Verlaine Alone

(from NZ Musician magazine)

There's been time to sing a few slow sad love songs since Graeme Downes made his last album with the Verlaines, the unique '80s Dunedin band that fused punk energy with classical harmonies.

The Verlaines recorded six albums, three with Flying Nun, one with Sony and two for American label Slash. The band never officially broke up, but ceased being active when drummer Darren Steadman left for the UK in 1997.

Graeme Downes also left Dunedin around the same time, moving to Auckland where he was a tutor for the Music & Audio Institute of NZ. He is now back in Dunedin, running the University of Otago's Bachelor of Music in Contemporary Rock course.

One of our best songwriters, Graeme has recently made a welcome return with his new solo CD 'Hammers and Anvils'. He's also back with Flying Nun, the Verlaines' former label.


MATTHEW BANNISTER, who played in fellow Dunedin band Sneaky Feelings, met him on some disenchanted evening in Auckland, where the following conversation ensued:


So how does it feel to be back on Flying Nun?

Well ... (long pause) we signed with Matador initially, that was the main deal for America and Europe but they didn't really have anything going down here, so we said 'We'll give it to Flying Nun'. I mean, I guess the tradition is still there - we're still referred to as a Flying Nun band even though we've done stuff with Sony and Slash and whatever.


The album sounds like you've got a lot of freedom - I mean while I always loved the Verlaines, I sometimes felt the sound got in the way of the songs, but with this album the textures are a lot more varied.

I think that's pretty much hit the nail on the head - the band was a good vehicle but it did compromise a certain amount of things, I mean if I was sensible I would have written 10 "Pyromaniacs" and made an album out of it and been staggeringly successful, but I just don't work that way. The next one I wrote was "Wind Song" . (Both songs appear on 1987's 'Juvenilia'.)

It wasn't so much a problem around the time of 'Hallelujah All The Way Home' (the Verlaines' first album in 1986) cos we had the freedom to mess around in the studio with other instruments, but with the Slash thing there was more pressure to do a record we could actually go out and play live. That didn't necessarily work in favour of my eclectic songwriting habits. But because this was a solo record it was like taking every song on its own merits and doing what seemed appropriate.


How does 'Hammers and Anvils' translate to live performance?

I'm just working with a keyboardist (Stephen Small) and we do some tracks just like that - really quiet and intimate. Others we just use backing tracks - it's easy, especially if we go to the States as we're planning in November - we can't afford to take a rhythm section and I'd hate to try and train one up over there. With a song like "Cattle Cars and Chainsaws", the whole electronic grain of the recorded drums is so much a part of the song.


What period were the album songs written over?

Mostly since 'Over the Moon' (1997). "Cole Porter" is the oldest - it's the first song I wrote after finishing 'Some Disenchanted Evening' (1990). The Verlaines played it a few times but it didn't really fit on the albums we did after that. "Hammers and Anvils" was written some time back, in '93-'94. But the rest were written after I came up to Auckland in '97.


It's mostly you playing on the album?

No one else plays anything. Pete (Peter Van der Fluit, one-time Screaming Meemees bassist and work colleague) did a lot of the loops. His influence is pretty heavy on some of the electronica. He did "January Song" (drum loops) on his own because that was one we lost when the hard drive blew up. I was working on something else so he sort of did it in the next room.


It might all be computer sourced but it sounds pretty natural.

Yeah that's what I was aiming for - and that's sort of sequencing skills. It's hard to make the computer sound relatively human. American fans have emailed me and said 'Who's in the band?' They didn't pick that it was synthetic. That's kind of cool.


Are you still using open tunings?

No! They're all in standard tuning. I still write on the guitar but I've sort of gone away from it in the music - I mean the guitar's not the biggest feature a lot of the time.


Some of the Verlaines albums had a kind of overall pattern like keys in a symphony. Do you still do that when it comes to sequencing?

I still think about it ... but I don't agonise over it too heavily. They're much more a collection of individual songs.


Any musical motifs?

No more than you get with one songwriter writing a bunch of songs at the same time. Nothing conscious.


So what are you teaching at Otago - is it 'how to be a rock star' or is it more theoretical?

Oh there's both - songwriting, analysis, technology, music industry - so I've got a hand in most of those. I do the songwriting stuff and share the performance, half the technology. Of course doing the album helped me to do that. We've only been going two years so haven't got graduates yet. For a lot of them initially performance is the main focus, then after they've been studying for a while they find out they're better commercial composers or go into the industry side of it.


Do you use local music as examples in your teaching?

Yeah, I got them to set "This Be The Verse" (from Sneaky Feelings' 'Hard Love Stories') which is quite fun. It's like killing two birds with one stone - you're setting a task and using a band from their local past.


Do people recognise the local examples?

Some of them do. For some it's completely new, but that's part of what you're there for because generally being young they're mainly involved in what's current. To a certain extent there's not much point teaching them stuff they already know about.


From an industry perspective I think it's important these bands made recordings that got heard offshore, gained some kind of reputation, so if that's what you're aiming to do, you should have a look and see what the characteristics of that music were which facilitated that. Do you see any common characteristics, looking back?

I don't know. I think it's hard to see from here - American commentators are in a better position cos they're receiving it cold from the outside. There's a NZ approach, a NZ ethic to making music but not necessarily a sound.


Well there's a tendency to use like droney or jangly guitars ...

Yeah, but within that there's a huge diversity - as much as there may be that in common between Snapper and the Verlaines, that's about where it ends!


Do you have a favourite Cole Porter song? I'm a big fan of his too.

I think I heard a recording of him singing "Let's Do It" which is just so cute and quirky, but the lyrical resources that those guys pulled on ... from vague memory that's what kicked it off.


You refer to songwriters like Cole Porter, Randy Newman - the solo piano songs on 'Some Disenchanted Evening' and on the new album ("It Was", "Mastercontrol") ...

It's an aesthetic I've always aspired to. To me a song is a marriage of words and music, poetry, story, whatever, with music that expresses it - those guys are great at it. It sort of transcends styles, you don't have to write jazzy ditties to subscribe to that way of doing things. As you say, it runs through Randy Newman, Bacharach, the Beatles. Stylistically it's all completely different but the great songs you love and cherish have got that marriage of words and music.


Is there anyone in NZ or the world now who's working like that?

Ron Sexsmith is an example of someone out of that tradition who occasionally does this magical thing that's beautifully simple and streamlined - it's just a little two and a half minute story.


A sort of vignette...

Yeah, a little picture - not a wasted word, not a wasted note anywhere that nails some aspect of humanity in such a sublime and concise way. That's what keeps me interested in writing songs.