DOTMUSIC SETS SAIL WITH STRAW
High in the gods at London's Forum venue, dotmusic in huddled into a dressing room faced with a very excited Straw. It's a squeeze on the sofa but it's worth it. Let the fun commence...
Straw - Mattie, Andy, Duck and new boy Dan - start by telling dotmusic that the next 18 months will be spent touring. We're here on the last date of their tour with Westcountry rockers Reef which Straw declare was "fantastic".
"The audience have been very receptive," enthuses Duck. "A lot of kids going nuts."
Dan: "They've been well up for it. A lot of crowd surfing, shoe throwing…"
Duck: "…haven't really seen that before, people throwing shoes on stage. It's quite good because we set up a little stall round the back afterwards and flog them back."
And so the first moment of surreal sidetracking is already upon us, 30 seconds in. It won't be the last and dotmusic has to be focused to keep pace with their inter-band banter.
Have you been playing much old stuff?
Andy: "We dabbled. We do some early classical music, early tribal rhythm, that far back…"
Duck: "We've put a few tunes in, three or four tracks from the old album."
Mattie: "We've been playing the best of both worlds!"
Time for a quick recap. If you missed Straw first time round, where were you? A lot has changed but then again nothing much has. The new songs on the forthcoming 'Keepsakes' album are as strong as ever but there are a few major changes. We'll let Duck explain...
"We've had a lot of changes in the band. Well two main ones we changed label and we lost a member and gained a member."
Andy: "We've been recording and keeping ourselves to ourselves," chips in Andy. "And getting as good as we can possibly be. We're gonna tour for the next 18 months. Getting rid of old and in with the new."
"We left Warners at the end of '99," continues Duck. "It was pretty amicable, if could have potentially been nasty, but it ended up being really pleasant. They let us go with our album and no strings attached. It was a very brief period between the labels."
Were you apprehensive about signing to another major?
Mattie: "We show no signs of apprehension in any aspect of our lives...do we? I'm not sure."
Dan: "I'm not sure."
Andy: "I'm a bit worried. I'm a bit anxious."
Duck: "No it's great, the thing about it is you're in a band to..."
Andy: "...get chicks..."
Duck: "...and to do that you need to reach as many people as possible."
Mattie: "Especially if you look like Duck, it's more of a scatter gun approach with Duck."
Andy: "I actually want chicks, I want people to bring in little chicks."
Mattie: "Don't people will!"
Andy: "Alright don't send in baby chickens..."
Dan: "Little toy fluffy ones...that's the answer."
Duck brings the conversation back to reality...
"Everyone wants to succeed and your best chance of success is with a major label, pretty much."
Mattie: "You get to eat, you get paid, and you can pay your rent. Courtney Love, god bless her cotton socks, was asked that question 'why did you sign to a major label when you should be signed to a cool indie and she said all the people I was in bands with who signed indie deals are now waitresses. Which is very cool but if you want to carry on being a musician..."
Duck: "One thing they do have is money. Not that we get masses but we can eat and live and that's the key."
Andy: "We're in a good position cos we haven't had to change ourselves."
Mattie: "We were lucky cos we got to make the record ourselves so we immediately have that in our favour. It's useful for them as well cos that aspect of the band is sorted. They don't have to worry."
Andy: "Hopefully we can continue to do that and won't be like, 'for the next album we fly to Maui and record with Rick Rubin..."
They all look at each other and in unison suggest that this might not be such an absurd proposition.
Andy: "OK that would be phenomenally good…jot that down...Rick Rubin in Maui."
dotmusic then implies that the current music climate might be favourable for Straw.
Mattie: "It's very difficult if you start second guessing what is currently on the music scene. If you sat and tried to second-guess what would successful...I think you'd go nuts and also your music would be contrived. One thing people hate is contrived music, they can see if you band is pretending. This is as natural an album as we can make so were very happy with it.
"Once we got rid of the progressive folk element, the rapping and nu metal angle...essentially we made the album we wanted to make."
Surely the success of the likes of Travis, Coldplay etc spurred you on?
Duck: "We do what ever we do anyway."
Andy: "It's good for the music scene that Coldplay are doing what they are doing...and if it does paved the way our music then fantastic but if it does we'll still do what we're doing."
Mattie: "The interesting thing with that is they are selling the quantity of records that means they are appealing to people outside the circle of music hobbists. You've got Coldplay, Travis, Toploader and they don't have that credibility because they've succeeded."
Andy: "Travis aren't cool anymore, Coldplay are the new Travis."
Mattie: "To sell that many records somebody's mum has got to buy it."
Andy: "They've been in the Top 10 for six months. Surely the idea is to sell as many albums as possible."
Duck: "As long as you don't compromise the music. People who say they don't want to sell a lot of records...are lying because they don't want to set themselves up for a fall. If we wanted to sell a lot of records we'd be making dance music. Get a blond girl with big boobs and be making eurobeat..."
All look at each other and make another mental note.
Duck: "We just do what we do and hopefully…will like it."

As the cold sets in and the band start to lose all feeling in legs, dotmusic presses on with more questions.

Let's start with the comeback single, 'Sailing Off The Edge Of The World'...
Andy: "Let's just leave it there. That's perfect..."
Duck: "Sailing Off The Edge Of The World', it's released on February 19th."
Mattie: "Available from all good record shops..."
Andy: "...and all bad record shops!"
Duck: "It's kind of about being in a band. Mattie wrote it so he can explain."
Mattie: "It did come from Duck saying that being in a band was like sailing off the edge of the world. You get all your ideas and you climb in a boat and you head for the promise land and we're going to discover America. And you get about half way across and you use up all your supplies and at that point you feel that there's no turning back, it's too late. You've burnt all your bridges."
Duck: "You might hit success or you might hit a barren rock of failure and you don't really know where you're going. You might hit some crappy island or you might hit some lush jungle with ladies and fruit."
Mattie: "You make your choices in the band and you say we're going to be this kind of music, I can't look like this and we're gonna hopefully succeed, off you go. Then you realise you don't own your house and you don't have any possessions and you're just a musician who is eking out an existence on the odd chance you discover America or not."
Duck: "I've thought of another analogy that I thought of on the tube on the way here. It's like gold prospecting. There's an element of skill and also a big element of luck..."
Mattie: "Is it luck or is it chance?"
Duck: "You might be a very good prospector but you might not get the breaks. Did you know that the Golden Fleece in Jason and the Argonauts was because they used to use fleeces to get the gold out of the streams."
Cue rest of band nodding off!!!
All: "Anyway, where were we?"
What about the album?
Andy: "It's called 'Keepsakes' and it's coming out this year."
Duck: "It's very good actually."
Where have they taken the sound since their debut 'Shoplifting'?
Duck: "It is quite different. It's a lot simpler cos when we made 'Shoplifting' we got let loose in the studio."
Dan: "You got Let Loose in the studio."
Andy: "They came down. They're nice guys, close personal friends."
Duck: "It was a bit 'bull in a china shop', we had a pretty big budget...we kind of went a bit nuts and consequently it was a bit complicated."
Mattie: "Sophisticated."
Duck: "On this album we stripped it down and take all the complexities out which made it harder to understand the core elements of the songs. We really worked on the songs, really concentrated on the songs."
Did you know this when you went into the studio?
Duck: "Yeah. We toured the last album for a year and a half and we were really into recreating the record and it involved a lot of sequencers."
Mattie: "It was a very considered move. We decided to make an album that we could communicate live and if you've only got five pieces of information musically rather than 45 generally you can communicate that better. The biggest influence on that was we produced the record and we didn't want to look like we'd over cooked it. We said 'let's not get carried away'."
Do you feel you're better equipped for success?
Mattie: "Yeah we've got loads more equipment now!"
Duck: "This time it feels really good. We've had a good response from people and we've learnt partly from our mistakes. We've learnt a few lessons and we understand how things work a bit better. We're more at ease with it all now."
Andy: "We really like each other and get on really well. So if we fall flat on our arse we'll know we had a good go at it and a good crack at it."
Mattie: "We're had a really good innings, yah!"
Have you got point to prove?
Duck: "No not really, like we were saying we do what we do and people like it or you don't. If you start trying to prove a point it looks like you're trying a bit hard. We're confident in what we do and you either accept it or you don't."
Mattie: "I see it being like a biscuit manufacturer. You come up with this ingredient...and a big company says they are going to make your biscuits and they put them on the supermarket shelf and people say 'I like these biscuits' or they say 'they're horrible' and that's the music industy's like. I don't attach anything to the fact we are musicians, its just biscuits."
Andy: "We're biscuits."
The fantastic single 'Sailing Off The Edge Of The World' is released this week.

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