Hard-Fi

Surely?

By the time I arrive at the park near their revered new publicist’s office in quaint St John’s Wood, Rich, Kai, Ross and Steve are patiently working it for Notion’s photographer, amused by his suggestion that they now stand 'uncomfortably close,' for a final group shot. Gone is the ex-brightest Star Of CCTV’s spiky elfin mop, non-descript jeans and scuffed-up trainers: Rich now sports a rather stylised Elvisian quiff, indigo turn-ups and glinting Doc Martin boots. Steve is chatting excitedly about his solo cover shoot with a drummers’ magazine the next day; we speculate about what rhythmical goodies he might then be able to reap. So Rich remembers an old (hmm, NME?) shoot where the band were asked to leap about like speed-freak lunatics - because that’s what they do for fun in the suburbs, right? The next day a rather hurt Adidas executive was on the phone, all miserable because an airborne Rich had flashed a Nike stripe. Whoops. But hey, you can’t please everyone all of the time, a fact Hard-Fi swallow with ease.

First single from the new LP, 'Suburban Knights,' even ignites a pre-emptive strike with the line: 'All these people who criticise us well, / We’re only saying what we’re seeing with our own eyes…' Thus substance and style are accounted for in one. A brief but amusing interruption from Zoo magazine before our interview - two jokers hours late for their allocated slot have to grab snaps: the Staines foursome surround a gangly staff writer wearing a red branded t-shirt - reminds me just how far-reaching Hard-Fi’s allure is. So my first question has to be, was their decision to stick with their converted taxi office studio to produce 'Once Upon A Time In The West,' and to deliver another oeuvre of so-called 'working-class sermons,' firmly attached to their awareness that this was so much a part not only of their image, but also their appeal, the first time around? Rich goes for the studio issue first: 'We did look around... We could have gone to Abbey Road or whatever, with my last band we used studios like that, but it saps all of your energy, you spend all of your time playing pool, waiting for the catering. The record company would have loved that; work in a superstar studio with a superstar producer, and as they saw it, take the risk out of everything…' So would that have felt like selling out? 'It’d have definitely been selling out to Wolsey (White, co-producer with Rich) who did such a great job on the first record, and to be fair, they (Atlantic) went OK. We said, "We’re just going to knock through to the next room, we know what we’re doing," and we didn’t, so that was quite stressful, when they were spending all of this money!

So far, fair enough. But we still haven’t uncovered how these erstwhile slaves to the cash machine still feel within their right to sing about suburban striving and struggle. Their charismatic frontman is unperturbed: 'Of course we are, 'cos if we don’t, no-one else will. Some bands coming through singing about it miss the point: we never criticised anyone, it’s always been a positive thing. When we first came out, nobody was talking about our lives, it was all about being in this exclusive, London-centric clique that you weren’t allowed to be a part of, what after-show you were at and who was there… So we arrived and said "Hey, we’re from a small town just like yours, we have the same hopes and frustrations, and you know what, it’s OK." It wasn’t what the clique wanted to hear, it’s what the real people wanted to hear. We got up their nose and we still do, and even if we lived in New York, we’d still have that in our hearts. So many bands are cynical, so many bands like to sneer and look down and go, "Aren’t we clever?" But we’ve always been about trying to be positive, about passion, 'cos negative just gets you feeling shit. In this country there’s too much intellectual snobbery - that mechanical snigger. One article about our first album in a men’s mag said "Loved by the proles," but I’m fucking proud to be loved by the proles, and if you’ve got a problem with that...'

Whoah, Rich, we don’t want any trouble here!

Seriously, though, lyrical content aside, another element beyond doubt is the man’s coveted knack for writing irresistible pop hooks. Sound-wise, Hard-Fi’s second record rejoices, swells and swaggers with the might of match-day anthems; street-hollered curfew sing-alongs; even Motown showtime numbers. Delirious socio-political critique, 'Television,' closes with a raucous series of "Hallelujahs" that could well destabilise stadiums, while the Madness-tinged, ska-heavy 'We Need Love,' enfolds future festival all-together-nows of its "Woah-oh-oh-oh, / What we need now is love," chorus. So while mainstream radio - not to mention primetime TV - was Hard-Fi’s best friend for 'Stars Of CCTV,' did Rich feel compelled to pen tunes in the same vein? 'Those five Brixton Academy shows were one of the highlights of my life - 5,000 people going absolutely nuts, all jumping up and down. I remember thinking, "Man, I wrote this in my bedroom and now people are singing along!" So yeah, it’s hard not to imagine playing the new stuff at massive shows, but we just did our thing again, we made stuff that felt right. 'Tonight' opens with a piano ballad, then this big 808 comes in; I know that’s just going to tear up radio, it’ll have their machinery going wrong!' And of course the plays won’t just be limited to radio: the ever cunning Evil Nine even managed to slip 'Suburban Knights' into the midst of a deepest, darkest breaks set at this year’s Global Gathering - and if that ain’t good for a band’s crossover kudos, what is?

Indeed, giving is the primary action of this new record. Whether admitting defeat (the feverish, lavishly-stringed, 'Watch Me Fall Apart,'), battling racial hatred ('We Need Love,') or belting out a straight-up love song (the stomping, guitar-crunching and brassy 'Little Angel,' - in Rich’s words, 'Christina Aguilera having a fight with The Clash in a northern soul club,') Hard-Fi still play as if invisible demons are nestling machetes between their shoulder blades. For every tune is infused with the very 'passion' Rich rightly identifies as their trademark. On 'Help Me Please,' this mode has devastating effect: a simple and delicate song about the death of Rich’s Mum. Minute lyrical details - no light in the hall, no sound at all - shatter the tune’s beguiling guitar-around-the-campfire quality, just as the aching 'Emptiness, emptiness' follows an ironic, childlike melody. For Rich, how therapeutic was turning pain into the more palatable 'Once Upon A Time' formula, and was the contrast between this nostalgic title and its disillusioned, adult tales something he strove to engineer?

While the line 'A big fat nothing,' might not immediately ring true in the mouths of now world-famous musicians, we know that the remembered sentiment behind it is real. Further, while we might not expect a band of such stature to still be singing about fleeing suburban tedium for nocturnal fantasy, this is what actually means something to their audience, to 'real people.' Critical slandering against a band that refuses even to purport to be about and for anything more than their unglamorous beginnings is hardly surprising from a music press obsessed with buzz-power, uber-styling, Zone One-poseurs and willed otherness. Hard-Fi might be the band the taste-makers for the limp elite hate to love because, after just one listen you can’t get them out of your head (they of course beat Kylie hands-down). Heartfelt, easily digestible and awesomely catchy, how very dare they!

The neatest irony of the 'Once Upon A Time...' title is its indication of the bittersweet nature of their song-writing. Both dismay and euphoria morph into driving rhythms and scatter across uplifting melodies, for Rich has always felt that 'Soul music is in the DNA of this band. There’s always a rhythm that makes you want to dance, always something that makes you want to sing; but when you listen to the lyrics they break your heart or make you feel like you’re the king of the world - they speak to you. Even if it’s "I love you," or "I wanna get drunk!