Octopus Windmill Interviews Amor De Días

June 27, 2011

When The Clientele released their album Bonfires on the Heath back in 2009, they they mentioned the possibility that it could be their last. Gutted by the thought alone, I was left wondering what could possibly fill that void should they decide to pack it in. Nothing, I concluded. Fortunately, however, the band’s singer/songwriter, Alasdair MacLean, wasn’t about to just go into hiding while us fans sobbed on the message boards and demanded their triumphant return. Instead, he was already busy with a new project - one which found him joining forces with Pipas’ angelically-voiced Lupe Núñez-Fernández. Together, and with the help of a few friends (Louis Philippe, Gary Olson and former Galaxie 500 members Damon and Naomi), they crafted Street of the Love of Days, a record that’s so rich in texture and imagination it’s no surprise it took three years to produce. This is Amor De Días: “love of days”, as it’s translated. Sometimes sweet and reflective, sometimes ghostly and psychedelic, but always deeply rooted in the flavored sights and sounds of Spain. Having recently returned from their first US tour, MacLean and Núñez-Fernández were kind enough to answer some questions for me about their stunning new album, their collaborative process, and even their favorite songs from each other’s bands.

Amor de Días - “Bunhill Fields”

OW: So you’re recently back from your first US tour - how was it? Any stories from the road you’d like to share?

Alasdair MacLean: All good. I guess the craziest story is that our cellist confessed to a celebrity crush on Fozzie Bear. It was a moment of madness in Fargo.

Lupe Núñez-Fernández: We took a wrong turn when we were leaving Canada, but had some good times looking at barns.

OW: How has touring and performing live together thus far compared to time spent with your respective bands?

Alasdair: Amor de Dias are much smaller-scale and much quieter than the Clientele. I like both of these things. It’s far easier to control the sound. From a musician’s point of view, I love the fact that there’s no hiding place. Everyone has to play and sing the best they can or the whole thing collapses.

Lupe: I’m used to playing with a laptop and the most basic of guitar set ups with my other band, and constantly worrying about syncing with backing tracks etc. Playing with just acoustic instruments felt both really lush and relaxed in comparison, a total treat. Amor on tour is one more person than Pipas but the whole thing still has a real sense of compactness and autonomy and easiness on the road that I really appreciate.

OW: Street of the Love of Days took you about three years to complete - how does it feel to finally have this record out?

Alasdair: Usually record releases are an anticlimax cos all of the potential you’ve been dreaming of becomes an actual ‘thing’ that people are allowed to have opinions about. But this one took so long to do that it was just a relief to get it out there! I feel set free.

Lupe: Me too. On a personal level, it’s also a really special document of the last few years, seasons somehow preserved.

OW: Without any label pressure, you basically had all the time in the world to record Street of the Love of Days. Did you find that such freedom made it more difficult to complete?

Alasdair: Yes, definitely. That sort of freedom is of a particular type - it’s not freedom to re-write songs, but to tinker with arrangements on a song structure that’s already there. It’s easy to forget the song is the most important thing.

Lupe: I think we would have missed any deadline had we had one. This one really just needed to mature slowly.

OW: How did the two of you first meet?

Alasdair: We met in a pub in Fleet Street. It was called Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. It sounds like I’m making it up but it’s true.

OW: I’m assuming that Lupe’s vocal contribution to God Save The Clientele was the first time you two collaborated, but when was the first time you both sat down and played songs together and what were those first sessions like?

Alasdair: I asked Pipas to remix Losing Haringey before then. I’m still waiting for the result. The first time we sat down and played was wonderful. It was quiet, reserved, beautiful music. I’d never collaborated with anyone before in any meaningful way so to be able to add stuff to someone else’s songs was great.

Lupe: We actually first played together on The Relict’s Tomorrow is Again from 2003, on which Alasdair plays guitar and I sing, but we didn’t actually record any of it together. Alasdair sent me demos for God Save the Clientele and I was bowled over with the way those songs sounded without any of the final arrangements, just him and his guitar and various kinds of natural reverb. It was truly inspiring. I still hope those are released one day. I think we actually sat down with guitars only in late 2007, in Brixton in South London, and my first reaction to it was, this sounds so quiet, so medieval and troubadour-like, so light and intuitive. I loved it.

OW: What’s your collaborative process like? I read that you each wrote half of the songs on the record - so did you only sing and compose lyrics for the ones you wrote, or did you try to switch it up a bit?

Alasdair: We switched it up to an extent. I wrote most of the music for Foxes song, but Lupe wrote and sang the words at the end. Otherwise one would come up with a way to finish the other’s unfinished songs. And of course Ken Brake wrote Touchstone, we just sang and played it.

OW: Did either of you use the recording of this album as an excuse to try your hand at some new instruments, or did you mostly leave that to the friends you invited into the studio with you?

Alasdair: I played all the piano on the record, which is not something I’m much good at, but the sort of lazy bossa nova-ish thing is easy enough to do even if you aren’t great. And I played bass, which was a lot of fun, although my initial tendency was to play guitar solos on it. Ken and Lupe needed to calm me down a bit.

Lupe: I loved playing all the percussion instruments in Ken’s studio -a little wooden frog he got in Honduras, all kinds of bells and chimes, Indian string drums whose name I don’t even know. I play a couple of droney keyboard bits, which I’ve never done before. Now I keep talking about taking a harmonium on the road.

OW: Not only does “Bunhill Fields” stand out for being a great tune, but it’s also pretty different than the rest of the album. Maybe it’s just me, but it feels more inspired by some of the more upbeat Magnetic Fields tracks than anything else. What’s this song about and what influenced its sound?

Lupe: It’s sort of inspired by my life in the East End, all the contradictions and paradoxes of day to day life, and a cemetery called Bunhill Fields where non-conformists are buried. William Blake, John Bunyan, right in the midst of all the men and women crossing a really busy intersection in London. It started out as a very quiet song originally written for Pipas but never recorded, so it’s kinda funny it ended up being one of the fastest songs on the Amor record, no doubt thanks to Howard Monk’s upbeat disco drum beat. You can still hear the quiet underneath I think.

OW: “Harvest Time” continues to be one of my favorite Clientele tunes so I was pleasantly surprised by both its inclusion on this record and by how well you were able to re-imagine it. What was it about this song that made you think to try a new approach with it?

Alasdair: Actually, the Clientele version is the re-imagined version. The Amor version was the original, recorded before the Clientele did their version. I added it to the Clientele’s repertoire because I felt I didn’t have enough good songs at the time we were making the ‘Bonfires’ record. The Amor de Dias version is the definitive version for me. It has the hallucinatory, campfire ambience I’d imagined when I wrote the song.

OW: What does the future hold for Amor de Días? Do you hope to release more albums?

Alasdair: I hope so.

Lupe: It’s in the works.

OW: Finally, for a bit of fun: Alasdair, what’s your favorite Pipas song and why? Lupe, what’s your favorite Clientele song and why?

Alasdair: I love ‘Boxes’ from Sorry Love and ‘Barbapapa’ from A Cat Escaped. ‘Boxes’ because it’s a beautiful, strange ballad, and ‘Barbapapa’ because it’s such an amazingly great pop song.

Lupe: Hard to pick! ‘Emptily Through Holloway’ from the Lost Weekend EP, ‘Missing’ from The Violet Hour, ‘Breathe in Now’ from the Keith Darcy tribute CD, ‘Never Saw Them Before’ from Bonfires on the Heath. Because of their totally unique melancholy tender beauty, that incredible quality to the band’s whole output that just gets under your skin. ‘Here Comes the Phantom’ from God Save the Clientele, because it makes me jump up and down.