Review Fix chats with Fragile Creatures’ Adam Kidd, who discusses the band’s origin, goes and creative process.
About Fragile Creatures:
Combining rock, grunge, pop and catchy melodies, Fragile Creatures evoke the spirit of great musical innovators of the past, from Bowie to Blur and beyond. Resistant to the formulaic, going wherever their musical muse takes them. Hot on the heels of this Spring’s Heart Beat EP, the band are gearing up to release their second album Punk Yacht, with a series of self-recorded psych-pop singles. Beginning with A New Low, a diatribe against populist hate-mongering that straddles the troubled border between the spiky and the smooth.
Review Fix: How did the group get together?
Adam Kidd: I have been making music with Tom Alty and Aaron Neville since we were at school together in Brighton (UK). When I finished studying art at University, around 2011, the three of us clubbed together and recorded an album as Adam Kidd Band (embarrassing early band name). That record has never been released, but it got me a publishing/development deal. At that point we sought out a new rhythm section, and found James Crump first and then Adam Whittles to complete the line-up. Both guys just seemed to click with us old school friends and we’ve been tight ever since.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Kidd: It usually starts with me improvising on guitar, singing gibberish melodies on top. I record these ideas on a dicta-phone and then work at the lyrics once a line or two starts to stand out. If I’m writing with Aaron it’s more of a musical conversation, firing ideas back and forth. In both cases we like to take songs to the band half finished to see how the others react to the raw ideas. I used to make really detailed demos, but I trust the guys so much now I prefer to leave things a bit more open. I find songwriting is like discovery… It often feels like the songs already exist, you’re just revealing them.
Review Fix: What inspires you?
Kidd: All sorts of things… Often my emotional state dictates what I’m writing, but also I find life, politics, films, strange dreams… what ever is happening around me. Of course music itself is a massive inspiration. Just the way a couple of chords or notes sound next to each other can be enough to set the creative juices flowing.
Review Fix: How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you?
Kidd: The name of our next album, Punk Yacht, which we’re planning to release next spring, came about as an attempt to describe what we do. We are fully DIY now, we record ourselves with minimal over dubs. There’s a rocky rawness to our music, but it’s also very melodic and eclectic. In a review of our first album launch a few years ago we were described as ‘yacht rock’, which was really funny to us. Aaron and I really love that smooth 80s pop of bands like Toto, but I think we are much more rawkus and unrefined, and take just as much influence from a group like The Clash, for example, who could be rough around the edges but at the same time incredibly creative, versatile and full of passion.
Review Fix: How are your live shows different from your studio work?
Kidd: I’d like to think this new album will come a lot closer to capturing our live sound, as we recorded this ourselves in our rehearsal room. It’s taken a couple of years to figure out how to do it… Still, even then, the live show is inevitably faster, sweatier and more chaotic.
Review Fix: What inspired your latest single?
Kidd: When I wrote the lyrics for A New Low I was triggered by Katie Hopkins saying that migrants in the Mediterranean were like cockroaches. She used the same language as the Nazis when they were turning people against the Jews. In a wider sense the song is a commentary on this age we live in where media (both news and social media) gets used to manipulate us and divide us. Take Brexit for example… We are all so angry and polarised it seems impossible to move forward. It has all become very emotional and that is killing rational debate.
Review Fix: What are your goals for the rest of 2019?
Kidd: I want to get three singles out (including A New Low) before the end of the year, and make some fun low budget music videos for each of them. We also filmed a lot of the recording sessions on our mobile phones, which I plan to use for YouTube videos showing more of our process as a DIY band on a limited budget. Aaron has a solo project (Neville Sounds) that should have a single out this year, and I’m recording my own solo record which I’d like to finish before the year is through. Reliant on a label, or our old publisher, we were prevented from releasing as much music as we’d have liked to. Now as an independent band we’d like to let people see just how prolific we can be! I also want to get out there and play more shows, especially outside our usual spots in London and Brighton. It’s going to be a busy year!!
Review Fix: What’s next?
Kidd: We’re playing the Concorde in Brighton on November 10th. Join our mailing list through fragilecreatures.co.uk to keep up with developments!
Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?
Kidd: First and foremost we are doing this because it’s fun and we like hanging out with each other. The message we want to send to the world is a positive one: let’s all try to be a bit nicer to each other please!
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