Electric Soft Parade
(originally featured in 2007's Truck festival programme)
At this year’s Truck we’ll be seeing all of the many incarnations of ESP’s brothers White and Co. as they’ll also be appearing alongside their collaborative and respective side-projects: Brakes, Restlesslist and Actress Hands - which, they say, leaves them with, “No free time, and that’s the way we like it”.
The lads are planning on catching Tom White’s festival favourite, Buck 65, and taking it a little easier this weekend though - “We'll be knocking about all weekend, oh yes. I believe Youth Movies are playing too, and a reformed Grand Drive, which should be lush.” enthuses Tom - but with Alex, Tom’s brother and partner in ESP, appearing with three bands this year, he’ll not have time for too much fun, which might make him a candidate for designated driver status.
“I can tell you now, Alex will be weed-poppered out of his little skull all weekend, and therefore won't be fit to drive a shopping trolley, let alone a tour-bus filled with half of the Brighton and Hove contemporary music scene.” While Tom’s feeling so talkative, I fire a few questions at him:
ESP and Brakes have both just played Glasto, the world’s biggest festival: Having played Truck before, and knowing that they have intentionally limited the crowd capacity this year, how do these experiences compare with each other?
”Basically, if you get through a festival without having watched The Kooks or contracted dysentery, you've won.”
Believe it or not but Glastonbury is apparently located at a “dry spot” on the Somerset Levels, yet I ended up with trenchfoot.
Topographically, Oxfordshire appears a better bet, right?
“The weather is everything... Though that doesn't mean, being hardy English folk, we won't make the most of it whatever happens.”
I went to the O2 festival this year just to see the White Stripes; it was like an all-day long TV advert on the big-screens. How do you think Commercialism is effecting the live music scene, and how does Truck differ?
“Fuck 02 and fuck V. Fuck 'em all. Apart from the God-awful line-ups blighting most modern festivals, you've now got to put up with garish Photoshop nonsense blasting you in the face all day while you try and work out what song your favourite band is playing from a mile away. Simple as this: no one gives a shit who 'made this festival happen'. Advertising and corporate sponsorship should have no visible place at any festival; a festival that allows this to happen has missed the point entirely.”
To the uninitiated, Electric Soft Parade’s newest offering sounds like early The Who thrown in on a spin-cycle with Pink Floyd, which may sound messy, but it somehow runs together forming perfectly natural sounding indie-pop, with a casual splash of the Divine Comedy thrown in to soften things up a bit.
Vocal stylings befitting of John Lennon circa Rubber Soul play an all-important part, and RC biplane melodies pitch in and out of the mire, skimming across Josh Homme guitars and then soaring high up to clean, crisp, euphonious choruses.
“Our new LP is by far and away our best record yet - it just encapsulates and defines better what we tried (and failed) to do on our first two.” says Tom.
What has changed since your previous records and how has it affected your sound?
“We've signed to Truck and toured the States. We've made two Brakes records for Rough Trade, which has been a blast. Al produced the Actress Hands album, which is due out in the summer. I've been involved in Restlesslist, an ongoing instrumental project that finally came to fruition this spring. We have an album due any minute. Oh, and I’ll be putting out some stuff with another band I've been doing for a few years now - The Blind Cowboys. It's basically me and Pipettes bassist, Jon Falcone. We've never played live, but hopefully we'll be up and running in time for next years Truck. Anyway, there's an album of that on its way. Woo-Hoo!!”
