London, 24th October, 2003

To coincide with the band’s latest and greatest album, BETWEEN DARKNESS AND WONDER, we interviewed Lou Rhodes to find out more about the album’s creation. Lou also talked about the band’s musical journey, and hopes for the future. We at Shakenstir believe that the new album will lead to securing the broader audience the band seeks and deserves.

I included your last album in our list of the best albums of the year. But it seemed to me that it did not receive the recognition it deserved (i.e. radio or TV airplay, award nomination…). It was beautiful, distinctive, and very accessible. So what do you think are the reasons why it didn’t succeed as it should have done? Or perhaps it met your expectations?

No, it definitely did not meet our expectations. I think it was because it was a timing thing. It kinda came out and disappeared in a way because of all the shake-ups in the record company at the time. I think it didn’t get the kind of promotion that it needed. It just fell into the record shops and people who wanted it bought it. It just didn’t happen. So that was quite frustrating but I think it was just a timing issue really.

Did you feel disappointed at the time?

Yes, because we really did feel it was a really strong album and we wanted it to get out there to people. And it’s really difficult with our kind of music because we’re not the sort of band that get on mainstream radio and that’s one way to sell albums. You just need to be a bit more creative when promoting our stuff and there was people getting fired all over the place when the album came out. So it was really bad timing.

Following up from that would you say that commercial success is a major factor for you in the production of a record?

Not really for us. I guess it’s a kind of necessary evil (laughs). Our main concern is making music that we love and I guess the only way we can sustain that is for people to keep buying records. I do get a bit frustrated with the fact that we are still kind of in a ghetto. I think our music has the potential to reach a lot broader population. I think there’s a misapprehension as to what Lamb is out there. A lot of people haven’t heard of us, and if they have they say ‘aren’t you kind of trip-hop…?’ The people who do a lot of our press issued a press kit including ‘20 things you didn’t know about Lamb‘ thing. And most people called her back and said, ‘wow, they’re young, we thought they were travellers…‘ People have weird conceptions of what Lamb is. It’s just strange - a lot of people say, ‘yeah, I’ve heard of you and I think I should have heard your music but I don’t know it…‘ There seems to be a kind of block in people actually getting to hear of us… So succinctly, commercial success is not a great concern but reaching a broader audience definitely would be very nice. We’ve been doing this for a long time and you would expect more people would have been able to hear us by now…

Your new album is a natural, progressive and excellent follow-up. What are your hopes, aspirations for it?

I guess more of what I was saying just now. I would like to kind of break out of the ghetto a little bit. There’s a price you pay with that. I think one of the things is that our fans are really, really devout followers. We get emails to the site and many are really incredible and moving. Some of it is really extreme stuff, like life and death stuff. And I do kind of wonder if we reached a broader audience whether some of those people would feel like we weren’t theirs any more; that we kinda sold out… so there is that kind of consideration. But I don’t want to live in a ghetto for the rest of my existence and I’m really proud of it as an album. And when you’re proud of it, you just want to show it to the world.

Tell me about the meaning of the new album’s title.

Well it’s partly because there is a song on the album called Darkness (laughs). I guess we wanted a title that kind of left people intrigued, to draw people in… I guess the lyrics are kind of enigmatic in some ways. And also the thing with the album is that (something I’m really proud of) it’s very human, it’s just very honest in the way it deals with the human experience - I hope. I think people in the past have thought ‘oh God, Lamb are so happy all the time…‘ And this album actually deals with the darker sides of existence as well, the sort of shadow stuff that a lot of us don’t want to look at. And it deals with those extremes and hopefully highlights the whole thing that without darkness there isn’t light, and visa versa. You don’t see the wonder of the world unless you’ve seen the darkness in it.

There seems to be more emphasis and clarity in the vocals on the new album. Could you tell me about this?

Yes. We’ve been on a bit of a journey with the vocals, with the relationship between vocals and the music. I think there’s been a lot said in the press about the arguments between Andy and I - I mean when we formed Andy came from an instrumental/electronic-based background. To him, at that stage, vocals were just another instrument and he always had this thing about each instrument is okay but you have to get them to shut-up. I think that’s how he felt about vocals - that there was a place for vocals but you have to get them to shut-up as well. And to give the electronic music space, and so on… And of course there was always this conflict because I came from a song writing background and so for me the journey of the song was the most important thing. But for him, getting all the sounds that he wanted into the soundscape was key. We couldn’t cram all that in.

**page*

I think it reached its height in FEAR OF FOURS, and you can really hear it in that. It’s actually quite a difficult album to listen to and my voice was very effected because I was trying on different persona in the way I was singing, but also it was effected technologically as well. And again, I find it very difficult to listen to my vocals on that album because it wasn’t very natural. And so with WHAT SOUNDS we started to come back to a more organic feel in the vocal and giving songs a little bit more space. And I think now we have reached an absolute openness in it. Andy’s actually come to a point now where he is happy to give the songs space because he’s musical journey has arrived at a point where he listens to a lot more song-based music now that he never used to listen to. He chooses to listen to someone like Nick Drake and that has had a real big impact on the way we’ve written and so the vocals get to be heard and get to be quite to the fore I think on this album. Also what I really wanted was this intimacy; for me when I listen to vocal based music I want to feel that person is just singing to me, right in my ear. And that was what we were looking for in this album.

Production/sound quality also seems much stronger on the new album. Could you tell me about the process, objectives and who was involved.

I think again it’s a learning process. We’ve always produced ourselves and when we wrote the first album we didn’t have the first clue. It’s just a gradual thing and that can work in your favour. There’s a real rawness in the first album that was based in our naivety which is part why it is what it is, and why people say it was a classic album… really naïve, really raw, us trying to find our way… You’re confined to what you have at your disposal - we had really limited technology at our disposal for the first album. For the second album (FEAR OF FOURS) there was also a lot of conflict because we had an overload of technology at our disposal. It was kinda like ‘throw it all in, oh we gotta use that…‘ And I think Andy was really into that music technology and showing what it could do and being very clever with it. And there was a bit of a power struggle. It was a learning process and with this new album we’ve had more freedom with new technology and especially in using live instruments. A lot of the songs on this album were written with members of the live band as well. There’s a programme that Andy has used a lot on the album and it just gives you so much more freedom to run things live, and change things as you’re going along. It’s like playing an instrument almost… It’s a learning process and you learn that you don’t have to put everything and the kitchen sink in there. I think, in a way, we’ve probably streamlined the studio and what we have (we got rid of a load of stuff). I think we’ve realised (after WHAT SOUNDS) that less is more - it was so dense. And I think this album proved that point, even more so. We just wanted to say what was important… It was all written and recorded in the farmhouse that we rented in Bath and in fact a couple of the tunes were mixed there.

Tell me about writing the songs and the band.

Some of the tracks on the album were written with the live band. What tended to happen was that we had a couple of experimental writing sessions with the band, one of which was in Amsterdam, and we had a few days in Barcelona as well with just me, Andy and the guitarist Oddur. And a lot of the songs on the album came from those writing sessions but then we kind of found that it didn’t sound like Lamb because it was very organic sounding, like a band playing in a room. So we needed to strip them back and almost start again, but the basics of the songs stayed, and it was just the instrumentation around it that changed. So the core of musicians were me, Andy, Oddur Mar Runarsson on guitar, Jon Thorne on bass and double bass, and Nick on drums. We also had my husband Crispen who used to play percussion for Galliano (he guested on about five of the tracks with percussion). We also had an African bass player play on one of the tracks, a great bass player called Me’Shell NdgegeOcello. We didn’t have as many guest players as on WHAT SOUND because it just didn’t happen that way.

There are several stunning songs on the album but ‘Clouds Clear’ is a particular favourite. In fact it’s astounding in several ways. Could you tell me about the song?

It’s funny you should say that because everybody seems to pick up on that song. And it’s the same for us, everyone was there when it was written, the full band. It was one of those songs that came out of nowhere, it just happened to us. When we’d written it we were all kind of blown away. It was like one of those magical happenings, and I really think that when creativity really works it’s like that. It’s not that you have to toil away, it’s almost like you get out of the way and something else comes through. It’s like it’s not about the individuals or about the human beings, it’s about something else that happens. And Clouds Clear was like that. And it’s just an intense song and it’s very powerful live, especially that second build and that high note I hit. And every time we reach that point people just go ‘wow!’ And it’s really just a powerful song to share with people because obviously it’s about darkness, about hitting the bottom of emotional and psychological well-being. I guess people identify with that because we’ve all been there.

‘Wonder’ could be a ‘radio-friendly’ Christmas single. Your thoughts please, and will there be any singles from the album (if so which)?

It did feel the obvious choice as a single although Andy and I were gunning for Stronger as well. But the record company in their infinite wisdom have kind of really gone for Wonder. And it was kinda between the two so we went along with that. Wonder is one of those songs that sometimes I really love and sometimes I’m not so sure because it’s just so sweet. It’s really, really extra sweet and we’ve just done the video for it (I don’t know if you’ve seen it?) and it’s great. You hear the song so differently when you see the video; it’s really light-hearted and I had the opportunity to co-direct the video and write the treatment for it which was fun and very fulfilling to do. It feels like the creative process didn’t stop at writing songs and performing. My husband and I have done the photos for the cover as well and it’s kind of like travelling full circle because I used to be a photographer before.

Name a personal favourite song from the album, and tell me the reasons…

It’s really difficult. Clouds Clear is definitely one of them. Hearts and Flowers is another one because it’s really delicate and it’s about being vulnerable…

Many thanks and congratulations on a very fine, and moving new album.