Holding Tight

"THEY PUT you up on a pedestal and then they burn you for daring to take a look at the view." That's how Embrace frontman Danny McNamara feels now looking back on the band's brief tenure as next-big-thing in the midst of the Britpop frenzy in the latter half of '97. "I didn't realise the pressure that was on us at the time," he reflects. "I was probably too closely involved in it to notice what was going on in the press. Anyway, the pressure we put on ourselves was always far more than any outside pressure."
Signed to Hut Records on the back of a vinyl only release of 'All You Good Good People', the Huddersfield five-piece were lumbered with impossible expectations by the UK inkies frantically searching for the next Oasis. With a neat line in epic anthems, impeccable Northern credentials and no shortage of good looks in their ranks they seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Only, according to McNamara they had the band down completely wrong.
"We never fitted into the whole Britpop thing," he insists. "We couldn't get any gigs for a start. Our local promoter in Leeds said that if we sounded more like Shed Seven he'd put us on. We wrote 'All You Good Good People' back in '92/'93 when there was nothing but grunge everywhere, no-one was using strings. It took us a while to get our act together and by the time it came out it probably sounded a bit dated, like we were cashing in on something".
It wasn't all hype and nonsense however. When it finally came out in mid '98, Embrace's debut album The Good Will Out entered the charts at No. 1, going on to sell a highly respectable half a million copies. And then there was that triumphant Glastonbury appearance, which McNamara recalls with particular fondness.
"It was definitely the highpoint," he says. "I thought I'd be nervous but I wasn't, even though loads of stuff went wrong during the first two songs. The guitars had warped because of the heat from the lights and we had to continue with just the piano backing us while it was sorted out. There were TV cameras, radio, 50,000 people out in the field in front of you and it was all going out live. It was brilliant, something magical happened that night and I'll never forget it."
Following an exhaustive promotional haul around Europe, Embrace returned home to begin work on that difficult second album in January 1999. Setting up camp in a big country house in Gloucestershire they decided this time around to adopt a radically different approach to recording.
"The main difference with this one is that we play it all live, McNamara explains. With the first one we laid down the bass and drums, overdubbed the keyboards and the guitars making sure everything was perfect as it went down. We've since discovered that perfection isn't everything in music. The stuff you do by accident and those little bits of magic that happen when there's five of you playing together, you just can't get when you re overdubbing it."
"We also had more songs to choose from this time around," he continues. "Our Richard [Danny's guitarist brother] has become a much more prolific songwriter. Before it was about 80/20 my songs to his now it's about 50/50. That made it much easier. The other thing is we didn't have to promote ourselves at the same time as we were recording, we didn't have to do gigs at the same time as we were writing the songs."
Despite taking 363 days to complete, McNamara denies that there was any self-indulgence involved in the album's making.
"The best work we did was when we did it quickly," he relates. "You can spend a month on a song and not get anywhere with it and then you do three songs in a week. It's frustrating but sometimes you have to do it that way. If you don't put in that time and experiment you'll never know what might have worked."
The result of their efforts is their second album Drawn From Memory, eleven songs which range from the quirky upbeat recent single 'Hooligan' to the elegiac beauty of 'The Love It Takes' and the string-drenched title track. The second single 'You're Not Alone', a brass-fuelled ballad with an irresistible melody could well return them to the single charts.
"All I hope for with the release of each album is that we sell enough copies to enable us to do the next one without compromising the music. The first one selling half a million gave us a lot of space and time to do this one. Things are a lot better now than they were, but having said that I wouldn't be in the position I am now if it wasn't for the attention we got in the beginning.
"But it's ultimately up to the fans," he concludes. We've kept our end of the bargain. If it doesn't work out I'll be working in Burger King this time next year."
Drawn From Memory is released on Hut Records. Embrace play Dublin Castle as special guests of The Cranberries as part of the Heineken Green Energy Festival, on April 29th 2000.