At last! Mick Jones produces Vic Godard & Subway Sect
“There’s an unspoiltness about the whole thing.” MICK JONES
INEFFABLE PUNK veteran Vic Godard’s last release was March’s Mum’s Revenge. But in 2020 his LP-every-half-decade workrate will be disrupted by new album All These Moments. “For me, it’s unheard of,” says Godard. “Bloody hell, I normally take years…”
This time the special ingredient was producer Mick Jones. Comrades since Vic and Subway Sect first supported The Clash at the ICA in 1976, both were managed by the mercurial, omni-questioning Bernard Rhodes, as were the members of Godard’s current Subway Sect line-up. They teamed up after Godard and band were rehearsing in the basement of drummer Sean McLusky’s Gallery 46 art-space: when Jones’s daughter Lauren was exhibiting there, guitarist Johnny Britton speculated that he’d be an ideal producer. On hearing the material, Jones was sold, and in just two five-day stints recording at engineer Declan Gaffney’s studio in Hackney in November, All These Moments was captured.
The idea of the moment seized was key: Godard had finished vocals as MOJO arrived for the playback. “We were 10 minutes behind schedule,” says Jones. “But we’ve done it, we’ve delivered it,” adds Godard.
The album is soulful, loose and upbeat, and, it seems, meditates on time. Be My Baby-beat-borrowing opener Since The ’80s reflects on dreams and autumn becoming winter, with the Latin-sounding Nightingales co-write Commercial Suicide Man asserting, “You either love love love what you’re doing or you don’t.” Elsewhere there’s stop-offs in strutting rock’n’roll, Northern soul, New Orleans and urban funk, with dubby echoes of Jonesy circa-Sandinista!. Drum-brushing closer Time Shoulda Made A Man O’ Me is a saunter into past lives, with clarinet by Pete Williams from Dexys and conversational ad-libbing about being back next year.
“That track, we didn’t know Mick was going to leave all that chat on there,” says Godard. “It’s just a guide vocal. It’s fantastic though – no one’s ever put a track out with a bloody quiz in the middle of it, have they?! He likes to use early takes but he doesn’t want you to know that. He said, ‘If you’d have known that, you wouldn’t have done it naturally.’”
“There’s a certain element of unspoiltness about the whole thing and that’s what really appealed to me about it,” says Jones. “Because Vic hasn’t been in [music] all the time, he’s had real life experience as well. Everything like that goes into it being fresh now.”
“We wouldn’t have known all the different nuances he’s put in,” says Godard. “He seems to know how to make us more radio-friendly, but he hasn’t diminished our personality.”
Jones also sings and plays keyboards and percussion on the album, and sequenced it. A continuation of the JonesGodard link seems likely.
“[The album] is about time, and it making you appreciate what you’ve got,” says Vic of the future of Subway Sect. “We’ll crack on when we can.”
How High The Walls will be out on GNUinc Records on Christmas Day - https://gnuinc.bandcamp.com