The Highway To Bell

Let us now praise famous men and women. Paul Noonan and Dave Geraghty of Bell X1 are gathered here today to come clean about the plethora of the artists that have influenced the band over the course of five albums: Neither Am I, Music In Mouth, Flock, Blue Lights On The Runway and the brand new Bloodless Coup.

For an hour they argue their choices and whittle down the list, and it soon becomes clear that they’re an avowedly modernist lot. No Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zep, Beach Boys or Clash in 2011. The oldest artifact dates from 1979.
There are ties for certain places: the pair are hard pressed to decide between Q-Tip, UNKLE and DJ Shadow, between Talk Talk and David Kitt, between U2 and Depeche Mode. And when challenged to select a single PJ Harvey album from the canon, Mr. Noonan professes himself stumped. As for a common thread?
“There are certain sorts of producers that I’ve liked,” Paul says. “Jon Brion did the soundtrack for Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and there’s a version of The Korgis’ ‘Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime’ that Beck recorded, it’s so beautiful. And Neil Young’s Harvest is something we’ve talked about a lot in terms of describing that marriage of acoustic guitar, bass and drums. Some Van Morrison records are like that too, the acoustic marries with the snare and hi-hats and they have that beautiful one-ness. Really satisfying. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours would be another one in that neck of the woods.”
After more than an hour of intense discussion, the pair finally settle on a shortlist that testifies to their impeccable taste. Athough when pressed for a guilty pleasure, Mr. Noonan admits to one reddener:
“Live’s Throwing Copper. I was big into that back in the day.”
Enough preamble. Let’s see what they’ve brought to the table.

1. Counting Crows
August & Everything After (1993)

Paul: “We were trying to think of records that we listened to a lot that may or may not have influenced us while we were recording. We were thinking back to the days when we started making music and we lived in a country house. August & Everything After was definitely a formative influence on the album Neither Am I. That and Jeff Buckley’s Grace.
“I remember going to see Counting Crows live and Adam Duritz would sing things completely differently to the record, there was never any chance of a singalong – it was so annoying. Before that, Dave and I would have been massive Springsteen fans, and as a band this would have influenced our creative process. It was very organic. I loved how the drums sounded and the marriage of quite folky instruments: mandolins and banjos and acoustic guitars and stuff.”
Dave: “It touches a lot on what Mumford & Sons are doing nowadays.”
Paul: “What do they call it? Chum rock! Sounds like dog food!”
Dave: “Another one from that era was I’m With Stupid, Aimee Mann. That was on a lot in the gaff. A lot of these records didn’t date particularly well. They’re really good songs, but I think it’s the sound, the really pingy high-pitched snare and fretless bass.”

2. Jeff Buckley
Grace (1994)

Paul: “Apparently it cost a shitload to make at the time, they had several goes. It was literally arresting, some of that record.”
Dave: “The first time I heard it I thought it was a Robert Plant rip-off. It’s really weird: now I can’t even hear that. It’s funny, it became so much his own sound.”

3. Radiohead
The Bends (1995)

Paul: “Radiohead have been quite an influence, as much for their career path as their music. The Bends was definitely an influence around that time, and into Music In Mouth. I wasn’t crazy about Pablo Honey, there were a lot of records coming from similar sorts of bands at that time, but The Bends was such a leap, and the fact that it didn’t have a ‘Creep’ on it, I imagine there was massive pressure to come up with a smash like that. Creatively it was a jump, full of wonderful songs, and the John Leckie production… He’s made some records that are incredibly human, like the first Stone Roses album, and then he’s made some constricted and inhuman records as well. It’s kind of odd. But the ache of those songs, you’d just long to write a song like ‘Fake Plastic Trees’. Jonny Greenwood really came into his own.”
Dave: “I really like the new one (The King Of Limbs). And there were some amazing tracks on the extended deluxe version of In Rainbows, you’d wonder why they didn’t make the full album. But that’s Radiohead isn’t it?”
Paul: “And OK Computer was also an influence on Music In Mouth, even conceptually, it was a nod to the fact that computers were no longer something to be suspicious of, people were embracing the use of the internet. For us it was the beginning of the phase that ended in us tinkering away on the album on our respective laptops.”

4. Q-Tip
Amplified (1999)

Paul: “We’ve always dabbled in beats, but Q-Tip’s first solo album, Amplified, to me still has the most amazingly satisfying grooves, machine-driven in the same way as Endtroducing..., humans looped. Tunes with verse, chorus and middle-eight, but dressed in new clobber.”
Dave: “Also UNKLE, that first album Psyence Fiction.”

5. Talking Heads
Fear Of Music (1979)

Paul: “We spent a lot of time in Chiswick in West London while we were working on Music In Mouth and we’d come home and most nights we’d listen to Talking Heads’ Fear Of Music, which Dave introduced us to. As a Talking Heads fan I hadn’t been aware of it, somehow I’d missed it at the time, I was too young, it was the late '70s. It was so dissonant and taut.”
Dave: “It was like a guy standing beside you, shouting, and there’s nothing else around him.”
Paul: “Rhythmically, ‘I Zimbra’ as an opener is incredible. There were shades of the Afro path there, but it reinforced this idea that guitar music didn’t need to be big and macho. That wiry, brittle guitar was okay. But it also had great traditional songs like ‘Heaven’ and ‘Air’.”

6. The Flaming Lips
The Soft Bulletin (1999)

Paul: “In the interim between Music In Mouth and Flock we became more interested in conveying joy, which had always been difficult for us. The default setting was moany-hole for a while. The Soft Bulletin was a big influence in that sense, on songs like ‘Rocky Took A Lover’. ‘Race For The Prize’ had that incredibly joyous, drum-driven euphoria. And echoes of some kind of lo-fi Cold War in the video. I remember shifting from, ‘What would Radiohead do?’ to, ‘What would Wayne Coyne do?’ when making musical decisions, and being aware of the dangers of po-facedness. What underpins their stuff is great songs, they can be strummed on acoustic guitars.”

7. David Kitt
Small Moments (2000)

Talk Talk
Spirit Of Eden (1988)

Dave: “David Kitt’s first foray, Small Moments, caused a stir, and rightly so. Beautiful. I remember playing it for people and going, ‘Check out this guy.’ We’d been in Pulse recording and he was upstairs while he was working on The Big Romance. It was amazing. And Talk Talk’s Spirit Of Eden was a big influence on Blue Lights On The Runway. There are a few tracks on there that are not demanding your attention. They don’t say, ‘Hey, check me out, I’m a pop song!’ They’re songs that meander and twist and turn. That kind of music can be very reassuring sometimes.”
Paul: “There’s a Mark Hollis album that was beautiful as well.”
8. U2
Achtung Baby (1991)

Depeche Mode
Violator (1990)

Dave: “Just for the sonics of it.”
Paul: “Great songs as well. A true realisation of… Not ever having been to Berlin before that, it described an idea of the city after the wall coming down, it evoked austerity yet beauty and an industrial wasteland. It confirmed things in your mind’s eye through the use of Edge really, and where they were with the drums, less traditional kick/snare/hi-hat. Geographically they went somewhere to capture something and it really worked.
Dave: “Depeche Mode as well, Violator. They’re pretty consistent, they’ve one or two classic songs and the rest are really, really good album tracks. Martin Gore was a genius, an awful lot came from the man behind the curtain.”
Paul: “And there’s many a girl who confided that she felt her first flushes while watching Dave Gahan.”

9. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
Henry’s Dream (1992)

Paul: “For me he’s definitely a big influence, specifically Henry’s Dream. Our original recording of ‘Eve, The Apple Of My Eye’ was very much influenced by ‘Straight To You’, that sort of drunken, shambolic feel, several acoustic stringed instruments at once, velvet curtains. His journey from writing lyrics in his own blood in Berlin to working nine to five in the office in London hasn’t diminished his artistic output at all. If anything he’s better than he’s ever been.”

10. PJ Harvey
From Dry to Let England Shake (1992-2011)
Paul: “Someone who isn’t attached to any one record. From Dry and Rid Of Me and To Bring You My Love through to Stories From The City, Uh Huh Her, every record was very different. That marriage of grit and dissonance and pink stiletto histrionics is incredible. And the beauty of the stuff on White Chalk. She’s always been the epitome of the pure artist for me. The pressures that you come under in this game, in terms of delivering singles and being marketable and being on-message and being aware of your brand, I’m sure she’s had to deal with all of that, but it’s never clouded her art. I don’t know whether she’s shielded from that or is just able to do what she wants.