Neil Halstead Q&A

Here's a Q&A that I did will Neil Halstead of Mojave 3 last week. Enjoy!

T: What inspired the change to a more upbeat sound on the new album? Have you been listening to more up-tempo stuff lately, or was it more to do with wanting to change the feel of M3's live shows?

N: We just wanted to do something a little different. Make more of a fun pop- record...there weren’t to many sad/slow songs coming forward this time and I think the general vibe was one of just wanting to have a bit more fun with the songs.

T: What made you sing in your English accent for the first time on a couple tracks on the new album?

N: I think I always sing in an English accent but  maybe I’m singing faster on a few so I enunciate more and it’s more pronounced...not as much drawling..

T: There's a song on the new album which seems to elude to the Iraq war and/or terrorism. Was it strange for you to write about a more current-events type topic for the first time?

N: I think you must mean the song “just a boy”..it’s really a song about   a relationship between lovers,  but there is a line that alludes to a “war on TV”. I’m not really offering any political or sociological analyses here just using a crude metaphor .so really I’m still perfectly in my element.

T: Rachel has recently posted on her MySpace about her illness, who will fill-in for her on the upcoming U.S. tour? Are Simon Rowe and Alan Forrester still members of the band?

N: Yeah sadly Rachel is having a nightmare time at the moment dealing with what was a rather dehabilitating ear infection. We had all hoped when we booked the tour that she would be able to join us but as things stand we have had to do the first week of touring without her and it’s looking unlikely that she will be able to join us for a little while yet.

We have a friend of ours Alex(smudge)smith playing bass...he plays with a band called world leader pretend in the US, and the other new member we have for this tour is guitarist Peter greenwood who has been playing with Ian’s band The Loose salute for some time now.

Simon has not toured with the band for a number of years. He decided that his work and family commitments were suffering and decided to bow out, tho he continues to play on the records from time to time ...not “puzzles” unfortunately...we couldn’t get him down to Cornwall at the right time  but he’s still a part of the family. Just to complete the picture Joe light played with us on the spoon and rafter tour.

AND...Al is still with us and all the new record and on stage.

T:How did you come to work with Bradley Beesley on the "Breaking The Ice" video?

N: Well we are huge flaming lips fans and love his work with them so we got in touch. It turned out, rather fortunately, that he was quite keen to work with us and had some spare time so we got a little video together.

T: Was it a tough decision to allow your song to be used in a Hummer commercial, what with the car's effects on the environment and your love of surfing? That being said, they were able to create quite the beautiful advert!

N: yep it was ..but my own personal decision to allow the use was much more about how it would effect a friend’s life ..there are all kinds of issues with hummer that I’m uncomfortable with and they all made it easier to say no but I couldn’t really .

T: Will M3's cover of Donovan's "Catch The Wind" ever be released?

N: To be honest I don’t know....is it any good? We did it for a film and I love the original so it was a fun thing to do.

T: Going back a few years, how did the recording and touring w/ Bernard Butler come about?

N: Well I first met Bernard in the early days of suede and would bump into him through the years instrange places..we always had fun.When he did his first solo record he asked me if I wanted to come play guitar for him. It was a really nice thing to do and I liked his songs a lot. Just playing with someone that good is a real honour and I’m glad I did it.

T: There's talk of you recording another solo album late this year. What makes you desire to release solo records when your songs already fill Mojave 3 albums?

N: I just enjoy making music and making a record for yourself rather than with a group of people is a completely different process and expirience. Mojave make records as a band and everyone’s tastes and ambitions get thrown in, the songs might be mine or Ian’s but the process and the arrangement is always a collaboration. Nothing wrong with that but sometimes is nice to do something outside of a known enviroment.

T: And lastly, have you ever gone an entire week without someone asking you if Slowdive is gonna reform? :-)

N: well yes I have, and to be honest although I imagine it’s not something that would ever happen, I don’t mind the question at all. At least it’s good to know that people are still listening the music and that they care about it.

Puzzles Like You (my fav album of the year) is out now.

Comments

[rob]

nice Q&A!
It's good to see that Slowdive love isn't an irritating subject for Neil. It always get brought up when Mojave 3 is interviewed.
I would still love to see them break out Dagger, Alison, or 40 days..they could actually translate well into Mojave 3 songs.

Looking forward to seeing them when they pass through my town.

[Kraorh]

Somewhere I have a bootleg of Mojave 3 doing Dagger, circa 2001, 2002. It's pretty good - Dagger was pretty much their least shoegazy song already, so it was pretty ripe for an M3 treatment.

That said, even if I have no expectation that it would actually happen, I really wish they'd reform Slowdive. (I think largely because I'm a huge fan of Slowdive, and other than the new M3 album, pretty ambivalent toward M3). If that did happen, it'd be interesting to see how different they'd sound now - I'd be very, very disappointed if they just aped their old sound.

[Kraorh]

Oh, and Torr - nice job both getting an interview with Neil, and actually executing it. It was both highly professional and entertaining at the same time.