Augie March
Augie March are taking a break. Glenn Richards explains why
There are certain signs that a band are planning to call it a day. A contractual-obligation-fulfilling best-of album is one. A statement about going on "indefinite hiatus" is another. While it may not be quite in the same league, a band announcing that they're doing a tour covering all of their albums – and suggesting that it might be a good long while until you see them again – hardly seems like the act of a band in robust health...
"It's pretty hard to avoid the implications," chuckles frontman Glenn Richards. "I wouldn't say it's a swansong; it's just the fatalist in all of us. I'd like to think that the people who've known us for a long time see the humour in it."
To clarify, the band are not splitting up – but they are taking a break and pursuing other projects, and this tour is a way for the quintet to mentally clear the decks.
"It's intended to cover the four records," he explains of the somewhat-awkwardly titled Watch Me Set My Strange Sun You Bloody Choir tour. "It's kind of a ridiculous title for a tour and I'm kind of embarrassed about it, but there were no better options."
Richards is candid about his gradual dissatisfaction with life in the 'March over the last few years, a result of pressures to push the band in a more commercial direction. "It started with the third record [Moo You Bloody Choir], which was obviously our most successful record. The studio experience changed from kind of a free spiritedness to a concerted effort to kind of coalesce the various threads that made the band interesting," he sighs. "I think we're five reasonably clever men and we don't need to surrender our views to an outside influence [such as a producer or record company] quite so much as we did – but that's nobody else's fault, we surrendered quite willingly and we always wanted to see where it was going to take us. But I don't think we accounted for quite the exertion that was gonna be placed on the entire operation."
So rather than let those pressures tear the band apart, they're getting some downtime. "It's been a long time coming and everyone wants to express themselves differently. I'm kind of an advocate for 'let's go our separate ways for a bit and expand ourselves a little bit.' It's quite a practical level-headed thing to do. I mean, we're going to keep playing shows, sporadically, so we're not actually disappearing completely."
Richards is considering a solo record – "Well, if I get around to finishing a song, we might have a start" – but for the time being the band are preparing for some curve balls that the tour's setlist might throw at them.
"We put it out to forums if you're particularly passionate about one or two tracks that you haven't heard in a long time, then make a noise about it and there's a good chance it'll get played," he explains. "I will look at the ones that haven't been given the royal treatment in the past, and we'll try and make something special of them, rework some tracks. There are maybe five or six [songs per album] that are very, very difficult to pull off live and those are probably the ones we'll look at, to make it interesting for ourselves."
For a man notorious for his dislike of playing gigs, he sounds uncharacteristically as though he's actually looking forward to the tour.
"Yeah!" he laughs. "I strongly feel that post this tour there's gonna be some pretty seismic shifting of priorities and that actually makes everybody feel a little bit lighter on their feet. We need to make it fun, and I think that's probably the biggest benefit of the whole thing. We're giving it away for a bit and it's actually made it seem a lot easier, and a lot more fun. It's something that's been missing for a couple of years. The weight's off the shoulders and it's a nice feeling." Andrew P Street
Augie March play the Metro on Fri 17 Jul.
You've read what we think. Now tell us what you think.