Crowe and behold

“Hey man, I’m kinda jammed up. Could you call me back in five minutes?”

When Hot Press rings Brian Fallon back ten minutes later (we’re cool that way), the New Jersey native is out of breath, fresh from dealing with the stress of some last-minute suit shopping for a friend’s wedding. Attire safely “thrown into a bag”, apologies offered, and he's good to go.
Weddings aside, other major events in Fallon’s upcoming calender include hitting the road with new project The Horrible Crowes. Alongside his guitar tech and longtime friend Ian Perkins, the impressively-tattooed singer has delivered a cheerfully dark debut album in the form of Elsie, a soulful lament that takes aim at the fairer sex. So, is he ready for the inevitable allegations of misogyny?
“Nah, I don’t care!”, he laughs. “What are they gonna do? Call me what you want. Ask my wife! I don’t worry about that stuff. If people think that, cool, don’t listen to my record, go cry in the corner!”
But there is a definite element of female-related angst on the record, right?
“Sure,” he admits. “It’s kind of the blame game. We’re blaming a girl on all of the songs. She’s the girl that we named the record after, so that’s the name you can hang all the shame on.”

At this stage, it’s worth pointing out that Fallon doesn’t actually hate women. In fact, Elsie is as much borne out of respect as it is out of heartbreak.
“I have a thing for female singers,” he explains. “I love the sound of the voice. It’s something I could never do and I admire things that I can’t do. For Elsie, I learned to manipulate my voice in certain ways to sound female, so there are times when people will hear what they think is a woman singing, but it’s actually me.
“I never planned on doing something like that. When it came out it kinda broadened my horizons to what was possible. Sometimes you’re so focused on getting the details right in a song that you can miss something. A lot of the stuff I listen to for Gaslight, whether it’s Bruce Springsteen or something else, it’s very big on scenery. Bruce’s songs, you know where they take place. But if you listen to PJ Harvey or Tom Waits, it doesn’t matter where they take place, because it’s just about the emotion. The listener can decide where it takes place.”
Fallon goes on to credit Bon Iver for further inspiration, citing Justin Vernon as a major influence on his new approach to crafting vocals and lyrics.

“I love Bon Iver,” he gushes. “That guy doesn’t even care what it’s about! He just figures it out later. He mouths words so that they sound right. I think that he’s the best thing that’s come out in my immediate generation. I’m floored by him. I listen to his stuff every day, and that doesn’t happen very often. Maybe The National? But I think he blows them away, and I love The National, so that’s saying a lot.
“It’s such a relief for me, to have something like that in music now. I’m so sick of the way that a lot of bands were. Now you’re getting songwriters like Bon Iver who really care about the input of a song, and it reminds me of Nirvana in the ‘90s.”
Despite recording Elsie in just two-and-a-half weeks, it’s clear that a lot of thought went into its creation. But what of the band name and its mysterious extra ‘e’? Fallon insists it’s a nod to Perkins’ English roots and not a dig at famously short-tempered Antipodean Russell Crowe. And should the actor construe it that way, he’s ready to deal with the consequences.
“I could take that guy no problem! Both hands tied behind my back. I’ll bite him.”
And if biting doesn’t work?
“Headbutts man. Lots of headbutts.”