Hidden Treasure

A look of deepest horror flashes across Jack Barnett’s face. “Hopefully people will stop mentioning that particular matter around me,” gags the These New Puritans frontman. “’Cos if they keep on doing it, it’s probably never going to happen.”

Though he can’t bring himself to refer to it by name, the subject to which Barnett alludes is the Mercury Music Prize. The career-making award ceremony is nearly nine months away, but already TNP’s bat-shit crazy masterpiece of a second record, Hidden, is being trumpeted as a possible contender. Even if it doesn’t win, the emerging consensus is that it is a shoo-in for a nomination at the very least. Frankly Barnett thinks we shouldn’t get so far ahead of ourselves.
“You know how it is,” he stutters, his voice dropping so low you can barely make out his words. “We don’t want people talking about that right now.”
Not that he’s hostile to success. In fact, he’s chuffed that Hidden – a beautiful, if deeply bizarre, fusion of baroque orchestration and glitchy dance beats – has gone down so well with critics. In all honesty, he thought the album would be hated as much as admired and is deeply grateful this hasn’t proved the case.
“I thought opinion would be very much split,” says the pasty-faced 23-year-old, who with his big head, flat hair and waxwork complexion, resembles one of those doodles Tim Burton used to toss off back when he was a frustrated cartoonist. “We thought some people would really, really like it. But we thought some people would be really put off it. And that has happened in places. Mostly, though, the response has been positive. And that’s quite nice.”
Squeezed alongside Barnett’s mad preacher yelp, Hidden features a Czech orchestra, tribal drummers and a children’s choir. Assembling such unlikely constituents was, the singer reveals, a logistical nightmare.
“With the children’s choir, we got caught up in school politics,” he says. “We had one choir that was all set to do it. Then the headmaster stopped them, because the school governor didn’t want it. So we got dragged into that. Then we found a different class and they were really good. We went into the school with a mobile recording set up and recorded it in a day.”
Did the students have any inkling that they were in the company of art-rock’s brightest new hopes? “Actually, their teacher told them we were on the same label as the Arctic Monkeys. They were all getting our autographs and everything. It was very funny.”
A trip to Prague to work with members of the Czech Republic’s most prestigious orchestra was no less fraught. “We recorded about half of the album in four hours, because that was the amount of time we had. We didn’t have a choice. In a way, it worked better that way. We knew exactly what we wanted so we just went in and got it. It’s a bit of an exaggeration to describe it as an orchestra. They were Czech musicians, some of whom played with the Prague Philharmonic. This was their day off. It was strange to find ourselves in the middle of all these old, Eastern Bloc types.”
When their debut LP Beat Pyramid appeared in 2008, These New Puritans caught a bit of flak because of their perceived ties to the fashion industry. Whilst hailing from the grim English seaside town of Southend, the band were linked to the Nathan Barley-esque Shoreditch scene in London. As with Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and LA’s Silverlake, the north of the Thames suburb is one of those places where you can’t throw a brick without it clocking some idiot with skinny jeans and a sideways fringe.
Adding to their fashionista rep was the very vocal patronage of designer Hedi Slimane, who asked them to compose a piece for his autumn collection – and to then come and perform it at his runway show in Paris.
“None of that is my world,” says Barnett, sounding slightly embarrassed. “It felt like a bit of a misrepresentation of us. I suppose when people hear about that kind of thing, they get the wrong idea.”
Does he regret taking Slimane up on his invitation? “Not at all,” he says, shaking his head vehemently. “It was an amazing creative opportunity. We did the best music we had ever made.”
In the UK music press, Barnett has been painted as a bit of a dictatorial figure. In theory, These New Puritans are a quartet. Musically however it’s the frontman’s vision which is to the fore. Does this cause division in the ranks?
“We don’t’really think of ourselves as a band,” he says. “We’re more a sort of organisation really. There’s no power struggle. It just seems to work. Different people do different things. My brother looks after the visual stuff. Also, he’s the fixer. He’ll sort out the business side of things. So we all have our own functions.”
Barnett has a sweet tooth for pop, listing Britney Spears’ Blackout as one of his favourite LPs of the past ten years (he becomes almost animated as he enthuses about that record’s juddering “sub-bass” and “crackling track sounds”). In fact, he regards mainstream pop as, in its way, more subversive than even the most out there avant-rock. Some of the beats and sound effects on modern chart records are, he says, as balls-out wacko as anything you’ll hear.
“Weird pop is the best kind of music,” he says. “You can get away with all sorts of strange stuff. Michael Jackson – some of his stuff is really, really out there. And it’s an even greater achievement because it gets on the radio. To have that kind of success would be our idea of perfection.”
As a fan, was he haunted by the passing of Jacko? “Actually, I can’t remember where I was when I heard he had died,” he says. “That’s an odd one isn’t it? Everyone says you’re supposed to remember stuff like that. And I haven’t got the faintest clue.”