A short talk with Garce and Nigel from Sad Lovers & Giants on Big In Japan phenomenons, 80s' post-punk and Peel sessions.
Diogo: My father is a huge The Sounds/Adrian Borland fan. I really think he would dig your sonority, so I introduced Sad Lovers & Giants in the following way: "They create a bridge between the post-punk you grew up on recognize and the college rock that followed". What do you think about this succinct description?
Garce: We supported The Sound on one occasion and I’m very familiar with their work so I can understand when people put us in the same box. I think the idea of us being a bridge between Post-Punk and the American College Rock of the mid-'80s is interesting but the reality is that we started with songs that were definitely Post-Punk, like "Lost in A Moment" and "And When I See You" but we were already evolving into a more College Rock style with songs like "Things We Never Did". I would argue that our first single, "Imagination" is more College Rock than Post-Punk. In the end though we were very popular on American college radio sessions with songs like "Cowboys" so that’s where we ended up.
Diogo: What cultural or personal circumstances do you think have influenced your band's approximation to the sound promoted by American college radio sessions?
Garce: This is my personal take on your question. In the 1980’s indie music scene there was at one extreme a shallow manufactured kind of pop music and at the other extreme some pretty experimental music, like The Fall. In the middle was a more melodious, maybe atmospheric type of music with lyrics that were more complex than pop. The descriptor indie perfectly sums up the ideology and the nature of that music albeit that some of that type of music crossed over into the mainstream. The British indie scene and American college radio stations revolved around the same sort of music but my view is that in America the bands that were prominent were the more accessible ones, I’m thinking of the big American college radio hit of the '80s by REM, "The One I Love". The point I’m making is that SLAG were more like REM than The Fall which is why we were popular with US College radio stations. This wasn’t by design, we just like tuneful, atmospheric music. We got lucky, I suppose.
Diogo: There's some kind of peculiar ephemerality to the single "Things We Never Did". Looking back to this particular song, what factors do you believe make it stand out?
Nigel Pollard: It’s atmospheric, it has an interesting but clearly defined and hypnotic structure and beat and it’s very catchy. All of these qualities make it accessible.
Diogo: Epic Garden Music earned the status of "cult album", but what can you tell us about great and lesser-known records like the follow-up Feeding The Flame? If you had to describe each of the studio albums in the most minimalist way possible, how would you do it? Imagine me as someone who just fell in love with the sonority of Epic Garden Music and now is looking forward to keeping exploring.
Garce: I don’t want to describe each album of which there are nine, including 2018’s Mission Creep, because I want to leave our audience with their own intellectual headspace. Suffice it to say that we didn’t stop releasing albums after Feeding the Flame. In fact, the album after that, The Mirror Test, offers a version of Sad Lovers that is itself new and interesting and has just as much artistic integrity. We have always been a compulsively creative unit and continue to be so; last year we produced a COVID lockdown video for a new song called "Asylum Town" which is only our second video and stands up robustly against our early-career material. So to someone who has heard EGM and wants to hear more I would say, follow our albums in chronological order, be prepared for interesting twists and turns in the journey and make up your own mind.
Diogo: What was the 80s' underground Post-Punk scene like in the U.K.? Some bands weren't able to find a dedicated fanbase in their own nations, but ended up gaining notoriety in foreign countries, in large part due to independent radio stations and alternative venues.
Nigel Pollard: Although we had some success in the UK we found a larger audience in Europe, in particular Holland and Germany initially and then later in the ’80s in Spain and France. The U.K. scene was very creative but the music papers had the power to make or break bands and if you didn’t come from Manchester or Liverpool you weren’t in fashion, we came from Watford so it was harder to get good reviews.
Diogo: What do you think were the differences between the mentality regarding the music business within the U.K. and other European countries/U.S.? It's a "big in Japan" phenomenon to be appreciated by foreigners the most.
Garce: (...) To take the big in Japan idea which is like the biblical quote from Luke’s Gospel about no prophet being accepted in their hometown, I would say that the UK indie music scene of the 1980’s was very much influenced by the tastemakers of the music press and they never really liked SLAG until the very late ’80s. Outside the mainstream, every country has its own music scene and tastemakers and they don’t all like the same bands at the same time, we’ve always benefitted from that as successive countries have looked favourably on SLAG. However, the sustained 1980’s revival has meant there is more interest in the band now in every country. It’s a good place to be in, at last.
Diogo: Madrid and Amsterdam are two cities that come to mind when I think about places that played a big role in the achievement of overseas success for Anglo-Saxon '80s Post-Punk bands. I'm aware of the fact that you recorded a live album for Radio Netherlands Worldwide in 1983.
Nigel Pollard: Yes, that was certainly the case with us. The first time we played outside the U.K. was to do the Radio Hilversum session in Holland which combined with four other gigs, the last of which was The Milkyweg Club in Amsterdam. We were impressed by the large enthusiastic crowds which were unlike anything we had experienced to that point. Later in the '80s, we had the same experience in Spain. In fact, our first appearance there was in the bullring in Valencia.
Diogo: Speaking of live albums, what was it like recording a "Peel Session"?
Nigel Pollard: At the time it was a really big thing and still is that we were asked to do a Peel Session. I remember we wanted to write four completely new songs for the session, which we did. In fact, one was finished in the session ("Sex Without Gravity") and the other was so new that we hadn’t given it a name so we just called it, "There Was No Time" because we hadn’t had the time to name it!
Diogo: Have you been following the latest rock bands coming out of the U.K. and Ireland? I enjoy "The Windmill Scene". Bands like Black Midi, Black Country, New Road, and Squid have the know-how to adapt guitar-centered music to the current trends of the digital era. The final result reminds me of what journalist Simon Reynolds would describe as "cyborg rock": "(...) some kind of interface between real-time, hands-on playing and the use of digital effects and enhancement".
Garce: I’m afraid I haven’t heard of any of those bands, I must search them out and have a listen, thanks!
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