The Way Back

THE RELATIONSHIP between bands and record companies has more often than not resembled one long, unhappy marriage but in Rialto’s case, they found themselves abandoned at the altar.

With three hit singles under their garter, the post-Britpop sextet were all set to tie the knot with the release of their debut eponymous album, which had already received rave pre-release notices but, alas, they had the red carpet abruptly pulled from under them by their erstwhile label, EastWest.

Singer and song-scribe, Louis Eliot, winces at the memory. The first question on every journalist’s lips is: what was the label playing at?

“I don’t know. If you ever find out, let me know,” he replies wearily. “Basically, there was a change at the top of the company. We were quite happy there and we got on with everyone at the label but I guess he (Rob Dickins, EastWest’s new boss) just wanted to inflict his own taste on the label and on the public. We’re talking Jimmy Nail, Simply Red and Enya. I don’t think we fitted in with that lot.

“But I think we should have been given a chance to develop. We had three Top 40 singles from the album, whereas I don’t think Simply Red had that from their debut. I think in the last few years, the label signed too many bands and expected too much from all of those bands. Maybe the industry needs a rethink.”

Fortunately for Rialto, a new suitor arrived in the nick of time and saved the day – China Records (whose roster includes The Levellers and Morcheeba). But there were complications arising from the split with EastWest.

“EastWest International were really shocked at Rob Dickins’ decision to drop the band,” explains Eliot. “They refused to let us go. The guy who looks after us in America, Seymour Stein, said there was no way he was going to drop us. So that put us in a funny position – we were looking for a new label but only in the UK. We found China Records who, it turned out, are, like EastWest, also affiliated to Warners outside of the UK.”

For all sorts of boring legal reasons, the band had to concoct a new sleeve for the album so the original one, glimpsed only by scurvy hacks, will no doubt become as sought after as the everlasting gobstopper. A pictorial narrative based on their flagship single, the epic long night’s journey into day, ‘Monday Morning 5.19’, it features phantom-like shots of the band beside payphones, while the new sleeve opts for a film noir mock-up of a winged damsel in considerable distress.

Like the songs themselves, the artwork is incredibly cinematic and unapologetically melodramatic. Rialto’s love affair with John Barry and Ennio Morricone soundtracks is well-documented and songs like ‘When We’re Together’, a first-person account of a smitten stalker, is essentially Kieslowski’s A Short Film About Love condensed into three minutes – but without the subtitles.

“I’m a huge fan of Kieslowski but strangely enough I actually wrote that song before I saw the movie,” comments Eliot.

While his lyrics may combine the romantic decadence of, say, Suede or Pulp, the sweeping, kaleidoscopic sound in which Rialto deal is of a much older vintage, both in spirit and method.

“We’re big Phil Spector fans,” says Eliot, “and we basically wanted to create a modern Wall Of Sound. He used to get his massive drum sound by using two drummers. When we first got the band together, we only had one drummer and we were demoing with loops or even recording the drums twice, so it just seemed logical to get another drummer in.”

Conversation almost inevitably turns to – one more time with feeling – Le Coupe Du Monde, but Eliot doesn’t quite share Ian Broudie’s unfettered enthusiasm for le foot.

“Watching the games is a bit too intense for me,” he admits. “If you let yourself get sucked in, it’s more intense than taking drugs. It’s weird: when I was growing up, people were either into football or pop music – you weren’t allowed to be into both. Now they’ve become interlinked.”

One last question. David Beckham: discuss.

“Er, nice hair.”

• Rialto is out now on China Records.