Label Profile #2 // Bella Union

The appeal of London’s Union Chapel as a live music venue is in its simplicity as much as its grandeur. It’s hard not to appreciate the cavernous ceilings and air of reverence in the main hall, but essentially, when an audience is sat facing the small stage, nestled into the rows of seats, the experience becomes a fairly uncomplicated example of what is beautiful about a good live performance. You can forget about dancers and strobe lights, in this environment, only one thing takes center stage – the sound. Despite the impressiveness of the room there are no frills, in the best possible way.

A similar thing could be said of Bella Union records. A label with a reputation for quality, an incredibly strong discography and an authenticity that many a major label would love to buy; their success simply comes from an ethic of artistic freedom and nurturing over exploitation and is measured in the beautiful records they help to produce.

A luxurious line-up, then, of four Bella Union acts: Alessi’s Ark, Lone Wolf, Mountain Man and John Grant, sharing a stage at Union Chapel for an evening, is quite a proposition. One that TLOBF would’ve found it monumentally hard to pass-up if we’d wanted to, which we emphatically did not, especially since we were given a chance to interview each of the frankly brilliant acts performing on the night.

Alessi’s Ark

Hi Alessi, I really like the Sole Proprietor EP you put out on Bella Union.
Thank you!

I’m looking forward to the album, what’s happening there?
Well, I am in the middle of recording, I did some recording in Wales just before I went to do a tour in April and then I did a bit more last week in Brighton with the Willkommen Collective, Sons of Noel and Adrian, they’re people that I got to tour with and just got to know from playing places and being on the same bills and they’ve become friends of mine, they’re really comfortable to play with and easy to be around. So I did some recording with them and yeah, just working on it. I guess the Autumn is when I want it to be finished, but I feel like maybe it will be finished before then…

Going well?
Yeah it’s been fun! The loose plan would be to put it out in January, we’ve got a bit of time, but I thought that it’d be better just between shows and things just to be doing stuff… so I’m busying myself with that!

How have things changed since Notes From a Treehouse? Are things a bit different now?
Well I think it’s only healthy, traveling on – but I don’t think the music is going to be anything too dissimilar from what I’ve done. The common thread is that I’m singing!

No rapping?
No, I haven’t started rapping yet! Nothing too groovy! Yeah I feel like it’s a continuation of the last record, but the environment is different, for Sole Proprietor, which is the only thing I’ve put out since that -besides a split EP I had with thunderpower that was done at a friends house- I mean, the first three songs were recorded ‘as live’, so apart from a few songs on Notes From The Treehouse because there were quite intricate arrangements and things, the nature of the recordings were such that you couldn’t really do that many things ‘live’ and so it was quite fun to record some of these songs almost like a show, you know? And then the fourth track on that EP was made to sound like how it sounds when I play with the Willkommen and it’s fun because there are cornets and bits and bobs, things that I hadn’t really entertained before. But now, stick cornet on anything, anything can have a bit of cornet on it, hahaha! Yeah, it’s been fun – there’s a bit of harp on there and there was harp on the album so there are instruments that are re-occurring but um… I don’t know where the music is going, but it’s fun!

It’s going there by itself and you’re just following it, right?
Yeah yeah! I feel like it’s leading me… on…! Hahaha!

Opening the night to a still-growing crowd, Alessi cuts an unassuming figure standing alone on the Union Chapel stage. Her disarming, informal greetings flutter by and she begins to play. Some artists can peel their material back to the bare bones while losing none of the essential spirit, Alessi is one such artist. The sound of a beautiful voice working through a collection of sweet songs is a simple but powerful pleasure, one amplified by the dimensions of Union Chapel and the effortlessly likable character that threads through this performance.

Alessi’s Ark: ‘Shovelling’

Lone Wolf

Hey Paul, so you now have a name that isn’t… your name… so how did that come about?
Well, it came about from me realizing that I have a really shit name.

Heheheh. Right.
And also, I got sort of sick of being pigeon-holed as a singer-songwriter. And many would say “well you were a singer-songwriter” or “you are a singer-songwriter” but there’s a problem and a weird little stigma that comes with that sometimes.

Absolutely.
And you know… how many records probably drop on radio DJ’s desks every day – “John Smith” “Michael So-And-So” …

Johnny McPowerballad…
Yeah, you know and the thing was… Vultures was very much about ‘Paul Marshal’, the songs on that record were brought in from all kinds of different timeframes and stuff, it wasn’t meant to be an album originally, it was kind of a compilation of my work as it were. And then when it came to recording this record, I always wanted to just push things a little further and it came to making the demos and I just wanted to shake off that initial sort of immediate singer-songwriter label because I wanted people to sort of give this a chance, like maybe from the point of view of thinking that it’s a full band at first – I don’t know, I think I wanted to create a little bit of an illusion I suppose.

I don’t think you’d be alone in that, I mean it happens all the time, doesn’t it? People instinctively approach something with more of an open mind at the moment for some reason if it’s given a name that appeals – I mean Beirut, St Vincent… the list goes on.
Precisely. And it’s not because I think I’m worth any more than anyone else or anything stupid like that. I guess that after I signed to Bella Union I just felt that I wanted a fairer crack of the whip, really, rather than just have people make that assumption that I’m this singer-songwriter, which is why in a way I was happy we put ’Keep Your Eyes On The Road’ out as the first single because I wanted people to hear that, and then have responses coming back like “Who are they?” and “Where are they from?” and it’s – Aha! it’s not actually a “they” it’s a “he”, you know?

So now that you have the new name and it’s sort of a fresh project in that sense, how do you feel things are moving on?
It’s certainly moving on in the sense that I’m getting a lot more opportunities than I ever got as Paul Marshall and it’s weird actually because we’re in the location that I think a year and three days ago that Paul Marshall metaphorically died! It was the last gig in here. But yeah I mean at the end of the day it… it’s only a name.

Have you been doing a lot of live stuff for the new album?
Yeah, quite a bit, I went on tour with Wild Beasts which was great, did that solo. Then there’s Blue Roses (Laura Groves), she comes out with me and we do it as a two piece, then we do it as a five piece like tonight. But we’re doing bits and pieces, we were in the Royal Festival Hall on Monday, supported Broken Bells, which was pretty…

That sounds amazing.
Yeah it was pretty much one of the best nights of my life, got to play the Steinway hidden, you know in the Royal Festival Hall. Well, you only have to imagine it really, it was pretty spectacular.

Yeah, I am imagining it, right now…. Any other highlights to look forward to?
Green man. Oh and I don’t know how 100% confirmed this is, but I think I’m going to be touring America with Wild Beasts, only for like four or five dates or something but that’ll be fun.

So what with changing the dynamic so often, five pieces, two pieces – how does the music translate? Do you have a favorite way to play the stuff?
Favourite way is always full band, always, because that’s the closest to how it sounds on the record. But the one advantage I have, whereas some bands might have an ‘acoustic set’ where they strip the songs down, for me that’s where the songs started, so when I do it on my own or as a two piece the songs are just going down to were they started from, the core of the song is still there. But yeah I prefer it when I have James smacking the crap out of the drums and the synths going. Also, it’s nice to hang out with my friends, you know it’s nice to not have to be on the stage by myself all of the time you know?

While it could be argued that the sound of some of the other acts tonight might take to the cavernous echo chamber of Union Chapel like the proverbial duck to water, Lone Wolf’s set up might find the acoustics from the stage a slightly less comfortable variation in environment. Adaptability, however, is the key to success, and with the thrumming alternative rock teased out with a measure of restraint, fighting to get away and thunder around the room, gaining richness and drama without losing too much in the way of clarity.

Lone Wolf: ’15 Letters’

Mountain Man

Hello! How long has Mountain Man been a band for?
Molly: Just over a year, like a year and three months…

And you came together and started writing songs?
Amelia: We already had a lot of the songs that we sing. Alex wrote Animal Tracks and we learned it and I wrote Honey Bee and so… it was.. an amazing event.

So you turn up to indie clubs or maybe these black boxes where a lot bands show up with drums and guitars and pianos and everything – and for most of the set is just you guys singing. A lot people probably don’t expect that.
Molly: No and they especially don’t expect to see three women appearing under the name Mountain Man!

Amelia: Usually it’s the initial shock that gets people in. And that’s nice, but usually we can’t string them along further based on the fact that our songs are authentic and interesting. Sometimes it’s really hard.

Alex: I mean bars are definitely not the best venue for us to be performing in.

Molly: But sometimes they’re great!

Alex: Yeah sometimes it feels good to fight for it.

Amelia: …and it feels deserved and earned when you have to really work to get the audience to be there. And once they’re there, they’re there.

Molly: I think it’s really refreshing sometimes for people to hear just three voices without drums and guitars and everything else on top of it!

Amelia: I think those things are wonderful, but it’s refreshing to be without them sometimes. Especially in the land of reverb that we currently live in.

So do you guys just hang out a lot together, singing all of the time? Is that how you practice?
Molly: Actually we don’t really practice, we just hang out.

Alex: I live in Virginia, which is a nine hour drive from Vermont. So we don’t practice unless we’re together.

Amelia: But we can learn to play it right in like fifteen minutes? We’ve got it down within an hour. We have good communication.

So what inspires you to make songs? What do you think about when you’re singing in harmony?
Molly: I think about going inside people’s chests with my voice.

Huh. That’s interesting.
Molly: Yeah because everything else is already there and what we have is already there, I don’t have to think about it.

Amelia: By now it’s just muscle reflex, like our bodies know how to sing and so we don’t really have to think so much about the song, just about the emotion.

Alex: Yeah it’s more that we just have to tap into that emotion when we’re singing… I think about family … and being a woman and being a human that conducts sound, particularly in this hall, it felt really, really amazing to feel that “okay I am going to open my mouth and my voice is going to be like synthesized with these other two voices”.

Molly: Sometimes I think about people I really love and care about and try to share that.

Union Chapel seems almost purpose built for what Mountain Man do here tonight. Having seen the room and decided to perform with no amplification at all, the three ladies stand hand in hand on the stage and wind together layers of vocal harmonies with incredible skill, accompanied only occasionally by a solitary acoustic guitar. Their voices reverberate around the lofty ceilings, the intelligence and playfulness of the vocal-only compositions could never fail to raise a smile. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to describe a performance like this as unmissable, the audience are hearing the layers of a contemporary folk band peeled all the way back to the core, and it’s fascinating how luxurious and expansive it can sound with the right amount of skill. If one were to risk spinning a cliché, a Mountain Man show such as this one is a truly organic live music experience.

Mountain Man: ‘Soft Skin’

John Grant

Hi, John. So let’s start by talking about the new album. Are these songs that you have collected over the years, or songs that you wrote specifically for the album?
Three of them are ideas that I had before, but the other nine all came about during the course of recording. So it’s all pretty fresh.

And you worked with Midlake on the album, how did that come about?
Well we’d both been on Bella Union for a long time and we met at SXSW down in Austin whilst having breakfast one morning with Simon and everyone. We just hit it off right away, kept in touch a little bit. Then Eric Pulido asked me to come down and sing at his wedding and that sort of cemented out friendship, I got to know them all a little bit better. They knew that I was struggling with the music… that I was sort of giving up on music because I had such a nightmare experience with The Czars and that the music business in general is just really disheartening and they started asking me to come and do my first solo album with them. And the Czars basically had very little success, we were together for over ten years and so I was really just unsure, I was living in New York when the time came to go and record the new record and I was doing well, I was doing Russian medical interpreting which is another big passion of mine, languages. So I was working at a really high-end restaurant and I had insurance and I had started to put down roots in that city, which is a hard thing to do, I would imagine it’s the same way here in London, it takes a long time to get to know this place? Like years?

Yeah, absolutely.
And so I was thinking “Well you’re forty one years old, are you really going to go and try again, aren’t you just fooling yourself? Shouldn’t you just give up? The reason that you didn’t make it before is that you’re simply not good enough, so just quit.”

But I felt like it was an offer that I just couldn’t refuse, it was just too good. And I felt like deep down I still had something to give and that I should be doing it. And Midlake really encouraged me, they said to me “we feel that you are far from done, what you need to do is simply keep going..”

So it was more than simply guys that you started to hang out with and play music with they really were a huge source of support. Without those guys it might not have happened?
It’s hard to say, I think the music would’ve gotten to me eventually, it would have kept coming. But, I don’t know. I’ve been asked this question several times and I am still not sure, it is very special the way it happened and it could not have been this way if it hadn’t happened this way of course. I know that sounds obvious, but you know what I’m saying.

That balance you have in your life. Having that dream, that passion and wanting that to be your life and also needing to commit to having another life, sometimes we have to admit harsh things to ourselves about how realistic our dreams are. Sometimes we need to re-evaluate the role that something like music for example might end up playing in our lives…
Yeah.

But having someone to tip the scales for you in a certain direction…
They kept after me. They kept saying “Come on man, we’re here. Let’s do it. Let’s go. You can live here for free, you can use the studio for free and we will be your backing band for free.”

That’s amazing.
Yeah, it’s huge. And that was encouraging in itself, that people I respected that much had that much faith in me as a musician. That I was respected as a musician and an artist by these people that I respected myself. That was nice because I really felt down on myself. I really felt like a failure. So that really helped me out a lot.

Yeah, you said earlier that you would tell yourself “you’re just not good enough” and I think that’s a place that we can all go to very easily.
Well, I was there you know, I kept showing up, I kept doing it. But the thing is, it simply does nothing for the situation for you to call yourself a failure and that you’re not good enough.

What is the difference at the end of the day? What’s the difference between doing it and being terrible and doing it and being under appreciated? I mean, does it matter?
I see your point and I sort of agree, I think the thing is that there are so many variables involved that you can’t understand.

When people talk about The Czars being ‘cult’. What does it mean?
Nothing. Nothing. Because you’re thinking “well I can’t pay my fucking rent!” I don’t care if everyone thinks I’m great when I’m dead. I want to figure it out now. I’m not asking for much, I’m not going to have the world’s greatest architect to build me the house of my dreams on prime real estate in Beverly Hills and I’m going to own half the world and hang out with Mick Jagger, but I can probably have a life doing music.

And why shouldn’t you?
And why shouldn’t I?

John Grant: ‘Marz’

The sense of John Grant’s vulnerability has not faded, although at this stage it does seem to form major part of his charm, his appeal, the the feeling from sections of the audience as they applaud out each song is that they feel personally invested in John’s well-being, his journey. For his part, John seems well, while not completely devoid of tension, fairly happy and comfortable. He mentions, as he has before that London holds a certain significance for him and that he particularly wants to play well while he is here. For tonight at least, he doesn’t disappoint- he delivers his heart-bearing laments, all of the passion, occasional twists of humour and surges of emotion with a with a certain open intensity. The sense of catharsis runs through the performance, perhaps, some dare to hope another stop in his road to that final success, redemption and final validation that his fans might feel he has long deserved.

All photography by Paul Bridgwater