Hit The North

Deci Gallen may have just made the album of his life, but that hasn’t stopped a little part of him yearning for a spot of moonlighting.

“I love photography,” he reveals. “It’s just a much more immediate process than making music. The album took me a year to mix, never mind record. Photographs – if you want to do it, you just go out there and do it. It’s an illusion, of course. Because once you take them home and develop them, you start noticing what’s wrong. I mean, I took the cover picture and love it, but the lines aren’t straight enough – I probably needed to spend as much time on it as the record.”
100 Miles Of Broken Pavement, the ten-track delight we’re talking about, is the second LP that Deci’s band, The Jane Bradfords, have released. And while it zips along at a rare downhill clip, it’s primarily a record of deep textures and arresting details. One that repays the time and attention lavished on it over the last three years.
“It was psychotically worked over,” he laughs. “Every detail, every shade. Not in a dry, clinical way; I just wanted to make sure I got everything right. Making an album is its own wee trip. Every stage – writing, recording, mixing, coming up with the track-listing – throws up surprises. At times it felt like the songs were dictating things to us rather than the other way round.”
Lyrically speaking, Pavement... is an album that wears its war-wounds on its sleeve. Songs like ‘Until The End’ and ‘About Our Love’ come with enough baggage to trigger an extortionate surcharge. Safe to say, it’s not a young man’s record.
“No, it’s not,” says Deci. “Wish it was though. I could talk all day about the music, but it’s funny – I do feel a bit queasy at the thought of someone unpicking the lyrics. I try not to think too much about them, but it’s broadly about growing up. It’s about interactions. Not necessarily romantic ones – just people getting on with one another, and the problems that crop up. But it’s funny, once it’s out there – it’s out of your control. People attach their own meanings to things. Someone said ‘Retro Romance‘ was an anti-hipster anthem. It isn’t. And anyway, the only people who would write anti-hipster anthems are hipsters. I’m definitely not a hipster.”
Deci demurs to mention the bands who have acted as reference points, but his desert island discs would see New Order, Joy Division, LCD Soundsystem and The National all shouldering for inclusion. His yen for ‘80s electro, meanwhile, is also highlighted by the fact that Dennis Blacken, the man who mixed ‘Sweet Dreams’ by Eurythmics, pulls a similar trick on ...Pavement.
“I haven’t actually met him.” Deci reveals. “It was all done through emails. But I’m dying to sit down and chat to him about what it was like back then. I’m nostalgic in a way for the early eighties musically. It was so varied. You had a Detroit sound, a London sound, a Manchester sound, a New York sound. Nowadays that’s gone. It’s probably due to the same technology being so widely available. But I can’t complain too much. I was able to make this album in my own house. I couldn’t have done that a few years ago.”
So, backward-glancing but forward looking; internally troubled but moving through the world with a skip – 100 Miles Of Broken Pavement is exactly the type of album that, with some backing and a little luck, could lead to The Jane Bradfords falling into step with a wider audience. Deci, however, is pleasingly sanguine about its prospects.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s already been a success. I couldn’t care less about keeping up. There’d be no point in trying. I still listen to new stuff, and like a lot of it, but I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m a huge dubstep fan. I just want to carry on writing good songs. It’s as simple as that really.”

100 Miles of Broken Pavement is out now.