National Heroes

I had intended to start this piece by describing the band in question as the ironically named National Heroes. Having allowed their music to seep into my psyche over the past few weeks however, as these words gradually grew from their humble origins in the record reviews columns into something approaching a full-blown article, I'm not so sure now that a more appropriate term mightn't be the aptly named National Heroes.
A three-piece band from Surrey who record down home on the farm and have the backing of a fledgling record label from Brighton, the National Heroes have enough English pedigree to earn themselves a best-of-show rosette at the next Smithfield. True, they create rock 'n' roll with a distinctly American feel; cross-fertilisation is nothing new however and to my ears, the band are most definitely national treasures, if not heroes yet awhile. The current line-up consists of Matt Seigne (bass/guitar/vocals), Peter Ellul (drums) and Bill Dunmore (guitar/vocals/bass). Bill is the band's spokesman.		Me and Matt have played together for years and years, and with Pete for about 3 years now. It's all been slow, but we're slow people. The benefit of it all is that no cocks were sucked: we just did it because we liked playing music.
The National Heroes debut LP Interplanetary Music (Theme Park TP11) kicks off with a Dick Dale-esque surf guitar romp, as bum a steer towards what happens on the rest of the album since Randy California launched "Future Games" into space with some strictly terrestrial CB radio talk. To be fair to the band, an extremely broad hint about their direction is dealt via the LP sleeve: a parody of the cover of Neil Young's "Zuma", with the same lettering and the same characters but all in subtly different positions, as if the picture were a later out-take from the same session. What the National Heroes have done, and done brilliantly in my opinion, is take the doors-open barn sound of Crazy Horse circa. '75 and stir into it all the tricks thrown up by mid-90s bands subscribing to the lo-fi aesthetic; I hesitate to mention their friends Sebadoh so early in the piece when I'm sure the National Heroes are tired of the same old comparisons, but it really is unavoidable and besides, the fact that a snatch of taped conversation with the Seb's Jason Lowenstein is featured on the LP doesn't exactly deter people from uttering both names in the same breath. Intriguingly, and embarrassingly perhaps, after the National Heroes secured a recent supporting role for Sebadoh in Brighton they received better reviews than the headline act, from which you can draw your own hasty conclusions. And other support slots for our Heroes to date include the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the Boredoms, both of which carry a further element of prestige.		Bill: People will compare us to Sebadoh, but I think we just come at it from similar angles. I have tapes of us sounding like that before I'd even heard Sebadoh. Maybe it's just low-budget Dinosaur Jr., although I'm not really into them at all these days.
So, who are the band acknowledging as influences?	Neil Young, the Byrds, Jimi, Galaxie 500, Husker Du, Nick Drake...
And, most telling of all,		My Mum telling us to do shorter songs.
Yeah?	Yeah. It was in the Summer of 1990, my Mum had driven us to a gig in South London. She saw some of our set and noted that the songs were too long. This was totally true, although I couldn't admit it at the time. We were trying to do something like Joy Division but it just turned out dull. Then the drummer left and after a bit we started again with Peter and changed our name to National Heroes. By then we realised that four-minute songs sucked and we made a conscious effort not to repeat any verses or to really hammer choruses. Basically we get bored repeating structures of "pop" songs, but conversely we love playing long, seven-minute plus structureless jams. Can are one of my favourite bands, and we aspire to that approach sometimes.
Two cassette tapes preceded their LP, the first a self-titled release from a couple of years back which is now chiefly notable for the inclusion of an early version of the LP cut "Greek Island Chaos" and a great, otherwise unreleased, number entitled "Flamenco Butterfly"; that, and Hardcoremellow (originally put out by the Traumatone label in August '94) which features one side of acoustic material and one side of longer....
		structureless songs. Of these, "All My Circles are Ovals" appeared on the LP. I think of this tape as more of a companion to the LP whereas the earlier one now sounds dated a bit. Hardcoremellow is also about to be re-released by an American tape label.
Both cassettes are available from Theme Park, and a further collection provisionally entitled The Cool Sound of The Scene has yet to be compiled, although one song which has already been pencilled in is National Heroes' version of that-man-again's "Southern Man". I asked Bill whether Neil Young wasn't becoming a bit of a permanent reference point for the band.		Yeah, and there's also about five new songs which are if anything more Neil Young than anything on the LP.
Okay. Having listened to the LP three or four times a day for the past couple of weeks I still can't better a scribbled note I made the very first time I heard it: their best stuff sounds like Crazy Horse performing Flaming Lips material, an absurd thought perhaps but try playing "Decadence" and then "Five Stop Mother Superior Rain" back to back and you'll see what I mean. Furthermore, the band's songs are as good as any I've heard this past few months, "The Last Day of Summer" [a title lifted from a short story by Ian McEwan, although the song, which is basically about growing older, bears no resemblance to the original tale] being a short stroke of genius that to me cries out to be a single - although it isn't. Instead, "Fire and Explosion Research Group" has been chosen to represent the album on the band's latest 7" "The Beat Doctor", a record which, fittingly somehow, begins with a snatch of sitar noodling entitled "Beautiful Korma". You have to really get under the skin of the National Heroes to understand how apt it really is though. There's also some less spacious but none the less effective acoustic and semi-acoustic songs thrown into the pot, the best of which is the hauntingly honest "Emotional Cripple", and a couple of lengthy jams which have been pruned to fit the format, "Water Covers A Lot of The Earth's Surface" being one particularly effective example; enough bass to make a passing car flip over onto its roof and some precise percussion creating a thunderous backdrop to the feedback guitar codas. "You Can Do Anything" is another, this time with a beautifully rounded distorted guitar tone that's as sexy as Sally. One further interesting diversion is the lengthy (and instrumental, aside from repetitive chants of title) "All My Circles are Ovals", a song which grows from a trembling electric guitar passage into a roaring nine-headed Hydra and then sinks back into the water again with nary a glance over its shoulder: if pressed I'd have to say it owes a great deal to Galaxie 500, but then again nobody's pressing me to say anything about the National Heroes at all. I just happen to like 'em.
	The LP is a collection of songs recorded mainly over a six month period, although the oldest dates back to March 1993. We are quite a prolific band, playing and recording at least once a week. Last Saturday we recorded a cover of a Tall Dwarves song "Life Is Strange" for a guy in France who is doing a tribute LP. Do a lot of our songs come across as broken hearted love songs? I'm not sure they are. I did notice that they all seem to be about loss. I don't think I could write an "up" song. This sad stuff just seems to come out. There's a new one entitled "Good Looking Manic Depressive" which probably won't do much to change people's perception. "Emotional Cripple" is half about me, half about other people in general. It's probably guilt... one girl thought I was the one for her but I was too "on another planet" and I think I disappointed her. Maybe I should send her a copy of the LP with a note saying "look, I got a song out of that confusion. By the way, I'm sorry..."

Written, produced and directed by Phil, © Ptolemaic Terrascope June 1995. With thanks to Russell Hill, and to our Hero for the moment, Bill Dunmore.

Go Back to the Table of Contents