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by Becky Hogge.
 Nineteen
ninety eight seems like a long time ago. I remember driving
200 miles from Brighton to start my first term at university
- what did I do once I had unpacked a few books and nick
nacks into my strange new home? Well, I stuck the new
Morcheeba album, Big Calm, onto the hi-fi, kicked back,
and let the dreamy strains of The Sea wash over me, bringing
with them doubts of wrong decisions, and a sultry home-sickness
for the sounds of this city's sweet shore.
A
lot has happened since then. The Earth has refused to
stop turning even though we decided that 2000 years might
be enough. I've graduated into a world where terrorists
lurk inside cereal packets and Tony Blair has become the
lap dog of the most powerful dictator on the planet. Now,
if I choose to listen to Big Calm, all I'm reminded of
are depressing Brighton winters spent in crappy refurbished
bars.
It
would seem, however, that lady time has stood still for
Morcheeba. July's release of their fourth album, Charango,
saw every critic from NME to The Guardian having to admit
that what
Morcheeba
had termed "our weird, psychedelic, out-there album"
was in fact about as novel and cutting edge as an Ann
Summers party. Although experimental salvation may be
provided on paper, by duets with Kurt Wagner of Lambchop
and the recently paroled US rap legend Slick Rick, when
you get to putting the record on, guess what? It sounds
like just another Morcheeba album.
I
put this to Skye Edwards, Morcheeba's lead singer, when
we spoke earlier this week. "It's experimental by
way of a larger string orchestra, we've never done that
before. We've worked with some different artists, I've
done a duet, we've never done that before. I suppose when
you say experimental, people think it's going to be Radiohead
and it'll be weird and no one will understand it. It's
kind of experimental in that it's just something different
that we've not tried before…"
Experimental,
in the Bill Clinton tried-but-not-inhaled frame of reference,
then. Fair enough, I suppose, for the band that won the
nation's heart by taking everything that was dangerous
out of the then current trip-hop sound. Where Portishead
delivered kidney-ripping vocal pleas pasted over hangover-hollow
beatz, Massive Attack maintained an assured street swagger,
and Tricky bent hellish rhyme around bubbling bong-ridden
psychosis, Morcheeba sang lullabies to a generation of
crossover indie-kids who needed something they could file
under easy and smoke to on a Sunday afternoon.
On
the flipside, where Portishead have all but disbanded,
Massive Attack had so many rows that at one point none
of them would stand in the same room as each other, and
Tricky smoked himself into the ether, Morcheeba have kept
going, selling over 3 million albums, enjoying critical
acceptance in the States, and basking in European pop
success. We might laugh at their belated, beleaguered
attempts at what Charango declares as all-new 'musical
cannibalism' (which roughly amounts to what the musical
world has, for the past five years been calling 'eclecticism',
a term so tired now it has been banned from most musical
publications), but Morcheeba must be doing something right.
After all, the new album is currently top 10 in ten different
countries.
Talking
to Skye Edwards, it becomes tempting to ponder that all
this success might be down to her, and not just in the
sense that without her vocals, Paul and Ross Godfrey would
be lucky to be still working in the music industry at
all. The lady is sweet. She slips effortlessly from talking
to me about Norman Cook's recent beach-side debacle ("I
suppose he just didn't realise how popular he was")
to talking to her daughter about the shopping ("Oh
wow what you got there? [It's a duck!] In the little baby
bath is it? Fantastic!") employing equal naivety
and candour with both the under- and over-10s. And when
we move on to talk about more personal matters, such as
what motivated her to move to Brighton two years ago,
the standard self-absorbed artistic rubbish is conspicuously
absent: "Oh, it was the usual, I met
someone
who lives down here. I was living in Stratford in East
London in a Council flat, one bedroom, 7th floor, two
kids. It was a place that I was familiar with and it was
time for me to move…"
Skye's
story is a prime piece of heart-of-the-nation Pop Idol
brilliance: one night, in the early Nineties, Skye went
to a house party in south London. She arrived too early.
Not knowing anyone, she walked over to the future father
of her two children, who she found was called Justin,
and asked if he had any skins so that she could roll a
joint. Later at the party, Justin introduced her to brothers
Paul and Ross, her future rock star colleagues. "I
had been working making ballroom gowns, you know, for
ballroom dancing, with the sequins. Which I found - it
was exciting at first but then very boring. The people
that I was working with, the travel - it was taking me
hours to get to work and I was using up most of money.
So, I chucked in that job and I bought myself a guitar
because I used to write poems and put my poems to melodies.
I learnt how to play from one of those books where they
show you where to put your fingers - a dot to dot type
thing."
Meanwhile,
Justin persuaded Skye to sing for Paul and Ross. "I
wasn't really confident enough - I didn't know then that
I wanted to be a singer". Luckily, the decision was
made for her, and 1995 saw the release of "Trigger
Hippie" - a surprise underground smash which launched
the career of one of the most recognisable voices of today's
alt-pop
soundscape.
With
such a voice, and with so many duets on Charango, has
Skye been tempted to guest on any other artists' albums?
"I've done a couple of duets, but the people I'd
really like to work with are all dead now. Frank Sinatra,
for instance." Perhaps herein lies the clue to Moorcheeba's
success. Though it might be surrounded by all the same
pundits and publications as other consumer industries,
music is not fashion. And although the critics may bay
for a wizard's-sleeve full of innovation and novelty at
the release of each new album, for after all there are
column inches to be filled, a talented artist can still
make their career out of being just that - a talented
artist.
Skye
continues: "I don't know. I think if I do anything
I'm more likely to do my own solo thing than anybody else's…"
Could this be the end for Morcheeba? "It could be.
I mean, never say never really. We've just signed for
another album and we're contracted to do three more, so
unless we break the contract we've got three more albums
to do. But we have been working solid…"
It
seems to me that Skye loves the company of other people
onstage too much to go it alone. "What I've loved
the most about doing the duets is it's good to have someone
to have fun with and dance around with. Ross pretty much
is hunched over his guitar. We've got a new bass player
now - he's a laugh, and then there's our drummer but he's
at the back really. I'm not climbing all over his drum
kit - it would be quite funny, I suppose, but I'm not
quite Skunk Anansie."
Too
true, I'm afraid. But what Skye lacks in Skin's brazen
bald-headed cheek and Chunnel-sized vocal apparatus she
makes up for in demure poignant lyricism sung through
a voice so clear you think you might see through it right
into her soul. An angel, no less, and one that even the
most hard-hearted critic would find hard to desecrate.
Despite
this, I pluck up the courage to ask Skye my final question,
the question my friends have been baiting me to ask ever
since I started to work on this piece: "What do you
listen to at dinner parties?" "Recently I've
been putting on Lambchop. Because I just went out and
bought the new album - I was waiting for a freebie but
then I thought, cor, I'll be waiting forever. So I'll
put that on, or a CD by Annie de Franco - I can't remember
the name…" The dig is lost on her. And why shouldn't
it be? After all, I'm just a nasty cynical music journalist
who makes a buck off other people's creativity, and Skye
is a celestial being sent down to sing to the nation through
dreamy clouds of marijuana smoke and into peaceful sleep.
Morcheeba
will be performing live at Brighton Dome on Monday Sept
30, 8pm, £15, 01273 709709 as part of their UK tour.
Charango is out now on China Records.
Morcheeba
- Fragments
- Morcheeba have released four albums in their career:
Who Can You Trust?, Big Calm, Fragments of Freedom and
Charango.
-
Skye's real name is Shirley Klarisse Yonavive Edwards
- she changed her name to the acronym Skye when she started
fashion college.
-
Morcheeba is another word for marijuana.
-
If Skye hadn't become a singer, she would have most probably
gone back to college to study
hairdressing. She mostly does all her hair and make-up.
-
Paul and Ross Godfrey, the other people behind Morcheeba,
are brothers and grew up in Hythe, near the site of the
Channel Tunnel.
-Next
year, Morcheeba will play dates in Australia and USA,
and will be touring Russia and China.
-
Skye has lived in Southwick, near Brighton,
for two and a half years. She can often be seen down at
the new playground by the West Pier, though she thinks
there aren't really enough places there where parents
can sit and keep an eye on their kids.
copyright New Insight 2002
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