No Thee No Ess is the band name of Cardiff-based Paul Battenbough and Andy Fung and their current album is Distant Country. Whereas 2021’s Dimmer Switch was awash with Laurel Canyon vibes, gritty guitars and psychedelic colours (the Joyzine review is here) Distant Country is a bucolic country album replete with fiddles, pedal steel and banjo joining Fung (vocals/drums) and Battenbough (guitar/vocals).
It’s not surprising that the duo would bring us a country album. Like the “land, lots of land under starry skies above” of the American west, Wales has plenty of big country to saddle up and ride through before setting up camp under the stars and toasting your rarebit over a roaring fire. The album roams along at a gentle canter and you can listen to it in full at the bottom of this article. I particularly loved ‘All Angelic’ which is as lovely as its title suggests, and I am impressed that they got ‘brackish mist’ into the lyrics along with the poetry of being “high on grass and perfume”.
We asked these ‘hen fechgyn da’ to answer some questions for Joyzine and Paul Battenbough obliged:
What inspired you to make music?
I got inspired by being a huge fan of music as a child. I discovered my grandmother’s collection of 78’s and the gramophone, was fascinated by the mechanism as well as these big round plastic things that when you scratched with a needle emitted sound.
Being a music fan, I had to overcome the idea that I wasn’t special enough to emulate my heroes. I saw a childhood friend, ‘Jock’ Stewart play guitar in the cloakroom of my old secondary school on youth club night. He lived on the same street as me. I thought, well if Jock can manage to learn to play guitar, then I should try too.
So really what inspired me was knowing I could actually do it to a degree that was satisfying to my ears.
What is the best description of your music that you’ve read/heard in a review?
I liked an Amazon review written by someone called Paul Ess for our 3rd album ‘Lights Over the Lake’ back in 2012. He wrote: ‘ It takes a few spins to sink in, but the initial surface sugariness, dispelled by familiarity, soon opens out and coruscating, perfectly-formed ideas uncoil’. Thank you Paul!
No thee by this description would be like a bag of Revels – you never know what the filling is till you bite into it.
What do you enjoy most and least about playing live?
Best thing is the energy of playing live. Meeting people, the aftershow. What’s not to like about the shared experience of collective joy?
Every gig has a downside. Usually shifting gear.
Is there a venue or city that you’d especially love to play, and why?
The old sci fi series ‘Space 1999’ had a base on the moon named ‘Moonbase Alpha’.
I reckon we’d go down well if we played there – we’d certainly add something to the atmosphere.
What is the strangest thing that’s ever happened to you at a gig?
Started up with flu-like symptoms at a gig, that got increasingly worse as the gig wore on. On the last song my voice disappeared as l was singing. Lost my voice completely. My mouth was opening but only a tiny squeak was coming out. That was weird.
Also did one where both of us, me and Andy, were suffering from a bout of Covid! We got through that no problem. Contrary to popular belief we are not a sickly band
If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be and why?
I always think of Hunter S. Thompson’s famous description of the music industry:
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
So making that statement untrue would be tidying up everything wrong with it.
If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and what would you work on together?
All my collaboration desires are met with No thee no ess, other band projects and the other Surk Records projects we’re involved in. I’d have loved to work with David Berman. A fantastic poet sadly no longer with us. I love movie soundtracks, so working with a director, like Jim Jarmusch or Wim Wenders on a new groundbreaking art movie would be amazing.
Who is your favourite new band/artist that we should be checking out and what do you like about them?
New to me are The Cowsills. I’d never heard of them before, even though they were the band that inspired the TV series The Partridge Family. They had hits in the 60’s with bubble-gum pop. It was a teen band with their mom in the band and baby sister Susan who was 8 when she joined.
I saw a video of an outdoor gig from 1968. Both Andy and I are very keen harmony singers [we dub ourselves the B.V. Kings]. man the Cowsills can really sing! amazing voices all of them. 6 sons one daughter, actually only 4 of those sons in the ’68 line-up, but they all had a stint. I’m in the process of devouring their entire catalogue. In 1971 they released a psychedelic masterpiece ‘On my side’. So if you’re not familiar, check them out as they are a very important piece of the pop tapestry.
If you could give any aspiring musicians one piece of advice, what would it be?
Stay away from Marshall amps, Ovation guitars and dance routines!
How important is the visual/aesthetic side of your music and why?
Both Andy and I are visual artists and usually have our creations as the covers of our albums. because we are democratic as a band, we take turns each album, who has front cover. Also, titles of albums is usually something we take turns with. We broke with tradition for ‘Distant Country’ but the jackets we wore in the photoshoot for the album, were the ‘artworks’ this time; in honour of the Flying Burritto Brothers and their ‘Nudie’ suits. The two artistic disciplines are interwoven. But yeah like a book’s cover can draw readers, I think album art has that same lure. We just love making imagery and it has been a conscious effort to draw attention to the art and by extension the music. We’ve done art exhibitions and played at them. So yes a very important part.
No Thee No Ess on socials: X| Facebook | Bandcamp
Introduction by Paul F Cook
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