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Moscow 1992, and we find Andy Yorke agonising over whether to form a band. His problem? Nothing really, just that 1,500 miles away back in Oxford his older brother Thom is about to enter the studio to record - among other things - a song called ‘Creep’. A fact which might partly explain why it subsequently took a further six years of fretting before Andy finally emerged in his own right. “Er, yeah. (Titanic pause) Thom being in a band was, um, a bit of a ... problem,” he whispers now, before quickly adding, “but it was alright at first because we didn’t really have any aspirations, and we certainly didn’t think of it as a career.” Still, when in 1993 Andy returned from his ten month spell in Moscow (part of a degree in Russian Language and Literature), he did so with a handful of song fragments that he immediately began to work on with his childhood friends, Nigel Powell (drums, keyboards, acoustic guitar), and later Jason Moulster (bass). Having taken their name from a Hal Hartley movie they began to write a set of sparse acoustic confessionals that recalled the caustic bleakness of Mark Eitzel and the skeletal echo of late Talk Talk. No wonder, then, that word began to circulate and despite a series of funereal and frequently incompetent live shows, by the summer of 1995, the band had been offered a sizeable publishing deal. Andy’s response was to pick up the phone and tell Nigel he was quitting the band and heading back to Moscow. “It was just a combination of things,” he explains quietly, “partly I was lacking in self-confidence and partly I was having difficulties in thinking of myself as a pop star.” Were you influenced by Thom’s experiences in Radiohead? “Not really, I just had no confidence at all. Everything was happening too quickly, and I wasn’t even that happy with the music. I mean, I’ve only been a passable guitarist for the past few months, before that I was fumbling around all over the place. It was only when we reformed after I got back from Moscow that I realised that we’d actually written some really good songs.” So good in fact that, having decided to give it another go, by March 1997 they’d signed to Virgin. Three records swiftly followed: a rough debut on the Oxford based Shifty Disco label, a starring appearance on Fierce Panda ‘Cry Me A Liver’ compilation, and then finally their major label debut, the colossal ‘Stone’ EP. This month sees the release of ‘Higher Than Reason’, another startling four-track EP that veers from the brittle melancholy of the title track (which the The Sun, yes that’s The Sun wanted to use on one of their adverts) to the orchestral rush of ‘Coming Round’. Indeed, such is the gravity of their songs in general, it’s no surprise to learn that the band were spotted at a recent London gig on - aaaaargh! - stools, thereby making them honorary figureheads of the Stool Rock Phenomenon. Cue groans all round. “You won’t be seeing us on them again for a while,” mutters Andy. “It was only a one-off,” pleads Nigel “We sound a lot better when we stand up anyway,” argues Andy, “and besides, we don’t want to be a part of any scene....” At which point Nigel launches into an impassioned “explanation” of the band’s ethos, which eventually climaxes with the assertion that they’ll “never appear on Live and Kicking or dress up as bananas for a publicity stunt.” Er, right. But then ultimately who in their right mind would ask them to? After all, this is The Unbelievable Truth we’re talking about here: a band concerned above all else with dignified melancholy; a band originally from Abingdon whose spiritual home is, oh yes, Moscow. Believe us no-one is going to dress them up as bananas. - James Oldham. That's it for now, more to follow in the future.
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