In 2010, As The Pineapple Thief geared up to release eighth album Someone Here Is Missing (which hadn’t been named yet) Prog conducted our first interview with band leader Bruce Soord about his career to date.
“Not that I needed any extra passion or energy, but it’s given me a boost knowing that it’s not going out on a tiny label so only those in the know will get to hear it.” Bruce Soord is talking about his band, Somerset quartet The Pineapple Thief, and their forthcoming, as-yet-untitled studio album. It will be their eighth in 11 years, but added excitement comes from it being the second to be unleashed from the wholly prog-oriented Kscope label.
“People used to deride prog because of the capes, wizards and pixies, but Kscope knew there were a lot of bands out there with progressive influences doing good stuff,” Soord says. “It was just a different world from [former label] Cyclops. I was on there for eight years; and as much as I owe them a lot for pressing stuff and getting us known, it was just one guy and he had no money to promote us.”
Kscope is also home to solo albums from Richard Barbieri and Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree – and it was Wilson who initially pointed the label toward Soord. Comparisons have been made between the bands over the years, and it’s not an unreasonable link; they share initials, a prickly protagonist within their names and, of course, a similar musical style.
“If there’s one thing I regret, it’s picking that name!” laughs Soord ruefully, when talking about the association. “I’ve met Steven a couple of times and we exchange emails. He gives me a lot of good advice because I think he can relate to our journey.” Another parallel is that both bands signed to Kscope around a decade into their careers – Porcupine Tree on their fifth album and The Pineapple Thief on their seventh.
“The fans you get from building up from nothing are not fickle and they’re really dedicated,” Soord says affectionately. “We’re so grateful – I know we wouldn’t be on Kscope now if it wasn’t for the fanbase we built up.”
Simply by engaging with their fans via message boards and the wonderfully-titled Brucey Blog on the band’s website, The Pineapple Thief have ensured a level of relationship that demands the fans put as much love and attention into listening to the music as it does from the band to create it.
The rapport led to a band-versus-fans five-a-side football competition before a hometown charity TPT show in Yeovil in 2009. But as the band’s profile grows, Soord understands the need to keep a bit of distance for the music’s sake. “It’s whether you want to maintain this illusion that you’re some superhuman being,” he says. “The past 18 months where we’ve been playing bigger venues, it’s been different.
Some closed-minded people need 18 million time changes and a drum solo in the middle, or they’ll hate you – but you get that in every genre
“When we were playing to 50 people you’d just go and have a chat by the bar, but I think there’s a line where the performance and the anticipation are more important. It’s not an arrogance thing – it’s just about making it a good show.”
Quality control is important to him as Kscope have set about realising the potential of the band’s back catalogue, and he’s polishing that material himself. “My studio’s so much better now,” he explains. “I’m not going to change the songs. I’m just going to make them sound more transparent and hi-fi. Some of the early mixes… blimey!”
He reflects: “Some of the engineering I did was mainly out of necessity. In an ideal world I’d do as much as I could here and then take the files to a studio. After you’ve listened to a track 100 times, you can’t see the wood for the trees, and everything you do seems to make it worse. That’s when it’s time for someone else to finish it. This time I’ve got some friends who are good engineers.”
That’s good news for those hoping to hear the finest TPt album yet. Even better news is the reissue of the much sought-after bonus discs of 12 Stories Down and 8 Days Later. “Because we gradually got bigger and bigger they got very collectable,” Soord says uncomfortably. “It’s pretty depressing – they’re changing hands for hundreds of pounds, and I don’t like seeing fans paying stupid amounts of money for stuff.”
The concept behind 8 Days Later was to write and record one song per day. While that may suggest those tracks were less important than the ones on the parent album, Soord says he took much from the process. “I’ve learnt that writing a good song doesn’t mean you have to spend ages on it. I used to go in and just get a couple of chord changes in six hours, because I thought you really had to work at it to make it sound great. That’s actually a load of crap – the best songs I’ve written took 10 minutes.”
Asked about the flipside of releasing an album on a larger label, he replies: “I do wonder at the back of my mind what people are going to think. But I love the progressive scene because the fans are so eclectic and open-minded. There are some closed-minded people who need 18 million time changes and a drum solo in the middle, or they’ll hate you – but you get that in every genre. What I love about the progressive world is that it’s just full of music lovers.”