Campbell McNeil, Aereogramme's giant, genial hairball of a bassist, leans forward on his bar stool as though he's going to say something. The rock sound crew gather closer to hear his words of wisdom and he slides slowly forward, smashing into a table, sending drinks flying, before slumping heavily on to the floor, apparently content to sleep peacefully amidst the spilt beer and cigarette butts. This is about an hour or two after he'd suggested that we should do the interview now, at 1am on Sunday morning, after several hours of drinking, rather than wait until tomorrow.
It's a typically perverse Aereogramme idea. This is the band, you'll notice, who stuck an extra 'e' in their name to see who was paying attention. If there's an easy way and a hard way to do something Campbell, vocalist Craig B, guitarist Iain Cook and drummer Martin Scott will always take the latter, complain about it being too hard, drink themselves stupid, pass out and then do it all again. Of course even they couldn't prevent their second album, the utterly monumental and fantastic, 'Sleep And Release', being a huge success. No, to prevent that, they needed the full force of a cleless music industry and a media strangely reluctant to give up its glossy, Calvin Klein-festooned pages, to ugly bearded blokes. But, although so far 'Sleep And Release' has found about a thousandth of the audience it deserves, it's not all bad news. If you want a beautiful, violent, epic soundtrack to Loserville, Aereogramme are your people and 'Sleep And Release' your album. And, if you want to have a good laugh in Loserville (we're actually in Dortmund, Germany but Loserville's the next stadt along), then they're your people again.
Nevertheless, the interview starts as stumblingly as you'd expect. We're in Germany because over here Aereogramme do a little bit better than they do in the UK (not hard). So it seems reasonably to ask them what it is that they like about Germany, or that Germans like about them>
"No man, that's two questions," points out Campbell correctly. "You've got to pick a question! You ask me a question and I'll answer it."
What do Germans like about you?
"Maybe it's a David Hasselhoff thing," he suggests. "Germans like Wagner, they like dark, epic music," Craig points out more sensibly.
And why aren't you popular in the UK?
"We don't look the part, basically," shrugs Craig scowling into his whisky. "We're not trendy. We don't get the TV or radio coverage that we need." "Black Rebel Motorcycle Club look the part," says Campbell (we'd been talking about them earlier). "We are fucking donkeys. They've got the right haircuts, we don't." "Everyone responds to the whole look thing, the cool thing," adds Iain, "but I think people on the continent are more open-minded on a purely musical level." Campbell is getting despondent. "We do amazingly cool stuff," he admits, "we tour the world, but... we're fucked. Our label doesn't want to know us, the people that know us don't want to know us, we're fucked!"
What do you mean?
"We are fucked," he spells out carefully.
In terms of not being able to survive or...
"We are fucked," as if it's self-explanatory.
You're not fucked. You'll be alright.
"Why don't we stop now, if we're fucked?" Craig asks, for a second sounding worryingly unhypothetical.
Erm, maybe 'fucked' is the wrong word...
"I think we've got a particularly difficult uphill struggle." Craig laughs. "We're not fucked," he rallies, "we're going to make another fucking album, how can we be fucked if we're going to make another fucking album?"
Luckily Iain's on hand to clarify what they mean by 'fucked'. "We don't have the looks, we don't have the style," he admits, "we can't compete on that level. In that sense we are fucked. But we don't want to compete on that level."
The level that they're competing on is best illustrated by their performance the next day at a sun-drenched festival. At about one o'clock in the afternoon, hangovers airily shrugged off, they give a performance of power and melody, heavy guitars pierced by moments of exquisite beauty. Around the festival site some people are walking around and chatting, but about 100 yards in front of the stage everybody is listening intensely. Maybe it's because these fans are German and they do everything intensely, or maybe it's just because it's hard not to pay attention when Aereogramme are on. They are a band who seem to garner extreme love from pretty much everyone who's actually listened to them properly. Just ask ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. The Texans spend practically their whole time at the festival smashing things, smashing things and burning things, but the 45 minutes of Aereogramme's set is the only time they stop and listen to another band all day.
In the summer sunshine things look a lot brighter generally. Aereogramme have got a record, the 'Livers & Lungs EP', coming out, which you might even, conceivably, be able to but somewhere if you're prepared to hunt around for it. It's got 'Indescretion #243', the first track from 'Sleep And Release' plus, bonus, a surprisingly haunting Hammer House Of Horrors take on Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'.
"I'm so fucking proud of that record," Campbell tells us. "Most bands can't even get out of bed when they're on tour. We made that fucking record in hotel rooms, in venues, in a van."
"I've got a clear recollection of being in the van," says Craig. "Iain was in the front seat, I was in the backseat, he had his laptop, mixing desk and microphone and we did 'Thriller' while people were queuing up outside to get into the gig that we were playing. There were people right outside the van - I think that's the bravest thing we've ever done."
'Indescretion #243' with its finale of "Praise the Lord" is probably the song that confused a fan on a previous tour who wanted to know whether they're a Christian or Satanist band.
"It's abou fucking-up for the 243rd time," explains Craig simply.
"And," says Iain, "Craig and I both grew up with very religious backgrounds, and when you go to church you always have 'and now let us sing Hymn 243' or whatever."
Have you escaped from that background now?
"You never escape," says Craig. "No matter how hard you try you always come back to it, or you're always fighting against it."
"You can alter your perspective on your beliefs but you can't get rid of them entirely," says Iain. "People react against things but that's still part of it."
Religious intolerance is still something that Craig, in particular, is obsessed with. The band recently played a benefit gig for the West Memphis Three, a group of teenagers who were accused of some horrific child murders in the States, primarily, campaigners argue, because the local police thought they were a bit weird.
"A bunch of kids went to jail for liking heavy metal and wearing black t-shirts," Craig explains. "They were surrounded by this society which was Bible Belt, redneck, which is a horrible combination, and one of the guys was really into Wicca, which they completely focued on, on top of the fact that he was into heavy metal. It was a community of really small-minded people attacking these wee guys. They found bitemarks on one of the kids who was killed and they didn't correlate to any of the three. Even if they're guilty, and I don't think they are, it's the wrong way off going about things"
"I don't think the kind of Christianity we were brought up with has much to do with the kind of backward, redneck, fundamentalism that you get in parts of America." Iain argues.
"Speak for yourself," says Craig. "I went to a Christian camp when I was a kid where they played us backwards messages of Queen and Aerosmith and AC/DC. They played backwards messages and told you what was being said before they played it."
Maybe Aereogramme need a few more backwards messages on their records. They abandoned God, or at least organised religion, a long time ago and they're far too nice to get on with Satan so, as yet, their day has not come. Maybe it never will but next time they decide that they're fucked maybe they should just take another listen to either of their two albums.
Interview taken from Rocksound magazine issue 53 (October 2003)