Noel & lads play in Key
FINE-TUNED COLLAB WITH ROCKERS
RISING rockers are keeping success in the family – by getting singer Lily Fontaine’s mum to help design their artwork.
Artist Gillian Fontaine-Grist has worked on the Leeds band’s singles design and created the cover of their debut album This Could Be Texas.
Lily told me: “All of the covers have been painted by my mum, but we design them collectively.
“It’s special that the art has Mum to tie everything in.”
Many of the album’s lyrics were inspired by
Gillian too: “I was mainly raised by Mum and we’re very close.
“Writing about her was unintentional but, when someone mentioned that I keep mentioning ‘Mum’ in my lyrics, I realised they were right.
“A lot of the album is about notions of home and Mum is an interesting subject to write about.”
IT’S tough teaching old dogs new tricks – especially when that dog is Noel Gallagher.
But rock duo The Black Keys achieved that on their new LP Ohio Players, which features an appearance by the former Oasis man.
Drummer Patrick Carney recalled: “We kept hearing, ‘Noel doesn’t collaborate like that.’
“But my neighbour was the Oasis booking agent for about 15 years. I was golfing with him one day and I said, ‘We’re trying to reach Noel.’ He said, ‘I could drop him a line.’
“A couple of days later, we heard back from Noel that he’d give it a try if we came to London.
“We got on really well creatively. It was seamless working with him.
“Noel said, ‘I’ve never written a song with other people in the studio,’ so we popped his cherry in that regard. That was surprising to me that he hadn’t done that – it’s pretty much how we make most of our music.
“Noel would usually write the chords and lyrics himself then bring it to the band and do it like that. I always make it up on the spot.”
Perhaps there’s a chance for that Noel and Liam song-writing collab after all, one day!
One Noel track, On The Game, features on the Keys’ album, but there could be more to come.
Patrick added: “We got a song on the first day and we got a song on the second day and we got a song on the third day – a whole take.
“On the fourth day we went into the studio and just kinda f***ed around – we didn’t want to push it.
“We already had so much great s**t, if we ended it with a bad song it was just going to ruin the experience.”