Saints And Kings

To some, it was the adrenalin spit of I'm Stranded that announced music was forever changed. To others, it was Ghost Ships' brass-driven grown-up realisations and reflections. To Chris Bailey – who has variously sneered, yelled, crooned or rasped the words as he's fronted various versions of The Saints since the mid-1970s – it's “The old girl [he] just keep[s] coming back to”.

“From the early days, The Saints has been an ever-evolving thing, and I actually am flattered that people stay tuned for the next weird and wonderful deviation from its basic course,” he clarifies.

Bailey's musical wanderings have led to a new Saints album, King Of The Sun, recorded in Sydney, while its creator still has the port of Amsterdam as his European home. “I have no idea why I've been here for 15 years,” Bailey (monkey) puzzles. “Back in the '90s we did a showcase here, my girlfriend loved the place and announced we should move here. And, strangely enough, two years later we did… That said, Amsterdam is really very handy to everything. If you want to be middle-European, there are few places more middle than this,” he considers, dryly. That move came after a few years in Scandinavia. “I was happy living in Sweden – even if I'm not really sure how I ended up there, for that matter – I thought it was paradise.”

Another European aside also postponed The Saints' latest resurrection: Bailey taking to bass, along with regular Saints drummer Peter Wilkinson, working as rhythm section and collaborators for Frenchman Renaud Brustlein, aka Hash Burns. “The name apparently works better as a pun in the local lingo,” Bailey helpfully explains. “Renaud opened for The Saints a few times, and a number of people exercised guilt on me to make a record with him, as he was 'really really good'. And, oddly, it turned out he is in fact really really good.

“The behind-the-scenes vibe was the hope we'd end up with one of the little singer-songwriter – or, as we call it, 'singer-songwanker' – albums which are such an unfortunate fashion at the moment. We subverted that idea, and became a little loud band, which allowed me to give Pete the job as drummer. In turn, this allowed us to tour, and eat and drink our brains out. We recorded the album in a little farmhouse up in the mountains near Grenoble. Three meals a day, plus snacks, and wine – a long way from bad hamburgers on the Pacific Highway.

“We toured and, as we only had one album of songs, we filled the set up with old Saints songs done in ze Froggy country rarwk-style,” he accents. “But then I came to make the record that has become King Of The Sun, and it was 'Oh, how am I gonna do this?'”

The reconciliation with his original Saints foil, Ed Kuepper, that many thought could never happen, helped. “The acoustic tour with Ed was actually quite a good thing for us to do. After doing those nostalgic Saints 'reunion' shows, we went a different way – stripping it right back.” There's a chuckled postscript: “And just as an experiment to see if we could stand each other for long periods of time… It reached the point where we again realised why we can't work with each other – Ed and I just have completely different approaches to working. We're both strong and stubborn old working girls who like things our own way.

“So then I started recording a new record with Sean Carey – really just one of the best engineers I've ever worked with, and his guitar playing is a bonus. Although we come from very different backgrounds, immediately after the first session I had this strange revelation: 'Zoot Alors! This sounds like a Saints album.'”

For longtime followers, King Of The Sun is a bit of a throwback to the band's bluesy-flavoured work of the '80s and '90s. Layered brass and string arrangements make the songs sound rich and well thought out. The singer conditionally agrees: “I had a vague plan. After making a couple of what were 'very noisy' kind of albums, it was always my intention to steer back to something of that 'singer-songwanker' vibe – but as a studio recording, with those kind of flourishes. Why? Just because I'm a contrary bastard who does that.” The man knows himself, if nothing else.

“Some of the records I made with Caspar (Wijnberg, latter-era collaborator) were buzzy, screechy – distortion on distortion. We had the ideas but probably not the technical abilities to make the sounds we had in our heads. It was of the time, certainly, but I don't put them on the turntable very often.”

Making my job easier, Bailey starts questioning himself. “Is it cyclical? Will the next one go noisy again? Well, actually, I'm struggling with that 'what comes next' as we speak. I do seem to be heading, er, focusing – I'm actually not very good with describing what I do – more to that liking for orchestration, and colouring and stuff.”

The self-anaIysis continues: “I actually had some time – ha, some years – where I made the stupid delusion I was that guitar player hero kind of guy. And as much as I can enjoy plugging in and turning the Marshall up to twelve and all that, you reach that point where you realise too much of a good thing is not necessarily a good thing.”

This touring line-up of the band will include keyboards and a brass section to add some of the record's textures and moods. Does this mean the next stylistic swerve might take the band off towards a jazz and swing period? Bailey ponders, then laughs. “I don't mind a bit of swing, but jazz merely confuses me. As it, I'm sure, does with most people – even those who claim to understand it.” True that.

The typical delays, complications and details of the business side of show-business have held up the new album and accompanying tour until now: “the usual tomfoolery” as Bailey describes it. “It's a new label, the whole new shebang. It took some time to organise things over here – and over there – and now it's all go.”

He's also very determined that this is a Saints of now, rather than of past glories. “Having done the heritage band bollocks the last couple of times – some people thought it was great, some thought it was shit, and I felt it probably somewhere in between the two – I've made it very clear I've done that. I really don't want to be a cabaret band, a nostalgia act. If that's how The Saints ended up, I'd be sickeningly disappointed. That said, we have played a great many RSLs in our time.”

The Saints will be playing the following shows: