ask Yorke Jr about is the difficulty of trying to follow in his brother's imposing footsteps. The good news is that, as of a week tomorrow and the release of Unbelievable Truth's remarkably composed debut album, Almost Here, this wil change. The sanity of Andy Yorke's decision to follow his brother into the music business is no longer at issue. Now, we want to know how one family could have produced two such distinctive voices.
Had the brothers Yorke begun releasing albums a few years earlier than they did, Oxford social services might well have been tempted to pay their household a visit, expecting to find them confined to their bedrooms, sustained only by a diet of gruel, Leonard Cohen records and girls who disappear insultingly the moment you fall in love with them. Like the Hal Hartley film after which Unbelievable Truth are named (they prefer Hartley's Trust, but that was already taken), the dominant mood in both Yorkes' music is melancholia, though Andy, with his rich, clear voice and uncluttered, emotional lyrics, approaches his in a far more direct way. Only one of the 11 songs on Almost There is much more tan four minutes long, and they range in texture from the concise, fluttering rock of the illchosen singles Solved and Higher Than Reason, to the beautiful acoustic carnage of Stone, Same Mistakes and Forget About Me. The atypically gregarious Settle Down, with its transcendent vocal harmonies (a group speciality), brings to mind Neil Young, or even the Eagles at their best: indeed, it would be possible to read Almost There is a brand of urban British country music, though Yorke denies any explicit country influence.
Unsurprisingly, they're already catching on in France, where angst is much admired (see the enormous popularity of The Cure). Even here, Yorke is not out of his brother's shadow, though he may have taken satisfaction from the fact that, when the host of the television show on which he is about to appear demands to know whether there are any Radiohead fans in the audience, only two sheepish hands are raised. Backstage, at close quarters, the pleasing eccentricity of the trio becomes evident. With his radical haircut, drummer Nigel Powell looks like a refugee from Sigue Sigue Sputnik. he talks a lot, too, whereas the bassist, Jason Moulster, sits motionless, facing the door of the small room, blinking occasionally, but saying absolutely nothing. After a while, you begin to wonder whether he's mute, or is making some strange situationist statement. In performance, though, he is riveting, every note seeming to pass like an electric current through him.
Then there's Andy Yorke. On stage, without his specs, he looks nothing like his brother, though up close the ressemblance is plain. His round, fresh features make him look younger than his 25 years. He is probably set to become the first British pop star with a degree in Russian from oxford University. After the show, he talks animatedly about the time he's spent in Russia and his passion for its culture. in 1996, on the day before he and his partners were to sign a dream first publishing deal, it was to Russia that he slipped away for six months, with nary a word to anyone.
"I basically left te band," he says, shifting slightly in his seat. "i didn't tell the rest of the band that. I left because I started writing songs quite late, when i was 20. Three years later, we were being offered a publishing deal and I think it was too fast for my little brain to cope with. Even three years on, i didn't really think of myself as being a musician, and i wasn't sure I wanted to be, I guess. i wasn't very comfortable, I felt that I hadn't done enough other things yet. So I left. The day before we were to sign the deal, actually. Which was..." He looks at the others and shrugs. "Sorry." They laugh.
" At the time, i don't think I thought I was going to come back. Everybody was ringing me up and saying, " It's really brave, what you're doing." But it wasn't that. It just felt like the only thing I could do to stay sane."
Anyone having trouble understanding this should bear in mind that Thom Yorke once described standing on a deserted Asian beach, the most beautiful stretch of coastline he'd ever seen, and having the whole spectacle ruined for him by the knowledge that he owed it all to MTV. Andy Yorke, too, will agonise over being signed to a multinational record company in a way that I thought people had given up. As far as both Radiohead and Unbelievable Truth are concerned, postmodernism might never have happened - this being one of their very greatest attractions. Where does their intensity come from?
"Uhm, i don't know. It's not like we were abused as children or anything."
They had a "pretty normal" upbringing in the small market town of Abingdon, near Oxford. He and Powell went to school together, playing in, of all things, a glam-metal band that they refuse to name ("And me in this horrible Morrissey cardigan and Glasses - oh God"). At a loss. Yorke asks Powell if he has any thoughts on the Yorke despond.
" Well, to me, it seems like an almost random genetic thing. There are certainly traits that I've noticed that each of you seems to have inherited from your parents. There doesn't seem to be any obvious reason for it in terms of your life experience."
The issue is this: is living in a permanent state of existential crisis merely a convenient way of ensuring a constant supply of fresh material? Writers such as Adam Duritz of Counting Crows and Mark Eitzel have long had to fend off such allegations. After all, both Yorkes appears to be effective individuals with a lot of advantages in life.
"I don't know. Three years ago, when I started writing these songs. I didn't feel like a very effective person at all. A lot of the songs come from that time when you've left education and are thinking, S***. what can I do? If there's a sense of confusion and feeling slightly lost in the songs, that's probably where it comes from. Someone like Nigel is lucky, because he only has one thing in life he wants to do : ...music. that's a real blessing. Whereas with me, there are two things in my life that I feel passionate about. There's music but also a desire to go work in eastern Europe and get really immersed in that. So when things get really weird - and I think this is scary for the rest of the band - in the back of my mind. I'm thinking. " Well, I don't actually need this. If I left I could do the other thing that I want to do."
Yorke admits to having feared that his ambivalence would hold him back, stop him from "engaging in music properly". In the event, it gives this odd misfit groupan extradimension that few others have. Good advice to both Yorke and his expanding audience would be to enjoy...