I interviewed Dave from Frankie and the Heartstrings a little while back so I thought it would be fitting to publish the feature this week as their debut album hit the shelves.
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Frankie and the Heartstrings
Sunderland popsters Frankie and the Heartstrings are an intriguing prospect. Talking to drummer Dave Harper, the conversation is peppered with references to art house films, literature and classic pop music. Not that that is unusual of course, in any given era there has always been a plethora of literate British guitar bands, from The Smiths to Maximo Park.
But it is rare to hear an intelligent, articulate musician discuss a new artist they have discovered with the same degree of erudition as Dave. He says of the undisclosed artist, “I should fucking hate the cunt. My foot should be firmly on his fucking neck.” Even better is that this proclamation is swiftly followed by a discussion on Philosopher Descarte’s ‘Mediationes de prima philopsophia.’ And it’s that duality which makes Frankie and the Heartstrings such a refreshing proposition. These guys are the real deal.
Frankie and the Heartstrings are a gang of gentlemen rogues in the most appealing and unaffected sense, exactly the type of band that Morrissey has a habit of falling head over heels with every couple of years. They are smart and romantic, tough and uncompromising. Just like the North East town that spawned them.
The band formed in Sunderland around a year and a half ago with the promise of injecting a little bit of good old fashion fun into the UK’s po-faced indie scene. Apart from singer Frankie, who at 25 is the relative baby of the group, most of the other Heartstrings are seasoned veterans of the stop-start Sunderland music scene. Now departed (as in left, not dead) guitarist Pete Gofton was in 90’s glam popsters Kenickie (his sister was that bands singer, one Lauren Laverne, no I haven’t heard of her either) and drummer Dave has worked with more musicians than Mark E Smith. Ok, not quite true but he’s not far off. And they do share the same fierce reputation.
After varying tastes of success in other bands the group’s main priority upon getting together was to do things their way or no way at all, regardless of handful s of record labels sniffing around after only a handful of local gigs. “We decided we didn’t want to do things in the conventional way.” Says Dave. “We weren’t interested in the usual cycle of play a gig, get a record deal, put out a single, put out an album then go on tour because it inevitably doesn’t work. Bands are being dropped and record labels are going under.”
Following the success of fellow local band The Futureheads’ attempts to start a label after being dropped from Warner, Frankie and the Heartstrings set about trying to find a different way of getting their music heard. The band were realistic in realising that it was necessary to generate revenue to fund their exploits, as well as maintaining a buzz around the band yet retaining creative autonomy. They were determined to find a fresh way of doing business.
“We thought, let’s think about pop music the way you’re supposed to think about pop music and think about reinvention and adding some fun back to the medium, which is something people haven’t done for a long time.” He says, adding, “It’s always been as if there is an invisible set of rules and I don’t know who made them up, but we decided to pay no attention to them.”
Disregarding those rules the band looked to the innovative artists and labels which had informed their cultural tastes as youngsters. They came up with POPSEX LTD. POPSEX is a kind of boutique record label cum clearing house for all things Frankie and the Heartstrings. It was set up after the group were inspired by local indie collective Boyeater in their teens.
Boyeater operated in the late 90’s in at a time when there was little going on in the Sunderland live music scene other than a ropey hard rock cover band at a working men’s club on a Friday night or a ‘turn’ in the concert room on a Saturday. Headed up by James McMahon, who recently worked for the NME as Features Editor, Boyeater was a celebration of all that is DIY in music and the gigs James put on have since gone down in Sunderland folklore.
Frankie and the Heartstrings’ drummer Dave decided to take the Boyeater aesthetic and run with it. He Says, “A lot of the Boyeater stuff was a little sugary for my taste and too fan-boyish plus it didn’t encompass anything other than the music. “When starting the band and label we knew we would never just be about the music, we’re about anything that is tangible that people can tap into and use for whatever they want.”
This search for anything tangible has led to a vast catalogue of POPSEX related items. The band admits shamelessly ripping off the seminal Manchester label Factory Records in deciding to catalogue all their releases but they have been much more playful with the aesthetic. So far there has been POPSEX numbers allocated to everything from a mix-tape limited to one copy (available on request) to posters, T-shirts, DVD’s and even guitarist Michael McKnight’s newborn twins (needless to say, not available by request).
I ask Dave how the band chooses what to catalogue? The answer is simple, “The question we always ask is, why not? And it seems to be working because as we add to the catalogue peoples interest in it seems to swell.” The result is a compelling archive of the bands career so far. POPSEX operates much like a fan club, an old school way of doing things, but it is not without its modern flourishes.
Frankie and the Heartstrings have a weapon in their arsenal that the likes of Factory and Boyeater did not. The Internet. The band has embraced limited edition downloads and free podcasts in order to sate their fan base’s appetites while they graft away at their debut album. More importantly than that though, the Internet, and Twitter in particular play an important role for the band.
Dave Harper was initially cynical about using social networking to address fans. Now 32, and a resolutely no nonsense type of chap, Dave resisted buying a mobile phone until in his mid 20’s. But even the self confessed Luddite has embraced Social Networking and admits that it is a significant tool in maintaining the momentum of the buzz around the band between releases while generally keeping the ball of communication rolling.
“I didn’t realise how big these things had become. Twitter is great just to let people know what you’re up to day to day by posting pictures on the road. The un-glamorous bits other bands wouldn’t let you see. That might mean nothing to some people but to some of our fans it means a lot.” He says in his broad County Durham accent.
Giving a snapshot of their real lives and breaking down the barrier of myth surrounding professional musicians is something that is important for Frankie and the Heartstrings. In an age where indie bands are dressed and preened by teams of professionals and lavished with free clothes from brands eager to have their wares associated with anything remotely perceived as being cool, Frankie and the Heartstrings remain nothing but themselves.
But that’s not to say the five-piece are unconcerned about the way they present themselves. “Image is very important.” Dave says. It just appears they don’t have to try very hard. “There are all of these bands who hire stylists. We’d never do that, but then were lucky because we have incredibly good taste.” Boasts Dave. Luckily this isn’t boasting of the idle variety, the band do look great. In a sort of James Dean meets 60’s Kitchen sink Drama sort of way. It’s certainly fair to say they all know their way around a charity shop, which is appropriate as it turns out Frankie used to manage one.
Bands, of course, are supposed to look cooler than the rest of us, something Frankie and the Heartstrings are acutely aware of, “It’s always been important right from the Rolling Stones through to Orange Juice. All the bands I love have a great look.”
Luckily the band are not a case of style over substance, they certainly have the tunes and the stage presence to back it up. On stage, Frankie is a natural, flouncing around making dramatic hand gestures and flicking his quiff about like his life depends on it, all the while trying to maintain an air of nonchalance. He performs with a kind of vulnerability and androgynous gusto that has been sadly missing from pop music since Morrissey swung round some gladioli on top of the pops. The Sunderland music scene has produced some enduring and talented acts but, perhaps with the exception of Kenickie, Frankie and the Heartstrings are the first approaching anything that could be described as sexy. Seeing them live it is hard not to be swept up by the longing and urgency they instil in every song.
While still ploughing the traditional pop furrow of songs about girls and heartbreak, Frankie and the Heartstrings’ songs are also filled with pop cultural and specifically, literary references adding to the overall sense of doomed romance and lost intimacy. Despite the deceptively light and catchy hooks and ‘oh oh’ sing-along choruses there are sprinklings of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Norwegian Nobel prize winning author and Nazi sympathiser Knut Hamsun and the uncompromising and notoriously ‘gritty’ filmmaker Mike Leigh.
While many fans have embraced this bookish influence, the band says that it all came about unintentionally. Dave tells me the band, ““just wanted to encompass things like literature or whatever crossed our path that interested us.” He is a concerned of over intellectualising what Frankie and the Heartstrings do, “It’s something we worried about but in the end we reasoned; don’t be ashamed of it but don’t show off about it. I’m not precious about things like books.”
The band really just want to share all of the things that they love and admire, the motivation is simple, Dave says, “I just hope that we can make people’s lives that little bit better. Whether it be from listening to our songs or from reading a book we referenced.”
That said, he ponders over the last sip of his coffee, “Finding a rhyming couplet for Dostoevsky might be tricky.”
'Hunger' is out now.
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