BCR: Something I must mention is the lyrics, I think they're like a cross between Nick Cave and the Brothers Grimm or Cab Calloway and Chuck Berry...
James Steel: I like that. That sounds quite nice. I think it's all quite interchangeable in my head because they're all people who talk in a certain language. Fairytales have key phrases; like all of them start with once upon a time and they have similar themes, or rock 'n' roll songs have those phrases that come up over and over, from blues right through. So I think they're all interchangeable and interlinked and a lot of the stuff from the bible, it's not really biblical stuff, it's just stuff I used to hear in church. You hear these rock 'n' roll songs and at the time they were thought to be profane but it's not that different from the bible. Like if you love Jesus, you can say you love Jesus but you could be talking about a woman.
BCR: I think a biblical background does seem to help in lyric writing, like Wynonie Harris and Robert Johnston and then contemporary people like Holly Golightly or Seasick Steve.
Matt Day: They're good stories...
James Steel: There's that but we say that we like blues and rockabilly which is roots music really, but in terms of poetry or lyrics, that's about as roots as it gets, the bible and fairytales. The thing I've been thinking about recently... I'm quite happy to talk in all that terminology because I went to a Church of England school and it's so familiar to me, but I'm starting to wonder if people get it because I'm so familiar to it. Not everyone goes to church anymore. A lot of the people who would understand or react to it, who went to church fifty or sixty years ago when the majority of people went to a church and knew all that stuff... Whereas acts like Holly Golightly and Seasick Steve, however successful they are in their own field, aren't recognised by people. That why the Arctic Monkeys who talk about their life in an everyday town, people can identify more with that because it's more in their sphere of experience.
Nick Foots: It's like that classic meeting of the sacred and the secular. Folk music meeting the establishment's music. You see it repeated over and over again. The clash of, not just the music, but the terminology of the fusion of the lyrics or imagery.
BCR: Right now I think that it's in your favour that people don't go to church and aren't familiar with the stories, because they're all new and interesting again.
James Steel: I like the idea of us being, maybe, exotic.
BCR: Well, you've got samba beats on one song and then some bizarre.. do you think it's bizarre, this confluence of styles?
James Steel: Well, everyone's mixing it up these days. Products of the IPod generation and everyone always sticks it on shuffle.
BCR: Are Brute Chorus products of the IPod generation? I highly doubt it...
Matt Day: I don't think any of us even own one.
BCR: Products of an overactive record collection habit...
Nick Foots: I think it's more how you view music. If you view it in genre or if you view it in terms of any kind of entertainment value or emotional and artistic output, however you want to put it…
Pizza and beer overwhelms this writer and The Brute Chorus and conversation moves towards Dave Ferret almost killing multiple children in an inadvertent fireball catastrophe and the affirmation of the rumour that Matt is in fact Leo Sayers cousin. Far too chilled by these revelations BCR turns off the recording device...
The Brute Chorus play for Big City Redneck's Big Bad Love night at 93 Feet East on August 14th.
Big Bad Love events page for Brute Chorus + Wet Paint + Popular Workshop + Sancho
