“I’m very much an idealist”, Gary Jarman of The Cribs says through his thick, almost monotone, Yorkshire accent. “We never expected to be in this position and that’s what I always go to great lengths to impress on people because I don’t want them to think that we’re acerbic, or that we’re being ungrateful or something.”
The Cribs are playing a small run of intimate shows across Australia to celebrate their tenth anniversary. They are the quiet achievers of the Brit-rock scene.
Arriving in the shadows of the spotlight of the new wave of rock and roll in the early 2000s, they found success in contradictory ways: an underground band who never managed to lose that tag despite having notched up over a half dozen UK Top 40 hits.
To add another layer to what is already a contradictory paragraph, their insulated DIY/anti-establishment ethic, and noted cynicism to the mainstream, itself grew from insulation. Allow Jarman to explain; “We had a really strong ethic when we started out. I think it came form the fact that we were pretty sheltered. Not sheltered, but we had never really been outside our hometown.
“We came from a very DIY scene. The fact that we were getting national exposure in the UK – we were happy about it but it was definitely a weird thing. We just really didn’t want to change what we were about. That didn’t matter at first but when you start crossing over and getting into some mainstream or commercial success that attitude starts to become like a caricature. It starts to become what people know you for.”
“I think lo-fi doesn’t really age because it’s something that is a necessity rather than a trend or a fashion.”The caricature is as follows: three bratty indie rock brothers dismissive of mainstream music, with contempt for trends and scenes in the industry, propped up by songs such as ‘Hey Scenesters!’ and ‘Don’t You Wanna Be Relevant?’. “It became our caricature to the press,” he observes of their reputation.
“Having said that I’m happy that we did that. I was uncomfortable with it for a while because I didn’t want us to seem like we were trying to be self-saboteurs, or trying to hold ourselves back.
“I think it’s part of the reason we’re still around because I think a lot of bands, a lot of the people who were our contemporaries, they embraced that side of things and they rode that gravy train and had a great amount of success for a couple of years but now it’s – it timestamps it. Hopefully we didn’t go down with that ship because we tried to make sure we were never on it.
The stability they have enjoyed, which eluded many of their contemporaries, could be the result of the band being composed of three brothers – a set of twins, Gary and Ryan, and Ross the younger one – for the majority of their career. The exception was their fourth record, Ignore The Ignorant, where the trio were joined by ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr.
“[My brothers] were the only other people I knew in the small town that fit my ideals. We liked the idea that we were very much limited by the fact that we didn’t have much experience and we were just three kids from a small town. But the real end was just to find an escape from where we grew up,” he reasons.
“Now I look back and I actually like where I’m from, it’s actually a pretty cool place. But when I was growing up it wasn’t like that. It felt very restrictive. You’d get hassled by people for being a musician or for having long hair or for carrying a guitar on a bus.”
Their self-titled debut was recorded in an 8-track studio in three days. Its low-fi style was dictated by the bands financial restrictions. “I think lo-fi doesn’t really age because it’s something that is a necessity rather than a trend or a fashion”, he says. Their sound matured naturally on their second record, not taking too great a stylistic turn until 2007’s Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever, it’s quality given a more traditional radio friendly polish by Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos. “The second record [2005’s The New Fellas] was more money but we chose not to utilise that. We wanted a better studio but we still did it live and on the floor and pretty quickly.
“The fact that we were getting national exposure in the UK – we were happy about it but it was definitely a weird thing. We just really didn’t want to change what we were about.”“There’s more expectation on the third and fourth records. We signed to Warner Brothers, like in America, more money and more expectations. After Johnny Marr left the band, when we made the fifth record, we went back to the ideals of the band in the first place just kind of playing live and recording. That’s our natural environment and that’s how we sound the best, I think.”
Earlier in the year The Cribs released a singles collection in celebration of their anniversary. They called it Payola, in keeping with Jarman’s belief that the very concept of such collections seems “a little self-congratulatory”. The title itself refers to a pay-for-play scenario between record labels and radio stations.
“We’d never really had the endorsement of a lot of mainstream radio, but we still managed to have some hit songs,” he says. “That’s why we thought we’d give it a deprecating name like that, it helps us to make peace with that.”
Payola showcases a decade of music The Cribs produced with independent and major labels yet, somewhat surprisingly, Jarman’s perspective of the latter remained relatively unscathed through the years he was part of that machine.
“At the time it was fine, it was something that facilitated what I wanted to do. Now I look back and I remember being stressed the whole time. I couldn’t really put my finger on it when I was in that situation but now that I’m out of that situation I just remember being, not unhappy, I was just a bit embattled by it.
“All I cared about was being able to make records and tour,” he concludes. “And that’s still pretty much all I care about.”
The Cribs Australian Tour 2013
Wednesday 23rd October 2013
NEWCASTLE, The Small Ballroom – NSW
$35+BF www.oztix.com.au
Thursday 24th October 2013
SYDNEY, Beresford Upstairs – NSW
$40+BF www.oztix.com.au
Friday 25th October 2013
BRISBANE, The Zoo – QLD
$40+BF www.oztix.com.au
Saturday 26th October 2013
MELBOURNE, Ding Dong – VIC
$40+BF www.oztix.com.au
Monday 28th October 2013
ADELAIDE , Uni Bar – SA
$39+BF TICKETS www.moshtix.com.au
Tuesday 29th October 2013
PERTH, Rosemount Hotel – WA
$40+BF www.oztix.com.au
