Schooled in the art of darkness
wonderful world of The Horrors
It’s been hard to miss garage revivalists The Horrors lately. Propelled by furious, cut-up surf riffs, and enough eyeliner to blacken a small lorry, they certainly provide ample talking points. The band are already bored waiting in their darkened tour van when I arrive. I ask how they met. organist Rhys (aka Spider) explains something about them meeting in Southend. Lead singer Faris slowly begins to bang his head on the table. “I thought we met at the fairground.
I thought we met at the butcher’s. I thought we met in the doctor’s surgery.” Faris doesn’t usually say much. In the uphill struggle for recognition in the music business, polarising your audience’s opinion is one way to garner attention. Despite the numerous cynical naysayers dismissing them as style over substance chancers, legions of rapidly- gathered fans are emerging. with their dogged loyalty, identical sense of dress and newly discovered love of 60s garage.
Is it a case of astounding the kids who aren’t old enough to have seen, say, Iggy Pop back in the heyday? “That’s exactly it,” agrees Faris nonchalantly in a rare committal of opinion, glancing up from his sketchbook in which he doodles incessantly for the duration of the interview. “The kids who come and see us are galvanised in the same way that people who experienced punk for the first time were. It’s about the excitement and energy that so few other bands have at the moment.
?? Whatever their secret weapon, it landed them a major record contract within seven months of their first rehearsal. How did it happen so quickly? Rhys is ambiguous. “I think it’s kind of a breath of fresh air for the industry on one side, and the audience on the other, and that’s why we had this reaction in such a short space of time,” he says.
So as a band with such a striking image and a sound so knowingly obscure, do they find that people at their shows are on the band’s wavelength? “To be honest,” offers Rhys, “the people that we meet aren’t familiar with the bands who influence us at all. “The subject matter of our songs is quite different to what’s going on at the moment because we just have very different ideas to the people being forced down your throat lately.
The whole social realism thing that seems to be quite the trend is just not something that we’re interested in.” There’s a real sense of hostility tonight, with Faris not so much playing with the audience as assaulting them, swiping the crowd with his paint-smeared hand • some, indignant at being defiled or shoved around, flee to the other side of the room.
Rhys’ organ screams alongside gritty guitars while deep, raspy vocals bark relentlessly from, well, nobody’s sure, because Faris is somewhere in the crowd, weaving his mic cable in and out of the swathes of bemused teenagers. Climbing back onto the stage, he pulls on it and trips up twenty or so entangled audience members, now also covered in paint. Looking behind me, the faces are overwhelmingly indifferent or, worse, amused • to some, The Horrors are a novelty.
Yes, some are loving every minute, but the awe that took the room hostage at their early London gigs is tellingly absent. As The Horrors make their exit, I overhear one confused couple discuss the set: “Well, that was…interesting.
2nd Nov 2006