PUERILE. INCOMPREHENSIBLE. Exhilarating. All in one. Sounds more like an episode of Garda Patrol than the shake down of a band who ve been fjted as pop tartlets. Babybird like to . . . eh . . . throw the proverbial cat among the flying rats every now and again, and boy, do they know how to goad the living daylights out of those airborne rodents.
Steve Jones, the Babybird responsible for the spectacularly hummable You re Gorgeous , has a weakness for imbroglios, if his press clippings are to be believed. Despite the innocence and naiveti conjured by the band s moniker, despite their insistence on sublime chorus lines, and perhaps because of their overnight success label (after a paltry nine years waiting in the wings), he s not one to suffer fools gladly.
The expression Overnight sensation hints that we ll be gone tomorrow, Steve Jones explains, intent on scuppering that particular misconception before it gains momentum in the pages of HP. That s what we re worried about because being in the Top 10 suggests that we might be like all the boy bands that are around at the moment. You re Gorgeous has been great. It s given us a profile and that s what we wanted, but I want us to be around in 20 years time.
Jones is intent on reigning in the Babybird beast before it loses the run of itself on the back of You re Gorgeous .
I think Babybird has lost a bit of its coolness, he suggests, and it s moved on a step that needs checking at the moment. I mean, we have admittedly released pretty poppy singles but we want people to buy the album because that s the only place where they ll see our whole manifesto and that s the most important thing.
One of the manifold bonuses of Ugly Beautiful, apart from its musical content of course, is its sleevenotes. Leaving all notions of coherence aside, they paint almost as vivid a picture of the state of Steve Jones brain as do the songs themselves. Jones describes Ugly Beautiful as unplanned, like a cheeky little bastard . Does this mean that the follow up will be subjected to a more rigorous contraceptive regime?
Jones laughs at the prospect of spaying the baby before it causes any havoc.
My only worry now is the use of words, and how they can be taken up, he admits. Like tank top in You re Gorgeous : it s a better word than T-shirt or jumper. I wasn t trying to be trendy or clever. But a lot of mainstream music is very conservative, and they re bound to pick up on lyrics that are outside of the norm. So I think I ll think longer and harder about my use of lyrics on the next album, which is probably a negative thing. So I suppose it will be a bit contracepted!
Whether people listen that closely to Babybird s lyrics is a moot point, and one on which Jones has no illusions.
Well, take You re Gorgeous , he offers. People think that it s about a rent boy, when in fact, I wrote it as an anti-male song. It s about the use of sex. But you have no control over how people interpret your music. I do take a lot of time over the lyrics, but I there s no point in being too precious about them because people will have their own ideas.
So what of Ugly Beautiful s cover, with its cocky Love Me coyly tagged on the toe of a corpse? Necrophilia may not have been top of Jones agenda when he wrote the magnificent I Didn t Want To Wake You Up , but can he really blame his fans if they assume he has a certain fetish for coffined carnality?
That song s about my girlfriend s father who died, he explains, a touch mundanely it must be said, and suggestions that it s about necrophilia are so wide of the mark that they re pathetic. Granted, if you look at the cover, you might think that all they want to do is shag a dead body, but that s more down to the journalists perversions, I think!
Jones is an ingenue who s wide-eyed at all manner of life s quirks and foibles. Religious fervour, celibacy, dead men (not) walking and fat 45-year-olds.
You know, that comment on the album about celibates fantasising about Jesus, Jones smiles. Well, that came from people like Ken Russell who always talk about celibates having fantasies about Jesus. Surely, that has to be wrong, in that you re not supposed to have any sexual thoughts if you re religious.
I think the way of life, whether it s in an Amish community, or a convent, is brilliant, and a lot stronger than anything I could do. I couldn t lock myself away in a monastery, but I can t see how it can help society. I would ve thought if you re religious, your first thought should be how you can make the world a better place, and if you re locked away, I can t see how you can be of much help to the world.
It s all in the rich tapestry of life, really, eh?
I m just fascinated by everything, Steve Jones enthuses. I m fascinated by the world, and I want to write about it: not just I love you and you love me . Why not write about something else? Songs can t answer things for you, but they should provoke thought. It s like the government trying to ban documentaries about the IRA. They should be shown if they provoke some kind of dialogue, some thought. That s what songs should do and that s what I d like to be able to do too. n