STAMPEDING BUFFALO

Grant Lee Buffalo’s tour manager, Steve, wants to try on my new coat. It’s quite a nice coat, a “formidable” coat, apparently, but their sound man isn’t sure that the black velvet collar suits him.

“It hangs really well though, and it smells lovely,” remarks Steve, twirling round and pouting rather like a stubbly, brunette Cindy Crawford. “I particularly like the sleeves.”

Grant Lee Buffalo’s drummer Joey Peters, meanwhile, has been out shopping. He’s bought a bargain black shoulder bag in the £1 shop, for holding his vitamins, his camera and his earplugs, and now they all want one.

“I think we should get three. Then I can tie them round my body,” murmurs Paul Kimble, the band’s bassist, producer and depressive in residence.

Grant Lee Buffalo have been on the road for over a year, and, says Joey, it’s “done something to them.”

Like what exactly?

“It’s made us more insane.”

You also have something of a reputation for being melancholy and pessimistic.

“Which isn’t true,” argues Joey.

“It is for me, I’m a real pessimist,” counters Paul. “For me it’s absolutely true but Joey’s a real optimist and so is Grant. I’m a huge pessimist so I think it’s great. I am a very unhappy person, I always was.”

“We can be on the road playing to thousands of people and he’ll complain about the deli tray or something,” teases Joey.

“No, I never complain about the deli tray, I complain about the situation that the world is in most of the time,” corrects Paul.

“That’s what makes me unhappy. Anyway, looking back through history, anything that’s had any kind of validity hasn’t been banal and happy. Look at the bands that are considered great. John Lennon, was he optimistic? Maybe sometimes, but he certainly had his primal scream days as well.

“I think the album is more than just strictly pessimistic or optimistic, I think it has all those elements rolled into one. It asks a question of the listener, and that’s usually what people react to, their own fear and inhibition about having to confront things. People do a pretty good job of whitewashing things over so they don’t have to deal with it.”

TOTALLY WEIRD

Fuzzy is an evocative and exceptional record. It’s the kind of debut that brings otherwise stalwart individuals to trembling point because, sublime as it is, you know it’s only an indication of Grant Lee Buffalo’s capabilities. Fuzzy is the album that became famous for being Michael Stipe’s favourite of the year, and yet the band know they can do better.

“There were a lot of things that I was unhappy with and didn’t know if they quite sat right, but I think most of those things were from a production or mixing stand-point,” says Paul. “In terms of songwriting I think the album is really brilliant, it’s just that Joey and I usually fuck it up. I always feel as if I’m screwing this great thing.

“But I just realised that perfection is laziness, because you could sit around and re-do everything all day long and re-record those songs a million times. Unfortunately some bands do. I’d always opt for spontaneity over perfection, or so-called perfection. I’d rather hear a little noise and be able to tell that somebody was actually involved in it.”

Being raved about by the very coolest person in the whole world, the man who will one day (oh yes!) father the next generation of startlingly attractive Freeneys (perhaps more startling than attractive, but there ya go), seems not to have fazed them in the slightest.

“I mean, it really doesn’t matter either way,” says Paul, in what seems a remarkably nonchalant fashion. “It’s like everyone else is more aware of Michael Stipe’s quote than we are, because it’s been printed on posters and everything. It’s great that he ever got the record and actually bothered to listen to it, and liked it. The whole thing is a weird chain of events.”

“There was a couple of different people who both sent him the CD in the same month and called him to tell him how much they liked it and that he should listen to it,” adds Joey. “About a month later we actually met up with him, and hung out for a while.” (They hung out for a while! With him! HIM!)

“That was a pretty strong thing for him to say as well,” says Paul (oh go on, rub it in) “rather than, ‘I really like this band’. That’s a lot to carry around. We haven’t thought about it much because he’s just a guy.” (Actually, he is the Messiah.)

“I was a huge REM fan for the first three or four albums. I haven’t listened to anything since1984. For me, just to actually meet him ten years later and sit around with him, it’s totally weird. We were just some geeks who made music in a garage somewhere.”

They’ve been compared with everyone from American Music Club to The Waterboys (Paul: “I’ve never even heard the fucking Waterboys.”) Grant Lee Phillips is apparently the new John Lennon. And the new Bob Dylan. And David Bowie. Right now he’s standing in the Tivoli Theatre wearing glasses and a funny hat and getting ready to do a sound check for what turns out to be one of the best concerts of the year.

It’s written in the stars. The geeks shall inherit the earth.