Special Brew

We always had a lot of time for The Embers in this manor. Cast your mind back a few years and you may or may not remember me praising this most lovably shambolic of bands to the HTN rafters. A curious mixture of the stylistically flamboyant and personally reticent, the four-piece specialised in a woozy blend of space rock and pastoral indie – shuffling round, if you like, with hunched shoulders and their hands in their pockets, but with gazes trained firmly on the heavens. They built impressive looking windmills but, unfortunately, used balsa wood and lollipop sticks. In hindsight, come the first big gale, they never really stood a chance.

News of their demise was sad when it arrived, but, in truth, hardly shocking. In fact, the plight of The Embers could be seen as entirely typical of that which faces many bands of a similar level. Talent, vision, and a unique, endearing sensibility were all present, but good luck to anyone hoping to find any evidence of self-confidence and business savvy.
Listen to James Smith, the band’s former lead singer, as he talks of struggling with writer’s block and stage fright, and you may well wonder if the same fate awaits his current project, Ex Magician.
“It’s just the way I am, I suppose,” he says, demolishing a roll-up. “The self-doubt, the lack of confidence, fear of failure, fear of criticism. It can get pretty debilitating at times.”
And you may well begin to wonder if the lad should bother at all.
But then you're confronted by a batch of his songs. And whatever authority and sense of purpose he lacks in the selling of his material can be found in abundance in the tunes themselves.
“It’s strange,” he admits. “On the one hand, when The Embers split up, I played bass with Corrigan for a while and it was really nice just to be able to stand behind such a big personality; it was a relief. I played with Danny Todd as well, and it was the same thing. I could just get up there, play guitar and not really have to worry about anything else. But then, when it comes to writing my own songs, I do everything. Even in The Embers, I was pretty controlling. Everyone wrote songs for the band, but with my songs, they had to sound exactly how I wanted them to. I like to dictate things too.”
It’s still possible to pick out traces of The Embers’ sound in the growing Ex Magician repertoire – a shuffling backing beat here, a muted vocal delivery there – but make no mistake: since the demise of his old crew, Smith has been busy picking up lots of new tricks.
And the result is a charming brew of irresistible melodies powered along by programmed drums, washes of electronica, and fulsome folk-pop sentiments – like Eels, only with slightly better eye-sight.
“I like to think that I can turn my hand to a bit of everything and pull it off without it coming across as a pastiche,” Smith offers. “I don’t want to be restricted to a single style. I’m finding lyrics a struggle, but I’m actually having no trouble writing music. I do tend to keep writing pop songs. Can’t help it. I throw in the odd twisted wee element, but at the end of the day, they’re all tunes.”
So smitten are the BBC, they chose one of his tracks as bedding for the ad campaign trailing their recent series of Northern Irish films. Likewise, word of mouth commendations from many of his peers have created quite a buzz around Smith. There are still no firm plans to play live (which, given the quality of the material, is a great shame), but you get the feeling that Ex Magician will be able to conjure the kind of spells that will mesmerise people from afar.
“I have an album in mind,” he says. “Have most of it written and recorded and have been mulling over the track-listing. It’s something I always fantasized about when I was a kid – knitting a record together; seeing which songs compliment which. I’ve always had a notion that the last song should be a really simple ballad. Make track 11 a monster, then move into something very slight and quiet. That’s the way to do it.”

Ex Magicians new track ‘Lightning Stuck a Deal’ is availible for download online now