While a fair number of rock musicians of a certain vintage seem to ease into a mellow kind of semi-acoustic middle-age, Pretenders sidemen James Walbourne and Kris Sonne have felt the need to scratch a raw, bleeding rock’n’roll itch with their new band His Lordship, and this year’s second album from them, Bored Animal, is a supremely refreshing blast of high-octane, garage-rooted R&B.
Titles like that and stand-out numbers such as I Fly Planes Into Hurricanes and The Sadness Of King Kong hint that this is anything but mid-tempo, ponderous stuff, although idiosyncratic psych diversions add further intrigue. We caught up with Walbourne in while His Lordship were taking their splenetic live show to the US.
What have been the highlights of your year?
Well obviously releasing the album, but also the shows this year. We did a London one at Hoxton Music Hall, which was great. Our drummer, Kris, had to take a bit of time off, so my brother jumped in on the drums for a bit. It was the hottest gig I think I’ve ever been to. And I was playing it! That place has still got the music-hall air-conditioning in it – which is none. We’ve been playing shows in the States too which we’ve loved.
That makes sense. But how do Americans react to you exporting this distinctly American-rooted music back to them?
Oh, I’ve been loving the way people have been reacting to it. This is the home of the music I’ve loved since I was a kid. Like every other British rock’n’roll guitar player, the holy grail is to play here. I’ve played here loads but it still excites me. We’re gonna be over here quite a bit next year. This week I’m in St Louis taking part in a show for Chuck Berry’s birthday, which is crazy to me that I’ve ended up in that kind of company. We did a ‘His Lordship Presents’ show in St Louis, and played with the Bottle Rockets, The Kills, some St Louis rappers. It was amazing. We played a gig with Johnny Marr recently too, in Nashville, but we’re back touring in the UK soon.
You’ve played in all sorts of different bands. Is it a very different mindset you have to adopt when you perform as His Lordship?
It’s certainly a different mindset. I’ve grown up over the years playing with lots of different bands, from Pretenders to Pogues to Pernice Brothers. But this, because it’s me fronting it, I have to sort of go into a different character. It’s been very freeing for me, because it’s almost like I no longer have to give a fuck. Because if it goes wrong it’s on me. I don’t care – no one’s gonna fire me.
The album has a real live sound. Was it recorded that way?
We did it at Edwyn Collins’s studio up in Scotland. We did it all live. All the tracks were done just with me and Kris facing each other, playing guitar and drums, and then I would add the bass on or whatever. Quite a lot of the songs weren’t finished when we got there, but that worked because that lent itself to spur-of-the-moment-type energy, and that lends itself to this kind of music. We recorded it in like ten days, maybe, a couple of weeks max, then gave it to David Wrench to mix. You could feel the energy off it better like that.
We left mistakes in, we didn’t clean it all up – which is a hard thing to do when you’re a musician, with all the tools at your disposal these days. As me and Kris have played together, we’ve realised all those records we love have all those mistakes in it. I was listening to Richie Valens the other day on headphones, and you could hear when they made the edit back in the day. There was like a ghost track in the background, and that’s what gives it this eeriness – this otherworldly quality that I think rock’n’roll should have.
Are you using old valve amps and stuff like that to recreate the old garage sound?
No, not at all. I think all that’s a load of rubbish, really. I mean, some of it was recorded on old equipment, but it was mixed by David Wrench, who’s a great engineer, producer, and he does it all in the box, sometimes via computer, sometimes not. It’s just his ears, really. And with this band it was never a retro thing. We’re open to doing anything – we could make an avant-garde jazz record next, to be quite honest with you. It was never just to be a garage rock band. It’s come out that way because we like it. It doesn’t mean we don’t want to evolve. Who doesn’t?
The album sleeve is great too. The surrealism of it somehow suits you.
Kris’s wife, who’s a great artist, came up with that. We don’t want to be those guys sitting around smoking a cigarette with leather jackets on, because it’s not really us. We always wanted this element of something left-field to us, which I hope we got across in the music. We didn’t want to just be the same old garage rock thing.
There’s humour in your records too. Is it important not to take it all too seriously?
There’s a fine line to tread, but yeah, why the hell not? I used to have a few pints, go to see bands and just really fucking enjoy it. Come away smiling. And that’s kind of all I wanted to achieve with this. And I think it’s important, especially in these times where everything’s so fucking dismal. We’re just trying to add a bit of light.
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