Reichenbach Falls - Interview

  by John Clarkson

published: 14 / 12 / 2013

intro

John Clarkson chats to Abe Davies, the front man with Oxfordshire-based folk pop collective Reichenbach Falls about his band's debut album and break-up record, 'Reports of Snow'

“I was watching one of the new ‘Star Wars’ movies when it came onto TV last night, and it was kind of gross and bloated,” says Abe Davies, the front man with Reichenbach Falls. “I suppose it was fun in a way, but I was thinking about the original ‘Star Wars’ film which was made when they didn’t know whether or not it was going to be successful. They were doing it on a shoestring and finding interesting ways of cutting corners, and that is often how you get great stuff because you get people showing a bit of ingenuity and going, ‘Well, we can’t do this. How we can do this? What can we do that doesn’t involve endless amounts of money and helicopters and computer effects?’” Davies, who was raised in England but is of Canadian heritage, formed Reichenbach Falls when, after having lived also in Spain and Scotland, he moved to Oxford three years ago. He is speaking to Pennyblackmusic about his band’s video for his song ‘Risky’ and their just released debut album, ‘Reports of Snow’, both of which were made on a bare bones budget. A break-up album, ‘Reports of Snow’ captures all the heartache and the confusion that comes when a romance reaches an end. It, however, also moves far beyond this, and, with poetic literacy and a naked honesty, describes the sado-masochism that can often evolve between people in the dying days of a relationship. ‘Reports of Snow’ is also embedded with occasional sharp flashes of dark humour. Despite being recorded on next to nothing, ‘Reports of Snow’, which is a folk pop record, has a surprising richness and lushness of sound. Out of financial necessity Davies, who plays guitar and sings, currently runs Reichenbach Falls as a floating collective with himself as its only permanent member. An indication of how highly he is regarded by his fellow musicians, ‘Reports of Snow’, however, also features a large assortment of other Oxford and also London-based musicians including Rufus Thurston on backing vocals, percussion and keyboards; Richard Neuberg (Viarosa) on guitars, mandolin and backing vocals; Ben Walker (Candy Says, Little Fish) on keyboards; Robert McHardy (Viarosa) on guitar; Mike de Albuquerque (guitar, bass, keyboards); Joe Bennett (The Dreaming Spires) on bass and guitar and Nick Simms (Viarosa, Cornershop) on drums. The album was co-produced by Neuberg in his home studio in Oxford with Thurston, who is a work colleague of Davies and has played in various Oxford bands, and de Albuquerque, whose father Michael was the Electric Light Orchestra’s original bassist between 1972 and 1974. ‘Reports of Snow’ also has a tautness. One keeps expecting an explosion to come, but it never quite does so, tightening further its depiction of the claustrophobia and the tension of the fading romance. The video for ‘Risky’ was shot in one continuous take. It reveals a devastated Davies walking through the streets of Jericho in Oxford, oblivious as a dancer flails herself wildly around him, then a girl in a billowing veil stuck up a tree waves frantically for help, and finally a man sitting on the wall beside the road sinisterly strokes a shotgun. In one of his first interviews Pennyblackmusic spoke to Abe Davies about ‘Reports of Snow’. PB: ‘Reports of Snow’ is a very bleak reflection on romance… AD: Yes, it is (Laughs). I wrote the majority of the album in a month. Six of the nine complete full songs were written soon after I moved to Oxford. It is always funny moving to a new city, and there was a break-up involved. I had written the remaining songs on the album in the year before that, and they seemed to fit together pretty well. I was a huge fan of albums like Ryan Adams’ ‘Heartbreaker’ and Josh Rouse’s ‘Under the Cold Stars’. I always thought that they were both really beautiful break-up records. What I wanted this album to have was a story. It doesn’t have a clear narrative or anything like that, but I hope that it is an album that people will sit down and listen to as a piece. PB: Do you see this album then at one level as a concept album? AD: Yes, I do. It is a very loose concept album. It took a while to make because we had money problems. We were working with Richard Neuberg, who gave us a great deal and was incredibly generous with his time, but we had to do it at a slower pace than we would have liked just to make sure that we didn’t go into too much credit card debt. As the year went by that we worked on it, I wrote a lot more songs, so the temptation was to add this one or that one, but we made a real conscious decision to leave them off. I really wanted it to be songs from that period that were all tied together. Yeah, it is a concept album of sorts. PB: A lot of the songs seem to be about a relationship which has become sado-masochistic. Do you see it that way? You start out on the opening track ‘Drink and Drive’ by singing, “Somehow I have become another victim of her/She is another way to drink and drive,” and on ‘Risky’ you sing, “I tell myself I like rejection/But I can’t take anymore.” AD: It is true, for sure (Laughs). That second line from ‘Risky’, however, is also me poking fun at myself. It is at one level a sad song. When you are into the kind of music that I am, it feels good to be sad sometimes. That line was a bit of dark humour. That was me saying to myself, “Well, I asked for that really. I really like being sad, but now I don’t like it anymore” (Laughs). PB: The video for ‘Risky’ is fantastic. How did the idea for that video come together? AD: Well, as these things often are, that had quite a lot to do with necessity being the mother of invention. I know this guy called Ben Johnston, who is a really accomplished video artist but he is still at this stage relatively unknown. I went to him and said, “We would really like to do a video. We don’t have any budget, but it would be great for your portfolio. You can do what you want. You can come up with the idea, and if I hate it we won’t do it.” So, he came up with this idea where we filmed it at double speed and then slowed it down to half speed. You have this peculiar effect where everything is in slow motion except for my mouth. Ben also scouted around and found the location for the video in Jericho. Michael de Albuquerque’s wife is a dancer, and it is her that is the dancing girl at the beginning. Then the guy with the gun at the end of the video is Michael himself. PB: Did you actually shoot it in one shot? AD: Yeah, it was done in one shot. In fact we rehearsed it a couple of times, and we did three takes at it and picked that one. We got everyone down into Jericho by eleven ‘o’ clock in the morning and we were done by one ‘o’ clock. It was great fun to do, but it was very cold. The girl up the tree in the veil had been up there for quite a while, and I think another half an hour and she might not have been with us (Laughs). PB: ‘Stay Home, Elizabeth’ has got the line of “You are safer on your own” in it. What did you mean by that? AD: That picks up on the point you made about sado-masochism. I am always reminded of Smog and Bill Callahan when I sing that line. ‘Red Apples Fall’ is my favourite Smog album, and it has got a beautiful song on it called ‘Blood Red Bird’. There is a line on it that says, “We continually tear into each other/Ripping off another piece as we move away.” And I think that is so true. For all the really good stuff that everybody at first gets out a relationship, when it is ending we end up really losing a lot from it as well. That is what that line on ‘Stay home, Elizabeth’ is about. It is fantastic at first, but then you get to a point where you are more hurting than benefitting each other. PB: The track on the album that comes after that is ‘In the Wreckage’. It finds you in the aftermath of this romance which has gone terribly wrong and looking back on it. It ends with the lyric of “It’s a miracle.” Are you saying “It’s a miracle” because there were good things in it once, however badly they have gone wrong? AD: That line was not in the original song. When I was recording it with Richard and Rufus Thurston in the studio, we had this instrumental outro, which now has the singing over it, and we thought, “Maybe it needs something else,” so I wrote these other lines. That line is pretty mysterious in its full meaning, even to me and I wrote it (Laughs). I like it though because it seems very forlorn to me. It is almost as if he has found something in the wreckage. It also reminds me of the end of ‘King Lear’ as well, where Lear’s daughter Cornelia is dead but Lear is going mad trying to get her to breathe. He is holding up a mirror to her mouth because he is convinced that he can still hear her breathing, even though she is clearly dead. On ‘In the Wreckage’ it is like he is also trying to breathe new life into something that is gone. PB: When you started Reichenbach Falls, you began by borrowing musicians from other projects on a temporary basis. Are you any nearer a permanent line-up these days? A lot of the musicians who appear on this album have played in other bands - Cornershop, Little Fish, Candy Says, Viarosa. Are they the current line-up of the band? How easy it getting them together for rehearsals and gigs? AD: Most of the Reichenbach Falls shows involve just me, but I do the occasional thing with Ben Walker from Little Fish and Candy Says. He plays piano and organ, and I have played a couple of shows with Joe Bennett who pays bass and guitar, but it is very much up in the air. It has to be. To be a full-time musician and make a living, you have to be involved in a lot of projects. You have just got to be realistic, I think. Other things are going to come up, especially when you’re in a smaller band and other people might play in other bands that might do a bigger tour than you and that is going to help them pay the mortgage. Once the record was almost done and it was just a matter of finishing it off and mixing it and mastering it. I spent quite a lot of time trying to get a permanent band together last year, but it didn’t work out. We had a fantastic drummer, but he was Italian and because of family stuff he had to return home. We also had a great guitarist who had to move again for family reasons. I have a decent amount of songs now and I know how to put a decent solo show together, so it seems to me now that that should the basis. If something comes up, and I think that would be nice to get other people involved, I will call the guys and see if it is free and if it is do-able. I have always got that basic option, of doing something solo. That way I don’t have to turn anything down and I have got it covered. If we decide it would be fun to do a duo, trio or whatever, then that option might also be there too. PB: ‘Reports of Snow’ is being released on Observatory Records. Is that your own label? AD: Yeah, it is just my own label. Realistically it is very tough to get on a label, especially in the current climate. It would have taken a really long time I think to find a label, and I didn’t want to wait any longer to get the record out. PB: How is ‘Reports of Snow’ going to be available? AD: It is going to be available through Bandcamp primarily. Distribution is all a little beyond me. Making the records and having a day job precludes the amount of time I can do on that, so it will available either digitally or on the CD through Bandcamp. It will also be available in record stores in Oxford. At the moment the CD is just available in a cardboard sleeve. I would love at some point to do a full pack with a booklet with the lyrics in, but at the moment it is too expensive to do that. PB: Reichenbach Falls shows have so far been confined to largely Oxford and London. Are you planning to do more shows nationally now that the album is out? AD: Yeah. Again the limitation is just having time and money. I have played as a solo act a few festivals. The furthest North I got was Derbyshire and a festival called the Why Not? Reichenbach Falls will also be playing a couple of dates with the American singer-songwriter, Chris Mills. He is one of my favourite songwriters. He is criminally neglected in my view, and has just crowd funded his new record. He will be touring here in February. He is doing a little European tour, and I am just over the moon that Reichenbach Falls is going to be open for him at his Oxford and Brighton shows. PB: Final question. Are you working on a second album now? Will that be in a different or a similar direction to ‘Reports of Snow’? AD: I am still deciding at the moment (Laughs). Over the eighteen months since we recorded this one, I have written a lot of new songs, and have got probably two albums worth. I have done a bit of recording with the guys from Little Fish and Candy Says and that is in a really different direction. It is still recognisable as Reichenbach Falls, but it is more homemade and quirky. I love the record that we have made and having all these virtuosic players. That was amazing, but it has also been fun to see what you can do with some feet tapping and a shaker. If I can get the money together, I would definitely like as well to get the same guys together who did this one and just record another ten songs or twenty or whatever. I am just deciding now what approach to take and the direction to go in. PB: Thank you.

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