Punk polymath Billy Childish returns with House on Fire, another Medway missive alongside CTMF bandmates Nurse Julie and Wolf Howard – by my count their eleventh and Childish’s umpteenth long player in a musical career stretching back to the late 1970s – and from the moment his familiar bark ignites opening track ‘Magpie’s Flown’, we know we’re in for a wonderfully bumpy ride.
House on Fire, released today on Damaged Goods Records, serves up fourteen tracks of fuzzy, scuzzy rock and roll while accompanying EP Keep Mojave Weird is a generous extra helping with three non-album tracks, including covers of Chuck Berry’s ‘Memphis Tennessee and a reworking of Childish’s own track ‘Wile E Coyote’.
The record kicks off with ‘Magpie’s Flown’, which features a sustained throbbing chord which sends my dopamine receptors spinning, before Billy tells a tale of local upheaval and decline, centred around the now-closed hospital of his birth, set against a global background of power hungry warmongers – the more things change, the more they stay the same.
“I was born in All Saints Hospital, Magpie Hall Road, Chatham, (the same hospital as my grandfather, AB Seaman, who died in early 1981),” explains Childish. “The hospital was later closed up and demolished – which I personally find stupid. I hated school – we were just fodder for the Royal Dockyard, which was closed under Thatcher. The song is about the local landscape, institutions, and how war on nations and people seems to be the way humans do stuff.”
It’s followed by a cover of The Yardbirds’ ‘Shape of Things’, a hazy garage pop rendering and the first of several vocal outings for Nurse Julie on the record, which also include a take on The Saints’ ‘Untitled’.
Elsewhere we get a history lesson in ‘Trafalgar’, following a reluctant participant in the famous sea battle in an excellent track which takes folk storytelling and sea shanty traditions and feeds them through a rumbling rock and roll filter; the strutting riff and undulating bass of ‘Blues That Kills’, peppered with references to the Medway towns and the Tex-Mex blast of lead single ‘Keep Mojave Weird’, which Childish describes as “A tune about the road trip I took with my family to the Southwest in 2025. It mentions three UFOs which I saw over Pioneertown, the lone phone box they’ve got in the desert, The Mojave Indians weaving Blue Flax, and Captain Beefheart’s liking of Bo Diddley, all nodding to The Seeds. (Sky Saxon once told me that Thee Headcoats played the way The Seeds should have.)”
A further highlight comes in the form of the purring revenge pop of the title track, with Julie’s double-tracked vocal channeling a psychotic Nancy Sinatra, giving her scorned lover more than her boots to worry about as she smiles “If you see a match in my hand, you better run”.
“House on Fire was written by Julie… Initially she meant the song to be an ‘I love my man’ type ditty,” Childish claims. “But as it progressed it lurched into a revenge number.”
Compromise, or the lack of it, is a recurring theme, from the unrepentant protagonist of ‘Bridge Burner’ to a scathing chastisement of a sell-out, on the bluesy organ swirl of ‘A Surprise to You (No Surprise to Me)’, which sees Childish spit his venomous verdict: “So sad to become someone, but to never be yourself”.
With Childish and CTMF clearly at the peak of their powers with this brace of releases and a pair of sold-out shows at The Lexington in London coming up at the weekend, we caught up with Billy to find out more about the new records and reflect on his place in the musical landscape.
It’s been three years since the last CTMF album, what have you been up to in the interim?
I think I did a good few LPs with the Guy Hamper Trio – instrumentals with my friend Jamie Taylor on Hammond, a couple of LPs with The North Kent Folkways Revival (with my friends from the Singing Loins), a couple of LPs with Thee Headcoats and Thee Headcoatees, a couple of Museum shows of my paintings in China, an exhibition with my New York gallery, another with my Berlin gallery, a few poetry books, and working on a novel I’ve been messing with for the last 15 years. Cooking, painting, and walking the dog.
Were there any central themes that you had in mind when writing the songs for House On Fire?
Not really, it’s a bit of a patchwork job, with some fancy bits of embroidery. Putting it together I wanted to feature Julie more and that’s worked well I think.
The last time we interviewed you was for The William Loveday Intention LPs, how does the process of writing and recording with CTMF differ?
Well William loveday had Dave on lead guitar – other than that I just book a day at the studio and think, now I better write something.
Between the album and EP there are covers of The Saints, Yardbirds and Chuck Berry – why these artists and these songs, and what do you think the CTMF versions bring that’s different to the originals?
Julie really likes the Yardbirds, and I got used to them in the Pop Rivets as Big Russ has a cassette we played on tour in the van. Chuck Berry – I was always a fan, but mainly like the Beatles demo of ‘Memphis’, I just added a Bo Diddley beat for fun. I don’t think we bring anything much else to that track but play it as respectful fans. ‘Untitled’ by the Saints is quite a different take with Julie on vocals but we still embody the main spirit of the song. (I was a fan of the Saints and saw them play with the Jam in 1977.)
You’ve said that ‘Keep Mojave Weird’ was inspired by a road trip to the SouthWest where you saw three UFOs over Pioneertown – can you tell us more about that trip, what you saw and how it affected you?
The UFOs were three orange lights that zipped away at incredible speed that’s all. Not like the saucer I saw in 1966/67 which was low and clear in broad daylight, so nothing much really. We just had family trip; I drove a few thousand miles. Mexican food, a few bits of south western rings and belts, pics for later paintings, mules at Grand Canyon, ghosts the hotel at LA.
In contrast, ‘The Magpie’s Flown’ and ‘The Blues That Kills’ are rooted in the Medway towns – how has your local area shaped you as an artist? Could you imagine making the same music, art and poetry if you were living elsewhere?
I can imagine that, but fortunately, or unfortunately I can imagine most things.
How do you and Julie decide who will sing on each song? What different qualities do you think the two vocals bring to the songs?
Julie wanted to do ‘Untitled’ and ‘Shapes of Things’ – the other two she wrote so she sang. It just falls together naturally, though I have to force her to do stuff as she’s more interested in going to ballet than being in a group.
You’ve released well in excess of 100 albums stretching back to the late 70s – what are the key things you’ve learnt about the process of making a record since then, and is there anything in your approach that’s still the same as those early recordings?
Straight off I wondered why I didn’t like the sound on contemporary recording, so we we’re always trying to work that out, we found good valve amps and playing together as a group was the way.
In addition to all those records, you’re also a prolific writer and painter – how do the various creative disciplines that you work in interact with one another, or do you see them each as distinct?
I just did an exhibition in New York titled Keep Mojave Weird, but apart from titles maybe, pretty different, though I sometimes use poetry idea in lyrics, but not often lyrics as poetry as they are different beasts.
It’s rare to read an article or review about you where you’re not referred to as an ‘outsider’ or a ‘cult figure’ and your music as ‘garage rock’ – how do you feel about these labels?
A bit ambivalent. I’m definitely an insider in the art world, although the British art establishment still scorns me – but that’s the English for you – wankers. ‘Cult’ I guess so, but no plans on poisoning the members as yet. ‘Garage rock’ occasionally true.
You said in an interview with The Guardian that “It would be a good idea for all people in pop music to know what their 19-year-old self would think of them now.” What would your 19 year old self think of you?
He’d be surprised, but dig it.
You must have done hundreds of interviews like this and been asked a lot of the same questions (some of these included, I’m sure) – is there a question that you’ve never been asked but would like to be, and what would your answer be?
Do you believe that no one knows what they are looking at or listening to? Answer – Yes!
House on Fire and Keep Mojave Weird are both released on 27th March via Damaged Goods Records – order via their online shop or download via Bandcamp
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Article by Paul Maps
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