For music fans of a certain generation the concept album has a bad rep – conjuring up notions of double albums with gatefolds sleeves, overblown music and impenetrable lyrics about swords and sorcery.
In that context, it’s a bold move for the reformed Liverpool post-punkers, the Room to dedicate their second comeback album to a single narrative.
Thankfully, whilst the upcoming record indeed has beautiful packaging, the music is anything but overwrought. Marking the first time the same line-up of the band has recorded consecutive albums, ‘The Telling’ develops the sound of its disquieting predecessor into something more expansive with the exuberant, piano-led single ‘The Teller’ a particular highlight.
When discussing the new record with itm? singer Dave Jackson revealed that he has always had an interest in longer form narratives. A screenwriter himself, it’s not surprising that this interest has found its way onto record.
“I was thinking about developing stories in more than one medium and had an idea for folk/horror screenplay. I was also thinking of a short novella and doing it as a spoken word thing.
“Originally, I was going to do it with Paul (Cavanagh, Room In The Wood guitarist/co-songwriter) with atmospheric guitar, provided by Paul. But when he decided that he didn’t want to do the Room in the Wood anymore, it didn’t happen.”
Paul’s decision was effectively the catalyst for Dave reforming the Room with guitarist Darren Brown with original bassist Becky Stringer and later the band’s first drummer Clive Thomas coming on board. After writing the band’s comeback album ‘Restless Fate’ together, Dave and Darren moved onto developing the stalled project into a new Room album, but with a key difference from the original plan.
“I’d written it as a spoken word piece but when Darren started sending me new ideas for songs, I got the idea of having it sung, instead of spoken.
“I wanted each of the songs to exist both as a chapter within a longer story but also independently so we could play gigs and not necessarily play the whole thing. So I had to rewrite the piece to make it fit into eleven songs.”
Fitting the music to the words led to the song-writing process becoming a bit more complicated, as Dave explained.
“Darren would send me an idea for a song and I would come up with the vocal line. I’d then rewrite the words to fit the melody and the rhythm of the song.
“I’d send that back to him and then he’d realize that he’d either have to lose a bit of it or extend it so that the story would fit for that particular song.
“So it was a bit of back and forth. And then we brought the rest of the band in to finish the songs.”
When discussing making a type of record that would have been beyond the pale in the early 80s, Dave acknowledged that the ‘punk-as-Year-Zero’ attitude of more than 40 years ago still exerts a hold over musicians of his generation.
“It is strange, especially given the amount of time that’s passed. I know that I was guilty of it for a long time, you know, and I did hide my pre-punk taste in music for a bit.
“I always remember that hippy notion of never trust anyone over thirty, while the punk thing was never trust a hippy! Then I think there was a dance culture thing which was never trust a punk!”
Forty years on though, Dave felt able to try to fuse together two improbable musical sources.
“My vision was something like Peter Gabriel‘s Genesis meets the Fall. Fortunately, nobody in the band objected but initially our label, 9×9, were wary of the idea. However, I think eventually they got into it!”
Dave acknowledges that he had ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’ in mind when conceiving this project but another long-standing passion is as big an influence on ‘The Telling’.
“I’ve loved storytelling songs from when I was a kid and I think the first song I ever learned to sing was ‘Riders in the Sky’ when I was about four.
“But there’s also a song by Bob Dylan, ‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts’, which I’ve always thought read like a treatment for a feature film.”
To promote the new album, the band have a number of dates already lined up for the autumn. However, the new songs will only be gradually introduced to the set, partly due to the difficulty of rehearsing the new songs with a band that is spread from Devon to the Lake District.
“I think for the first shows, we’re going to do three or four of the new ones and play some of the old songs.
“But, by the time we play with the Blue Orchids on the 8th November at Rough Trade in Liverpool, I think we might just have a go at doing the whole thing, or at least as much as we can do as a support band.”
Here’s the video for the cracking lead single from the record:
‘The Telling’ is released on 9×9 Records on Friday (4th October) on LP, CD and download.
The Room have the following dates in support of the new record announced so far:
Thursday 3 October – Northampton, The Black Prince (with Mike Mooney)
Friday 4 October – Liverpool, Rough Trade (with Mike Mooney)
Wednesday 30 October – Manchester, The Castle Hotel (with Gdansk 81)
Friday 8 November – Liverpool, Rough Trade (with Blue Orchids and Shelton San)
A London date and a further Liverpool show will be announced shortly.
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