WRAPPING UP 2012 with Easter

If you cast your mind back to May on these pages, Thomas Long was talking about the “more rocked up” mark 2 version of Easter that had created the album “Innocence Man” and was on the cusp of releasing it. Come the autumn, with the album out of the traps and the band touring, there was another line-up change for the band and some internal re-shuffling of roles (Mark 2.1?). Although a quarter different in personnel, this version of the band was still damn sharp in delivering those towering songs from “Innocence Man”.

I thought the record an “extraordinary listen: an immense, brooding and ruggedly beautiful journey, as monumental and carefully hewn as the carvings at Mount Rushmore or the implacable Victorian brickwork of Strangeways prison”. Americana UK said “Easter have produced a pretty remarkable feat with "Innocence Man". Its six tracks, some stretching out over six or even eight minutes, are both expansive and intense. There is a delicate balancing act of discordant riffs against powerhouse drumming and intimate, articulate and half hidden singing... Easter are noise alchemists shaping discord and painful feedback into sound sculptures of disconnection and confusion. For the most part it sounds suitably splendid”. I have to disagree – I think it all sounds splendid.

Thomas Long here looks back on the last twelve months of releases and re-births.

What I will remember most about 2012 is...
Getting the album out this year was the big one. It took us a while so to finally have it out and get some good reviews, airplay and people getting into it has been great. But almost as important has been getting the new line-up together, it's feeling really good at the moment cos we can now get out and tour, which we weren't really able to do before. We just did a string of UK dates in November and it was a big buzz.

What should be forgotten about 2012...
Like I say the line-up change has worked out well but it's always a bit of a drag sorting it out, it's almost like starting afresh, it could crumble, but thankfully it hasn't.

The best gig we played was...
The album launch gig at Kraak was awesome - it was packed. But our gig in Edinburgh with Broken Records probably tops it. It was the last night of the tour, great crowd and the new line-up was really firing.



The best gig I saw was...
Best gig for me was Radiohead at the MEN [Arena], it was just immense, epic set, great choice of tracks, a real fan's set. Made me realise how great they are as I'd overlooked them a little bit over the last few years.

A record from 2012 that will still be played in 10 years time?
EL-P “Cancer 4 Cure” is great, really intense, paranoid as ever, and great production. Think he's still one of the few people pushing things in hip-hop. Live he was immense too, played the full album. Only just bought Swans “The Seer” but that's great, lot to get yr teeth into but I think it'll definitely be remembered.

Overlooked in 2012?
Easter “Innocence Man”? Ha!

And what can we look forward to in 2013 from Easter?
Hopefully have a seven inch out in the spring, and we're working on a proper UK tour for around that time as well. Then it'll be down to work on the second album which we’re building up tracks for at the moment. There might just be something else in the pipeline too but I don't want to jinx it.

I agree about “Innocence Man” being overlooked. Some enthusiastic reviews and praise from online sites and record shops, plays on 6Music and Xfm but it didn’t get the recognition it should have done in the monthlies or major music websites. If that was their loss, make sure it’s not yours too: “Innocence Man” is one of this year's, if not ANY year's, essential purchases.

EASTER Innocence Man

“Second verse / it’s always worse” claims the song ‘Pages’ on this the debut long-player from Easter. As Thomas Long describes in last month’s Q&A, the current line-up for his band is Easter Mark II. But those words hardly apply to the group themselves. The four-piece – Long on vocals and guitar, Danny Saul on guitar, Gavin Clarke on bass and Andrew Cheetham on drums – combine and spar in a way that speaks not just of laborious stretches of rehearsal-room jamming but of an intuitive click between the players. Their debut album "Innocence Man" is only six tracks long but what an epic, rich navigation lies within those half dozen, tersely titled songs.

The first two – the slow, caustic grind of ‘Somethin’ American’ and the choppy ‘Damp Patch’ – are the more traditionally structured ‘pop’ moments, built on 90s US alt-rock foundations – think a holy trinity of Sebadoh, Slint and Sonic Youth as the floor-plan. The following four songs on the album all swing upwards of six to eight minutes, and as well as those heavy hooks and riffs, the band add longer instrumental post-rock passages. It’s never a simple formula of loud-first-half-quiet-second-half. These denouements vary in length, dynamic and intensity, no doubt informed by the extra-curricular activities of the other players including earlier solo albums of experimental noise and stints in improvisation duos.


Thomas Long’s voice is flinty stern throughout but never wearied despite some bitter emotions and experiences: the 2pm drift and smash-your-head-against-the-brick existence of ‘Damp Patch’ (where those much quoted “Crumpsall pipe-dreams” remain resolutely out of reach), the acrid scorn of ‘Never Me’ and the heart-ache and leave-takings of ‘Begin Again’. The guitars also spiral through many sounds, scales and moods –as well as angular riffs and chug they move from caterwaul and pained screech in ‘Never Me’, to fog-horn mournful in ‘Holy Island’, to long, aching chimes in ‘Begin Again’, contrasting beautifully with sombre cello on the latter.

“Innocence Man” is extraordinary listen: an immense, brooding and ruggedly beautiful journey, as monumental and carefully hewn as the carvings at Mount Rushmore or the implacable Victorian brickwork of Strangeways prison. Easter is, as per the name, a re-birth for this second line-up but it’s also the sound of potential realised. And how. Long goes on to sing in ‘Pages’: “You haven’t seen the best of me yet”. What a dizzying prospect.





Easter Innocence Man [BUY]

"We Just See Where It Goes..." Q&A WITH EASTER

As the name suggests, Manchester's sonic-screechers Easter have undergone re-birth in their longer-at-it-than-you'd-imagine history. They released an EP back in 2009 but before that band leader Thomas Long had been “writing, jamming and gigging in the city since he was fifteen”. Yet the current line-up of Easter is a fresh start – or development – of the band’s sound: brooding dark rock, melding pop hooks and post-rock experimentation to fine effect. Joining Long now are drummer Andrew Cheetham, experimental guitarist Danny Saul and bass player Gavin Clarke. On the cusp of the release of debut long-player “Innocence Man”, I asked Mr Long of Crumpsall, North Manchester to share some thoughts on where Easter is at now. And where it is going.

This is mark II of Easter. What has changed from the first version of the band and why?
It's a complete change really. I'm the only original member from the first line up, and Mark II is just far more rocked up. After we recorded the "Hob Talk" EP the line up just kind of crumbled, as I guess it was more like friends who were helping me out rather than this committed thing, but I was disappointed when Rich (original guitar player) left as it kinda started with him and he's a great guitarist with a whole sound. But it's worked out pretty well in the end cos Danny, Andrew, Gavin are awesome players and I had a much bigger sound in my head after the "Hob Talk" EP and I think we've pretty much realised it.


“Think a musical backdrop of Godspeed and Sonic Youth melded together with the atmospheric vocal delivery of Red House Painters' Mark Kozelek” Handy summary of your sound but does it encompass the full range of influences for the band?
It is quite a good summary but it leaves out some British stuff which I think is definitely in there: things like The Chameleons, House Of Love, Joy Division. And the more poppier side of the American stuff - Sebadoh, Pavement, Dinosaur Jr which we all love. For me Dylan and Springsteen are pretty big too, and more recently folk stuff like Martin Simpson and Richard Thompson has informed my playing but that'll probably come through more on the second album. As for the others, Danny brings a whole world of noise music to how he approaches anything, intense stuff like Merzbow, and Andrew's playing is definitely informed by a lot of free rock, and free jazz stuff, and Gavin's into weird jazz stuff too like John Zorn. They're fun to play with!

Tracks can be a combination of verse-chorus-verse song structures and long, instrumental and improvised passages. How do you work as a band to create these songs?
I’ll write the core of a song usually on an acoustic guitar, and then bring it to the band and we just hash it out. I like to leave things open ended so there's the possibility of these expansive sections, and we just see where it goes. I've been thinking of us recently as a have-yr-cake-and-eat-it band, we like songs with hooks and lyrics, but we don't want that to stop us getting into some heavy jams.

On the spectrum that goes from meticulously planned to spontaneous, where would you put Easter?
Somewhere in the middle I guess, the end section of ‘Holy Island’ is never the same twice, and the middle bit of ‘Pages’ we purposely kept loose so it had that jammy feel. With certain sections putting definite constraints on it can suck the life out of it, in a way.

Hence the album was recorded live in one evening?
To be honest it was more a case of circumstance than anything else, the rest of the band all play in different things so it was becoming difficult getting us in the same room. We just went in to see what we'd come out with, recorded it in one night, then a year or so later of mixing and messing about and we had an album.



Is being in a band and releasing this album what those Crumpsall pipe-dreams [from 'Damp Patch'] were about? Or is there still more to be done to fulfil them?
From being sat around on the dole or whatever a few years back this would seem pretty cool to finally have an album in my hands - and it is a rush - but now it's all about working on new stuff and getting more stuff out there, so yeah a lot more to be done. Hopefully this will be one of many.

Beyond the album release and launch gig in June what are the plans for Easter?
Yeah we're fixing up a tour at the moment for July/August, then we're looking at doing a seven inch for the autumn which will be 2 new tracks, in the meantime just working on new stuff that should form the second album.

Second album teasers before the first is even released? One thing at a time please. And despite the line from 'Pages' - "Second verse / It's always worse" - this second coming of Easter has already produced in "Innocence Man" one of the year's essential listens. It's out on 11 June on White Box Recordings accompanied by a Manchester album launch at Kraak Space on 22 June.

LAST HARBOUR + EASTER @ BAND ON THE WALL 26 March 2012

Uh-oh - tables are out at Band on the Wall. Maybe they're not expecting a capacity audience tonight? It was certainly a small but perfectly formed crowd for opening act Vei. Such solo laptop glitchery does not make the most visual or animated of supports but the overlapping pulses, loops and drones was a pleasantly serene if slightly cerebral start. Small crowd yes but enthusiastic response at the set’s conclusion.


Easter's ‘Somethin’ American’ was a joyously chugging earworm of a song from last year. It was the set opener tonight but full marks to the four-piece – Thomas Long, Andrew Cheetham, Gavin Clarke and Danny Saul - for adding some simple theatrics to kick it off. As both guitars held down single, sustained notes, the machine head of one was dragged across the top of the amp to add some teeth-on-edge distorted crackle before into the song proper. Spine-tingling. Under the overly bright yellow glare of some unatmospheric lighting, Easter went on to deliver some very atmospheric and at times very ferocious noise-rock. Tonight I really heard the Sebadoh connection in their heavy, 90s leaning guitars.





There were moments of quiet melody or vocal passages but most songs in this six song set were inexorably drawn to intense, twin guitar work-outs. The set finished with more distorted noise: manual manipulation of effects pedal feedback that was both thunderously ominous but also electrifyingly refreshing. Wow - heavy stuff. Tonight’s set hugely whetted my appetite for the band's debut album “Innocence Man” released this June.

I last saw Last Harbour seven years ago supporting Mark Mulcahy in the basement of an unloved – and now unmissed – cafe-bar. I haven't kept up with Last Harbour’s steady output since - especially the two most recent albums, last year's more heavily orchestrated “Volo” and this year's more stripped-back “Your Heart, It Carries The Sound” (and I suspect most of the set came from these two, unfamiliar to me, records). The six-piece – voice, bass, two guitars (or guitar and violin), drums and Roland keyboards – play a funereal pop (“misery... with a smile”) as smartly attired as their waist-coated, brylcreemed singer. There is an assured stateliness to their music – and a maturity since I saw them last – that is a gradual pull in rather than immediate hook.



The wide stage and slightly bohemian feel of Band on the Wall suited them well – even the red neon of the venue’s logo which I normally find a distraction adding to the moodiness. Last Harbour are another band without overt stage theatrics but let the songs – creepy, doom-laden or poignant – create their own sombre ambience – and the early ones that alternated male and female voice worked particularly well I thought. I initially didn’t see this line-up as natural bedfellows but by the end of the night realised what they share is that they all create distinct and darkly atmospheric music. Easter delivered all that I hoped - plus some exceptional playing to boot - and the headlining set made me realise how much catching up I have to do with Last Harbour.