Big things were expected of Cherry Ghost. Band members were riding the crest of success that had swept them from unknown Lancashire musicians to prime-time radio darlings. Their debut album, Thirst for Romance, entered the charts at No. 7, with a Q Award for Best New Act-following and an Ivor Novello for singer-songwriter Simon Aldred.
But then, everything went quiet. The promised mainstream success never fully kicked in, with the band eventually putting out a follow-up album earlier this year. It charted at No. 40.
Crucially though, Beneath This Burning Shoreline is widely considered to be a musically superior album. Certainly Cherry Ghost’s new sound is very British yet rootless, of the moment yet timeless.
Simon Aldred writes dramatic, gothic, heartfelt songs—not for him are shallow, lovelorn platitudes. Aldred’s palette is drawn from the grit of life: abusive relationships, people who lose loved ones at war, the pitfalls of religious faith. And while Cherry Ghost is very much his band—started by him in 2007, with the other members gathered from previous musical incarnations—the second album is undoubtedly a group effort.
If they have moved on since their debut as a band, it’s in the tightness of their arrangements and the sense that Beneath This Burning Shoreline is truly a complete work.
You might expect Aldred to be a rather moody poet, obsessed with the internal worlds his songs inhabit. But as is often the case, the opposite is true. He’s refreshingly open, despite the “lurgy” he’s contracted following a headline tour of the U.K.
He has, he says, a “love-hate relationship with touring” because of its relentless and often dull repetition. But, he adds, “It’s the closest you get to having a proper job, which is actually strangely rooting when you’re doing music, because it’s such an indefinite thing to do.”
Cherry Ghost has toured with the likes of Manic Street Preachers and Crowded House, bands well into their careers. Aldred says it can be testing touring with bands like these because “sometimes you recognize the cracks that are appearing” and that “as bands become more successful, it sometimes appears that they’re having less fun.” But he emphasizes that Cherry Ghost players are still enjoying themselves and diplomatically refuses to name the bands he’s referring to.
His answers are considered and thoughtful, much like his lyrics, and spoken with an earthy Lancashire lilt (“I’m not from Manchester, I’m from Bolton” he stresses). Indeed the band members are rarely allowed to forget they’re from the Northwest, often lumped in with the likes of Elbow, Joy Division, and Richard Hawley.
Aldred ruminates that this is because of a “certain melancholy to the songs, which is quite common in bands from Manchester.” But he takes issue with the comparison to Richard Hawley, saying that Hawley’s writing is “very nostalgic and northern.” “I’d much rather listen to bands like TV On The Radio than lots of old-time songs about washing lines and slate roofs,” he says.
Aldred formed Cherry Ghost after being in a number of bands that, for one reason or another, were never successful. After going it alone, he holed himself up in his bedroom, learned how to make music on his computer, and released some demos. He was offered four record deals almost immediately, eventually choosing to sign with Heavenly Recordings.
Cherry Ghost was, most unusually, asked to appear on the Jools Holland show before it had released any music, giving its first album a kick-start.
But success, says Aldred, is a double-edged sword. “For all the positive elements of it, like having money and getting exposure, there are elements that you’ve not been used to in terms of getting criticisms and lots of hard work,” he recalls. “It made me examine more closely what I was doing and what I wanted to achieve.”
The result of this introspection was a much-more accomplished second album, one that, while it may not have had the commercial immediacy of the debut, has widened the band’s cultural cache.
“I wanted this album to be more universal lyrically, and musically I think it’s just more cohesive,” he says. “You can hear a band playing, not just musicians playing songs.”
Aldred says his songs, while often dealing with tragic subject matter in the lyrics, ultimately offer hope. “There are some songs that offer no hope on the album and maybe two or three that are quite bleak in their outlook. My God Betrays [about a bitter loss of faith] is a very bleak song, but it’s also a very gentle and sad song, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. But there is generally a belief in humanity that exists throughout; otherwise it would be a very miserable place to be.”
He states that he’s achieved what he wanted with this second album. The plan for album No. 3 is to step away from what he’s done before and be more playful: “Go for more instantaneous melodies, give myself a little bit of a break with the writing and maybe not chain myself to this idea that I have to be poetic with everything that I do. And just have more fun with it,” he says.
He also claims it won’t be another two years in the making. “I plan to have it done in six months. I don’t want to spend another two years recording an album. I don’t think in this day and age it’s appropriate. Bands have such small budgets now, you’ve got to be more intuitive with what you do.”
