Hard-Fi doing it the hard way

Mon 26th Jun, 2006 in Features

Guitar driven music is back in a big way in Britain this year and English four-piece Hard-Fi has been leading the pack. Their debut album Stars Of CCTV hit Number 1 in January and they’ve just joined an elite crowd (including Bob Dylan and The Clash) to have played five straight nights at London’s Brixton Academy. They’re also making inroads across the world: “When we went to Italy it was like Beatlemania,” says bassist Kai Stephens down the phone from yet another stop on the road.

Last year, they were nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize (just losing out to Antony And The Johnsons) and made many critics’ end of year lists. But their success story has been much more gradual than the overnight rise of the likes of Arctic Monkeys. Stephens, vocalist Richard Archer, guitarist Ross Philips and drummer Steve Kemp formed the band in Staines, a commuter town just to the west of London previously only famous for spawning Ali G, four years prior. Away from the London scene, they forged their own sound, fusing the beats of mod and reggae with the particularly English lyrical observations of The Clash, The Smiths and Billy Bragg.

Kai Stephens takes up their story: “We were running our own race. We’re just that bit too far from London. We’re too far to even get a nightbus home. That actually meant that when we played our first London show, a lot of our friends and family couldn’t make it. At that time, we weren’t taking doing another London show for granted.” Lack of recording facilities in their hometown meant they recorded their debut album themselves after hours in a disused taxi office: “We tried to have a foot in the door. We weren’t having a social life, we had our day jobs and we pooled our money. We pressed 1,000 copies of the album and then our distribution company went bust. We all thought, ‘Is this going to happen?’ Our manager stuck with us for the love of doing it but the phone stopped ringing and we were wondering if it was all going to pot.”

It wasn’t though. The copies of the album that went on sale to the public were quickly snapped up, thanks to a mix of strong reviews, radio airplay and touring. After a bidding war (“We made ourselves a makeshift video and the record companies said ‘They’ve done all this by themselves’”) the band signed to Atlantic, who asked them to re-record the album. Nixing the opportunity to head to some sun-soaked location, they went back to the taxi office.

The full commercial release of Stars Of CCTV was a slowburning hit, but backed by a series of chart-bothering singles (‘Living For The Weekend’, ‘Hard To Beat’ and a reissue of ‘Cash Machine’) and relentless touring (including spots at Glastonbury and supporting Green Day) the hard work began to pay off.

The album epitomises living in Blair’s Britain at the turn of the century. “You’re always being watched,” says Stephens. There’s a paranoia and a desperation to the likes of ‘Cash Machine’ and ‘Feltham Is Singing Out’ that screams of life in a suburban English town. It’s no surprise that that other poet of English surburbia, Paul Weller, joined them onstage during that record-breaking Brixton run.

Of all the album’s strengths, Stephens reserves particular praise for Richard Archer’s lyrics: “Richard’s had these ideas, stuck with them and pulled them apart until they fit. We had a version of half of ‘Tied Up Too Tight’ and half of ‘Hard To Beat’. It’s almost making the jigsaw. I couldn’t do it but he can.”

And the next album’s already waiting to be recorded: “Album two was kind of written around the time we were recording Stars Of. Some of those songs could’ve easily made it onto that album. Those songs which were recorded in those black early days are just coming around.” And he thinks Archer’s best songwriting is still to come: “The ideas are pouring out. By the second and third albums I think he’s going to be up there with the best of them.”

First though there’s a bunch of summer festivals and then the small matter of their first Australian tour presented by FasterLouder. “Most of the band haven’t been here and it’s just such an amazing country,” Stephens says before he signs off. Those shows will be one more chapter in an amazing year for Hard-Fi.

Hard-Fi’s Stars of CCTV is now on sale. Hard-Fi will be touring Australia this September presented by FasterLouder. Tix on sale now.

Frontier Touring and FasterLouder present the Hard-Fi Australian Tour
September 27 – The Palace, Melbourne
September 29 –  The Enmore Theatre, Sydney
September 30 – The Arena, Brisbane
October 2 – Metropolis, Freemantle
 

For full coverage of Hard-Fi click here