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Embrace
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| Good things, we are told, come to those who wait. That old cliché has applied quite well to Embrace's career thus far. It took over five years from Embrace's formation as a band to the release of their debut album The Good Will Out in 1998. Likewise, it took them three years to write the songs for 2004's double platinum-selling fourth album Out Of Nothing. So Embrace could have been forgiven for taking their time over writing and recording a follow up. But it didn't quite work out that way, as Danny McNamara admits.
"The first album took five years to write. The last one took three years, and then four months to record the album. With this one, it took 18 days in the studio to write and record the whole thing." Whereas Out Of Nothing was preceded by a long, frustrating period of writer's block on Danny's part, This New Day evolved out of something closer to a musical block.
"I just couldn't face playing my guitar," he says. "I still haven't picked it up since we finished Out Of Nothing. After three years of playing it day in, day out, I hated even looking at it. It made me think of all that time I'd spent before the last album living like a monk, trying to write songs on guitar and not getting anywhere."
So apart from a few melodies developed on a piano and the usual pile of ideas scribbled down on bits of paper, Danny joined his bandmates in the studio without any finished songs to work on. "We ended up just going in and writing songs together as a band," he says, "and recording them as we wrote them. I still haven't picked up a guitar and I think this album wouldn't be as good if I had."
To write and record This New Day, the band travelled to Granada in Spain to spend nine days at the studio of Out Of Nothing's producer Youth, and returned to a way of making music that they had abandoned nearly 10 years before. "When we started as a band, before we were signed, we would try to write stuff just from jamming, because that's what we'd read that bands we liked did, like Joy Division, U2 and Echo & The Bunnymen. But we just sounded like crap versions of them! So it was weird going back to that method, just us and Youth plugging in and playing, developing and recording the songs as the ideas came to us. In the first nine days we wrote 24 songs, and five of them ended up on the album. Then we spent another nine days in studios in England and did the rest."
For all the departure in method, the result is reassuringly familiar - ten songs dripping with the kind of heart-bursting spiritual resonance that has become Embrace's trademark and has helped them build one of British music's most loyal fanbases.
You can hear it in every note, from the upbeat opener No Use Crying through to the regret-stained title track that brings the album to a close. It oozes from the slow-burning, piano-driven single Nature's Law, the U2-ish guitar patterns and widescreen anthemics of You Will Hit The Target Every Time and from the pounding euphoria of Celebrate. It's nothing more complicated than an emotional connection that their songs make with the listener - a fast track to that part of the human soul that only music can reach.
"I think this album is more immediate than any record we've done since our debut" says Danny. "Really rousing and triumphant."
A title like 'This New Day' gives the impression of a rebirth, which would certainly seem to be fitting considering the creative and commercial renaissance that Embrace have enjoyed in the last couple of years. Likewise, songs called You Will Hit The Target Every Time and Celebrate suggest a positive outlook and optimistic themes. Yet in truth, all is not what it initially seems with these songs.
"The mood is actually quite mixed, lyrically," admits Danny. "Some songs are as dark as anything I've ever written. For instance, You Will Hit The Target Every Time sounds like an optimistic title, but if you dig deeper you'll find there's quite a bit of dark emotion in there."
Whatever feelings you take from these songs, Embrace's ability to tap into the universal emotions of their audience has never been in better shape, not least because they've perfected the medium of communication that has got them where they are today - big, brash, rousing tunes that demand communal inclusion. You either sing along with Embrace or you walk away - this is anything but background music. That's why their live shows have become such events, whether they be the secret shows that they continue to play on anything from bandstands to Big Brother, from Palma to park benches round the country ("It makes you feel like a kid on school holidays"), or arena shows like the tour of forests planned for later this year.
This album continues to reflect Embrace's unashamed emphasis on simple, straightforward, powerful tunes, with the minimum of stylistic conceits. Danny freely admits that Embrace haven't always been a fashionable band, simply because they've never been interested in fashion, and have creatively stuck to their guns. Yet it's served them well in the long run, as Danny confirms. "I think there has to be an aesthetic continuity about what you represent and what you are, which people believe in and want to have in their lives."
That's not the only reason why Embrace have stood the test of time, though. Danny admits they've had to 'raise the bar' in terms of songwriting.
"We fucked it up on the third album. We got dropped and almost split up. We're once bitten twice shy about it and now we never want to fuck it up again. So we've raised the bar to a place where it's really difficult to jump. Yet we got there really quickly. We were close to putting the album out last year as we felt we had all the singles in the bag but ultimately we opted to take more time. The extra writing sessions added more songs and the album is all the better because of it. We've got half the next album written too - some of my favourite songs were left off this album because they didn't hang together with the others. But they'll make it onto the next record."
And now Embrace have got used to their new found rapid-fire productivity, they're not going to rest on their laurels. "I want the next album to come out pretty soon after this. I feel like we're on a roll now..."
Anything is possible, it seems. Who knows, Danny might even get round to picking up that guitar again. But let's not push our luck too far... |
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| Come Back To What You Know |
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| Hooligan |
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| Wonder |
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| Nature's Law |
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| The Good Will Out |
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| Out Of Nothing |
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Daniel Jones
