Simple mind

When former Mutton Birds bass player Alan Gregg set about making his first record with a new band, low commercial expectations afforded him creative carte blanche. The New Zealanders made a lot of friends during their tenure on Virgin (the Envy Of Angels album in particular was a rainy, grainy beauty), but sales figures never lived up to critical goodwill. After the split, Gregg busied himself with then unknown Kiwi songwriter Bic Runga, all the while percolating ideas for an album under the Marshmallow moniker. Indeed, as you join us, we’re backstage at The Village after the band’s assured support set, and Gregg is getting ready to play Lee to headliner Bic’s Nancy on a version of ‘Summer Wine’.

“A lot of people like me probably should stop playing music and get a job after something like The Mutton Birds finishes,” he says. “But with home recording and computers it means you’ve got 24-track digital in your bedroom, so people can carry on making pretty good quality recordings. But you know, The Mutton Birds were always so concerned with making it.”
Gregg on the other hand, was more concerned with making the record he wanted to make.
“Most of it was written in London,” he says, “but if it was an exile’s record it was certainly not on a conscious level. It was more not really wanting to fit in with what the current climate was, because around that time Radiohead had just put out these two sort of unlistenable albums, and Richard Ashcroft had put out an album, and people seemed to be going for really earnest music. And I thought, ‘Oh well, I’m going to make a happy little pop album and I don’t give a shit if anybody hears it or not.’ And touring with Bic Runga for 18 months, the huge machine behind her is just incredible, and it took me back to that thing of, ‘Well fuck it – no one’s gonna give me that kind of money. Why don’t I just make what I wanna make?’”
When the folk at the Circus label showed an interest, Gregg responded, intrigued by their roster (the Tim Buckley/Gary Lucas Songs To No One album, The Go Betweens, The Magnetic Fields, plus forthcoming plans to reissue the Harry Smith Anthology). Marshmallow was released late last year, making it onto many scribes’ end of year lists, with songs like ‘Let Me Love You Like There’s No Tomorrow’ splicing jangly Rickenbacker rock to the unabashed naivety of the Everly Brothers, the Crystals or the Shangri-La’s.
“Naivety’s great, it’s my favourite thing,” Gregg says. “The Everly Brothers or early Beatles or some Ray Davies songs, on the surface they’re really naïve, but they have a lot more going on than you realise. Jonathan Richman does it so self-consciously and it drives some people crazy, but I love those corny rhymes: ‘UFO man was flying around/UFO man hit a cactus/He was flying upside down for practise’. Naivety is something I aspire to.”
Well, Blake’s songs of innocence and experience are the ultimate expression of that simplicity.
“Exactly, and who knows whether he wrote them off the top of his head or honed them down for ages. It’s that thing of effortless effort; I love people who write lyrics where you can’t see the joins. I much prefer that to someone who’s setting out to make these big grand statements. I like the little pithy idea.”