11-1991 / Melody Maker / The Pastels by Everett True (extracts)

(...) The first ep, the delightfully chaotic "Speedway Star", which also includes a version of Daniel Johnston's "Speeding Motorcycle", was released a month ago. The second "Thru' Your Heart", a collection of torching ballads, is out any day now. Both have been made Maker Single Of The Wekk. "Speedway Star" even reached that hallowed status in Speedway Star, the bible for Speedway racing fans. "It was a really charming piece about how we attended the Speedway in Glasgow", Stephen, the Pastels self confessedly introverted singer, reveals. "They quoted nearly the whole song and whished us luck, but the person who wrote it couldn't really figure it out. He thought the fact it had done well in Melody Maker meant we'd be on 'Top Of The Pops'." (...)
It seems strange you chose to include a song by Daniel Johnston (...)
"He's one of the most beautiful, honest and affected songwriters I've ever heard. (...) And I love teh melodies in his songs. I can slip into a song like 'Speeding Motorcycle' really easily and feel a part of it. He's so undervalued and it's so sad."
So "Speedway Star" is a concept single all about motor-racing. But isn't the new single also conceptual too? All the songs are very, very sad. Stephen disagrees.
"It's not sad, it's gutsy," he says.(...)
"Firebell Ringing is a funny song (...) It was written on a train to London. Aggi and I were sitting across from this mother who was keeping her kid entertained drawing this elaborate picture of a kitchen with a happy wee family. She'd pass it onto him and he'd go, 'Mum, the kitchen's on fire!' and start drawing flames, or 'Mum's the chip pan's on fire!' and so on."
"The ultimate one," Aggi adds, "was when she drew a fire station and all these firemen coming to put out the flames, and he went, 'Mum, the fireman's on fire!'. So we wanted to incorporate the idea of everything catching fire into a song."
Why did you choose to include the (bedroom) demo version of "Thru' Your Heart" (...)?
"It was to prove great songs are great songs, however they're recorded," Stephen explains."I wanted to contrast well recorded studio stuff with bedroom stuff to show that poetry can exist anywhere. I like things that cover the spectrum."
(...)
Multi-instrumentalist Katrina joined her favourite band after strategically leaving some instruments lying round her room when Stephen and Aggi came to visit. She managed to convince them she could play every instrument under the sun, including bagpipes and tuba. Before she heard The Pastels, she'd never even listen to independent music.
"She gave us a pretty unconvincing performance on the trombone one time," Stephen comments. "Considering how good she was meant to be on the tuba." (...)
"The past two years have been very difficult for us," Stephen says. "We hadn't put out any records and we had no idea whether anyone would still like us when we finally did. But we carried on, because we really believed in what we were doing, and we were doing it for ourselves."
(...)
"The main reason for the conventions was that we didn't have a band at the time", Stephen explains."But we wanted to carry on existing and communicating, so we thought we could play music in rooms. The one when Jad played in Pat's pantry was my favourite show of the year, alongside Primal Scream at Barrowlands. It was just so intense, he played with so much passion and the acoustics were great. Even if that was the only thing we'd done, it would have been worth it."
A fanzine followed, something Stephen has always been in favour of without liking that many, because, as he puts it, "they're either apologetic, or the writers view them as a stepping stone towards writing for the MM or NME."
(...) As Stephen puts it : "When you play on stage it's got to really burn, it's got to have that intensity or it's nothing.
"Sometimes, I wonder if it's all that different from looking into a Viewfinder," he muses. Unaffected, pure music. That's The Pastels.