Live at Loch Lomond preview: King Creosote

Published on Friday 30 May 2008 03:21

KENNY Anderson is looking very comfortable, sitting in his manager's swanky London office overlooking Queen's Park. His musical moniker King Creosote is about to release Bombshell, his umpteenth album ("I think we're into the 30s now," he grins) and potentially the one that could catapult him into the mainstream, KT Tunstall-style.

It's all about as far as you can get from the quaint fishing villages and impromptu folk sessions in the East Neuk of Fife, where Anderson set up the Fence Collective over a decade ago and where he continues to be based. Today, however, the image of the artistic agoraphobe reluctant to step a toe out of the confines of his Kingdom of Fife has all but vanished.

And he is very, very happy. For a start there's the album, and a very good one it is too, but also there is his family and the satisfaction in balancing his changing career with his personal life. "My manager and agent both have young families and understand the need to be about as much as possible from that point of view," he says. "So on this tour we are never away for more than 10 days on the first leg, then I get back home for a week."

His daughter, Beth, is now eight years old, and more aware of her dad's job, understanding why it means he can be away for days at a time. When she was starting school, Anderson was always around, having made a conscious decision to allow his partner Lindsay to fulfil her ambitions, rather than relentlessly pursue his own.

"Three or four years ago, her mum wanted to do a teacher training course, which involved going up to Aberdeen. Neither of us wanted to move Beth up there just for that year, and it coincided with her first year at school. So I made a conscious decision to calm it all down and I became a full-time dad for that year. Although I didn't do a lot of gigs I did do a fair bit of recording, wrote a lot of songs, and it was during that little window that Rocket DIY arrived, and the beginnings of KC Rules."

These are the previous two albums which resulted in ecstatic critical acclaim and modest commercial success, creating the anticipation surrounding his latest, and arguably, most important release to date. There are plenty out there who are whispering Anderson's name in the same breath as KT Tunstall's, his one-time fellow Fence Collective member who, as we all know, went on to much bigger things. Anderson, however, refuses to speak about Tunstall, saying it's not relevant to his story. Whether that means he is touchy about people thinking he wants to follow the same career path as her (which some have labelled selling out), or whether he is simply being modest about his own success is unclear.

Back in Fife, Lindsay found a job and the Anderson family support system kicked in, allowing King Creosote to resume his benevolent rule. "Now Beth is in P4, and I am out trying to sell all the material generated during that year at home. At that time Lindsay and I were spending more on childcare per day than we could earn, and it was a really hard couple of years. So I feel like it is payback time, and I have to put back into that now, and try to smooth the way the wheels revolve a little bit. The downside, of course, is that I am away a lot more."

The upside, however, is that the new record is something of a Fife Family Anderson affair. Younger brother Gordon was a founder member of The Beta Band, leaving in a haze of drug-related and mental health problems, all since painfully resolved. He emerged from that period as The Lone Pigeon, releasing records through Fence, before rejoining the flock with fellow former Beta Banders John Maclean and Robin Jones as The Aliens, their debut album Astronomy For Dogs causing a considerable stir earlier this year.

But when the chance came to work with big brother, he heeded the call. "It was brilliant because Gordon had time off in March and I dragged him into the studio so he is on a couple of songs, including 'Spystick', and also one that missed the cut and will turn up on a b-side later. So that's cool, a right good bit of Andersonage!"

They both appeared at Scotland's brand new music festival, Connect, last weekend, The Aliens finishing their performance on one stage as King Creosote prepared to take to the boards on another. Touchingly Gordon directed the crowd in his brother's direction, urging them not to miss it because "he is really good". At the Green Man Festival last year, Bombshell started to take shape. Anderson was approached by DJ/producer/remixer extraordinaire Jon Hopkins about working together, having been impressed by King Creosote's final song of the live set, 'And The Racket They Made'. It was written by Jennifer Gordon, a close friend and Fence enthusiast, and Anderson rates it as one of his all-time favourite songs. There and then the pair decided it should be the ending for something. It is now the final track on Bombshell.

Similarly Hopkins loved the first song played by Anderson and his band, 'Leslie', coincidentally the first he ever wrote and recorded as King Creosote. No prizes for guessing the opening tune on the new album. In between the two are a host of typical Creosote musings, rich in wordplay and humour. The single 'You've No Clue Do You' is a wonderfully dismissive piece of pop, the composer chuckling at the notion of a football crowd belting it out whenever an unfortunate football referee is making all the wrong decisions.

Anderson is still genuinely bemused when he hears it as it is hard to avoid on UK national radio, and he is used to Radio Scotland's Vic Galloway phoning him with a friendly alert for any imminent Creosote airplay. Galloway's colleague Bryan Burnett recently featured 'You've No Clue Do You' on a programme themed on the lines of games people play, as the song includes references to Waddington's murder mystery classic, Cluedo.

"All the characters from Cluedo are in there to represent all the human traits, which when I see them in myself pretty much makes me despair," Anderson explains. "The song is written in the second person, 'You've No Clue Do You', but it's about me. I'm really just having a go at myself over when envy rears its ugly green head, and I get jealous and when I get a bit this and a bit that. But I didn't want it to sound as morbid or depressing as my usual songs. I wanted to lighten it up, hence the Cluedo references."

It hasn't captured the imagination of Beth and her P4 pals, though. She reckons the pun-tastic 'Cowardly Custard' is her dad's best song on his latest album, a view shared by his accountant's kids. Anderson loves indulging in nursery rhyme simplicity, and any chance to work trifle into a song with custard in the title.

One of the most touching songs is 'Church As Witness', an account of Anderson trying to teach his daughter to ride her bike. "We had a fall-out that day, which happened to be in the church yard in Crail," he recalls. "So we had this major row right on the spot where my mum and dad had their wedding photos taken, which was quite bizarre. It was a genuine moment, and after I explained to her the history of where we were having this fight, she was on the bike, off and away!" Which is what may well be happening to King Creosote's career.

www.kingcreosote.com

Originally published: 9 September 2007