11 - 1997 / Select

Interview by Andrew Perry

The Pastels' greatest fans - Nirvana, Teenage Fanclub, Belle and Sebastian etc - are always more famous than you. Is that some kind of artistic validation?

"Yeah, that's what I tell my landord... But no, not particularly. We have been helped by those people, but the style of our music has changed a lot. A lot of people now percieve us as being part of something - C86 - that to be honest we were pretty dubious about to begin with. We definitely feel like contenders now. We're going to New York tomorrow!"

'Illumination' laments the lot of the outsider. 'Unfair Kind of Fame' is about low budget movie visionary Ed Wood...

"We stand in favour of the underdog. It seems like there's so much irony just now, and people who are prepared [ I think afraid was the word JK] to really go out there and do something that's different from everything else - people'll just laugh at them. Ed Wood's films were pretty rudimentary but in other ways, they were really quite far ahead of their time, in terms of cut-up techniques and collaging. To me that's like the Primal Scream album"

Musically you use more than just guitar bass and drums these days...

"You can't keep making the same record over and over again. We're really anti-complacent, we're eager to keep learning. That doesn't happen very often with pop music. Film makers like Bunuel made their best films when they were in their 70s. Same with Miles Davis. We're trying to leave more space and learn from electronic records and jazz records."

But is vocal training still off the agenda?

"I personally think my voice is pretty expressive. People say I sound like Edwyn Collins with a throat infection, but I feel that the lp is in tune. I know on certain records in the past I wasn't in tine, and I could point the parts out to you where I lost it. In fact I'm sure you could find them for yourself. I'm really pleased with the vocals on this record. It sounds in tune to me, anyway..."