ARTICLES
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"I felt everything had changed too quickly, I was very homesick in London, I made some bad choices. Everyone has to experience things and I just experienced too much of too many things." [Lauren Laverne] 
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A year ago, KENICKIE were conquering the world in a blaze of glitter and witty one-liners. Since then, nothing. We met up with them in a posh restaurant and found out about their new 'mature' direction and those Marie/Einstein comparisons. "Will you get off my breasts?" Good Lord. You join us in a swanky restaurant, in a very swish hotel, at the exact moment that the assembled well-to-do matrons and deal-clinching businessmen spit out their afternoon liveners in horror, the air of understated luxury well and truly shattered by three grappling young ladies. They are of course, Kenickie - one time Best New Pop Group in Britain, now simply the best - who have brought us here to celebrate their new "sophisticated" image and "grown up" musical direction by, erm, getting bevvied on fine wines, scoffing a frankly unnecessary amount of asparagus and cuddling up close for a Maker photo session. Rather too close, in Lauren Laverne's case. "This is sexual harrassment!" protests Emmy-Kate Montrose. "Sexual harrassment at work," points out Marie du Santiago, helpfully. "Disgusting!" mutters a passing posh bloke. Ah, but who is the real sick (wo)man in this so-called society? Is it the mildly inebriated pop star who breaches the peace in fancy restaurants with a little pseudo-Sapphic horseplay? Or is it the businessman, in his suit and tie, swigging afternoon cocktails with his "clients" and, er, heading straight for us actually. Gulp. "What on earth is going on?" "Er, we're just doing some pictures for Melody Maker." "My daughters read that. Are you famoud or just starting out? Should I be asking for your autographs now or later?" "Ask for them when we're dead," quips Lauren. "They'll be worth a lot more then." Well and truly Kenickied, the businessman beats a signature-less retreat. Alas, one fears he will regret his lack of persistence long before Ms Laverne is in her grave. Because, this time around, Kenickie are but a 60p bus fare away from immensefame and fortune. In the meantime, however, they're all dressed up and in desperate need of somewhere to go... A short cab ride later and we are happily holed up in Leauren's delightfully kitsch East End pad (Fairy lights! Anita Dobson records! An actual, proper bar!), but the "All dressed up and nowhere to go" poser still rankles. After all, ever since they gatecrashed the post-Britpop party in a haze of spangles, glittery eye-shadow and ill-advised vodka consumption, we've been able to rely on Keinckie to paint-splash some pop glamour over a grey T-shirted indie-world. But while their unrepentantly trashy singles and fabulously witty interviews endeared them to anyone with a romantic's heart and an intellectual's brain, the cynics refused to take them seriously. They were (sniff!) young, they were (ugh!) gurls, they had (yuck!) fun... what could they possibly know of real life? Of suffering? Of art, godammit? Well, plenty as it happens, as anyone who actually bothered listening to their splendid "At the club" album - which veered from pure joy to utter despair, as only teenagers can - would know. But no, the cynics just marked their card as The Band Least Likely To Have A Gnawing Pit Of Despair Overshadowing Their Every Move, and waited for them to go away, so they could get on with the "serious" business of listening to Radiohead. And Kenickie, of course, did go away. In the year since they last appeared on The Maker cover, they've been through all the break-ups and breakdowns, bust-ups and drink-ups that accompany any passage from teenagerdom to adulthood (Lauren was 20 the day before yesterday, the other two will be soon), while simultaneously going through the usual Yoof experiences of travelling the world, moving to London, learning to drive and finally sorting their hair out. What is unusual, however, is that Kenickie have also found time to make a good second album, "Get In!", that, in the "seriousness" stakes, makes Thom Bloody Yorke look like That Bird Out Of Aqua. We've done a lot of ch-ch-ch-changing since the last record," says Marie. "Everyone does at our age. It's the 'leave home, buck your ideas up and do something with your life' period." "Exactly," agrees Lauren. "It's when you make sure you're doing what you want to do. And we realised we weren't. We'd been playing the same songs for two years and we were bored shitless with them." A situation that came to a head last summer, when EMI decided to re-release "Punka" as a single. The band felt they'd moved on from such thrashy beginnings, so its release, against their wishes, only added to the feeling they were going nowhere. "I had lots of new songs I'd rather have released," sighs Lauren. "But what really did my head in was the realisation that people didn't udnerstand us. I wrote 'Punka' to take the piss out of something, but I had some 16-year old kid coming up to me who'd carved that word into himself with a razor! And he expected me to be pleased! It felt like we'd been swept away by this big glittery monster that was really nothing to do with us. So we decided we'd had enough and that we shouldn't do the band anymore." Were you really that fed up with it? "Yeah," says Marie. "It's like if you work in an office and you type the same letter every day for two years. Eventually you just want to smash the typewriter over your head." Kenickie, however, weren't typing letters, they were writing ace pop songs. Which is why they're still with us today. "Basically," says Lauren, "We decided to record this album and see if it was any good. If it was, we'd keep going and if it wasn't, we'd split up." And, thankfully, everything turned out swimmingly. Just as well, too, otherwise we'd have been deprived of the first single off the album, the really rather beautiful "I Would Fix You". But scratch the surface of this eminently kissable pop tune and you'll find some heart-breakingly tragic lyrics. Listen to lines like "I'm in pieces/Does no one see it?" and "I am here to take it out on/I am strong to break your fists on" and it's clear there was more troubling Lauren than a few over-obsessed fans and an unhelpful record company. They sound, in fact, like breakdown lyrics. "Well, yes, I was very depressed," she admits. "I've always been a melancholic person, but this was different. Every 19-year-old has a time when they think 'What am I doing here?', but if you're on telly in America with everyone going, 'Tell us everything you know about everything ever!', it's bound to be a bit worse." What was making you depressed? "Oh, loads of things. I felt everything had changed too quickly, I was very homesick in London, I made some bad choices. Everyone has to experience things and I just experienced too much of too many things." Drugs? "No. Just too much...everything. I can't really talk about it. I was just really sad cos of the way my life was." Why don't you want to talk about it? "Well, I don't want this to be 'The Second Album: My Breakdown Interview'. I'm not arrogant enough to go, 'Let's talk about my depression', because everyone's got the same depth of emotion, everyone's got the same capacity for feeling." Well, yes, but people might be more surprised to discover someone like you - young, popular, god-looking - suffers from depression rather than, say, an "outsider" type, like Thom Yorke. "But it's a terrbile idea that Thom Yorke is so special because he wrote 'OK Computer' about what a f***-up he is. He's not a f***ing f***-up, he's a millionaire! And he's got no right! If he was working in some horrible, filthy factory earning 5p an hour, then he'd know what being miserable is about. And I'm sure I'd have been a lot f***ing worse if I was a single mom living on benefit. It's all about perspective and I've never forgotten that. So I'm not going to go on about it." Instead, Lauren decided to do something about it. She split up with her boyfriend and moved back to Sunderland. She stayed at her parents' house, wrote a load of songs with her brother Johnny X (absent today, but now "promoted" from drummer to guitarist/songwriter) about her life and decided that, this time around, she was going to do things her way. "Writing the album was really good cos it made me think, 'I've made something so good I don't have to feel shit any more.' I moved home and decided how I wanted to be, how I wanted the band to look. I wanted to get away from all that glitter and boys-in-eyeliner stuff." "I'm not getting away from boys in eyeliner!" squeals Emmy-Kate. And so, Romo-snogging differences aside, it is a new Kenickie we meet today. They turn up for the restaurant in varying degrees of spangle-free sophistication. Faced with a lack of vegetarian options, Lauren demands that the chef "creates me something!" Admittedly, she is then presented with three entirely asparagus-based courses in quick succession, but the point is, the new Kenickie aren't about to be pushed around by anyone. And they expect to be taken seriously by everyone. "It was too easy for people to pigeonhole us before," admits Emmy-Kate. "they could just go 'Funny bairns, like a laugh, from the north.' And it's like, yes, we do like a laugh and we do say funny things, but that is not the entire point, you bastards!" "It's as if, for the entirety of Einstein's life he'd had to put up with people coming up to him and saying, 'Hey, I like that photo of you with your tongue out! Hilarious!'," claims Marie. "And he'd be going 'But my theories...' 'No, your tongue's funnier! And your hair! It's mad, innit?' Er, not that I'm comparing myself to Einstein, obviously..." Obviously. But then, as Albert might say, it's all relative. If mopey old blokes can be hailed as rock genii, then why can't chirpy young lasses, especially when the chirpy young lasses in question have just made a brilliant album that includes everything from cocktail jazz ("Something's Got To Give") to shameless disco-boogie ("Stay in the Sun", soon to become an indie kids' "I Will Survive"). The question is more: who cares about all this "grown-up" business? You're only 19, for Christ's sake! "Well," ponders Emmy. "We're not saying, 'We've nothing left to learn, we are women now and we've done everything.'" "But we're not litle kids anymore," points out Lauren. "I remember coming down to London to do our first ever interview with you and you talking about how young we were and me thinking 'What is the big deal?' But we were little kids then. We were in awe of everything, because we'd just fallen into it. Whereas now we've discovered what we want to do and we're doing it." And no one should underestimate the accelerated lifestyle change Kenickie have been through. Some people can't even contemplate going straight from A-Levels to university without the comfort zone of a year out; Kenickie went from top of the form to "Top Of The Pops", a process Lauren gleefully describes as "f***ing mental". Child stars often complain of "missing out" on childhood. Do you ever feel like that about adolescence? "Oh no," says Emmy, "we've been to loads of good places and done loads of great stuff. The only time it's ever really struck me was when I went to visit a friend at university. She's really together, but some of her mates made me think I'd missed the whole 'being that age' thing." "Yeah," agrees Lauren. "And sometimes we meet fans who are the same age as us, but you just want to pinch their cheeks and go, 'You all right there, little bairn?'" Even with all the changes they've been through in the last year, however, Kenickie could still find themsleves strangers to the Zeitgiest. For a start, the new wave of teenage insurrection they inspired has fizzled out, leaving most of Britains top pop stars the "wrong" side of 30. "Well, yes" tuts Lauren, "but how can you dis them for being over 30, if they're making good records and the only alternative is Symposium. Well, f***ing great! Let's get rid of The Fall and listen to Symposium instead! Durr!!" OK, good point. But what about 1998's lack of glamour? Kenickie, like most of the best bands, put as much into the way they look as the way they sound. Most bands nowadays look like they've slept in their clothes. "Every band cares about image," protests Marie. You can't tell me Richard Ashcroft doesn't put on that leather jacket, look in the mirror and think, 'Heeeeey! I'm the Fonz!' They've just got their own idea of glamour, that's all." Fair enough. But you have to admit that 'avin a larf seems pretty low on most groups' agendas these days, whereas you always make being a pop star look like FUN with a capital everything. "Hmm," says Marie. "I suppose on the face of it, it is all miserable blokes, but then 'Barbie Girl' has been Number One as well. As long as we have The Verve and Aqua, it'll be fine." Cynics of the world, give up. Because, ultimately, wherever Kenickie fit in the current so-called "scene" - they rate Mogwai, Arab Strap and the Spice Girls, have no time for The Verve ("'Lucky Man' sounds like the sort of song you make up with your mom when you're little," spits Emmy) and say the first person to call them "the indie All Saints" will "be chinned" - we need them more than ever. Because, unlike that Britpop quislings who deliberately went out and made "difficult" albums, for Kenickie, personal depression doesn't lead to commercial suicide. "I hate bands who go, 'F*** you, our fans! We're going to put 20 minutes of feedback on our albumto teach you a lesson! You will listen to our inner rage!'," seethes Lauren. So "Get In!" isn't your "This Is Hardcore" to "At the Club's" "Different Class" then? "No," says Emmy firmly. "Because Pulp deliberately took all the pop ones off 'This Is Hardcore', whereas we've gone out of our way to make this more radio-friendly. We want bigger hits, not smaller ones!" Well, exactly. Their fan club already includes Shirley Manson and Courtney Love (who recently dubbed them "a big, raw-boned bunch of f***ing sex", whatever that's supposed to mean) and now they've finally added Radio 1 to their list of admirers, "I Would Fix You" should provide them with the smash hit they've always threatened. And when that happenes, the sort of lifestyle we've caught a glimpse of today - fancy restaurants, posh frocks, nervous waiters tolerating your outbreaks of Tourette's Syndrome - could be theirs for ever. Although, of course, according to their erstwhile record company boss - Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley, who famously declared they'd be millionaires by the time they were 20 - they should be there already. "Oh yeah," snorts Emmy. "Mystic Bob! He certainly consulted the runes on that one didn't he?" "I'm not a millionaire," states Lauren. "But I could be this time next year." "That's very 'Only Fools And Horses', isn't it?" giggles Marie, donning a preposterous Del Boy "cockney" accent. "Vis time next year, we'll be millionaires! Laverne, you plonk-ah!" One suspects dodgy deals down the "lock up" will not be necessary. They are, after all, Kenickie. Still dressed-up. Newly grown-up. And going all the way to the top. |
