Jamie Lenman, punk rock troubadour, Doctor Who aficionado and for many the personification of the early 2000s sound as frontman of Surrey triumvirate member Reuben (alongside Hell Is For Heroes and Hundred Reasons) decided to have a sit down and a quick chat with Hit the Floor. Admittedly, Jamie’s voice was very fragile, as he’d been on tour for a while, but we still managed to drag some answers out of him.
At one point, the lighting engineer came in as well, checking what lighting would be alright; to which Jamie responded, “Anything. Just don’t turn them off at any point. And no strobes. … You’ve only brought a strobe, haven’t you?” Alas, I digress!
HTF: Hi Jamie, how’s it going?
J: Great, I’ve gotta say though, my voice is in limited supply. I love doing interviews, and I love talking about myself, but tonight’s just a bit tough, you know? If we could be as concise as possible, that’d help me a lot.
HTF: Yeah, that’s fine – when you return to music and smash out hardcore screaming vocals every night on a tour, it’s gonna’ take its toll eventually. I’ll skip out all the largely anticipated questions, like, “Are Reuben getting back together?”
J: Is that actually on your list?
HTF: No, it’s not. Anyway, the first one I s’pose is that everyone’s excited about your return to music. But, how does it compare to the Racecar era, where you were on the way up – now you’ve come back, and you’re “the guy from Reuben,” and everyone’s going batshit over it. How do you feel about that?
J: I feel good about it! I feel like the groundwork that we laid in the Reuben days has paid off. I haven’t had to go begging on my knees for any of it – nor would I have. It’s not that I’m not prepared to make the effort, but it’s not as… desperate? That’s not the right word, but before it was my whole life, now it’s a bit easier. You know, qué sera, sera, what may come may go, whatever happens, happens.
HTF: Well, we’ve all had a listen to your new album, Muscle Memory, and it strikes me as something of two sides to the same coin. What we have is two musical styles that make up your Reuben persona – but in two parts, on two CDs. Is there a reason you wanted to deconstruct them?
J: A lot of people would say that the way I naturally write music is how Reuben’s sound came about; riff, chorus, singalong bit, bludgeoning metal – and people would say that’s all well and good, but it’d be nice to have a record that’s also more one definitive vibe. I can understand that; some of my favourite records are ones like Sergeant Peppers that go everywhere, but I do love records like Will Haven’s WHVN that’s just one vibe that you can really get into. So I thought it’d be worthwhile to make a record like that – to take the two sides, the heavy and the soft; separate them, give them a bit more room to breathe; then we’d end up with two discs, each with their own strong, distinct, narrower vibe. As it came out, they’re both still quite varied anyway; but I stuck with it and that’s how it came out.
HTF: Is there anything you’ve got planned in the pipeline? Are there any ideas you want to implement that will be completely off the wall, completely different, for the next CD?
J: Maybe. I think it would get quite boring for every single CD to be some kind of crazy reinvention of the wheel – not that this was – but there are different things you can use music for. There’s music for communication with your family; I mean, everyone sings a song. You can use it to play other people’s songs, for your own enjoyment; there’s music as art, as I’ve done on this record to say something specific. It doesn’t always have to be about innovation and invention. I might do a covers record, which I feel would be perfectly valid, or if I did an album of songs that sounded more like my previous record In Nothing We Trust, that’s the kind of music that I enjoy writing – so it wouldn’t be any particular innovation, but it’d still be enjoyable music so I may do that. I don’t think I’m going to do a record as crazy as this again, but I will continue to innovate over the years. It gets boring otherwise. But not every record – you’re not gonna’ have to twist your brain to get around every CD I come out with.
HTF: Hundred Reasons and Hell Is For Heroes did a kind of reunion tour last year. I found we got a load of 30-somethings turning up in baggy jeans and band t-shirts. A lot of these people like to hark back to what they believe to be “Glory Days,” the early 2000s—
J: What, glory days seven years ago?
HTF: Well, yeah. That golden age myth that people hold on to. What do you think made that time so special, being at the forefront of it?
J: I think that’s really sad. They’re always going to be special, because that was our music – I had my primary burst of my career, if you like, and the people listening to that music were in their late teens or early twenties, which is a special time anyway. But for people to want to revisit that five years down the line, I think that’s really lame. Really lame. Imagine saying to yourself, “five years ago was the best time of my life, and I want to go back to doing what I was doing in my early twenties.” I just think, fuck, have you got nothing? Have you made no progress at all?
They asked us to do that tour, and we said no way. We all said no way. How pathetic to do a reunion tour after three years. I mean, fuck off. To do that would be to say, “that is it. That’s the end of my career. That’s the best thing I’ve done. I’m 28, and I will do nothing further.” Fuck that. How limited.
HTF: There are a lot of newer bands around now, bands like Bangers or Caves that are making similar sounds to those Reuben et al were making back then. So, it’s kind of having a bit of a revival, I s’pose – you can see where their influences come from. Do you think that the bands that characterised that era – Hundred Reasons, Hell Is For Heroes, Reuben, etc – were ahead of their time?
J: Not at all. What we were doing was what rock bands have always done – regurgitating the stuff that they listened to when they grew up, and then putting their own spin on it by default. I think a lot of the time, I didn’t even notice that I was putting my own spin on it – as far as I was concerned, I wanted to sound as much like Weezer and as much like Kerbdog as I possibly could. And I failed, but the result was different enough to be another step onwards. It’s the same thing that Kerbdog were doing – they were just playing Helmet riffs, putting their own spin on it.
There are bands coming forward now who say, “Oh, we listen to Reuben and Yourcodenameis:milo,” and all that – they don’t sound like Reuben, they never do. They don’t sound like Hell Is For Heroes either. But you can tell where they got bits of it from, and they’ve put their own spin on it – and that’s how art always evolves. Rock and roll particularly – there’s always been a lot of respect for previous artists’ work, and it’s nice to be a part of that chain.
I don’t think we were doing anything particularly new at all, certainly for the most part. There were certain areas where we tried to innovate, but not enough – I have to say, there’s a track on the new record that deals with the fact that artists of the noughties era didn’t try hard enough to create a distinctive sound. And if people think there was a distinctive noughties sound, that’s nice, but I think what they’re identifying is the particular clichés that we chose to perpetuate. I don’t think there was a distinctive noughties sound – I think those bands picked the best bits from previous decades, and created a nice sound out of that. That’s not to say that I would trash it in the same way John Lennon famously trashed The Beatles records when he said they were worthless; I wouldn’t say that at all, I think the Reuben records are great. I think Hell Is For Heroes’ and Yourcodenameis:milo’s records are great records; but I don’t think any of them represent any real innovation.
HTF: Are there any particular artists or bands you’ve noticed coming up now who are attempting to push the boundaries of innovation and move it forward even more?
J: Castrovalva. What they’re doing is influenced a lot by Blood Brothers, but what they’re doing – well, it’s new to me, and this is the key thing – if it’s new to the listener, then what fuckin’ difference does it make? Castrovalva represent a lot of new sounds, so I’m excited about them. Shining, who are a Norwegian band, are putting a lot of jazz with metal, they have a saxophonist and fuse the saxophone with metal – which is great. So, there are things that are pushing it onwards, not a lot, but just enough. There are bands like Kill Chaos, who I don’t think would be upset with me for saying that I can’t really hear any innovation in what they’re doing; but like I said earlier, it’s not always absolutely necessary to innovate with music; you can just write great songs. That’s what they do, and that’s very difficult to do – in some ways, it’s harder, even, to just write a great song than it is to just play some new music on theremin and the flute. That’s what they’ve got – an album of ten or eleven brilliant songs. There’s nothing wrong with that – in many ways, I prefer that.
HTF: Did you watch the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special?
J: Of course I did.
HTF: Did you watch it live, or did you watch it later? What did you think of it?
J: I watched it in the cinema, with my 3D glasses on. I’ve supported Doctor Who through its many guises; the thing about Doctor Who is that it’s like a family – it’s unconditional love. Doctor Who’s the love of my life. I watched it, I thought it was great, and I haven’t been very satisfied with the recent run of episodes; I don’t really like the direction the current producer’s taking it in. But I thought he pulled it out of the bag for this one, it was a great story, and a great tribute to the 50 year thing. You know, I actually get asked that question a lot – I’m like the Doctor Who spokesman for the internet punk rock scene.
HTF: That’s excellent. I’ll let you get on now, sort your voice out and scream at everything. Thanks very much for the interview, and it was great to meet you.
J: Thanks for coming in, it’s always good to talk. I guess I’ll see you out there!
You can get Jamie Lenman’s fantastic new album, Muscle Memory, from lots of great places. My personal favourite is Banquet Records, though, so, y’know…
