Ahead of their 45th anniversary, IQ are looking forwards with optimism. Vocalist and lyricist Peter Nicholls admits he’s in a more positive place than he was on 2019’s Resistance. He tells Prog how the work of poet Dylan Thomas and an online video ranking their releases informed their long-awaited 13th album, Dominion.
“We never consciously take time off,” says IQ vocalist Peter Nicholls, when the subject of the near six-year gap between albums is raised. The band play at annual weekenders and have frequently appeared onstage over the last few years – but to many, it still feels like they’ve been missing in action.
Objectively though, their last two albums have contained a substantial amount of fresh material. “We don’t set a timetable of recording one album every five years,” Nicholls says. “I guess each album takes a couple of years to get through. With the last two, Road Of Bones and Resistance, they were either a double or there was a bonus disc, with twice the volume of work to get through.
“Sometimes when you get to the end of it all there’s that feeling of exhaustion. At the moment, though, I really think the situation with the band is that we feel this is a renaissance for IQ.”
Latest album Dominion is another fine recording that continues their recent trend of creating lavish and inspired records. They’ve also pinpointed a methodology of working that’s aided the writing process – far removed from their occasionally embattled earlier creative sessions.
“The music comes from [guitarist] Mike Holmes, a astonishingly prolific and prodigious talent,” Nicholls says. “He just thinks of music all day long, so there’s never a shortage of potential new tracks. Mike essentially produces demos for everybody to listen to and we then have our input. Obviously, my contribution is to handle the vocals, but Mike will put a guide vocal idea down and I’ll use that as a basis.
“Once the lyrics are in place, the vocal tune will sometimes be amended to sit more comfortably within the music. But essentially, at the minute, Mike is responsible for coming up with the music.
“In the olden days we’d get together in a damp and dingy rehearsal room and trade licks. We’d just be improvising, and that would lead to arguments – you know, ‘My idea’s better than yours!’ Thankfully, it’s a far smoother process now.”
Dominion is a relatively compact recording, with the band eschewing the temptation to cram the maximum amount of music onto a single disc. Nicholls says it was a deliberate ploy that was inspired by the random discovery of an online video which ranked IQ’s albums.
I had always thought that the more songs there are, surely that’s a great thing – but it’s not necessarily so
“These guys were putting them in order of preference,” he recalls. “One guy made the comment that he didn’t like Resistance because he thought it was too long. That was a revelation to me – it hadn’t occurred to me that somebody might think there was too much to absorb.
“On reflection, I thought it was fair comment. Not everybody has two hours to listen to one album. I had always thought that if someone likes the band, then the more the merrier. The more songs there are, surely that’s a great thing – but it’s not necessarily so. I think it’s definitely the right thing to do a single album this time around.”
IQ have always retained a welcoming, recognisable sound. Yet they’ve also managed to ensure that each release demonstrates progress compared to its predecessor, and Dominion possesses a distinctly contemporary edginess. Nicholls recognises that assessment, citing an overt desire to continually add the unexpected.
“The aim with any album is to surprise people. But you also can’t completely divorce yourself from your own personal history. There’s an IQ sound, with certain trademark elements, that we’ve worked for many years to establish. We’re not going to dispense with that. When I listen to a new album by a favourite artist, I want to hear them sounding the way I like them, but I also want them to show me something new – what haven’t I heard before from this person?
“The challenge is to come up with a new twist on what we do. We don’t want it to sound like we’re treading water. I’m also very aware that you’re only as good as your last album: if we were to put a clunker out, we’d do ourselves a lot of damage; but thankfully, we’ve never done that.”
Although Nicholls admits he attempts to disguise his most personal lyrics, he reveals there was a central darkness that infused the themes of Resistance, which has that’s been rectified for this current release. “The last album was happening at a difficult time in my life,” he says carefully. “Let’s just say I was climbing some existential mountains. My feeling about that album now is that it has quite a dark heart. For me, it was quite a hard album to connect with.
Death will get us in the end, but it’s not the master. We’re the masters of our worlds
“But where we are now with Dominion, I’m in a much more positive place, and that informs the lyrics. They’re never autobiographical as such; if I feel they’re getting too personal, I kind of put them behind a sheet of glass just to not give too much away.
“I approached this album with a more optimistic viewpoint, and it just seemed to me that coincidentally the music Mike was coming up with had a more melodic, optimistic feel as well. There was also a feeling that what people should do is make the best use of the time that we have. I was thinking in terms of the world that we create for ourselves, the personal world we live in. Our domain, if you like.”
There was also the influence of Dylan Thomas, with Nicholls reading the poem And Death Shall Have No Dominion, which neatly fed into his mindset of maximising the time we have on Earth. “My perception is that he’s saying death will not be the ultimate power that controls us. Obviously it’ll get us in the end, but it’s not the master. We’re the masters of our worlds, our destinies.
“From that I took the idea that the dominion is the world that we make for ourselves. And not just for ourselves, but for other people. The phrase ‘living your best life’ is very much prevalent in my mind. All of that, compounded with Mike’s melodic music, informed the mood of the album. It felt like a more positive experience – the result is I want to go back and do it again now!”
The contemplative nature of the lyrics and IQ’s upcoming 45th anniversary understandably causes a pause for reflection on their legacy. The singer has mixed thoughts, unjustifiably focusing on his own self-perceived shortcomings as a vocalist, but also remaining content over the quality of their music.
I know it sounds immodest, but I think there’s brilliant stuff on everything that we’ve done
“My views of the albums are always clouded by my dislike of the vocals – I think they all sound crap,” he says. “With the early albums, like Tales From The Lush Attic and The Wake, I was recording the live performance; it’s very different from the studio performance you want.
“Genuinely, I listen to the early stuff and I shudder when I hear the vocals. But a lot of singers are uncomfortable with the sound of their own voice. I now feel that on albums, the voice needs to be something that you believe in. It needs to convey the lyrics convincingly and credibly.
“Around the time of [2009’s] Frequency, I approached the vocals quite differently. This album is probably how I thought I’d sound then. So, 44 years later, I’m starting to get the hang of it!
“All our albums have great merit; to my ears, it’s all been very strong and purposeful. I think we’ve always believed in what we do and that’s always been hugely important. I know it sounds immodest, but I think there’s brilliant stuff on everything that we’ve done.”
Crucially, there are no suggestions that IQ will be succumbing to retirement any time soon. They recorded a raft of material that wasn’t made available with the current album, and there are plans for their next release to appear in a time frame rather quicker than six years.
“I want to do the next one as soon as we can,” he says enthusiastically. “My preoccupation right now is time. That and health are our most important commodities. The band have both of those and we should make the best use of those.
“Everybody is playing well; the relationships within the band are also very strong. We’ve been good friends for nearly 50 years. There will come a point where the band will finish, but that’s not for a good few years yet. We might have another 10 years left – who knows? I really want to make sure that these are really strong years. IQ are in no danger of fizzling out.”
