Interview with ANDY CAIRNS (THERAPY)

Mick Burgess caught up with Therapy’s Andy Cairns during their recent UK tour to chat about their new album A Brief Crack Of Light.

MER:

You’ve just released your latest album, A Brief Crack Of Light. Are you pleased with how it’s turned out?

ANDY:

We are very happy and we’re quite surprised at the reaction it’s got from the fans. A lot of new people seem to be coming to the band, which is good as we always say that when we release an album that you are so close to it and that makes it hard to have a real perspective of it until you get out there. Fingers crossed, so far it’s been great.

MER:

This is your 13^th album. How do you see it as a progression from your last album Crooked Timber?

ANDY:

I think with this one we took the template of Crooked Timber, which is based on rhythm and bass beats with a really growly bass sound and effects laden guitar. We kept the classic Therapy trademarks, but brought in some new things such as the vocoder for the voice and effects, samples and ambient noises in the background, which is something that we’ve been working on for a while just to make the sound slightly different. We are a Rock band but we do like our albums to sound a little different compared to other Rock bands.

MER:

Those new elements are probably most evident on the final track “Ecclesiastes”?

ANDY:

I think you’re right. I brought in a vocoder into the rehearsal room as we all like early Kraftwerk and also Neil Young had a much maligned album called Trans, which has “Computer Age” — I’ve always liked that electronic stuff. When we’ve tried it in the past it always ended up sounding like Cher so we bought an old analogue vocoder and it ended up sounding really good, so we used that on “Ecclesiastes”.

MER:

When did you start working on the new material?

ANDY:

We did the live album in 2010 and then we toured the Troublegum album for our 20^th anniversary. We had bits and pieces written, but then we went up to Derby where we have a little place where we rehearse occasionally and we spent 2 weeks there knocking ideas around. We then went into the studio in January with about 14 ideas and we did the drums and the bass first of all, then by May 2011 we added the guitars and vocals. We spent about 4 weeks in the studio in total.

MER:

How many songs did you end up with during the writing sessions for the album?

ANDY:

We recorded about 14 and used 10 on the album. We were up against it time-wise and one of the songs still needed some work and we didn’t want to rush it and put it onto the album. The other 3 were good, but we didn’t think they fit in with the sonic chemistry of the rest of the album, so we kept them back for later. There were 2 songs that the producer thought should have gone onto the album, but we thought that they were very Poppy and due to the nature of the album we felt that they sounded out of place. They were more reminiscent of the old Poppy ’90s Therapy and if we were going to do that then we’d put them on an album full of songs like that. They just didn’t fit in with this album so we decided to leave them off.

MER:

What will you be doing with these extra songs?

ANDY:

We’ll keep them for B-Sides or for downloads from our Website. We are constantly working on new material and we have lots of ideas so we might knock them into shape and put them out at some point.

MER:

You worked with producer Adam Sinclair as a co-producer … he’s also worked with New York Dolls, Quireboys and Andy Taylor. Why did you choose him for this album?

ANDY:

He did the Crooked Timber engineering and he co-mixed the record at the end. He’s young and not weighed down with his way of doing things. He’s quite happy to work with a band like The Unthanks and then a noisy band like Therapy. He listens to everything, which means if we drop in say a guitar sound on a King Tubby record he’ll know what we mean, but if we used a straight Metal producer they wouldn’t get it.

MER:

How long did you spend recording the album?

ANDY:

We spent about four weeks from start to finish. Adam dealt with the mixing. That was where we needed someone to be objective as if you have three people all shouting for their parts to be turned up over the mixers shoulder then it’s not going to work.

MER:

What is the meaning behind the album title, A Brief Crack of Light?

ANDY:

It relates to the brevity of our existence and it came from a quote from a Russian writer called Vladimir Nabokov who said that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness and it relates back to what I was saying earlier about us in the west getting hung up about things in such a short space of time and we should spend more time searching for joy and happiness as we’re not around here for very long.

MER:

You’ll also be releasing a limited edition purple vinyl version of the album. Do you think that there is a growing demand for a physical product, particularly vinyl, these days?

ANDY:

I remember all those records by The Dickies and the UK Subs on colored vinyl, Budokan by Cheap Trick was on yellow vinyl as well. I loved those and wanted us to put out something collectable like that.

MER:

What about the rest of the year, what have you lined up?

ANDY:

We haven’t got any festivals secured just yet, but we have shows in Spain and Ireland and also big festivals in Austria, Germany, Holland, and Belgium and maybe Hungary too. Our agent has said that we have a tour lined up from September that’s going to be a big 8,9,10 week tour with 2 weeks in the UK and 2 weeks in Germany and shows across Europe, so that is going to be the real A Brief Crack Of Light tour as we’ll get to play the whole album and we’ll play for an hour and 45 minutes … so they’ll be full shows and we can’t wait to get out and play!