Interview with Sandra’s Wedding: ‘I felt that the album needed a bit of punctuation at the end, it needed a send off!’

Goole, East Yorkshire alt-rock band Sandra’s Wedding will release their captivating new album, The Hopeful Boy Replacement Service, tomorrow (14 July.)

The band comprises Joe Hodgson (guitar and vocals), Jonny Hughes (guitar), Luke Harrison (drums) and Corey Jones (bass). They got together in Goole about six years ago and Hughes is from a town nearby (Castleford), having been introduced via a mutual friend. Of their name, Hodgson said: ‘It’s a bit of a deflating moment (laughs). I had an idea of us as a fictional band at a wedding. There isn’t a Sandra, sadly. We should come up with a better fake story!’

The album title – and title track – The Hopeful Boy Replacement Service reminds me of Alan Bennett and when I tell Hodgson this he laughs: ‘It’s a bit sort of Alan Bennett, it wasn’t a conscious thing,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t say exactly where it came from. I was playing those chords and it scanned in. From that, everything followed. It’s an interesting group of words, they mean nothing and a lot at the same time. I got into the groove of writing the rest of the album. I liked the idea of the tracks being a stage interpretation of a book in the 60’s or 70’s.’

The title track twists and turns, cinematic in scope, with lots of sonic surprises, beautiful chord progressions and memorable lyrics such as “technicolour dream coat shrunk in the wash”, a line that is repeated in the closing track ‘The Berlin Wall & Other Stories’. Hodgson’s voice is very reminiscent of the warm, mellifluous voice of former Housemartins’ frontman Paul Heaton, and, like Heaton, his songwriting is poetic, witty and observational. ‘It was called ‘How Does The Medicine Taste?’ for a long time,’ he said. ‘I had the idea of this community group adaptation, I wanted to pull more into the vibe and the whole thing changed.’

As ‘The Hopeful Boy Replacement Service’ kicks off: “Hey, little goldfish in a sandwich bag, you’re dreaming of leaving. Is the water cold? Here’s to you never knowing, river flowing.”

‘I’d certainly made the conscious effort to get away from the black and white realist themes’

This album takes Sandra’s Wedding in a new direction, lyrically, moving away from the kitchen sink dramas in post-industrial towns on previous tracks like ‘Given Rain’, which describe a town that’s decaying, highlighting the struggles of ordinary people facing layoffs and poverty: ‘This album is certainly brighter and widescreen,’ Hodgson said. ‘I’d certainly made the conscious effort to get away from the black and white realist themes because you can quickly get into a rut. I thought it would be fun to be technicolour (laughs). You could listen to the tracks in any order, it’s put together so that it works on the ear, you want to balance it out. The last track is ‘The Berlin Wall & Other Stories’ which explains it, they’re all like short stories. There are motifs in a lot of the songs likes ‘French Girl’, which is about a middle-aged couple having an affair on the coast (laughs).’

Hodgson describes the themes running through the album as ‘escape from the mundane, the feeling of ‘Groundhog Day’, you certainly get that in the front end of the album’: ‘Most of the album, actually, thinking about it, every track perhaps being a daydream to escape the boredom. ‘Hopeful Boy’ being about not having fulfilled your potential, ‘French Girls’ about lacking excitement, ‘Post-Disneyland Blues’ about being trapped in the domestic setting. ‘Rum Life’ is about masculinity and how you can feel like a bit of a let-down. There’s a definite feeling of that but all through a very theatrical lens where there’s feather boas, make-up and platform shoes and stuff! There’s tonnes going on everywhere, I like that there’s that jigsaw puzzle feeling to it all, a ‘Build Your Own Concept Album’.’

‘French Girls’ is one of the biggest tracks on the album, kicking off with an old school, Peter Sellers-style spoken part before it breaks out into a sweetly catchy, upbeat song: ‘It’s my spoken part at the start, we layered it up with loads of effects (laughs) to sound like HAM radio from the 40’s,’ he said. ‘With that song, I was sat here playing it on the guitar, it’s quite ploddy, late 90’s swagger, like Weezer. I had the chorus for ages but didn’t have any narrative or verses, it all sort of fell out of there. There’s melancholy on the bridge – it alludes to a car accident – that song sounded great recorded. We got a woman called Hannah in to do backing vocals, it made it nice and sweet, a little upswing at the end like Chumbawamba.’

As the track goes: “Wake up, ’bout 9. It’s summer, so he might shine. Hit me right in the feels. Picked up, afternoon. Satsuma split in two. Your lovely hands on the wheel.”

Hodgson’s love of poetry shines through, something he was into before he even started the band. He has spent some time writing poetry and is a big fan of Philip Larkin and Don Paterson, a Scottish poet, saying to me last year that he likes things having a punchline, like poetry for ‘a bit of extra depth’. Today, writing poetry has taken a back seat but their songs are reaping the rewards of that: ‘Anything I’d consider to be poetry gets kidnapped and turned into lyrics very quickly but then I think that where a lot of the song ideas come from is a line or a title or a turn of phrase. I’d like to do some poetry again in a collection or something at some point.’

There are bits in every song that he likes: ‘The bridge in ‘Laughing My Head Off’, I love that. Those bits are like poems in a song, when you get the build up and the punchline at the same time.’ It’s an incredibly memorable song, with a tropical feel courtesy of the drum pad that provides beachy vibes and which almost sounds like a heartbeat: ‘It’s like a lo-fi preset drum beat, it was one of the first songs we started recording about this time last year, I’d done a demo at home.’ The sunny melody sits at sharp contrast to the lyrics and lines such as “I know a place where you can just go and fuck yourself”: ‘It’s a bit Beck-like, it’s got a lighter feel. It’s quite a hopeless song about losing a bit of hope and focus. I’m quite pleased with the two bridges and the Gene Kelly putting the umbrella away reference becoming “put the Black and Decker away when it started raining”. It’s piecemeal, like a scrapbook. The outro, with the reverse guitar, is a bit of a surprise. It’s a chugger which I had knocking around for a long time before it locked into the chorus. I thought I’d have a bit of fun with it, I thought I’d make it a bit off the wall!’

‘Me and Jonny describe it at a “palate cleanser” on the album’

It’s the track with the most twists and turns sonically, with short heavy bursts that you’re not expecting the first time that they surface: ‘I was thinking that it needed something different, it’s a box of tricks that song. Me and Jonny describe it at a “palate cleanser” (laughs) on the album.’

‘This Be The Verse’ would be a brilliant festival song, with a slight Finn brothers feel: ‘I thought it would’ve been the first single, it’s a strong poppy one, it’s very accessible,’ he said. ‘It reminds me of The Cranberries ‘cos Jonny’s guitar is really nice on it. The title comes from the Philip Larkin poem of the same name. I had the bridgey chorus first. It’s about a night out with something hanging over you, enjoying the last nights of freedom. I didn’t want it to be too on the nose (laughs), I didn’t want it to be too first album Arctic Monkeys. I was excited about people being able to put their own interpretation on it. A really big part of the thrill of doing it is when people pick out a lyric or a bit of the melody. I like to think it gets to a place where it sounds tidy and good on the ear.’

They have also collaborated again with neoclassical composer and double bassist Gavin Bryars, also from Goole, who was nominated for a Mercury award in 1992 and who has worked with Father John Misty. ‘The new track, ‘For The Benefit Of The Tape’, it’s interesting, it’s a nod to The Beatles and ‘For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite’. The title comes from police interviews when someone nods and they say “for the benefit of the tape”,’ he said. ‘It’s piano and strings.’ It’s a beautiful piece, opening with a haunting piano line, and particularly lovely vocals from Hodgson that draw you in. When the strings come in, around a third of the way through, they lift up the slightly anguished lyrics.

Interestingly, his parents are not huge music fans: ‘My mum isn’t especially ‘into’ music but she loves Elvis,’ he said. ‘She does enjoy music but in a very normal way, she’s not an obsessive or a collector or anything. My dad had one CD when I was growing up and that was Rod Stewart’s Greatest Hits. He’s not really into music at all as a pastime. They were both always very supportive. To be honest, I feel like the fact they aren’t musical meant that I was more inclined to pursue it, I imagine having people ‘in the know’ would lead to a bit of pushing back or unsolicited advice on stuff. Saying that, I suppose having parents who are in or around the music industry would make things a bit easier to navigate.’

‘The last track on each album, it’s an indication of where we’re going next’

As a band, they have many influences, including The Smiths, R.E.M, Flaming Lips, Deacon Blue, Talking Heads, Chumbawamba, Squeeze and Modest Mouse. Hodgson has also become a big fan of Hull rock band Ketamine Kow, describing them to me last year as ‘a bit of post-punk sort of anarchist stuff, it’s fluid, in your face’: ‘They’re still going strong, doing well are Ketamine Kow. I personally have been in a bit of a Roddy Frame period recently, I’d never listened to much of his solo stuff but I’ve gotten right into him, amazing songwriting. On a more local-ish level, we’ve gigged with a guy called Peter Cat recently from up in Scotland, he’s very good. I’d recommend listening to him, it’s like Divine Comedy in Space.’

‘The Berlin Wall & Other Stories’ is an inspired closer, it feels as if the story is to be continued and that the next album could take up where this song ends. It takes the listener on a rollercoaster of a journey as the couple in the song meet up across the world, including in New York: ‘There’s even a reference to the Statue of Liberty’, there’s a transatlantic thing going on,’ Hodgson said. ‘It was probably the last thing I wrote for the album, it was very last minute. I went into the studio and recorded the guitar to a click. I’d written it the evening before (laughs). I felt that the album needed a bit of punctuation at the end, it needed a send off! Lyrically, I don’t remember the starting point but I liked leaning in and being more arty farty (laughs) and using more imagery.’

Ultimately, the closing track steers us towards what we can expect next: ‘The last track on each album, it’s an indication of where we’re going next.,’ he said. ‘This one feels quite beautiful, it’s got a bit of gravitas. There’s a lot of information in it for a short period of time. It mentions flying 10 hours to New York, we tried to figure out where that would be from, we knew it wasn’t the UK, that would be shorter. We figured out it had to be from somewhere like Berlin (laughs). There’s a line in it “walk into silent rooms and ask who died”, I imagined that like Billy Elliott at the end, when he’s grown up and on stage, where you’ve changed locations and grown up a bit. A young man on stage getting ready for the performance, that ties in into the theatre adaptation idea where this character has managed to escape the crushing reality and he’s taking to the stage in make up in an exciting country. At the end, you have the sound of the waves, it’s very theatrical (laughs). It’s one of my favourites on there. It’s funny, creatively, sometimes you like the ones you spent the least time on, you don’t get that Stockholm Syndrome.’

Hodgson isn’t easily starstruck but he was delighted to finally meet Gavin Bryars recently: ‘I got to meet him in person at a performance of his in London, he was great. We had a chat and he was very kind about our music and the stuff he’s worked on with us. That was nice, I suppose I’d count him as a hero now with all the time and effort he’s taken to help us out, he’s a great bloke!’