COME AND HAVE A GO IF YOU THINK YOU'RE HARD ENOUGH!
Interview by Ruth

Ruth met up with David Line (vocals, guitar), Kevin Hendrick (bass, vocals), Caroline Banks (drums, vocals) and Charles McLeod (guitar) from Seafood to discuss their new album "When Do We Start Fighting...", working with Eli Janney, Aiya Napa and cockroach-filled apartments.

David Line, singer and vocalist with Seafood does not exactly have what you would call an aggressively self-promoting nature. Five minutes into the interview and he's already waxed lyrical about support bands KaitO ("You've got to watch them, they're excellent") and Easyworld. Still star-struck, he's related tales of working with hero Eli Janney from Girls Against Boys on the new album ("we were in awe") "When Do We Start Fighting", and their time spent playing "Crazy Taxi" and watching American TV between takes. He still doesn't seem to be able to believe his luck at being able to work with Howie Weinburg on the mastering. A compliment made by Rock Midgets about the album is met by surprised, but appreciated thanks, and a swift changing of topic.

Then suddenly, part way through talk about the new album, the atmosphere suddenly seems to change. It's perceptible on the tape; maybe it's just a response to the sounds of band soundchecking in the background, but David seems to move in a bit closer to the mike. "We've always been outsiders. And I think it sort of came across in the album, and in the lyrics, and just the album title. We want a fight, you know? We think we're a good band... Now we've sort of been doing it for five years, it's like now we want a bit of the action. We want to be recognised as a band in this country, a good decent band…" Time to rewind the tape, I think…

* * * * * * * * * * *

We meet David Line and the rest of the band backstage at the University of Newcastle's student union at the tiny upstairs bar. Last time any member of Rock Midgets made their way in this direction was the NME Premier tour, when Katie and Thalia came to see JJ72 and Amen pack out the downstairs hall. Upstairs the backstage area of the venue is rather less glamorous, if that's possible; a cold, empty room packed with snooker tables, yet oddly bare and dimly lit. We are introduced to David, crumpled in the corner, the only one of the band who seemingly hasn't escaped in time to find sustenance. Politely asking about the fanzine, he refuses offers of a proper dinner in favour of a banana due to pre-gig collywobbles. "I can't eat before gigs," he explains. "He never eats," confides one of the roadies. It's not hard to believe. He's one of the few people I've met who actually looks even thinner than he does in photographs.

It's the second night of the tour, Seafood's first UK jaunt since work began on the second album.
Since last year's tour with Wilt, Seafood have spent most of their time capitalising on their success elsewhere, going to Japan and America. Yet even the last few months have seen a lot of changes for Seafood. They've switched labels, changed management, and recorded their most emotionally taut record yet in just one month in New York. Yet nerves don't seem to be at the front of the lead singer's mind. David sees this tour as more an opportunity to play some new material "and remind everyone that we're still here". With the advent of "When Do We Start Fighting" due for release at the end of July, I'm sure new label Infectious will be seeing things a little differently.

Seafood emerged towards the end of the decade, the product of university friendship and an advert in Loot, and slowly began to pick up pace with a handful of understated single releases on various indie labels. But despite media acclaim, Seafood's cult status is still a closely guarded music industry secret. While negative reviews are a rarity, noone's ever seen fit to give them more than the odd column inch here and there. But their debut album "Surviving The Quiet", a mess of subtle American sunshine lofi crossed with dark metallic guitars earned them a growing cult following, both here and overseas, as well as the patronage of bands such as Idlewild. Roddy Woomble reviewed Seafood's new album for both band's respective mailing lists; they've toured with The Fall (Kevin Hendrick : "He was like a puppy dog, Mark E Smith, wasn't he?" Caroline Banks : "He used to give me cuddles when we came offstage.")...
They even managed to secure Eli Janney, Girls Against Boys' keyboardist, on production duties for their new album. Recording sessions for "When do we start fighting" took place in a four week marathon stint in New York earlier this year. Holed up at Mission Sound studios with a Playstation, Seafood "got addicted to "Crazy Taxi". And watched loads of crap American television, which consists mostly of adverts. And made an album."

"It was really cool," says David, his eyes lighting up like a five year-old in Disneyworld. "Charles (McLeod - bandmember ed) and me are big Girls Against Boys fans. We've been to see them a few times, so when it turned out he wanted to do the album... We had to do it in New York, because his wife was eight months pregnant, which was fine by us! It was just wicked, it was brilliant. We got to meet the singer, Scott (McLoud - Indie Ed) from Girls..., he sang on the new album. Got to work with Mary Lorson from Madder Rose. I used to love Madder Rose. The first two albums are amazing. And that was brilliant doing a duet with her, and just working with Eli was cool, you know? And he had the kind of bands we were into, Fugazi and all that kind of stuff, and you know he's mates with all of them, so he was telling us all the old stories. So we were like in awe. We're all indie kids at heart. It was just... brilliant."

Although first impressions weren't exactly ideal for a group of budding fans meeting their idols... "We had to go and meet Eli Janney, and Girls Against Boys were playing that night, so we literally dumped our bags and then we had to go and buy sleeping bags. And we turned up at this Girls Against Boys show in New York with these huge sleeping bags and pillows, a bit embarrassing, really. And that's how we met Eli for the first time. He said hello to us from the stage while he was playing (laughs). And that was really embarrassing."
But not so well reported is the fact that David got to work with one of his lesser known heroes on this album... "I flew out three weeks later on my own to master it at Masterdisc with Howie Weinburg, which was a dream come true for me. You probably don't look who masters albums, but if you're into that kind of stuff, and I am (laughs self-effacingly), like he's just done everybody, all the best bands ever. So it was amazing again to work with him."

The band haven't always been this fortunate, though. Seafood were originally signed to London Indie label and Rock Midget faves, the magnificent Fierce Panda. The band gave the label it's first ever mini-album and full-length album releases, in the form of "Messenger In The Camp" and last year's impressive debut "Surviving The Quiet". At the time of their first album, Fierce Panda was being run under the corporate beneficence of the Mushroom group, the collection of labels including Mushroom (home to Muse and Garbage) and Infectious' UK headquarters (home to My Vitriol and Ash). Then at the start of this year it emerged that Fierce Panda were having certain financial difficulties not unrelated to a band who once supported fellow Rock Midget favourites Grebo...
"Fierce Panda had spent loads of money on a band called Bellatrix, who then sold nothing," elucidates David. "So Fierce Panda lost out and they got dropped. But because our record contract was actually with Mushroom through Fierce Panda, Mushroom had the option of keeping us or dropping us." However, Seafood's luck again held out. "Surviving The Quiet", an album recorded "basically... for nothing", had already sold over 20,000 copies in the UK. So Mushroom decided to give them a shot. They sent them to New York to record an album...
"They were waiting to hear the album, really," David continues. "It was a scary lot of pressure, a lot of tension. We didn't know if we were gonna have a label."

So Seafood found themselves flying to New York in the spring, with a four week deadline to complete an album in time for the birth of their producer's child. And some of the tracks weren't even finished...
"We were still writing when we got there. It was really stressful, yeah. Particularly "He Collects Dust", we sort of wrote when I was out there, just did it with the producer, just sort of picked up with all the drumbeats and stuff from that a sort of riff, and started singing, we just got Scott from Girls to sing in it. It's a poem by Caroline about a man dying on his own. The rest are sort of racing lyrics, this is a little bit sad to be on the record, it's about a bloke dying on his own. And we reckon he was in a lighthouse with the ocean all around him. And err... err... yeah, and then "Splinter" was written out there as well, I sort of had half of that. And "What May Be The Oldest" I'd written as an acoustic track, but as it came out there was a band there. So we did that out there as well."
Yeah, that's my favourite track.
"Complete fucking nightmare to be perfectly honest even when we finished it (laughs). But, um, we got through it. (Pauses) Yeah, you like What May Be The Oldest?"
Yeah, I really like the guitar on it.
"Oh yeah? Cool. (quietly pleased) Cheers."

But despite all the tension, at least they could go home and night and relax in the comfort of a luxury five star hotel...
"We had a shithole apartment in Brooklyn, which was like full of cockroaches. We turned up and there was two sofa beds, which had mattresses, no furniture at all, just this crumbling kind of 'in the hood' in Brooklyn, it was hilarious. And there's like cockroaches everywhere. We were kind of freaked out. We had to go and meet Eli Janney, and Girls Against Boys were playing that night, so we literally dumped our bags and then we had to go and buy sleeping bags. It was pretty crap, but we cleaned it, in true rock'n'roll style. And we made it our home, and people lent us beds and stuff, so that was alright. We spent all our time in the studio."
Ah. Oh dear.

Yet despite the Spartan living conditions, the deadlines, the pressure, sadly for the Tabloids there are no tales of The Priory or nervous breakdowns. The album arrived on time, Mushroom loved it, and Seafood are still here, albeit on Infectious. However, that's not to say the album arrived exactly as intended. There's an entry on the band's website from April, describing the new album as 'sexy rock'. As anyone who has listened to the icescapes of "People Are Underestimated" from the new album will testify, evidently something was lost in translation...
"We did think we were gonna write a sexy rock album," David protests. "It didn't turn out... I think it's still quite a sexy album. But live we're a lot more of a rock band than on record. We don't come across as a rock band on record. A lot of people see us live always think we're an indie band. I dunno, it's just the way the songs came out."
Ever considered having sex to any of your records?
"Laughs. No, I don't really listen to them. What a strange question! (Thinks) Yeah, maybe "Cloaking" or something, maybe. (Deadpans) Or "Pleasurehead". No, no, I haven't thought about it. I'll think about it."

The first album was a bit like a coming of age movie, like "Stand By Me". If the first album was like some kid with a magnifying glass shining it on a bunch of ants, this is like the same kid in adolescence. It's a lot colder...
"Yeah, yeah. Especially with the artwork as well (A series of photographs of melting ice, photographed by a friend of the band - Artwork Ed). It's definitely how we felt. "Surviving the quiet" unless, you count especially, they're both very innocent kind of albums. And "When Do We Start Fighting" is definitely a Seafood album, typical us in some ways doing the Seafood thing as we do. But we did feel very... a bit bitter towards like our reception in this country. Like, um, the lack of support, basically from like the press and didn't really push us, and pushed a lot of other band we thought were just... you know. I'm sure every band says this, but felt like there was a conspiracy, felt like there was this gang, and we weren't part of the gang. We've always been outsiders, sort of thing. And I think it sort of came across in the album, and in the lyrics, and just the album title. We want a fight, you know? We think we're a good band. Not everyone has to sound like The Beatles if you're a British band. You get all these American bands who come over, and everyone worships them. And I reckon if we were actually an American band, we'd probably be huge. But the thing is cos we're British, and we're sort of drawing influences from the late eighties and early nineties of the alternative scene, we're just not fitting in to what the current musical climate is. But we're doing alright in America and Japan, so we're gonna sort of concentrate on those territories I think the rest of the year, just because they like us!"
Don't you see an advantage in not being built up as much as, say Terris?
"We're really lucky, because being with Fierce Panda for so long, and part of the Fierce Panda family, erm, it's just brilliant, because they didn't have any money, didn't have a lot of money, but they kept us. They really believed in us. They really do believe in us, and they just kept us going and did everything they could for us. We got to go to Japan, and we were still with Fierce Panda. We're not even on a major label. And they managed to sort it out and we played sold-out shows and stuff. It was actually amazing that they did that for us. But we've never had that big sort of push. "Surviving the quiet" had one advert in the NME. A black and white advert, and that's the only press we got. We sold the album on the back of album reviews. And so we never had that big push, so yeah, we never really sort of had to be thrust into the limelight. But now we've sort of been doing it for five years, it's like now we wanna sort of bit of the action really. We want to sort of be you know, recognised as a band in this country, a good decent band, we should be thinking Oh we think we've got something to offer. Just cos we don't write ten songs that sound the same. They're different. We can do rock, we can do quiet, we can do acoustic. And not everyone likes listening to the same thing over and over again."
There seems to be a lot more difference between the different kinds of emotions on this album.
"Yeah, I guess it's just how the songs came out. We thought we were gonna write a big rock album, we really did. And then we realised there's only, like, three heavy songs that we had. It's just the way it goes, it's just the way we write. We're quite mellow and we find writing simple songs really hard. We just dunno how to do it. It's a real talent to be able to write a pop song. And it's very easy to do loads of complicated songs and do loads of twists and turns is actually easier. And that's what we're trying to, want to write a perfect kind of rock pop song. We've always been into like, we love all the American stuff, Fugazi, Sonic Youth, all that kind of stuff that we get compared to. And all we wanted to do is take those ideas but then make them into like a really catchy sort of song. And we're getting there, we're getting there."

Kevin was quoted as saying "we want to be on daytime radio, we really really do". Do you think that there's a simple pop band inside of Seafood waiting to get out?
"Yeah, I think there is. Yeah, yeah, I think there is. Definitely there is a pop band. But we like to make it interesting. I like bands like Weezer and that kind of stuff, but I just find the whole album, a bit boring after a while. It's the same song structure, same pattern, same everything. And we just like to add a bit of something else. If we learn how to write pop songs we won't do ten or you know, we'll just do like a couple, you know."

The rest of the band turn up half an hour later, after spending about ten minutes trying to get into the building by the closed front entrance. Charles McLeod is just as tall and well-built as you'd expect, but says very little unless spoken to. Drummer Caroline is small but perfectly formed...
Do you still want to be on daytime radio considering that state of the charts?
David : "More so."
Kevin: "Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. All the more reason."
What do you think about it?
Kevin : "State of music charts? Well, bit ropey isn't it? I mean. But that's kind of good in a way, cos it makes you want to fight against something. So it breeds good music, which would perhaps normally start underground. That's why we've always wanted to be on the radio, always wanted to be on Top Of The Pops, you know? But we're not gonna change. We wrote songs as we see them. As far as we're concerned we have written some pop songs. And we're kind of fans of pop, so..."
Like?
Kevin: "Michael Jackson. Duran Duran." (David starts singing "Survivor" by Destiny's Child. It's a scarily good impression.)
Kevin: "Destiny's child. Missy Eliot. So I mean, there's fucking great songs on the radio. Madonna's a prime example. (At this point someone's phone starts to ring...) Maybe it's me. Hi Karen."

It may be a dream that's closer to coming true than the band first imagined. Steve Lamacq picked up on a demo of Cloaking that had been flying around about the time the band were recording, and immediately touted it as a possible new single. It wasn't long before Mushroom realised Radio 1 were onto something.
You weren't originally intending to put out Cloaking as a single, were you?
(Pause)
Charles : "Hmmm..."
Kevin : "Well, we dunno, we didn't know that... It's kind of like a bit of a first for us, cos now we're on Infectious, and this is the first time we've been ahead of ourselves, like actually had an album recorded and just had choose what singles. I mean, in the past we'd just gone along, bit by bit, and released these singles and then made an album of what we had. So I dunno, I don't think we necessarily thought about it as being the first single, but the record company are kind of into it. For the first time in our lives a record company are arguing about what should be the singles. It's all new to us!"
Charles : "It's normally the other way round; they can't decide on them. They say 'Oh there's no singles on this album'. It's like, well... It's good."

The move to Infectious has given Seafood the boost they need to finally see the fruits of their hard work. In the meantime, Seafood have finally been confirmed for Leeds and Reading this year, and hopefully trying not to repeat what happened when they played there in 1998. Or rather, what happened before it.
"I'd come back from Canada and I was jetlagged," relates Charles. "I went to a party and then someone thought it'd be really really funny to throw a fire extinguisher into a lift shaft. I was at the top of the building, and all the smoke came up, and it was orangey. So I thought Oh there's a fire. And I was told the only way of getting out the building was via a lift shaft. Didn't know there was stairs going round the lift. So I was there, got really shit scared... and put my hand through a toilet door."
"Thirty stitches or something, wasn't it?" adds Kevin. "But he did make an appearance at Reading with his bandaged hands to say hello. Charles always suffers the brunt of mine and Dave's sort of flinging ourselves around."
"I got a bass.. you know, the tuning thing on a bass? Kev went like that, got me in the eye. And the venue happened to be called The Red Eye at the time, didn't it? Quite apt."
So what happens when this tour is over, then?
Charles : "Keep going round the country I think."
Kevin : "We're going out with Grooverider. A few little first ones, a couple of graveyard shifts. Aiya Napa. Gonna fly straight over to Ibiza."
Caroline : "Yeah, we're bringing indie to Ibiza."
Kevin : "We're gonna make some money to finance our next toilet tour. We're promoting the album by Djing, so that kind of works out so we'll probably everything but Seafood. But we're playing like Cardiff and Sheffield and places like that DJing, so that's cool. And then we've got Reading and Leeds. And then we're supposed to go to Japan, and then we're supposed to go to America, and then we're supposed to go to Europe. So I think we're gonna be quite busy, but it's just all up in the air at the moment."

The last time we were here, the crowd seemed to be polarised by loyalties to different bands. There were the metal fans moshing to Amen, who left before the end of the night, and the indie fans bouncing to JJ72 or gazing longingly at James Walsh from Starsailor. But what struck me was the amount of kids who bridged the gap between the two. The fans who were there for most, if not all of the bands. The kids who read Kerrang! and NME, and don't think there's a contradiction in liking pop and rock. The ones who like their music to have brutal thundering basslines and melodic hooks. Tonight, they're the kids who are here. The tiny bar upstairs is host to a wave of kids moshing, dancing, playing with water pistols, heckling the band about their giant inflatable iceberg stage prop ("It should be a giant prawn!"), but mainly just having an amazing time. While the blistering "Cloaking" pounds out of the speakers, the guitar pop masterpiece of "This Is Not An Exit" David Line still seems extremely taken back by all the applause. Yet when he's playing, grinding seven shades of the proverbial out of his guitar, screaming like he's being dragged through the gates of hell backwards, there's a look in his eyes of someone who knows that this is his time. So from here on in, this is a declaration of war on the charts. And this is one fight Seafood aren't about to lose.