Government in action

All regimes take great pains mythologising the circumstances of their formation. You may have heard it whispered that Tyro-Casio duo The Vichy Government came into being when Belfast born Jamie Manners wandered into an Andrew Chilton-run Cambridge nightclub (where the play list included Neu, John Foxx and Japan, but resolutely no Stone Roses) and talked himself into a stint as a DJ. However, Manners and Chilton contend that this version of events is entirely incorrect. When the official history of this administration comes to be written, you’ll instead find a more colourful creation myth: “I first met Jamie outside the Salvation Army hostel in town begging for enough pennies to buy a copy of Scott 4,” says Andrew. “He was rescued from that life by pop music.”

And now the pair plan to return the favour. By any means necessary.

“I think the basic thing we are doing is trying to surprise people,” says Andrew. “ It’s really as banal as that. Most pop music has declined into a series of set rituals. Loud guitar bands go on stage, play very fast, sweat a lot and smash their guitars. If you’re really lucky, they’ll maybe do themselves an injury. Or electronic acts come on with mountains of equipment, looking really serious…”

“Singing about Eastern European cities and motorways,” adds Jamie.

“…Eastern European cities that they’ve occasionally read about in travel brochures. We’ve been seduced by the idea that pop music was an exciting and unpredictable thing. And in a world that’s incredibly humdrum, it is something that should be capable of being exciting and surprising. From a musical point of view we’re not actually very good. So, we have to think of ways in which we can redeem it and make it a spectacle worth enduring.”

Which has meant inflammatory onstage diatribes; songs like ‘Orange Disorder’ and ‘The Protestant Work Ethic’ have upset big-knuckled bouncers in certain Belfast venues; whilst a desire to tease and provoke informs everything from their Sylvain-style haircuts and confrontational stage behaviour, not to mention their slightly risqué choice of name.

“It’s playful,” says Jamie. “We’re pop scholars and we know all the clichés that exist about making very vague references to Nazi chic that you can just about get away with. I remember years ago Roxy Music had Hitler Youth drummer boys running through the crowd at their early gigs, David Bowie flirted with the aesthetic, Joy Division – their name. Why be vague and evasive when you can just go the whole hog?”

But hold on a minute – an English-based, Nordy flavoured, Electro duo fond of the literate wind-up. If you can detect a similarity here with The Feline Dream, then move to the top of the class. The Vichy Government provided the support on FD’s last Irish tour, and while it’s very clear what unites the two bands, how will the casual observer tell them apart?

“Well they can play and we can’t,” says Andrew. ”We did a couple of gigs with them and they had a van full of equipment – towering banks of synthesisers and keyboards – and we brought everything we owned in a carrier bag. It was the equivalent of George Formby supporting Led Zeppelin.”

And it seems that The Vichy Government are having little trouble finding willing collaborators. Marco Pirroni (following a tip-off from Manics biographer Simon Price) has declared an interest in signing the band to his new label. There are expansionist plans afoot.

“We’ve got an album ready to be taken out of the realms of hypothesis,” says Andrew. ”We’re looking forward to being given enough money to turn into grotesque self-parodies. But I do think there is something there that people can genuinely respond to. If you just want to shock people, all you have to do is go up and swear in their ear. I think we’re more interested in entertaining them.”