New Model Army

As one of Britain’s most unique and misunderstood bands prepare for their 40th birthday, we talk to frontman Justin Sullivan.

Some groups record in the Bahamas or similar glamourous locations. Why did New Model Army visit the tiny Norwegian island of Giske to record their fifteenth record, From Here? We went there because it’s the most extraordinary studio in the world. I mean, look at the photos of the place. It’s so bleak and romantic. As a band we love bleak.

Interestingly, Classic Rock’s review described the album as “fascinatingly bleak and sparse”. Well, there you go then. But besides the landscapes, it’s a state-of-the-art studio. We wanted a record that sounded really big, with an ambient drum sound, and it was the right place to make it happen. Giske is like nowhere else on earth. On the last day we threw ourselves into the sea – it was the coldest water I’ve ever been in.

Do the album’s lyrics touch upon the current political unrest? No, not at all. Our last album, Winter [2016], was written before the European referendum and Trump. But we knew all of that shit was going to happen because we’d been singing about it for years. This time we made a very deliberate attempt not to get involved in what everybody’s screaming about. We took a step back and looked at the bigger picture, including being stuck on this fucking planet which we’re slowly destroying.

From Here reached No.13 in the official chart, which is the band’s highest placed album ever in Britain. Do such landmarks still carry any weight with you? Not really. As a young musician I used to talk about ‘making it’, whatever that means. What’s more important is making a living from it, and we crossed that line back in 1984. After that it really doesn’t fucking matter. I mean, who cares? Last time I looked there was still food in my fridge.

Have New Model Army ever made a record that could be described as ‘cheerful’? It all depends on what makes you happy. There are some cheerful songs on the album, but I’ve always liked songs in minor keys.

In a Classic Rock interview talking about NMA’s 2013’s album Between Dog And Wolf, you explained that wilful selfsabotage has always been a part of the band’s DNA. Our attitude has always been: whatever they want from you, fuck ’em. We used to have an official policy: if ever a song threatened to become bigger than the band, then we’d stop playing it for five years. And if that annoys some of the audience, well, tough. It did the trick [laughs]. It was commercial suicide, they told us. But in 2019 we’re a band that can do whatever it wants. There’s no song that we have to play.

“Our attitude has always been: whatever they want, f**k ’em.”

Is there a single greatest misconception about NMA? It kind of annoys me when some people think we’re a Chumbawumba, a Crass or a Billy Bragg-style of band, where the politics are more important than the music. Our agenda is entirely musical. We’ve even written a number of songs from standpoints that we don’t even agree with – including trying to get inside the head of a nationalist – purely because we found them interesting.

The last date of the tour is in Nottingham on December 21.