Come All Ye Indie Faithful
One drummer boy finding his feet after leaving the grinch in his old band behind, one indie songstress that got snowed in with her new boyfriend. Andy Burrows and Emmy The Great both have Christmas albums out with their new respective musical partners. Let the Yuletide battle commence...
Craig Fitzpatrick, 07 Dec 2011
There’s something in the eggnog – on the cusp of 30, four indie stars running in the same circles have stumbled on the same idea, aiming to recapture their youthful excitement for the season in song. In one stocking, we have This Is Christmas from Emmy The Great and current beau, Tim Wheeler of Ash. Sounding suitably twee and loved-up, it contains enough winning songs to make for a fine work. In the other, Andy Burrows, once of Razorlight, has teamed up with Editors’ Tom Smith on Funny Looking Angels, a more ornate and wintry effort that escapes the Christmas shackles through sheer quality.
When we catch up with Emmy, she’s a tad under the weather, and is stuck in her parents’ Sussex home. A similar situation last Christmas started the album ball rolling.
“Myself and Tim got snowed in,” she explains. “Like really, really snowed in. We were just bored. We’d watched the two movies that I’d got in for Christmas, we’d played a game his family plays at Christmas and made snowmen… We were stuck here for a week so we ended up writing some songs.”
From there, the record took wings this summer. New love can be tough enough, so surely relations were strained in a studio environment? Apparently the couple didn’t really argue at all. A Christmas miracle.
“We had ‘team talks’. We’d have band meetings that were just the two of us. If things got a little bit heated we’d be like, ‘Right, band meeting!’ but we didn’t really fight. Tim is a really, really good person. He’s also a good producer, and is excellent at getting the best performances out of people. Also, we’re just a good team. We’re not bad at getting motivated.”
Turning to Andy Burrows, Funny Looking Angels is the latest in a long line of collaborations since his departure from Razorlight in 2009 (he’s worked with Mr. Wheeler too).
“I wanted to work hard,” he says of his solo path. “I didn’t come out of that brilliantly massive and successful band and do nothing, just sit on my arse. But work hard and enjoy myself. You get into music as a kid because it’s enjoyable and more fun than… most other things! I wanted to make sure that I embraced that, that I wouldn’t look back at this stage of my life as being miserable the whole time.”
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