Photo:
Flanked by two of his three deputies– guitarist, Ross Phillips and bassist, Kai Stephens – Hard-Fi frontman Richard Archer is talking about Sergio Leone’s 1968 western, ‘Once Upon A Time In The West,’ while devouring a cheese salad baguette for lunch. “We love the film; we used to watch it on the tour bus quite a lot,” enthuses Archer, while peeling back the cellophane on his baguette. “We come on the stage to ‘The Man From Harmonica,’ which is on the soundtrack to that film. We’re big fans of Ennio Marroconie who did the film’s music, so the title has always been kind of knocking around. Someone suggested it and we thought, ‘You know what, this works perfectly.’”
Probing a band about a film isn’t normally one of your key questions, or normally a question at all, yet Hard-Fi have decided to name their second album – the follow-up to their number one debut album, ‘Stars Of CCTV’ – after the cult-classic. “You can see the little play on words because of where we’re from, West London. It’s sort of tales form where we’re from but also it suggests a fairy-tale,” explains the transparent eyed Archer, “fairy-tales like stories of tragedy but also hope, so it always felt like it fitted together and felt right – it seemed to sum up the album really.”
Indeed, listen to the band’s new album, which comes out in September, and watch Leone’s unconventional western, and you’ll soon see that the two productions have far more in common than a shared title – both in lyrical content and their cavernous structure. While Leone’s film follows intertwined stories of inheritance theft, love and tragedy, Hard-Fi’s ‘Once Upon A Time In The West,’ like their debut, continues their graphic snapshots of life in 21st century British Suburbia. Only this time, the pictures of routine employment, love/hate relationships, and, notably, the tragedy of death, are more far personal than on ‘Stars Of CCTV,’ not to mention more significant.
Although Hard-Fi have always been ones for letting their individual musical influences leak into their own music – each member lists various exponents of ska, punk and house music amongst their personal musical tastes – two years of touring the last record, which included a five night residency at the Brixton Academy and collaborations with Mick Jones and Paul Weller amongst others, have seemingly made the band even more willing to experiment on ‘Once Upon A...’
“I think we just did what felt right as a song, just see what worked and what didn’t,” explains Philips, as he makes his first of two sporadic contributions to our conversation. With Hard-Fi, Archer is as much the frontman in interviews as he is on stage; consequently, he’s often left to continue from where his fellow guitarist stops. Using, ‘I Shall Overcome’ – a venomous funk beat inspired, N.E.R.D sounding song, as an example of the LP’s musical multiplicity, he reveals: “There is that beat and the acoustic guitar on there that we almost let come through more than the others on this [album]. On the last album, you know, tracks like ‘Tied Up To Tight,’ had a drum and bass beat, obviously until we stuck all the guitars over the top and then that drum and bass beat became a rock beat - so yeah, it’s weird how that comes around when you think about it.”
‘I Shall Overcome’ is one of three songs which Archer reveals dictated the entire construction of, ‘Once Upon A...’ The other two, the album’s first single, ‘Suburban Knights,’ an expansive slice of suburban patriotism (more on that later), and, ‘Tonight,’ which is the first of many glimpses into Archer’s personal life on the record, are perhaps significantly also the album’s opening three songs. It’s thanks to this that, once again like Leone’s cult western – which was heralded as avant-garde because of its unusual and unrestrained pacing – Hard-Fi have created an expansive yet breathable record where the album’s subtleties, like the “Massive Attack influenced snares” and the Will Malone (The Verve) conducted string orchestra are given elevated prominence. “We always had the idea that this record would have more space on it so that you’d hear those sorts of things and it would be a bit more moody, darker and a bit more downbeat but still kind of tough,” states Archer, sincerely. “On the first record we sometimes had to put stuff on to hide the tracks you know. The way it was recorded if you didn’t put a noise there you’d hear the planes going over, whereas on this one we spent more time almost letting it breath a bit more.”
Even, ‘Television,’ the albums anthemic standout track begins with seemingly all the aerobic freedom in the world. Built on the foundations of a repetitive “housey” piano riff, the song bursts into an exasperated assortment of crisp cymbals, rapturous guitars and the lyrical refrains of, “Halleluiah, halleluiah.” To date, it’s probably Hard-Fi’s most liberal moment. “That was one of those tracks that was always there and it was always one of everyone’s favourites but just kind of sat there minding its own business,” reveals Archer. “We knew it was good so we didn’t spend as much time on it as we could. We knew that when we recorded it, it was just going to work and thankfully it did because often those ones don’t (laughs) - you know, you sit there for ages going ‘why isn’t this working?’
Like its predecessor, ‘Once Upon A...,’ was once again recorded in the bands home studio (an old taxi office) in Staines because other, more lavish alternatives never really “felt right.” This time, however, the band were able to expand the premises because “a unit became available next door,” although, this in turn presented a new problem – time. “It was hard you know,” admits Archer, “it put us under a lot of pressure because we had to build the place and then find out how to use it. We didn’t really know until we got some decent recordings whether it was going to work and if it sounded any good. So that was hard you know. Looking back now it was difficult times. Now we can go in there and know that that is how it works but then we had no idea. We didn’t have running water for three months. We still haven’t got handles on the doors, we were trying...””We’ll never get handles on them doors,” interrupts Fisher, as the three share a smile with each other.
To take on the task of renovating their own studio space, potentially jeopardising not only the quality of their material but also the eventual release date, might sound like a foolish risk for Hard-Fi to have taken. The fact that it did seem like too much to everyone (particularly their record label, Atlantic) but themselves, comes in part from their upbringing. All raised in Staines, Surrey, the fourpiece – who are completed by drummer Steven Kemp – have had to do it their own way all their lives. While Britain might be controlled in the cities, Hard-Fi exist to show that in the suburbs life isn’t all about the fluctuation of the FTSE 100. In Hard-Fi, therefore, and particularly Archer, these people have suddenly got a spokesperson: “There is always a bit of a mindset when you come from places like our town that if you want to be something different, if you want to be a musician, if you want to be a journalist, a writer, a painter, a photographer or anything that not everyone else does yeah, people always go, ‘yeah, you can mess around with that for a bit but that’s not for the likes of us, that’s not really for us. You can play your little games and then you have to grow up and join the real world.’ Fair enough you know, but then we come through and we did it. We’re not saying that we’re amazing or special but you can do it.”
Is ‘Once Upon A...’ ultimately a celebration that it can be done, that salvation can happen in the suburbs? “I hope so; I hope people will feel that way.”
Archer owes much of his positive mindset to his parents who, like so many parents trying to support their children, worked all their lives for bosses who had “a better education or better connections” and who selfishly took the merits of their employee’s hard work. Although the singer lost his father five years ago, one thing he left him with was an ambition not to follow in his footsteps. “Something happened with my Dad at work and he was like, ‘Alright, I’ve had enough of this,’ and he said, ‘you’ve got to follow you’re dreams, I’ve played the game so you don’t have to, you’ve got to go for it, and if you’re gonna go for it, you’ve gotta fucking go for it - you can’t sit on your arse and smoke weed and play computer games because that’s not going for it, that’s just being a bum.’”
And so Archer set about, with a music career as his dream, trying to “go for it.” After seeing his previous band signed and then dropped, instead of giving up and signing on, he formed Hard-Fi and the rest, as they say, is history. Well, not exactly. As the band prepared for the full release of ‘Stars Of CCTV’ in July 2005, Archer tragically lost his Mother, who’d been battling with ill health for some time. “Those last two years I had everything I wanted come true,” he admits, in reflection, “and then at the same time I’d had a lot of personal tragedy and you’re sort of sitting there going is it the case, that if you have something good happen to you that you have to have something bad happen to you – is that the way that it is? Fucking you up a bit.”
One of ‘Once Upon A...’ most revealing songs is ‘Help Me Please,’ a song written following his Mother’s death. Although it originally featured on the ‘Help: A Day In The Life’ War Child album, Archer says they felt “it maybe didn’t get the recognition that it deserved so we put it on this one because it’s a memorial almost – it means more, it’s special.”
Is it not hard to pen such personal lyrics? (“Breaking down on the stairs, hello loneliness, hello despair /All of this, all of it's wrong, you won't ever come home.”) “They’re very hard to record but you feel like you have to, that you have to get them out there. Personally that song is someone else and I’m going to play the part of that person but it’s not me and I try to just detach myself from it. It’s probably more acting, I mean obviously I’m not an actor but if you don’t then it will just catch up with you and it’ll be quite hard.”
At times, on their debut, Hard-Fi sounded like a band wanting to escape their suburban dwelling. Now, however, through a mix of life’s staunch ups and downs, just a few years down the line, they sound like a band who have found their comfort zone in their outer city extremity. And what’s their message? “What we’re tying to say is yeah it might be shit but let’s get out there, let’s make something happen, let’s be positive. And that’s the difference with us and perhaps a few UK bands is that it’s quite indicative, the same with Britain, everyone is quite cynical and negative where as we’ve always been more positive and progressive.” Forget spaghetti westerns, suburban Britain has just found its suburban knights.
.jpg)
