The Zuton Clan

Don’t let the massive roar of hype surrounding The Zutons fool you. They may be enjoying their status as new statesmen of ‘Scally-fornia’, but it seems they have yet to learn the fine art of being a rockstar proper.

Exhibit ‘A’: at their recent gig at the Village in Dublin, the band decided to, by their own admission, keep off the black stuff, or indeed any stuff, instead preferring to have a rather civilised glass of red wine. Just the one, mind.
Drummer Sean Payne also confides that the band had yet to find their sea legs on their previous trip to Ireland.
“We were a bit nervous the first night we came, as it was our first gig outside the country, and I think we were all sick on the ferry over,” he recalls. As it happens, that particular show became fabled as the infamous Temple Bar Music Centre gig where The Zutons supported a relatively unknown Irish act called The Thrills.
“Their album was about to come out, so there was a good crowd there for us,” recalls Payne. “But who would have thought at the time it would have been such a big thing? It went kind of mad for them after that.”
On this trip to Ireland, there were no instances of ferry sickness, indicating that the boys are at least gaining in confidence. And why wouldn’t they? Since their last trip to these shores, the band have released their album Who Killed The Zutons? to massive acclaim. Not only are they undisputed lieblings of the UK music press, but along with the Basement, The Stands and The Coral they’re a major tent-peg in Liverpool’s blossoming new scene. But it’s a situation about which they appear to have mixed feelings.
“Take a look at the Seattle scene...if it wasn’t for someone like Nirvana, people wouldn’t really have listened to Soundgarden or Mudhoney or any of those other Seattle bands,” reasons Payne. “It’s kind of great that through this whole ‘scallydelic’ scene different bands will make it through. I guess the trick is to put your own stamp and personality on what you’re doing.”
Despite blazing their own trail within the framework of the Liverpool scene, the band decided to call upon ex-Lightning Seed Ian Broudie, who has carved out a niche for himself as a Merseyside producer-for-hire and purveyor of the scene’s sound.
“We were initially put off a bit by the Lightning Seed thing,” Payne admits. “I mean it’s not really my cup of tea. We went with him though as we knew he could record a band pretty much as they are.”
It turns out they were right. The Zutons have certainly broken away from that quintessential Liverpool indie sound to create an album that’s marbled with the legacy of pure Californian funk. The single, ‘You Will, You Won’t’, seems gilded with a kind of B-movie vibe, driven by a nicely meaty riff that counters the almost bumbling psychedelic tendencies of fellow townsmen The Coral, with whom they are relentlessly equated.
“The first time you hear the comparison is fair enough, especially as we’re on the same label and from the same place,” explains Payne. “It’s not fair though when that’s all that journalists are willing to talk about. It’s lazy. What nobody’s taking into account is that we have different influences, that we approach music in a very different way.”
You would in fact be hard pushed to find a band with such a unique musical blueprint – Payne acknowledges such luminaries as Parliament, Funkadelic, Pixies, Sly & The Family Stone, Neil Young and Talking Heads as regular fixtures on The Zutons’ tour bus.
“I think our music would range from the simplicity of someone like Jonathan Richman to something more elaborate like Pink Floyd,” says Payne. “We listen to a lot of different stuff, but I guess what they have in common is that they all played with the same sense of spirit, which is what we try to take from the music and bring into our own thing.”

The Zutons’ Who Killed The Zutons? album is out now on Deltasonic