The Day The Music Came Back To Life

By Joe Kavanagh

Perception is everything in the music business. It's why celebrities pay a fortune for publicists, why singers have their real age and their "showbiz age" and it is not too far a stretch to say that perception is actually more important than reality in the often artificial world of rock n' roll.

Throughout the years, some of the nastiest people in entertainment have managed to cultivate positive public images through shrewd marketing, while, conversely speaking, some of the most renowned wild men and women of music are simply media creations designed to reinforce an image, designed to reinforce a career.

Being known as a psycho or saint is one thing but the worst public perception of all is that you are "finished", and it also happens to be one of the most difficult labels to shake.

This is exactly, however, where UK act, The Music, found themselves a couple of years back, despite having only two albums under their belts and barely being out of their teens.

It was over for them, or so the media claimed and so the public believed, leaving the band a spent force on the brink of break-up.

Perceptions though, as we all know, are often wrong and The Music is about to blow any notions that they are yesterday's men out of the water with an album that entirely validates the few that always believed.

The Music is a band in the truest sense of the word, unlike the many manufactured acts that pass themselves off as such.

Singer Robert Harvey and superbly named guitarist, Adam Nutter, knew each other virtually since birth, growing up as friends in the Kippax are of Leeds.

As the expression goes, "it's grim up north" and it was particularly so for the two friends whose musical inclinations and different look often saw them tormented by local bullies.

Although the two played in separate bands for several years, both men claim they knew from an early age that they could create something special if they ever joined forces. The opportunity soon arrived and, uniting with school friends Stuart Coleman (bass) and Phil Jordan (drums) the four-piece settled on the name, The Music, because it was concise and served as a simple mission statement.

During their final two years of high school, the four rehearsed at virtually every spare moment they could find, often during lunch breaks and between study sessions. It wasn't long until it began to pay off and by the time they were finishing school in 2001, indie label Fierce Panda (renowned for unearthing talent) released the band's first demo in the form of Take The Long Road And Walk It, which sent a palpable ripple throughout the British music media and had hugely-influential BBC radio deejay, Steve Lamacq, declaring them to be the "best unsigned band in the UK".

Such praise and a prospering reputation as a live act par excellence soon had the major labels sniffing around and the band finally decided to take their chances with Virgin feeder-label, Hut.

Two EPs followed in the form of the rather unfortunately named You Might As Well Try To F**k Me and critically-acclaimed, The People, before the band signed to Virgin proper and were snapped up by Capitol Records in the US.

In September of 2002, the band dropped their eponymous debut to a salivating British music media who treated the event like it was some kind of coronation.

Desperate to create a lineage within UK indie music, the media myopically declared them the new saviors of rock n' roll, like some kind of combination of the Stones Roses and Oasis.

Some of the more animated music journalists even went so far as to declare them the most important group since Oasis arrived on the scene a half dozen years beforehand.

The hype was not just confined to the right-hand side of the Atlantic, as the album was released in the US early the following year and the resultant fuss was enough to secure them an appearance on Letterman.

They also went on a two-month tour of the States with fellow Brits, Coldplay, and as album sales crossed the half million mark, it looked like these four teenagers might just attain the dizzy heights that many had predicted.

Then, almost as quickly, the wheels fell off. Many put it down to their ill-advised decision to use US producer, Brendan O'Brien, as the guiding light on their sophomore effort.

Used to working with the likes of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Rage Against The Machine, O'Brien - superb producer that he is - unfortunately had little or no knowledge of the indie/dance culture that had spawned The Music.

The results were predictable as both sides compromised their vision and ended up with something that pleased no-one.

Bombastic, contrived, lacking passion and ultimately empty, Welcome To The North, received a thorough and prolonged kicking from the critics upon its release in 2004.

Somewhat surprising was the vitriol exhibited by some scribes who essentially felt cheated and even foolish for supporting the band so rigorously in the first place, but the album was only part of the problem.

It has only emerged in recent months that Harvey was also struggling with his demons.

A recreational drug user since his mid-teens, he had begun to let the drugs use him and by the time 2005 had rolled around he had added an alcohol problem to his drug habit and also discovered that he was suffering from severe depression.

Inevitably, his performances suffered and something had to give as the money dried up and the crowds tapered off. In 2006 Virgin and Capitol parted ways with the band and most people in the media were ready to consign The Music to just being a footnote in history.

After some time away from each other, the band convened a meeting and decided that no matter what the future held as a group, they could not and would not walk away without a fight, adamantly refusing to agree with a media that portrayed them as washed up while barely into their twenties.

Most importantly, the four guys who had been there from the start still loved music and were not willing to call it a day just because that's what the media believed should happen.

There would be no more hype, as the band sought to make a "soft return" and quietly began writing a follow-up.

This time, they sought the assistance of U2/Depeche Mode producer Flood, who initially turned them down without a second thought, undoubtedly as convinced as everyone else in the music industry that the band was finished.

They then turned to Phil Hartnoll of The Orbital, who listened to the demos and began helping them on the long road back.

Hartnoll then passed one of the demos on to Flood, who was highly-impressed and decided that he did want to be part of the project after all.

If early signs are anything to go by then this three-way partnership has already gone a long way towards salvaging The Music's reputation.

New single, Strength In Numbers, is a triumphant return to The Music at their very best, an infectious and frantic fusion of beats, jagged guitars, driven by the type of energy that can only be generated by a band who believe in what they are doing.

If it is a fair representation of what is to follow on the forthcoming album of the same name then there will be many more believing in The Music once again before this summer is out.