Thanks so much to Kenny for the interview! I’ve been trying to do an interview with Jim’s Twenty One for years, and now as they have released a compilation of their songs called “Nadine” on the classic American label Harriet Records, it made total sense for it to happen! I think it was years ago that I contacted Kenny on Twitter (also called X), we chatted, and found out both had worked at the Wall Street Journal (all at different times, but how cool is that?!). Anyhow, I am so glad to find out more about the band as it was always a mystery to me to know that there was a British/Irish band that was clearly indiepop but was based in Brussels out of all places! Now, please enjoy this great interview, best way to start 2026! And get the “Nadine” compilation!
++ Hi Kenny! Thanks so much for being up for this interview!
First of all thank you very much for this opportunity, I know you’ve been a long-time supporter.
++ There is some great news about the band. After such a long time your songs are getting a new life. Harriet Records is releasing a retrospective compilation called “Nadine”. How did this compilation come to be? Did Tim Alborn reach out to you?
A while back, we started to think it was a shame that the jims’ EP released in 1987 was not available online, specially seeing some of the prices people were paying for second-hand vinyl copies on Discogs. So we had the four songs on the EP remastered into digital files, and the plan was to put them out on Bandcamp at least, if not also on vinyl. Earlier this year, purely by coincidence, I learned through Kieron Mitchinson of a band called The Rosslyns, who have an album out on Harriet, that Tim Alborn was a fan of the jims and in fact actually took the trouble years ago to upload a video for one of the EP songs to YouTube. I contacted Tim to thank him and mentioned our plan for a digital re-release, and he quickly replied to say he’d be happy to do it on the Harriet label as he revived it a couple of years ago. In terms of UK label interest, the EP was distributed by Fast Forward in Edinburgh at the suggestion of 53rd & 3rd, its sister arm and label. At one point we hung out with Alan McGee in Brussels, as described in the ‘Nadine’ CD liner notes, and we heard suggestions indirectly that there was some interest at Creation, but at that point, with us based in Brussels and with no profile really in the UK, it probably wouldn’t have made sense in practice for them to sign us.
++ It is definitely great to release on Harriet, a legendary American label for indiepop. I wonder though, was there any interest at any point from UK labels? And what does it mean to you that a label an ocean away is very interested in your music?
As for Tim/Harriet interest in us, we’re very flattered and excited. It’s certainly true that being on Harriet gives us a lot more exposure in the US, where we’ve been getting a lot of radio play I’m sure we wouldn’t have had otherwise. I should also mention Mike Schulman of Slumberland, who called the first EP “a total classic”, has been a huge help in getting the word out. People have checked us out purely on his recommendation. It really is pretty mind-blowing to know that whole new generations across the world are now getting the chance to hear our music.
Before all this came up this year, I had been working on solo stuff under the name Slow Country, and I put an album out on Bandcamp in September, called ‘You Still Believe In Me’. This stuff is the complete opposite of the jims because I wanted to explore tunes made without the usual pop song structures, and without any vocals, leaving more to the listener’s imagination. I’ll be doing more of this in 2026.
++ Let’s go back in time. What are your first music memories? Do you remember what your first instrument was? How did you learn to play it? What sort of music did you listen to at home while growing up?
The first rock’n’roll stuff that I was struck by was probably seeing the likes of T.Rex on ‘Top of the Pops’ on TV, and of course my parents didn’t get it at all, making it all the more interesting for me. Jim and William Reid talk about this in their autobiography – very funny, highly recommended – and it was a bit like that for me, although that world of pop seemed even more distant I think in a village of 200 people miles from any big town.
++ Had you been in other bands before Jim’s Twenty-One? What about the other band members?
Then punk came along… I was too young to be involved but seeing bands like Buzzcocks, Blondie, The Undertones on Top of the Pops, and starting to listen to John Peel on the radio changed everything. The idea that you could just get up and do things yourself was revolutionary in those days. So at school a couple of friends and I started a band, by default I became the drummer though I had never played drums and didn’t have any at first to practice with. No lessons, bar watching how others did it on TV. Needless to say we sounded pretty awful though we didn’t let that get in the way… I did get a little better on drums, played with a couple of friends in a band in my last year at university, but nothing much came of it and I was getting a bit tired of not being able to write my own songs.
Of the other founder members, neither Seán nor Andrew played in bands before the jims, though Andrew did know how to play guitar pre-jims.
++ Where were you from originally?
I’m from a very rural, remote part of southwest Scotland. So at home, when very young, I heard a lot of folk music records, and also live, as well as country and western, which is very big in Scotland. My mother was more into Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, though, so it was a mix.
++ The story says that you all three met in Brussels. And that’s where the band started, right? How come you all ended up in Belgium? And how did you meet?
We all met up in Brussels where we had each ended up individually for work. I met Seán in the first month after I moved from Scotland, he had just arrived a short while before and we were each staying with friends while looking for places to live, friends who happened to know each other and lived in the same building. So totally random really, but we quickly became friends, not least through similar interests in music, film, arts etc.
We met Andrew several months later, when we three shared a taxi home after a late night out. By the end of taxi ride it was clear we’d met another kindred spirit. Again, random as you like…
So as we became firmer friends, a strong common bond was a feeling that there were no good bands in town, no one making the kind of music we liked.
++ How was Brussels at the time of Jim’s Twenty-One? Were there any bands that you liked? Were there any good record stores? Or what about the pubs or venues to go check out up and coming bands?
Brussels was, and still is, a great city for bar nightlife and clubs, but very short of venues for gigs for up and coming but still small indie bands. A lot of the time touring bands would skip Brussels altogether in favour of places like Ghent or Antwerp – we saw the Shop Assistants three times but never in Brussels, for instance. To see the likes of McCarthy, the Pastels, the Brilliant Corners we had to go to tiny venues on the outskirts of Antwerp. i think the Brilliant Corners may even have just been in someone’s house…
There were a few highlight shows in Brussels, like the Jesus and Mary Chain in 1985, in a tiny back room in one of the main venues, the Ancienne Belgique, which was a revelation to us but was universally slated in the local press. And Felt in the main hall of the same venue in 1987, which was a great show though the venue was half full and the crowd silent. Also the Chameleons played in town, which is where drummer Kevin was recruited. But the kind of guitar music we liked really wasn’t a widespread taste in Brussels. Local bands were more likely to be doing industrial music using synths, or goth etc.
This all fostered a kind of ‘us against the rest of the world’ attitude and eventually the idea took hold that we should start our own band. Seán and I had to learn guitar from scratch and I guess our lack of technical ability was helpful in a way in that it narrowed down what we’d try to do.
++ You were one Irish, one Scot, one English. What did that mean for the band’s sound? DId that bring different influences, different ways of seeing music?
I don’t know if having grown up in different places was a big influence as such, as we had plenty of bands we liked in common, overlapping. But I do think that being a little bit older when we started the band than people who have started making music in their late teens with others with whom they have grown up gave us a bit more time, and space, to be sure of what we liked.
++ I read that you also got some help from someone called Janey on backing vocals. Was she also a brit in Belgium? Why wasn’t she part of the band? What about Kevin the drummer?
Though she wasn’t around when we founded the band, Janey was and is an integral part of the jims. She is English and we found her, again totally randomly, working in Brussels for a year before going to university. We had always wanted a strong female voice in the band and Janey was the perfect fit, another beginner like us but with a shared ‘let’s just do this ourselves’ attitude.
As mentioned, Kevin joined as drummer and was a great fit musically, a real drummer with a love of melody. We didn’t have a full kit most of the time so he played a floor tom and a snare, with great effect because he was technically very good.
++ Were there any lineup changes in the band?
Eventually though Kevin went his own way, and Janey went off to university in Edinburgh, so we were back down to three.
++ What instruments did each of you play in the band?
On instruments, Seán, Andrew and I all played guitar; bass was mostly Seán, sometimes Andrew; Kevin was the drummer on the EP and the live tracks on the album, on other tracks it’s mostly me, Andrew on a couple.
++ How was the creative process for you? Where did you usually practice?
There was never any strict policy about this but for almost all of the songs, the three founder members each came up with music and words on our own and then presented tunes to the band in practice sessions. So that meant three separate songwriters and lead singers. There are a couple of joint compositions but those were the exception.
When we started rehearsing properly, if that’s the right word, probably one of us would present a new song at each practice and we’d gradually build up the repertoire.
Seán and I shared a narrow, multi-storey house, a very typical Brussels building with mezzanine floors. For some reason we had a spare kitchen upstairs that we didn’t use for anything so that became the rehearsal space. Band practice would be Friday and Saturday evenings from about 6.30pm or so. They’d be pretty short, maybe 45 minutes or so, because we had real drums in the room and practice amps turned up to crackling level to compensate and our ears would get blasted quickly. Not to mention those of the neighbours. No one ever really complained properly, though our landlady lived down the same street and used to moan about hearing us from there. I think the brevity of the rehearsals saved us. And prepared us for playing fast and loud.
++ What’s the story behind the band’s name?
The band name came about after months of trying to come up with something. At a certain point, we decided we really had to make a call and on the deadline night we pieced it together from the last remaining suggestions. I think some people have taken it to be some kind of reference to coming of age, but really it can mean anything you want it to.
++ I’m thinking of what was happening in the UK at the time, there was some sort of scene with the indiepop bands, the C86 tape, and so on. You missed it, right? But still, were you aware of that music, the bands and the labels? Would you think the band would have being part of it and get maybe the attention you deserved?
Yes, we were aware of what was going on in the UK in particular through buying the NME religiously, it arrived in Brussels about a week after it was printed, plus a bit of John Peel, though radio reception was a bit sketchy. Seán somehow persuaded a local community radio station to let him do a weekly show, and even more miraculously a new record store agreed to let him borrow a selection of new releases each week and play the ones he liked before returning them (or buying them). And when the bands that we heard and liked did tour, we did put best to catch them, wherever they played. We even went to Eindhoven in the Netherlands one night to see the Shop Assistants, and other times we saw them at outdoor festivals in remote corners of Belgium. Because of the 53rd & 3rd/Fast Forward connection, there was a rumour that we had actually played support gigs with them — not true but we didn’t go out of our way to deny it.
But we were obviously pretty disconnected physically from that C86 ‘scene’, and I think what ended up on the album was recorded really before we got going properly. The phrase ‘C86’ has come to mean something quite different to what’s actually on the tape, there’s a lot of really abrasive stuff on there, not just the more jangling indie pop kind of materials. We liked parts of it, from the Shop Assistants to A Witness and others, but I don’t think it was as big an influence, for me anyway, as the C81 tape the NME did five years earlier.
I don’t know if it would have been helpful to be on it, really. We were not in a position to tour in the UK, and I think for some bands, at various points, it wasn’t seen as a positive in later years to have been involved. Not being on it meant we remained completely separate. But there were lots of good bands from that time who were not on it, like the June Brides, for instance, That Petrol Emotion or My Bloody Valentine. Actually someone recently said our sound reminded him of early MBV, and if you listen to the ‘Strawberry Wine’ single or ‘Ecstasy’ mini-album, I can hear what he means, that combination of lighter and heavier stuff before they went full aural assault mode. Actually one time in London we used a practice room that we were told MBV had used – tiny, so it must have been ear-bleedingly loud when they played there.
++ During your time you only released a record, the “Throwaway Friend” 7″ EP on Tulip Records. I need to know about Tulip Records, who ran it? And how was your relationship with the label people?
Ah they could be really awkward, the Tulip guys… No, just joking, Tulip was just us, the name we chose after Fast Forward said they’d distribute a record if we had it manufactured ourselves.
++ And so, from what I understand, Nadine, who gives the name of the new compilation, ran the La Tulipe bar. Can you tell me a bit more about this bar? Where was it located? Did it have live music? Did it serve food or just beer? Do you recall what was your favourite stuff to order there?
Happy to answer this one… so yes, Tulip Records took its name from the bar, in Place de la Tulipe in Ixelles, just round the corner from where we lived. Ixelles was and is one of the coolest neighborhoods in Brussels, still very lively at night.
La Tulipe was in the dive bar category, opening at 9pm and closing around 3am or thereabouts. It was very basic in terms of decor, the pinball machine was the only ‘frill’. But Nadine made it a welcoming place for a bunch of mostly local outsiders, for want of a better word, with good grace and humour. Although some of the characters who hung out there were a little bit on the wild side, they always listened when she told them to calm down, including that guy one night waving an old-school flintlock pistol around… still no idea where he got that from, nor whether it was loaded.
There was absolutely no food, but there were a couple of fast-food places a few doors down. A typical Friday evening would see us trooping over that way after rehearsal to eat ‘frites’ and some kind of questionable sausages, then hit La Tulipe around opening time. We’d give Nadine a mixtape to play on the sound system, play a few rounds of pinball and have a few beers — Jupiler, I think, a Belgian brew — and then we’d head into the city centre, about 10-15 minutes by bus to check out what might be going on. We might stop at a bar called Interferences, run by the people who used to do Les Disques du Crepuscule, or the DNA, the bar where all bands who did play Brussels would be taken after shows — this is where we met Felt, Alan McGee, That Petrol Emotion etc etc. We might go on from there to a great dance club called the X, which would be open till 5am or so, or sometimes we’d head back to La Tulipe in Ixelles for a nightcap before it closed. And it would be pretty lairy in there by that time. I hasten to add, that wasn’t every night by any means, we all had reasonably serious day jobs to attend to.
++ The 7″ has also some very cool art. I wonder who made it? Was it you?
The cover artwork for the single is done by us, yes. Tulip was a fully DIY operation. The front is a picture of the Berlin airlift in the 60s, and the rear cover picture was taken by one of the canals in Brussels by a good friend, Dave Galloway, who gets a credit on the back cover. The tulip image on the label – we borrowed that from the artwork that Nadine had made up for the bar signage, again she was very kind to let us use it for nothing. Also also since the bar is long since gone, as least the logo is preserved in part on the vinyl.
++ The songs were recorded at Studio 105 in Brussels. How was this studio? Was it your first time at one? Did you work with a producer? Did it take long to record the songs? Any anecdotes you could share of the recording session?
Studio 105 — yes, this was the first studio we used, a small 8-track operation in a basement in a fairly standard Brussels suburb. The first demo and EP songs were recorded there. The rest of ‘Nadine’ was recorded in a variety of places in Brussels and London after we moved there in 1988.
Studio 105 was run by the engineer, Claude, we referred to him as Claude Spector because he helped us make our own ‘wall of noise’, a nice guy, he didn’t ever tell us to turn things down. The EP songs were recorded in one day, mostly the whole band playing live in one room, with some guitar overdubs later and vocals, of course. As for anecdotes, toward the end of the day I had two vocals to do but we were all starving by then, so the others went out to get takeaway food, and by the time they came back, 10 minutes later, I was done, just sang as best as I could and one or two takes were enough. When the others came back and heard the songs with vocals, they asked “Is that really you?”, because it had been done so fast. When we rehearsed you couldn’t really hear how anyone’s vocals sounded, it was all so loud.
One other thing I recall from that session is about when we recorded ‘Map of the World’. For that one I played the lead guitar part. I’m left-handed but in those days I was playing a right-handed guitar strung upside down, which is fine except it means you can occasionally brush against the guitar controls with your hand as you strum as they are between your hand and the strings. And sure enough, right as we started the song I must have clipped something because it didn’t sound at all like it was supposed to, was more muted but also with a hint of feedback. But when we heard it back it sounded just like it was always meant to be that way, so we kept it.
++ Why didn’t you release more records? Was there any interest from other labels?
Seán, Andrew and me moved to London one by one in 1987-1988, in the months after the EP came out. There was no interest from other labels but that was partly because weren’t well connected in a city that was new to us, we didn’t play live there since it was hard to get gigs without paying to play. We had a low profile, if any, things move quickly and small bands go under the radar. We did do more recording there, some of which is on ‘Nadine’, but we felt like it was time for someone else to put out our music. And we came to realise it was — even in the indie world —- all business there at that time. We would need to gig a lot, probably paying to do so, while at the same time managing day jobs, personal life, etc. And then Andrew got a job offer to move to NYC, which obviously he couldn’t turn down.
++ The new compilation has 18 tracks! Let’s start with the 6 live tracks. Where were they recorded? I only know it was from a Brussels gig in March 1987, but do you remember the place?
The live tracks were recorded from the sound desk when we supported The Membranes at a small bar/concert room in downtown Brussels called the Planete. The Membranes and John Robb were very nice to us, mild-mannered until they got up on stage and turned into rock stars (in the best way). We played our usual set which was about 22/23 minutes long, so there are a few live takes that didn’t make ‘Nadine’ for various reasons, like the sound guy not recognising which vocal mics to turn up or down, or flubs in the performance etc. We were not originally planning to include these on the album at all, but then we came to see them as really good representations of the songs in pure live form, and Tim agreed, so we added them in.
++ And then where the other 8 tracks that are neither from the EP or live come from? Demo tapes?
Yes, the others are from a selection of demo sessions in Brussels and London. One session, from which songs like ‘It Frightens Me’ and ‘Laugh’ are taken, is from recordings in a giant apartment in a leafy suburb part of Ixelles, engineered by a work colleague who was keen to try his hand at recording a live band. That was towards the end of our time in Brussels and we three founder members had been playing together for a couple of years by then, so we, er, rocked quite hard as a three-piece and made a huge racket in this stately old apartment block. So we again had to work pretty fast to avoid complaints, and I think the engineer guy was a bit taken aback by how ferocious it could sound, what someone else called ‘the fire and the immediacy’.
++ And also there is a video now for “That Means Nothing To You“. Care to tell me a bit about it? Where was it recorded? Who put it together?
The video footage was shot by us in Brussels in late summer 2025. We had actually started planning a trip back there long before we ever knew there would be an album coming out as we hadn’t all been there together since 2000. We shot the footage for the video at this huge fairground called La Foire du Midi that sets up in central Brussels for about a month in the summer every year. It’s really popular with people from all walks of life, and we always used to go there. A guy I know, Dave Cortez, stitched it all together brilliantly. He works in video editing but this was his first time doing a music video.
++ My favourite song of yours is “Map of the World”, wondering if you could tell me what inspired this song? What’s the story behind it?
We find that people have very different favourite songs so it’s interesting to know you like this one best. It’s one of Seán’s songs, so I passed your question on to him and here’s the response: “’Map of the World’ is about two people in a relationship that falls victim to geography. One of them hits the road, leaving behind a printed map as a fading memento.”
For this recording, Seán switched to acoustic guitar from bass, which was played by Andrew, and I played the lead guitar part as mentioned above (most of the lead guitar parts were played by Andrew).
++ If you were to choose your favorite Jim’s Twenty-One song, which one would that be and why?
Really difficult question to answer… I’d rule out my own songs mostly, because like most people who are not divas, I think, it’s always a bit difficult to like your own singing voice.
For the most out-there song, I’d pick ‘It Frightens Me’.
On the flip side of that, for the most poppy songs, I’d say ‘I Want To’ and ‘Out of Reach’.
When we discovered all the old tapes, I think one of the songs that I had not heard in a long time that I was really impressed by is ‘Knowing You’.
If I had to pick one for someone who has never heard us at all, I think ‘That Means Nothing to You’ is the best introduction. I think it’s very distinctively us, punky and poppy at the same time. And I got to channel my inner Steve Jones on rhythm guitar. Just my own personal opinion, but I think this one is to us as ‘Safety Net’ is to Shop Assistants.
++ What about gigs? Did you play many? What were the best gigs that you remember? Were there any bad ones? Any anecdotes you can share?
Gigs were hard to come by, as mentioned above in Brussels there was no scene for our kind of music and few venues, even fewer willing to take a chance on an unknown bunch of non-locals. And in London we didn’t want to do the pay-to-play game, as well as being comparatively unknown. But we did play a handful, yes, all in Brussels.
The best one would be the support slot for The Membranes, as heard in the live songs on the CD. There was a really good ambience, the venue was reasonably full, there were people we knew in the audience, including Nadine, who helped transport gear for us, and we played just about as well as we could. We only got this show because we had been pestering a local, small-scale promoter for months. As well as music on The Membranes end of the spectrum, he was really into bands on the Ron Johnson label, less poppy things and also he put on Dutch punk veterans The Ex. I think he just got fed up with us – he called us ‘boy Scout music – and relented, maybe couldn’t get anyone else for that night. But we were happy to do it.
The only other support gig we did was at a place that was really a jazz bar/club that had just opened and needed bands/music to fill their schedule. They put us on to play with a kind of avant-garde jazz-rock outfit called De Mins (The Minuses in Flemish). Needless to say, they were not our cup of tea and the feeling was mutual. One thing I recall, I think this is correct, is that the venue insisted we had to play for 30 minutes, whereas we only really had about 24/25 minutes’ worth of songs at that stage. So we added a cover of ‘Baby Honey’ by The Pastels to get us over the line… We don’t have a recording of that, unfortunately. This venue is still going, called Sounds, so fair play to them, they must be doing something right. I guess they started out strongly…
The very first show we did was a free one in La Tulipe, just the three of us who started the band, playing for about 15 minutes using practice amps and a drum machine. We had put some posters up in the bar beforehand, but I think it’s fair to say no one had turned up to see us in particular, they were just on their usual night out so they were a bit bemused, to say the least. I think it was the first and probably last live music show there. At one point mid-set a big guy in a black leather jacket with a punky haircut stood up and lunged uncertainly towards us, but it was only because we were blocking the way to the bathroom, which I think he needed to use urgently… After the show, he came over with a beer to talk to us and he was very cordial/well-lubricated. It turned out he was in a punk band, called The Tarantulas, and he offered some friendly advice on our stagecraft, saying we needed to loosen up and ‘perform’ more because we were “Too much the technique”, meaning looking at our instruments and concentrating on trying not to make any mistakes in the playing.
The last show we played was maybe the most memorable in some ways. This was in a room above a second-hard/collectors’ record shop called the Jukebox, which is still going (we visited last August). It was on a Friday night in summer, and it was just us playing, so to drum up an audience Andrew and I spread the word at our workplace at the time. This was The Wall Street Journal Europe, so not exactly hardcore indie pop fans… but a lot of them did turn up. So too did a bunch of skinheads, which was a bit of a surprise as they, like the WSJ office staff, also did not seem like our natural audience. What we learned later was that during a show at the same venue the previous Friday, there had been a bit of a ruckus between the same skinheads and hardcore punks, so the skins decided to show up for a round two at our gig. So by the time we did start to play, the place was pretty crowded and pretty soon the skins started yelling abuse, pushing each other around for fun etc. Andrew wearing his Madonna t-shirt probably didn’t impress them either. It was a very low stage so at one point one of the skins was able to reach over and switch of the bass amp, which we had borrowed for the night from another, now quite concerned WSJ staffer. Some coins were thrown at us, no bottles, I think, and one or two made some kind of moves towards us. I don’t think we hit anyone with the guitars but we behaved as if to suggest we were prepared to. Anyway, we played pretty frenetically and got through the set without major mishaps. The skins headed out, probably in search of trouble elsewhere. The WSJ people were a little bit quiet by the end of it all.
++ When and why did Jim’s Twenty-One stop making music? Were any of you involved in any other projects afterwards?
As mentioned above, the band went into hibernation in 1989 when we started heading off in different geographical directions.
I did try to get something going in London after I became friends with Bruce Hopkins, formerly a guitarist in Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes, and also Terry Banks, who now plays in Dot Dash in Washington, D.C. and played in a number of other bands before that, including St Christopher. We practiced a few times in rehearsal rooms but nothing really came of it as we all three just played guitar and there are no recordings.
I moved later on back to Edinburgh, and with Sean and another friend we got our own ‘club night’ going, called Deep Fried, though that was a dance music thing, old school hip-hop etc, not an ‘indie disco’.
Andrew did do some stuff with a friend in NYC, but again it didn’t come to anything, I think.
And as mentioned earlier I do the Slow Country solo project these days.
++ Was there any interest from the radio? TV? What about the press or fanzines? Did they give you any attention?
I don’t think we were ever on TV, but songs from the 1987 EP were played by John Peel (“They don’t sound very Belgian”) and Janice Long on their BBC shows at the time, which was a huge deal for us. There was a little bit of radio play in Scotland and Belgium too, and there was some in the US and maybe elsewhere but this was pre-internet so we had no way of tracking exactly where and when. We know it was played in these other places because we got fan mail from people, which again was a bit wild to us. ‘Nadine’ has been getting what seems to us like a lot of radio attention, from the US, UK, Europe, etc — again a very welcome bonus.
There were UK fanzine write-ups of the EP, yes, which Fast Forward sent on to us. US coverage might have happened, but we didn’t get sent any of that. The EP did get reviewed in the UK weeklies, quite amusingly in some cases. In the NME, Steven Wells, then a prominent writer, described it as “Shop Assistants with beards”, which I think was meant as a put-down but we quite liked it. There were a few straight-out negative reviews as well: The Edinburgh Evening News (a local paper, I guess they reviewed it because of the Fast Forward connection) wrote: “Something’s definitely going wrong here” as a play on the title of one of the songs. Maybe our ‘favourite’ bad review was in a local Brussels magazine for expats working for the EU, which called the music “Seedy garage rock for timewarp victims”. We kind of treated these as badges of honour in a way, we were amused and not upset at all, we’d have been more disconcerted in a way if some of these publications had liked us. Noisy indie rock was absolutely not a mainstream thing in those days, it was a very minor taste, though the record pressing (500, small at the time) did sell out around the world.
‘Nadine’ has had a far better reception – some very positive responses – which I think speaks to how the audience for indie has expanded, older people who were into it then and are still into it now might have their own radio shows or blogs etc, and they’re reaching a contemporary audience but also much younger people.
++ Looking back in retrospect, what would you say was the biggest highlight for the band?
At the time, I guess firstly actually just holding our own record in our hands was a big deal, and then seeing it in stores, and getting airplay on John Peel, etc – these felt like achievements. But probably being able to put out an album now, on a noted label, to a positive reception, and to finally have digital versions of the songs distributed across all platforms, and to hear how well the songs stand up after all this time, reminding us that, to toot our horn a bit here, the jims were and remain a really good band – all this is as big a highlight as anything.
++ Also wondering if you are excited about this year’s World Cup?
For my sins, being from Scotland, I always follow the national team’s efforts and mostly that’s not exactly been a source of joy. But yes, it’s very satisfying to see us make it to the World Cup for the first time in 28 years – though I think we’ll likely be back home before the postcards, as they say.
++ And now you are in Tokyo, right? How do you like it there and how did you end up in that city? Do you follow any indie bands there?
I moved to Tokyo for work in 2007, expecting to only stay a few years maybe. But it’s an amazing city, home now, family life is here, and no matter how long you live in Tokyo, as a non-native there’s always something new to discover, whether it’s older culture or more modern. And Japan as a whole is endlessly interesting.
As for indie music, I think I’ve been more focused lately on bands coming out of Southeast Asia, there seems to be a lot of stuff going on in Indonesia, the Philippines and so on. Most Japanese bands sing in Japanese so there can be a bit of a language barrier, but there is a huge range of music to enjoy here. I like the record put out this year by The Moment of Nightfall, and also very much enjoyed Taiwanese artist Yu Ching’s ‘The Crystal Hum’ album. Maybe stuff on the less well travelled fringes of indie music appeals to me more these days.
++ Anything else you’d like to add?
Just to say thanks again to you, Roque, for giving us the chance to be on your blog. And also, a big thanks to readers who made it all the way through this long read, hope it was amusing, interesting or both!
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