When a band member made a solo album, it used to signal the death of the group. But is it actually a mark of rude health?
Time was, if a band's vocalist put out a solo album it meant only one thing: irreconcilable differences, singer and guitarist chewing each other's throats out over who slept with who's girlfriend, the beginning of the end of the band. Lennon released his first Plastic Ono Band single in August 1969 and the Beatles were toast within the year. Phil Collins and Bryan Ferry snuck off from their Genesis and Roxy Music motherships to build the groundwork for solo careers over some years, but ultimately it was the Other Blokes who got sidelined. And in pop the practice was even more mercenary ? at least Beyonc� gave her Destiny's Child brethren a farewell album and tour after the success of Dangerously in Love proved her the golden goose of the group. No such luck, The Rest of Boyzone.
The solo album was invariably a toe-dip into the murky pool of individual success, and if the waters were found welcoming, the singer dived in. But of late there's been a shift in attitude; solo albums have become legitimate pressure valves for singers' creative steam. Inspired by autonomic US collectives such as the Wu-Tang Clan or Animal Collective ? where solo projects went hand-in-hand with group releases ? the past 18 months has seen a positive glut of solo albums. Brandon Flowers, Julian Casablancas, Kele Okereke, Interpol's Paul Banks and Maximo Park's Paul Smith have all put out their own records while insisting their band is merely "on a break", and in the coming months Noel Gallagher, J Mascis and ex-Rascals and Last Shadow Puppets linchpin Miles Kane join the lone ranger ranks.
Kane, whose sexually charged slab of 60s-flecked roots rock Come Closer is released this month, puts his solo launch down to simple bandmate fatigue. "The band I was in [the Rascals] was the funnest couple of years of my life. But you think something's gonna happen and then it doesn't and it was running dry. It took me a while to write tunes on my own and do this album, but there's that many bands out there, rather than starting something again I wanted to something more honest."
But why so many singers nipping off from their bands for a crafty solo album on the side? "Particularly within indie rock culture there's side-projectitis," says Jenny Lewis, whose projects with the Watson Twins and Jenny & Johnny have kept her "main" band Rilo Kiley on indefinite hiatus since 2007. "All my friends have started three or four side projects ? Ben Hibbert, Conor Oberst ? so I wanted to keep up."
Keeping up with the Obersts is an unusual explanation for going it alone: the most common reason is a fear of creative inertia or an inability to stop writing during down-time. After five years and three albums of solid touring and promotion, many bands crave a hefty dose of R&R, but frontmen, it seems, get itchy. "After six years on the road you feel like you need a bit of time to yourself," Okereke told website State, "but once I was by myself, it came out faster than I ever thought it was going to." In NME Brandon Flowers echoed the sentiment: "From talking to the guys in the band it was clear there was going to have to be a long break between records. But ? I'm overflowing with songs right now. I've just got this fire in my bosom that's still burning. To be honest, I personally would prefer it if this was a Killers record [but] I'm getting something out of my system."
Tim Burgess of the Charlatans suffered from a similar bout of Songwriter's Splurge after their Wonderland tour, resulting in his 2003 solo outing I Believe. "George Harrison said he had about 400 songs so he had to put out a solo album and it had to be a triple album," he says. "I was more thinking of putting out an EP of Gram Parsons-flavoured desert rock, but more songs kept coming."
Is this rampant ego at play though? Can a singer not face a year without regular doses of adulation and applause? "Not for me," says Alex Ebert, ex-Ima Robot frontman, now singer and chief songwriter of 11-piece LA outfit Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and about to release his debut solo record. "It's more not wanting to take a break without creation. That's the passion, it's not to be attended to or have everyone pointing their gaze in this direction. However, that is part of it. If that wasn't any part of the motivation then no one would try to gain fame for anything."
"It's not about the touring," adds Jenny Lewis, "it's about the output of songs. If I've got a batch of songs ready to be recorded now, I want to record them before I forget them. Music is your job, so having a side-project was kind of my hobby."
The argument that their solo material somehow "didn't fit" with their band ? despite making said band sound like a bunch of furrow-ploughing luddites ? crops up often. Thom Yorke told the Observer that 2006's The Eraser came about because "[Radiohead] was getting boring and self-perpetuating ... one of the things I had wanted to do for ages was get stuck into a bunch of things that I had been mucking around with that didn't fit into the Radiohead zone." Julian Casablancas claimed that the Strokes ("a tough crowd to please") weren't interested in the synth-heavy songs that made up his solo album Phrazes for the Young: "I started having songs that felt more for Strokes and some that felt different," he told NME. "With the band it's hard for me to bring in songs. You might have a crazy idea where you had three different drumbeats on top of each other ? and other people might say 'that's not what we're about'."
When Maximo Park singer Paul Smith found himself penning personal ballads hinting at his childhood influences of Talk Talk, Big Star and Neil Young, he faced the same dilemma. "Maximo Park wouldn't have recorded stuff with loads of reverb on the vocals. It always felt like maybe the lads would want them at some point. It never felt like the songs had been rejected, it was more that I'd agreed they didn't really suit Maximo Park. But in some ways it's nice to show the rest of the lads that I'm not inept. It allows me to have the long middle eights that just go off on one, all the reverb and backwards guitars."
Indeed, the crafty solo album gives singers the creative freedom to explore the more esoteric crevices of their talent without any Neanderthal xylophone players nixing their 47-minute Swedish jazz concept "piece". "I got to the point with some ideas where I knew it was crazy but I wanted to do it regardless," says Casablancas, "I wanted to follow an idea to the end, even if it ended badly." Okereke claims that Bloc Party had been too "organic" to accommodate his dance leanings, while Yorke was excited about "using beats and some of these sounds that I had, writing to that rather than good old-fashioned acoustic instruments [to dispel the idea that] it's not a song unless it's got a fucking guitar in it."
For Carl Bar�t ? solo simply because Dirty Pretty Things had disbanded, the Libertines reunion had played out and "I didn't want to be in a band any more ? it's always been a distraction from my actual songwriting" ? his recent self-titled album was a chance to explore his inner whimsical crooner, taking in music hall nuances, ballsy torch ballads and twisted circus tunes that resemble Cabaret crossed with Hostel: Part II.
"Even subconsciously," he explains, "when you're writing, a band sounds limited to four guitars because when are you going to be able to afford a brass or string section? But when you're on your own you can be as cinematic as you like. It's a double-edged sword ? working together you feel obliged to sacrifice a part of the creative process, but once you don't have any brothers-in-arms you're accountable for all the glory or the shame. It's quite a naked thing to do. It's very exposing, having your name and face on it."
But by plastering your mugshot all over a record and packing it full of your long-constrained Nicaraguan Gypsy trance influences, is a solo album unavoidably more personal and revealing? Is it the singer's chance to unveil "the real me"?
"I guess so," Bar�t considers. "For me it feels like growing up. Bands feel like schoolmates and gangs."
The most cynical view of the solo album, however, remains the mercenary front-person considering the shelf-life of their band and the attention span of their audience and deciding to cut loose the dead wood while they're still popular. And that, surely, signposts the end of the band?
"I think it does a little bit," Bar�t says. "With bands it's literally all or nothing. That is cracks beginning to show."
Ebert disagrees. "The perception that I've had of solo albums is that it's someone trying to really make it on their own and if it fails the group gets back together. But in other instances like the John Frusciante album it doesn't come off like that, you don't think this is him trying become famous without them. Yeah, it is selfish, it's entirely selfish. But selfish has a strange history of being a negative word. Going out and getting some food is selfish. Creating [has] inherently got that selfish element. Was Picasso selfish?"
And as Smith points out, technological advances now allow musicians to knock out laptop solo albums inside an hour in the splitter van from Aberystwyth to Rhyll. "It's easier now to do it. Too many people in the past have probably thought 'am I going to destroy the brand of the band or destroy the bond between people' whereas music these days is more transient than it ever was. It makes no difference, if the music's good then put something out."
So perhaps we've entered a new era of unhampered creativity, where singers finally feel unrestrained by their bands and the music never need stop? A boundless musical utopia indeed ? until we get The Gospel According to Saint Dappy ?
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