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THE SERVANT ride again2005-03-02 20:30:00
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So there's Prince. Jamming with the Smiths at Warhols Factory. All inside the mind of a modern day Donnie Darko by the name of Dan Black. That's the Servant. Even at their most tuneful they always emit a faintly sinister glow. "I like that contrast" explains Dan, The Servant's singing, songwriting front-man. "Music can work on so many different levels. Even with the most uplifting melodies you can still have something much darker going on at he same time..."We've been here before. The Smiths 'Hand In Glove'; the Stone Roses 'Made Of Stone'; Pulp's 'Misfits'. But then that's the English songwriting lineage Dan Black naturally belongs to. So it goes. Some have an ability to make arrangements in horizontal lines of twenty-six phonetic symbols, others have the knack of writing songs so strange and beautiful they'll move people as long as the earth keeps turning. The Servant are that good.
If you've survived without them until now, congratulations: the wait is over.
The boring stuff. Dan grew up in a small village in Buckinghamshire. Life at the local boys school proved problematic. Unable to conform and alienated in such a competitive environment, Dan rebelled. Music was his co-conspirator.
"I got into music very early. My dad had a big record collection, so I heard The Beatles, The Stones and Dylan when I was very young. As a kid I was massively into Prince and Jane's Addiction then in my late teens, Bowie, Lou Reed, the Velvets. Also tons of hip-hop. I've never just been interested in white guitar bands..."
By sixteen Dan had been 'forced to leave' school. Revenge was sweet. By eighteen he'd moved to London and been accepted by Chelsea College of Art.
"As soon I got to London I wanted to be in bands. It was all I wanted to do. I'd be in three at once and still be at home recording songs on my own four-track.."
Cue The Servant. Having recruited Matt Fisher (bass) and Trevor Sharpe (drums) during forays into the sleazier corners of London clubland, Dan set about refining a curiously English sort of pop group. In Joseph Losey's 1963 film of the same name, manservant Dirk Bogarde usurps his decadent master James Fox in a perverse echo of the class struggle. The mood fitted the uneasy chemistry necessary for The Servant perfectly.
"I wanted to write songs which reflected things outside of pop culture" he explains.
"Songs don't have to have a lyrical content which barely stretches past 'I love you baby'. I wanted to give them a more literary feel'"
There have been two mini-albums. The first 'Mathematics' (released in '00) was a pre-zeitgeist splurge of Gang Of Four-ish punk-funk and casio-doodles which boasted in 'Too Late' the immortal opening line: 'I imported horses from Dubai'.
The second, 'With The Invisible' ('02) saw the introduction of guitarist Chris Burrows and was, quite simply, a masterclass in subversive electro-rock acclaimed by everyone from MusicWeek to Mojo. Retrospective features will linger long in the grooves of both.
Duly signed to the Prolifica label, Dan has since found his workload upped following a collaboration with Italian house-meisters Planet Funk. Having contributed some snarling guest vocals (and scathing lyrics) on four tracks on their debut Album "Non Zero Sumness".
"It's surreal. We've played some crazy gigs. The most memorable one was to a milion people in St.Giovanni's Square, where Planet Funk headlined. It's madness. I go over there, and I can't walk down the street. Then the minute I land back at Heathrow it's like (mimes irate comuter heading down tube escalator) 'out of the way, loser'"
All of these experiences inform the groups debut album 'The Servant' (released on Prolifica in November). Recorded over three weeks at the Garden studios in Old Street with Steve Dub (Chemical Brothers) and mixed in Dan's flat in Highgate until it sent him "fucking insane", it sees their abstract take on the classic pop canvas of Prince and The Smiths become splattered with colour.
On first listen, songs like first single 'Orchestra'; surefire hit 'Liquefy' and the Stone Roses-on-prozac stomp 'I Can Walk In Your Mind' swagger with a confidence which will have radio programmers reaching for their playlists. Lyrically, they deal with obsession, the wonders of human biology and infidelity.
You get the picture. 'Beautiful Thing' may appear to be a radio-friendly unit-shifter, but the lyric finds its protagonist 'on the edge of a high rise roof', mistaking chemistry for love ('Is it only seratonin?/Feel my blood thin'). 'Jesus Says' meanwhile sees the Son Of God back on earth, hustling as a low-rent drug dealer ('This is my body/This is my blood/This is my mobile/These are my drugs').
When Dan ends up hanging out at the crossroads ('Me And The Devil') it's a nod to both Robert Johnson and the current blues revival.
Without getting too aireated about it, a darker, more literate voice in British pop hasn't emerged since Jarvis.
Matters reach a peak in six minute anti-consumerist finale 'Glowing Logo'.
'Glowing Logo' is about how fucking lonely it can be living in a city, even though it's beautiful too. For me it's a love-hate relationshi living in London, and the record hopefully reflects that. The first lyric on the album is 'It'll all click when the mortgage clears' and I wanted to get that sense of uneasiness over from the start. We're living in comparative luxury in the West, but we're still victim to all these neuroses we can't do anything about.."
In a world over-populated with formula rock'n'roll bands, these Black-ops offer a discomforting alternative. If it's taken three years for their warped formula to reach this stage, so much the better. Some bands are built for the long-term. And if you happen to hear The Servant on the radio, cherish it.
"When you hear or see something like a great group on the radio or TV, there's nothing better." explains Dan.
"The fact that they're doing it now is the thing; that their music can't be categorised.. They represent something that threatens the established order.. I want people to hear the Servant and feel like that.... "
Paul Moody