Strange Fish
This month’s returnee from rock’s timewarp off-licence: literate, trumpet-assisted indie pop for the left brain.
Animals That Swim Workshy ELEMENTAL, 1994
Four ex-members of Animals That Swim surround MOJO in a north London pub in December 2016. Brothers Hank, Hugh and Al Barker and trumpeter Del Crabtree have gathered to address the unique qualities and appeal of their 1994 debut LP, Workshy, and some questions that have been bugging them for 20 years or so. Some pints of beer to the good, singing drummer Hank (stage surname: Starrs) fixes MOJO with an earnest gaze: “So tell us, Danny – why we weren’t massive?” Where to start? A raggedy, throwback indie shambles in the dawn of Britpop, Animals That Swim were the wrong band at the wrong time. They even had a heartbreaking song about a bitter, Elvis-era rock failure (Roy) that implied they’d foreseen their fate. Live, they were an experience. Starrs looked like he was trying to climb through his stand-up kit to rule the front of the stage. Trumpeter Crabtree would jump into the audience and parp in people’s faces or head to the bar and buy a drink. The only predictable element was their sibling rivalry. “Remember when Hank punched Al on the bus home from Bristol?” reminisces Crabtree. “It was a lady’s punch,” dismisses Al. “I was lying on my back!” protests Starrs. “You can’t get traction!” The Barker brothers grew up musical. Their English military father played jazz piano and their American mother spent a $100 windfall on guitars and ukuleles. Aged 18-19, Hank spent two years in upstate New York playing drums in bands, and returned to join guitarist Hugh. “I was writing hippyish rubbish,” recalls Hank. “Then Hugh played me The Fall and said, ‘Just try writing songs about light bulbs.’ I got this idea of trying to write interestingly about mundanity.” Animals That Swim’s shaggy-dog songs concerned fleeting alco-epiphanies (King Beer) and dying pensioners (Pink Carnations). If Starrs wrote a love song it would be to an eccentric photography pioneer of the ’20s and ’30s (Madame Yevonde). Wilful obscurantism was leavened by the wistful embroidery of Hugh, pianist brother Al, and Crabtree, who joined on bass until his trumpet playing became the main feature. “We felt like we should do what we wanted,” says Hank. “We were also sick of a lot of the stupid stuff that was around. Like The Stone Roses. Terrible band…” After releasing singles (King Beer, Roy) on their own Beachheads In Space label and the 10-inch 50 Dresses EP on Ché, they were signed to Nick Evans’ Elemental label, and entered Fulham’s Shaw Sound studios to record an album with producer Dare Mason, who was Hank’s wife’s ex-husband. They recorded something other than they’d planned, with eleventh hour substitutes like Vic (Starrs reminisces about a gig by paraplegic singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt; Vic asks for requests – Starrs tactlessly shouts out for Surfin USA…) adding extra layers of engaging WTF. Workshy placed at 15 in the NME’s Top 50 albums of 1994, ahead of Jeff Buckley’s Grace and Morrissey’s Vauxhall & I. What happened next was Britpop. “It transformed the expectations on an indie band,” says Hugh. “Before that you could bumble along, getting a bit bigger every time. Suddenly, people were expecting massive hits.” “We were trying to say that you don’t have to write shitty lyrics,” adds Hank. “But Oasis, particularly, seemed to fuck lyrics.”
“WE FELT LIKE WE SHOULD DO WHAT WE WANTED”
Hank Starrs
In the indie goldrush, Elemental was bought by One Little Indian and Animals That Swim played bigger venues. But when Hank stopped playing drums on-stage, the right replacement proved elusive. They made a tidier second album – I Was The King, I Really Was The King – but even the cover, clashing images of a gnarly old rocker dude flashing his bare torso and a vintage snap of a matronly lady on the town – hinted at disjuncture. “The guy was the dad of a photographer friend of my wife’s,” explains Hank. “I wanted him to be the whole cover, but Hugh wanted a picture of his wife’s auntie. So we put both on. Meanwhile, in the studio, Hugh was, ‘I’m going sing this song’, and I was like, No, I’m gonna sing this song because I’m the better singer.” They played Reading Festival (“We were on first, but still…”), a third album was demoed, scrapped (tracks from the sessions are bonuses on next month’s reissue of Workshy), then revived, with other songs, as Happiness From A Different Star (Snowstorm, 2001), but the group’s day was done. Hank now makes films; Al moved from music to tech; Hugh’s in publishing; Del is in “school improvement”. “We were quite ambitious,” insists Hank Starrs. “We did want to be our own version of pop stars. Or at least I did… But I understand the appeal of the band you like that no-one else does. For me, that was The Feelies. And I suppose, yeah, you are sort of aware that you’re probably going to be that kind of band.” As a reissued Workshy reaffirms the group’s faith in the anticlimactic short story as accidental indie anthem, you sense that, for all their regrets, they’re glad they (hardly) ever compromised. “You get shit bands like Frank Turner and these cunts,” observes Hank. “They just shout and chant and rage… But why not do a slow song, a proper slow song? It’s a challenge, and there’s a quite big chance that the audience will be like, This is boring… But we didn’t give a shit. We did it anyway.” Danny Eccleston