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| Texas return with a new album, "RED BOOK", on October 31st. The album represents over two years of work for the band, a time that has seen a variety of inspired recording sessions with a group of both new and old friends. "RED BOOK" is classic Texas and yet it is also something undeniably special and vibrant too. It's modern confident pop music as fronted and sung by Sharleen Spiteri. And it's an honest, confident, independent breath of fresh air in the current scene.
You're still hungry Sharleen, aren't you?
"You stay hungry through songs, through wanting to write your best yet. That's why I'll always try new things and why Johnny and I will always write with other people and change the way we work. Get your head down and push things along every time."
Is the album a deliberate sequence of events, hence "Red Book"?
"Ha, nothing that grand. I'd been writing lyrics, thoughts, ideas in this big red book. There's some sketches in there too so I really am the artiste, right!... ha, ha, ha.. that book was a collection of many ideas and many thoughts for these new songs, I hit a real roll in terms of songwriting and lyric writing. The album is all that honed and boiled down and worked over and combined with other people's ideas and interpretations and polished into 45 minutes of music. I honestly think we did everything possible to get every new song playing its part."
Texas represent music with a strong sense of melody and passion. New music committed to renewal and a healthy dose of reinvention. In 2005, Texas unveil a new album of real strength and depth, focused on secret dreams, heady hopes and private desires.
Pinning down musical influences and inspirations for "RED BOOK" is no easy task. Sharleen talks only of "classic pop music", Johnny McElhone reels briskly through "Stax, soundtracks, electronic pop, Giorgio Morroder, Kate Bush and the usual mix of Prince and Motown"; too modest to admit that Texas' return single "Getaway" is fresh and feisty enough to have been a great Altered Images seven-inch (he co-wrote that band's "I Could be Happy" at age 15). But the pervading feel of "RED BOOK" is that Texas have made a classic collection of songs fit to stand alongside their best yet, a "White On Blonde Plus" if you like!
Also, thrown into the mix is some fresh blood in the Texas camp. Firstly, is 25 year-old keyboard and programming maestro, Michael Bannister. Formerly a backroom studio engineer for Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, Aberfeldy and other Scottish bands, Michael was immediately thrown into the fray alongside Sharleen Spiteri, Johnny McElhone and guitarist Ally McErlaine, recording back-to-back international sessions with the likes of producers Dallas Austin, Mike Hedges and Spike Stent.
The levels of musicianship achieved by this new Spiteri/McElhone/McErlaine/Bannister axis at the band's Glasgow studio provided a gorgeous foundation for the new album as a whole. If a particular drum sound then needed more dusty magic, the "modern Spector" Mike Hedges would be drafted in for mix duties. If more direct pop polish was required, Spike Stent or Ash Howes would get the nod. "RED BOOK" is Texas returning to the epic team play of the "White On Blonde" album, as well as restoring some of that era's charm and playful naivety. Sharleen on xylophone? Believe it - it's there on "What About Us?", surely one of the five great songs of Spiteri and McElhone's career.
Michael Bannister was certainly not the only new influence enlisted for the recording of "RED BOOK". Texas also opted to work closely with Brian Higgins, Miranda Cooper and the rest of the acclaimed Kent-based Xenomania pop factory. The stunning "Can't Resist", "Cry", "Bad Weather" and "Get Down Tonight", all sounding like potential radio-slaying singles, were the results. Meanwhile simultaneously a very special duet with The Blue Nile was brewing and bubbling up in Glasgow, the reclusive Paul Buchanan trading perfect sentiments with Sharleen on feel-good highlight "Sleep".
An old friend or two also dropped by to help the playful mood further along for Texas. Glasgow's Bobby Bluebell, a songwriting collaborator of the White On Blonde sessions, was again seen sleeping on the kitchen floor, while Dallas Austin held court out in the garden. Rick Nowells, co-writer of the legendary "Inner Smile" single (still seemingly played on every other televised football match) got himself involved too, jumping a plane from LA to lend his assured hand to album climax "Just Hold On". Like Sharleen says, everything and everyone got to play their part.
Sharleen, there seems some real soul-searching going on in your lyrics now?
"I think that's true."RED BOOK" is a story book in the sense that I've drawn influence from things going on around me. I get to meet people and observe people with quite extraordinary and sometimes extreme things happening to them."
So what kind of people do have those stories? You?
"It's anybody and everybody. Everybody in the sense that we are all bound together in our capacity for both joy and sorrow. A wonderful surprise or a horrible tragedy can happen to anyone on any given day. Maybe we all forget that a bit sometimes and we lose our grip on that most fundamental truth. "RED BOOK" explores some dark lyrical moments and some light, but the whole thing's meant to be a celebration. A celebration of us actually all being in this thing together. All my new words were different attempts to work around around that."
There is also a sense that we can now truly recognise what is unique and fantastic about Texas, especially when contrasted with the wider musical landscape. In an era of fakes and wannabes, Texas are the real deal: British writers/producers who believe in confident modern pop albums, unafraid of the odd experiment in the interest of a new sound for a new song. Whatever it takes to inspire that nagging tune perfect for getting up on a Saturday morning or getting ready to go out on any given weekday night. In Sharleen Spiteri the band have a frontwoman possessed with both an awesome voice and a winning way with the wider world - a singer-songwriter who keeps her head down and does the hard graft while others are out turning up to the opening of an envelope... a true star who returns with great records.
She's done that again with "RED BOOK", Texas' best storybook of all.
Texas are:
Michael Bannister: drums, keyboards, programming
Johnny McElhone: bass, guitars, keyboards, programming
Ally McErlaine: lead guitar
Sharleen Spiteri: voice, guitars, keyboards |
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| Can't Resist |
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| Getaway |
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| Sleep |
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| I Don't Want A Lover |
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| In Demand |
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Felix Howard
