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Last update: November 2005 |
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LOGO New Music Features: No, not just a girl, Helene is a band...I have a confession to make, I'm in love. Helene touches me on a level like no other has done for too long a time; makes me think hard about things, about what I really want, about how sometimes the world can be a harsh but still beautiful place. Helene forces me through the gamut of human emotions, one minute bringing a smile across my lips, the next brushing it away with a scowl. What? No, not a girl this time, Helene is a band. Actually, Helene is a girl - a woman - but Helene the band also number Graham Gargiulo, Ian Carter, Annemarie Newman, James Corner and, frequently, Magoo's Owen Turner; it's Helene the band that I'm in love with. Rising from the ashes of cult 'indie folk country blues rock' combo Barefoot Contessa in 2001, Helene is built around the songwriting duo of its eponymous vocalist and singing-guitarist Gargiulo - an electric, kinetic, often strained pairing that frequently threatened to steal the limelight of their previous band. In 2000 Helene, Graham, Ian and James released 'Oh, The Sweet Power', their fourth and - though they didn't realise it at the time - final album under the Barefoot Contessa banner. When Global Warming (who'd released the band's 1999 'Blues For A Honey' LP) suggested the band retire to Norfolk to record with Magoo guitarist Owen Turner as producer, no-one involved realised quite where they were heading. "Barefoot Contessa kind of melded into Helene around the summer of 2001," explains Helene the person. "It was around that time that we started rehearsing and performing some songs which were a bit different to the Barefoot things, so we thought a new name was appropriate." Those songs slowly evolved into 'Postcard', Helene's beguiling full length debut, released to little fanfare - ecstatic ravings from Radio 1's Mark and Lard aside - last year. Pressed on the differences between the two bands, Helene is at a loss to explain exactly where Barefoot ends and Helene, the band, begins. "It's hard to say what the differences are, because they were and are mainly accidental or incidental - organic, I would say. Perhaps the Barefoot stuff was a bit more generic, more country, blues and folk-oriented - though a lot less than we were given credit for - but that may just be because people will always want to stick a label on you. We feel a lot more free with Helene, we can do pretty much anything we want, and I think that's reflected in the fact that we don't seem to have been labelled or pigeonholed or ghettoised just yet." She's right, of course; to try and label Helene's alternately seductive and abrasive mix of blues and country and Godknowswhatelse would take a better man than I. Opening with the slide guitar-filled 'Big Talker' ("one of my favourite sounds"), 'Postcard' contains 12 gut-wrenching songs of such emotional intensity it leaves the listener physically drained at the end of its near hour-long duration. Enveloped in regret ('Where Do You Go To When You Disappear'), desperation ('Peanuts') and even fleeting thoughts of murder ('Murder Can Be Necessary'), it's certainly not going to stop the tongue-wagging surrounding Helene's personal life. "I'm the type of writer who definitely writes from within the tradition of self-mythology. I think that is somewhat different to the confessional singer-songwriter who tends to be much more specific and perhaps a bit verbose," she explains. "I don't mean that to sound conceited or pompous. I do tend to use my own experiences and thoughts and feelings as a springboard for self-expression, but a lot of the time I'm not even aware that certain themes and words will repeat themselves over time. It's an organic thing really, but I accept that I do seem to use music as a conduit, an outlet, for dealing with things." She is understandably coy when questioned about what the band's own biography describes as her 'complex emotional and personal history'. "I'm not exactly comfortable talking about stuff," she explains tentatively. "Though I am more prepared to at least broach it, if only because I did four albums with Barefoot Contessa and yet, let's face it, I barely did an interview, I rarely played a gig, I barely left the house. Really though, it's only because the band started when I was 18 and I really wasn't prepared for all the attendant responsibilities that seemed to come along with writing and releasing some songs." When pressed, she'll concede that: "To be brutally frank, for much of that time I wasn't particularly well, so I missed a lot of time. I wasn't really there and I think it was very frustrating for Graham and all the other people who came and went in the band. But I would say things have changed substantially for me in the last year or so. Certain things have happened and I feel I've woken up out of a long old sleep." "I'd say that there was one thing in particular that influenced 'Postcard', but I'm not prepared to talk about specifics as far as that's concerned," is all she'll offer when pressed on the matter. "The one thing I will say is that the period immediately prior to the recording of the album was very significantly the start of my waking up to myself." And we leave it at that. Whilst Helene may understandably be reticent to explain what has or has not happened in her personal life, it leaves her fans in something of an emotional quandary: on the one hand whatever has occurred has inarguably added something to 'Postcard' that makes you want to clasp it to your breast and never let go; but on the other, you'd never wish somebody to have to be ill, essentially, to provide you with entertainment. Of course, for me, it's not really a quandary at all: I love Helene, after all. Adrian Read (LOGO Magazine, May 2004) Postcard is available from Amazon, Tower and all good record stores. Essex Chronicle interview 2005. Fanzine interview 2003. |
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