| The Answering Machine |
 Wandering aimlessly around the back alley of a venue is behaviour that is more expected of a teenage groupie
than that of a music journalist but when the shutters on the front door are down and you have an interview to conduct what is the alternative. Fortunately for Counterfeit someone was vacating the premises of Manchester's Ruby Lounge as I was lucky enough to be standing outside the unmarked back entrance and he subsequently let me in to meet The Answering Machine. A 4-piece band hailing from Manchester consisting of Martin Colclough – Vocals, Guitar, Pat Fogarty – Vocals, Guitar, Gemma Evans – Vocals, Bass and Ben Perry – Drums. As I entered the band were just in the process of rattling through an impressive sound check for their BBC Introducing show later that evening so no time was lost. After everyone was happy and the photo shoot complete the questions could begin. CF: How did the name come about? Martin: Patt was flicking through a dictionary trying to find names for a previous band he was in with his brother, he suggested The Answering Machine, but his brother hated it. Then one day me and Patt were meeting for a drink in a bar called Squirrels Bar in town and we were thinking of forming a band at the time, Patt suggested The Answering Machine and I thought that’s an ace name, the rest is history.  CF: Did you know each other before you formed the band?Pat: Gemma and me knew each other; we were on an English course together at Manchester University. We’d known each other for coming up to 3 years. Martin and me had a mutual friend at uni. who was on Martin’s course and lived in my halls and he always trying to get us to go for a drink but we were all pretty busy. Then one night we all had tickets to a Brendan Benson gig, that’s when I met Martin, and then about 2 weeks later we started writing songs together. Ben used to play drums for Liam Frost And The Slowdown Family; a lot of people were saying to us you should get Ben involved so we did. CF: Before Matt joined you used a drum machine called Mustafa Beat. Was it used because you couldn’t find a drummer at the time or did you prefer using the sound of a drum machine? Martin: We couldn’t find a drummer basically; they’re hard to come by. In fact after starting a band with a drum machine we were told of a house with 6 drummers in it. It was holding us back a bit, it was always our intention to have a full line-up with a drummer but we wanted to start playing gigs as soon as possible. A lot of the bands we were listening to at the time like The Postal Service and The Radio Dept. both used drum machines and loop pedals, we liked their sound, so when went down to Sound Control (R.I.P.) we put £50 in each and bought a little Boss drum machine. We still incorporate it into songs on the album, but it got to the point a couple of years down the line that we couldn’t take it further with the drum machine, so we decided to get the real deal. We still use a lot for samples. CF: Does everyone write the songs? Pat: In the early days because it was just Martin and me in the band originally we started writing songs together a lot, everyone now writes their own parts. Martin writes the melodies or a chord sequence and we’ll jam it out. Martin: I think that’s how we work best, a jam process, nice and organic. CF: What are your songs about? Martin: We kept the album process quiet conceptual, we picked out certain ideas that we were keen on at the time. Coming out of university we had that struggle of not knowing were to go, none of us wanted to do the whole 9 to 5 job thing, we were torn inside so we write about that a lot. Pat: Martin Hammer is a big influence on our lyrics. When we put the album together we wanted it to be quite conceptual, we wanted it to start with a blissed out party don’t give a shit kind of attitude then it moves on to boy meets girl and get a bit weird in terms of strains on the relationship and towards the end it’s all a bit abstract, you’re not really sure what happened. Martin: The whole album ends with Gemma taking vocals on the final track, a lot of the tracks are written from a male perspective on the relationship, it’s nice how it ends as you’re left wondering if it was told from the females perspective throughout. Pat writes more about technology and communication, I write more about conversations and breakdowns of relationships, both topics bounce well off each other in songs and we try to blend the two together. CF: Do you normally have lyrics ready for the music? Pat: No a lot of the lyrics will depend on the melodies, Martin comes up with a good melody and we’ll pick syllables around that. Martin: Sometimes the whole song will come about through one lyric. We try and reflect the lyrical meaning back into the music. So if we’re singing about technology we’ll try and incorporate the sounds of that technology. Pat: If we’re signaling out a phone conversation then it’ll be quite bleepy on the track and crackly, like Kraftwork it’s about the texture of the song. Martin: A lot of the time when you hear lyrics you conjure up images in your head so try and incorporate that into the song. CF: Who are your influences? Gemma: The 3 that you 2 (looking at Martin and Patt) formed a band because off, the gold triangle that was The Strokes, The Radio Dept. and Shout Out Louds. The Strokes were a big influence on all of us, in terms of music and fashion. Pat: I’ve always really liked Frances Bacon he shows amazing meaning and mutilation of lyrics and we try and incorporate that a lot, sometimes it’s abstract and we don’t know were the lyrical perspective is coming from.  CF: How did you select the songs that appeared on the album Another City, Another Sorry. I was wondering why Silent Hotels (a previous single) wasn’t included but its 2 B-Sides (It’s Over and The Information) were.Ben: We were working initially working with a producer on the album called Tony Hoffer, who we didn’t get to make it with in the end. He told us to hang a mic in the studio and record all our songs with loads of energy. So we had a c.d. with 30 tracks on it and we had to try and narrow then down to 10 tracks for the album, it was quite a democratic process by the band and producer Dave Eringa. Gemma: Silent Hotels didn’t necessarily represent what wanted to do on this album. Dave had huge ideas for songs like ‘It’s Over’ he completely transformed it, he didn’t touch the song structure, but the way he created the sounds in thesong were so good that it had to be included on the album. Martin: In terms of Silent Hotels I think we had moved on from that era and it was important to write in the moment. It comes down to the strength of the riff and there was better songs that Silent Hotels. CF: What’s your favourite song on the album? Ben: My favourite is Emergency. Gemma: Yeah I think the same for me. Martin: I’d say ‘You Should Have Called’ Pat: I’d have said that. Martin: Also Oklahoma CF: What’s your favourite venue and where do you aspire to play? Martin: I really like Ruby Lounge Pat: I really liked our hostel tour. (The Answering Machine played a series of free gigs in hostels in Manchester, Birmingham and London to promote the release of their debut album Another City, Another Sorry during the week of its release). We were promoting ourselves and we liked the idea of taking music away from venues and the places were people normally hear music. Why keep music confined to the venue? Ben: The Roundhouse in London. It’s scary just to walk in there. Pat: I’ve always wanted to play The Ritz but we haven’t managed to get there yet. The Answering Machine’s debut album Another City, Another Sorry is out now, they release their new single from the album Oklahoma on August 10th and set out on a headline tour in October taking in Nottingham, London, Bristol, Glasgow and Manchester. Photos: Hannah Dornford-May Words: Iain Ferry |
