“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you” – George Bernard Shaw.
It’s interesting, isn’t it? How many bands can you name who make you laugh when you hear them? And how many of those bands are taken seriously for having the affrontery to make you laugh? I’ll give you Pulp, and maybe The Divine Comedy, but what about They Might be Giants, Fountains Of Wayne, Weezer and OK Go? And, now, come to think of it, how many comic novels win the Booker Prize? The Old Devils and The Finkler Question, but I’ll really have to stop you there. And, you’d have to go back to Annie Hall in 1978, to find a movie comedy that won a Best Picture Oscar. But why not This Is Spinal Tap in 1984, or Bridesmaids in 1998? Enter your new favourite old band, The Hoosiers. “Satire is a good way to get your point across,” says frontman, Irwin Sparkes. “You just have to have more of a Trojan Horse in pop.”
Confidence, the new album from The Hoosiers is one of the natural wonders of the world. Of course, if you’re unsure as to the veracity of this conjecture, you should be aware that I am including certain recordings by Sparks and even Steely Dan, amongst these worldly treats, as well as more traditional landmarks like the Great Wall Of China, and The Leaning Tower of Pisa. Indeed, so effortlessly beguiling is Confidence, you may find yourselves, flicking through your record collection to check whether this bunch of songs has been knocking about your house for years. Of course, this turns out to be a wild goose chase, although it also turns out The Hoosiers have been threatening to release a brilliant record for so long now, we should be easily be forgiven such folly – but herein lies a tale.
Vocalist Irwin Sparkes and drummer Alan Sharland were at different schools when they first met in in 1995. Initially, the pair played in covers bands, before their chemistry teacher, Grant Serpell – who was still moonlighting as the drummer in Seventies’ pop chart-botherers, Sailor – heard their ‘concept album’, Elephant Man, and suggested they should seek out their own life experiences in order to write some original material. Taking him at his word, the pair headed to Spain, having won a competition to tour the country, but their van overturned at 80 mph on a motorway – the tanks exploded and there was diesel running everywhere – and they had to kick their way out of the van’s back door to escape.
Seeking further adventure, Irwin and Alan travelled to the US, applying on a whim for football scholarships at the University of Indianapolis. Amazingly they ‘won’ the scholarships, although it didn’t take long for Irwin’s asthma affliction to prove particularly football-unfriendly, and when Alan developed shin-splints, and then broke his wrist, their sense of failure felt tangible. “We were tired of failing in a band,” Sparkes told the Independent in 2008, “but it was humid there, and the ground was hard. They called us Mr Glass and Mr Wheeze.” Nevertheless, the experience proved invaluable, and emboldened by their lack of success on the field, the pair wrote songs in their shared bedroom – one called, Song For The Uncertain became a hit on campus – before returning to north London to finish their studies.
“Learning how to fail was so massive for us, because we’re two middle-class kids and everything comes to you. You get school, A-levels and bundle your way through. Then we went away on our own on this big adventure.”
Now called the Hoosiers – a citizen of Indianapolis is called a Hoosier – after abandoning a previous incarnation as Myst, Irwin and Alan joined forces in London with Swedish recording studio engineer (and ex-fireman!), Martin Skarendahl, and, in 2006, were signed by Craig Logan, former Bros bassist and head of Sony’s RCA imprint. Their debut album, The Trick To Life, quickly followed in October 2007, and was an instant success, shooting to No.1 in the UK charts, and spawning four singles, including Top 5 hits, Worried About Ray, and Goodbye Mr A. The latter in particular – reminiscent, in part, of Electric Light Orchestra’s Mr Blue Sky – became a fans’ favourite: in the video for the single, the Hoosiers kidnap Mr A, a comic-book character and the world’s greatest superhero, before taking his place fighting crime as incompetent anti-heroes, and Hoosiers fans would often dress as superheroes to attend their gigs. Two further singles, Worst Case Scenario – about the perfect pessimist – and Cops And Robbers – often compared to The Lovecats by The Cure – both surfaced in 2008, and propelled the album back into the Top 5.
The enormous success of The Trick To Life – since its release, it’s sold well over a million copies worldwide – ensured The Hoosiers could embark on a sell-out our, a mammoth excursion that took in appearances at Glastonbury and Isle Of Wight Festivals, as well as Radio 1’s Big Weekend. At some point during proceedings, the band realised they only had four months to write, record and release their second album. Naturally, they panicked, but then so did their record company, who promptly sent in a series of co-writers to write around the issue. “We were urged/pressured/bullied into co-writes,” says Irwin, “which afforded us an incredible education of writing with some of the best of the business.” The roll call of dignitaries included Cathy Dennis and Rick Knowles – and a trip to Nashville – but when the band’s second album, The Illusion Of Safety, finally surfaced in 2010, it barely made the Top Ten, whilst electropop-clad, lead single, Choices merely crawled to No.11 spot. Sony were not impressed, and in 2011, they parted company – except, the band retained the master tapes, and the album, with four new tracks, and a new title – Bumpy Ride – would appear in April 2011 on the band’s own imprint, Angelic Union “The aim is to sell enough records to be able to do the next one,” the band told the Guardian at the time.
In 2014, the Hoosiers released their third album, The News From Nowhere, a Crab Race release which encouraged the band’s fans to pre-order the album so “we can pay for the recording, manufacturing, adverts, videos, touring and promotion – all the stuff a label usually does.” This heartfelt plea was no doubt inspired by the title of the album – William Morris’s quite brilliant utopian novel, News From Nowhere, published in 1890, imagined a future where common ownership and democratic control of life’s necessities are based in a pastoral paradise – but whatever the truth of the matter, a fourth album, The Secret Service, followed in 2015, then two more live albums in quick succession. Since those heady days, there’s been an Irwin Sparkes solo album of “melancholy doom-folk” known as White Tail Falls, and earlier this year, The Hoosier Complex, a collection featuring the group’s entire catalogue of studio recordings along with additional bonus tracks, and multiple demos from their debut album. “Listening back to our debut album for the first time in about twelve years”, Irwin told Retro Pop magazine, “I was struck by how giddily breathless my vocals are. So little space and in a register as high as possible, owing to our producer – the late, great Toby ‘Jamiroquai’ Smith – and his insistence that it gave the songs a necessary urgency. This was the noughties and I remember the radio waves being full of everyone busting their lungs for a slice of chart pie. I can hear the desperation in the voice of that younger me, eager to make his mark.” Harsh words, perhaps, but when those eager young pop types set out to make The Trick To Life in 2007, “just wanting to be like Sparks or Talking Heads”, they could only ever have ended up being that shiniest, most exuberant version of themselves.
“It sounds like what a Hoosiers album would sound like if we’d come out in 2023. It’s a sonic shot of optimism, effervescence and joie de vivre.”
Fast forward to 2023, and the Hoosiers are about to release their best ever album. But why now? “Possibly as a by-product of having nearly lost the opportunity to play music again in lockdown,” says Irwin, “Al and I find ourselves more in love with each other, the band and making music with each other in this particular band than ever before.” Thank God, I hear you cry, because Confidence really is a revelation. Produced by Sam Miller, who mixed the first album, and recorded at Angelic Recording Studios – the line-up in the studio is completed by Leighton Allen on bass, and Paul Frith on keyboards – Confdence kicks off – after the brief, instrumental flurry of Welcome To Confidence – with the Metronomy/Daft Punk-tinged (no, really) Making A Monster, an extraordinary song (with brass courtesy of Old Dirty Brasstards) each verse featuring another lover’s side of the story, a fabricated romantic impasse, where both parties are gaslighting, both twisting events. After that, lead single Hello Sunshine is a Sparks/Feeling-type affair about fighting to see the positive, and avoid being dragged down by a loved one’s darker tendencies, whilst Idaho is effortlessly fabulous, and the least balladic murder ballad about covering up a crime and laying plans to live a wonderful, normal life, you could find – this side of Bonnie & Clyde, or True Romance. Up next, the impossibly-catchy erotomania anthem, G.O.A.T. sets us up for the gorgeous Lip Sinking – about lying to other people, by telling them what you think they want to hear. The latter is utterly beguiling, of course, like Fountains of Wayne at their dreampop best.
“We wrote and recorded it in about three months and it was the most life-enhancing experience of making music we’ve had.”
We’re only halfway through our new favourite old band’s new record, when we realise, Snowflake – about how a being of true love, who seeks only to love, could expect to be received in the UK in our present times – is political, since it’s really about immigration. There’s a brief respite with Losing Your Balance, before the devastating Things To Remember When You’re Falling takes hold. “It’s only in our final moments when falling to our death,” says Irwin, “we take a split-second inventory, and see we have not lived a life of consequence.” Eventually, Confidence (Is Easy) – “if good things come to those who look good,” says Irwin, about this song, ‘where does that leave the rest of us?”- comes into view, as does the stunning, nay-surreal, acoustic number, So High – “do you wanna fly into space, ‘cos I’ll show ya” – which turns out to be the album’s centrepiece if not its coda: the third of a triumvirate of tracks looking at the mistreatment of women by men – which includes Run Rabbit Run off The Trick To Life, and Up to No Good off the band’s fourth album, The Secret Service – So High is as spooky as can be, and easily succeeds in getting under the skin of our protagonist – a charismatic, confident sky-diving instructor! Finally, the album ends with Lying, which is about respect, and accepting the end of a relationship. It’s enough to make you weak.
Over the past two decades, The Hoosiers have been compared to everyone from Supertramp to Sparks, but whatever your pronouncements on the matter, one thing’s for sure: Confidence bears up to repeat listening, revealing layer upon layer of quiet reflections from the soul. It’s also an album that has no right to be as good as it is – and yet here we are! Oh, and that thing about not being taken seriously? “You play music for people, and you’re supposed to act like you got it tough!” says Irwin. “Everyone is in denial!”
The Hoosiers release their new single Hello Sunshine on Fuge on 25th April 2023. Their fantastic new album, Confidence, will be released in September 2023.
© Jane Savidge 2023.
