The Magic Numbers

26 | September 18, 2014 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News

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THE HEADLINER: MUSIC

The Magic Numbers are back! It feels like 2005 all over again. Except now it’s fourth album time, and, lead singer Romeo Stodart tells ELLA WALKER, they’ve changed quite a bit

Editor: Ella Walker email: ella.walker@cambridgenews.co.uk

The Magic Numbers:

“Bowling is the only sport you can do with a drink in your hand”

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HOT TICKETS WHAT’S The Magic Numbers, CambridgeON Junction, Saturday, September 20 WHAT’S ON HOT TICKETS at 7pm. Tickets £16 from (01223) HOT TICKETS WHAT’S ON 511511 / cornex.co.uk.

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THE HEADLINER: MUSIC

What are you listening to?

I really like that War on Drugs album, I think that’s really good. And I discovered this guy called Peter Walker, he made this obscure album (Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms?), doing these improvisations on his guitar. It’s kinda weird but it’s really good, I’m really loving it.

I

T’S amazing what can come from having a crush.

You kinda fancy a girl, start making that known, her brother doesn’t kick up too much of a fuss, and before long you’ve joined forces, written a Mercury Music Prize-nominated album and become darlings of indie-pop with happy-golucky hooks.

Well, that’s what happened to The Magic Numbers anyway.

Siblings Michele and Romeo Stodart grew up in Trinidad before moving to New York to escape a coup, and then wound up in Hanwell, London, where Romeo met Angela Gannon, developed said crush and bonded with her older brother Sean over a joint love of Guns N’ Roses. They formed The Magic Numbers in 2002 with Michelle on bass, Angela on melodica and percussion, Sean on drums and Romeo on vocals and guitar, and have stuck together ever since.

In fact, even on rare days off when they’re meant to be recovering for the next round of shows (which never happens: “you’re like ‘we’ve got a day off tomorrow so let’s cane it all night insanely!’”), they still end up hanging out at the bowling alley: “None of us are bowling champions but it’s the only sport you can do with a drink in your hand.”

We speak not on a day off sadly, but on the eve of rehearsals for the band’s tour promoting new album Alias, and Romeo sounds surprisingly laid back about, well, everything. “It’s been cool, it’s been good actually,” he drawls contentedly. “We’ve done a few festivals and we played quite a few of the new songs. It’s been going well.”

The band did a brief acoustic tour at the end of last year as a preview designed to tentatively share a few new tracks, followed by a tour of Europe supporting Neil Young, but this autumn – including a Cambridge Junction stop – is the first time the new album is going to get a proper airing.

“I think people will be surprised when they listen to it,” says Romeo, admitting the record doesn’t have the same feel as their early, much-loved singles Forever Lost and Love Me Like You. But: “for me we’ve finally captured the sound of the band – when we play live, that energy. It’s definitely our best record for sure. I think the song writing has stepped up. I mean, you would hope when you’re making the fourth album you’re getting better and better at what you do.”

Even the fourth time around though – particularly after the tepid responses to their last two albums, Those The Broke and The Runaway – it must have been nerve-wracking when they first started sharing some of the songs? “Yeah, it always is because you’re in your own world doing your thing,” he agrees. “The first time you invite a few friends into the studio, have a few drinks, say check this out, you can tell the reaction straightaway. Also, when you listen to things with someone in the room, you start hearing the things you don’t like about it so you can improve them.

“It’s always good I think [having other peoples’] ears in mind, but the reactions throughout have been really cool.”

Has he got a favourite song to perform off it yet, or is it still too

soon? “We’re still working through them all, but I think Shot In The Dark, because we get to wig out a bit more than usual, it’s good to rock out. That one’s been getting longer and longer every time we play it!”

Official reviews so far have been mixed though. Online music magazine The Line of Best Fit said: “Alias is by no means a bad album – on the contrary, it highlights the maturity and progression of four highly talented and much loved

British musicians – but it’s just not that fun,” while Q magazine called it: “A real jewel from an underestimated band. ” The Magic Numbers started out playing harmony driven indie pop that frothed with jangling guitars and easy-going hooks. And people loved it. Their self-titled 2005 debut sold more than 700,000 copies and was nominated for the Mercury Prize circa The Kaiser Chiefs and Hard-Fi (remember them? In the end Anthony

SURPRISE IN STORE: The Magic Numbers say this tour, which includes a date at The Junction, will be the first time their new album, Alias, will get a proper airing

‘I think people will be surprised when they listen to it. For me we’ve finally captured the sound of the band – when we play live, that energy’

28 | September 18, 2014 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News

THE HEADLINER: MUSIC

and the Johnsons won. Um, where are they now?), and Love Me Like You can still elicit the odd tingle. The intervening records were less lucid – although you can’t argue with the soft jauntiness of I See You, You See Me – and passed many an ear by. Alias is definitely more solid; more alive (we’re ignoring the weird disco vibe on E.N.D.).

This change in sound and their development as a band has been deliberately reflected in the album’s title. “I wanted it to imply a kind of new thing for the group. A new identity,” says Romeo, pausing. “A lot of the songs are about coming to terms with the fact you can surprise yourself, that there are different versions of you: if you’re around different people you react differently,

and when you’re on your own you’re someone else.”

Much of this soul searching, this working out of who you are, and realising you can squeeze a multitude of personas, feelings and identities in under your skin – as well as on to an 11-track CD – comes from the fact Romeo has recently become a father.

“It’s been a real life-changer in the most positive way,” he says of his son (also called Romeo). “He’s made my life so much more meaningful, really.

I was lost before.”

Large chunks of the record were also prompted by a pretty harrowing break up. It must be tough getting up on stage and reliving those emotions, raw and exposed, on stage every night. “Yeah, sometimes it can be difficult,” Stodart muses. “When

I’m feeling reflective or down, that’s when I will go to the piano or pick up a guitar and start writing, to get things out of your system almost. So when you’re playing live and playing those songs, sometimes if you switch off from even thinking about the show it can be quite emotionally draining.

But when you see the crowd it becomes like ‘oh ok, these songs are everybody’s songs’. But I think they need to come from that place to be honest, for me anyway, to be singing them.”

Other than the potential emotional trauma of touring, is of course the potential emotional trauma of touring with family… surely the four of them must be getting into sibling scraps constantly? “Ha. On tour it’s actually kinda fun because we really

What have you got planned next?

“There’s talk of us going back out with Neil Young in America.”

do get on – the four of us,” Romeo says diplomatically before laughing.

“Shaun and Angela, they’re like a fridge buzzing, they’re just constantly bickering like 24/7, like just total shutdown, so it’s really funny, but there’s never any malice or anything in it.

“Myself and Michelle, it can get quite heated sometimes. She can just throw me a look, or somehow I’ve thrown her a look without even knowing I have! On the road we’re all just up for having a good time, drinking and playing, but in the studio it can be really intense between me and my sister because it’s a high pressured thing.

“We’re committing something that will live forever, so you want it to be right.”