THE HUNGRY SAW
BEGGARS BANQUET, 2008
A rebirth, with a vital new lineup and their own studio in rural France
After Waiting For The Moon
it was pretty obvious that there would be a break – but I don’t think anybody thought it was over until we did the second album in full at the Barbican [in 2006]. We hadn’t played together for three years, it was a really great night but it was clear it was the last time. The relationship between myself, Neil and David predates Tindersticks, so there is something deeper than
maybe even the first incarnation of the band. A conversation started and we were like, “Maybe we should get together for a weekend, see where it takes us?” From that these songs started to emerge, and that’s how The Hungry Saw started. Over that album and Falling Down A Mountain we were exploring each other, exploring ideas, exploring this new space of what the band was. For me, the biggest thing was that if we were going to do this again, we didn’t look back or get involved in the nostalgia of the previous incarnation, this previous music that we made. So since 2008, all we’ve done is look forward and explore this thing we are in this moment. It was a lot of rebuilding, a lot of rediscovery. It takes a long time to play music with people in a deep way. It’s about your musical and personal relationship, not about how good you are. One of the big reasons of moving to France was to have a space to work in that had more ambience, that people could meet in to play music, so hopefully you’d catch those moments that aren’t pre-described. LUCKY DOG/CITY SLANG, 2015
The band’s 11th studio album proper, featuring a surprising detour into Afrobeat on “Help Yourself” I virtually recorded every note of this album – I was playing guitar, singing, operating the mixing desk and the tape recorder, all at the same time for those live takes. My studio had become more a place to explore ideas, to explore moods, and then the band would pass through, we’d play ideas together and then people would leave me and I’d try and find out what I was interested in from what we’d played. Then by the time we got together again there was something to build on and something to talk about. With The Waiting Room, I wanted to explore the minimalism. We had just started to work with Julian Siegel, who is a great sax and clarinet player, a great British jazz musician. I thought, ‘Why don’t we give “Help Yourself” to Julian and see what happens?’ It was an amazing moment hearing his ideas for the song – a real ‘hair standing up on your arms’ moment! It made “Help Yourself” complete. The way we found that rhythm is exciting, and is still exciting when we play them live. Those moments when you discover something together feed the energy in the band. This LP fed into making the soundtrack for High Life, and making my solo album Arrhythmia, which have all been a really experimental period of discovery, a time of feeling alive and together musically.