Press photo of PAPERLUNG. Sice in front.

WHILE READING:
LISTEN TO PAPERLUNG: A CAUTIONARY VISION

I am not a fan-type of person… There are not many bands that manage to keep my attention for more than one or two albums. I am bored too soon, maybe, or maybe I’m just too old for that kind of thing now. In the last two decades, I can only come up with two or three bands that I have bought more than two albums from, before they started to bore me. One of these bands are The Boo Radleys. They managed to keep my attention for as much as 6 albums, and if they kept together longer, I bet that I would get the next one too (I just bought the new compilation, which was great, so maybe you could say that they kept my attention for 7 albums?) . I’m not sure if I was a fan of the band. I never cared much about the bandmembers, what they said or did. I did not like everything they did musically either, but I found most of it very interesting musically (even the songs that I had trouble with). Why did they keep my attention? They made brilliant music with interesting and intelligent arrangements. They never did the same album twice, and sometimes they changed drastically. Their music were never easy to listen to, and never difficult to listen to. And it hit me, almost every time, in the heart and in the mind. Another reason is that they had a brilliant, warm and clean voice in front of the fuzzy guitars. This was and is SICE.

The Boos disbanded in 1999, and songwriter Martin Carr started working on his semi-electronic project BRAVE CAPTAIN (sorry for all these sidenotes, but I just have to mention that BC released a new album earlier this year, which he gives away for free on his website!).
Sice had a solo-project in 1996 called EGGMAN, and I expected some new stuff from him too after the split, but no… Not until now.
In 2006, Sice is back with his new band PAPERLUNG. Not a solo-project, not Sice with his backing band… This is Sice as a member of the quartet PAPERLUNG.

Paperlung has just released their first single, “the days that God sold you”, and in my ears, it sounds fresh and really good. Quality, as expected. Ok, now I really sound like a fan…

E-mail is a good thing, and I sent Sice some questions about the past, present and future of his music.

- The band Paperlung started almost by accident on a train station. Have you been looking for a band to work with, or was the idea of starting a band also something that just came up on that station?

Sice: At that point – late summer 2005 – I’d pretty much made my mind up that I was going to be in a band again. I’d dipped my toe in several projects (vocals for bravecaptain and Meister) and had even done a live show with Meister in London. I was writing a lot of songs and, for the first time in years, I felt ready for it. I was already tentatively casting about for other musicians, so when I met Simon in Victoria train station, it just seemed like fate. I’m a big believer in fate.

- “Paperlung”, – the name sounds so fragile… Tell us why you chose that name and what it means to you…

Sice: The name to me represents the importance of paper – probably the most important invention in the history of life. Up to now it has not been surpassed as a method of mass communication of ideas. Not only books, but also painting. To me, paper is as important as breathing – thus Paperlung. Also, you mentioned that it sounds fragile and I guess that description could be given to my voice too.

The Boo Radleys, Paris, 1998 (photo by Laurent Orseau)

- In your opinion, – what’s the main difference between Paperlung, Boo Radleys and your previous solo project, Eggman?

Sice: To me, there’s a massive difference between The Boo Radleys and Paperlung. Specifically – the songwriter. Martin wrote every track the Boos put out, so a band where I am the songwriter is always (to me anyway) going to be fundamentally different. It gets a bit confusing though, because my voice is going to be the one obvious facet that is present in both bands. So, while fundamentally different, we will essentially sound the same.
Confused? – so am I.
Eggman will always remain a kind of one-off – a bit of an experiment. I had two weeks and about twenty floating musicians to get an album made, so it was all a bit of a blur. I don’t think Paperlung will sound like that as were operating within a band framework.

- Your single “the days that God sold you” has just been released on shifty disco, and you seem to be playing quite a lot of gigs in the UK these days. How is it to be starting on scratch again?

Sice: It’s wonderful to be starting again. Just to get out and play live is fantastic. It’s the one thing I really missed about the music business when I was away. The band has no definite plans – we’re not in a hurry to go anywhere. We’re going to release two… maybe three singles… then we’ll have a think about releasing an album. You can’t really make plans in the music business – the music business makes plans for you.

- Now, with a new band, some years older, probably wiser and all that… Is your goal the same this time as it was back in the late 80s when you started the Boo Radleys? – What do you want to achieve this time?

Sice: This time, I have no goals. I don’t want to put myself in the same position as I did with the Boos and lose interest once a goal is achieved. Actually, one goal I have is to continue to play live. The Boos seemed to stop playing gigs over the last few years we were together and I missed it.

- Are there any bad sides of being a part of the music industry that you hope you can avoid with the experience you’ve gained through your former projects?

Sice: No, not really. You get out of life what you put in. I was a miserable little fucker sometimes when I was in the Boos and I hope to avoid that. I want to do it because I enjoy it – if I stop enjoying it, I’ll just stop. There are other things in life.

- “The days…”-single: Are these two songs representative of what a future album with Paperlung may sound like?

Sice: I really don’t know. I have no idea. We are in quite a strange place, in that the band have been together only nine months, yet we’ve already played a lot of gigs and have released a single. We haven’t really begun to explore what we would do away from a live situation. Up till now, we have been geared as essentially a live band. For instance, out of about 35 songs that we took into the practise room, we have only tackled the ones that we figured would work well live. We’ve yet to deal with the other ones.

- Martin Carr has been quite visible with his Brave Captain-project for some years now, but we haven’t heard anything from you until now. What have you been doing all these years? (I’ve heard some rumours about selling books. true or not?)

Sice: The rumours about selling books are interesting, because what I’ve mainly been doing is writing books (and breeding). I wrote three novels – two of which are with my agent at the moment (David Smith at The Annette Green literary agency – if anyone wants to publish). It was something I always wanted to do, and I’m so glad I took time off to do it.
Paperlung is the first band I’ve been with, although I’ve done guest vocals on a couple of things.

- What do you write about? What kind of literature do you enjoy reading yourself?

Sice: Like most artists, I have difficulty describing what I do – whether it be writing novels or making music. My writing really kind of focuses on anything that interests me. One of my novels is set partly in the music business, but dips its toe into the world of mediums and spiritualists. Another is set in a residential care-home for gifted children.
For my latest novel, I shall lead you to my agent, who describes it far better than I could -
As far as things that I like to read; I swerve between literary classics, pulp fiction, self-improvement, biographys and history, as well as taking in a big swathe of contemporary and historical fiction. Anything that takes my fancy really.

- Tell us about the people you play with in Paperlung. (I’ve heard that one of the members also is involved in electronic dance music?)

Sice: It’s the wonderfully talented drummer (Guillaume) who’s involved in the electronic dance music – in fact he’s involved in a load of stuff. He makes his own dance music under two guises – Giom, and Bobby & Klein. He also DJs and plays for another band called Transcargo. Simon (bass player) is the showman of the group – you wanna see him give it some on stage – and is a brilliantly melodic player. Ben ( guitar) is like my soul brother – I’ve never met anybody that reminded me so much of myself – though he’s about a foot taller than me. He’s a gentle melodic guitarist with bags of stored up talent.

- In Boo Radleys, there were one main songwriter who were credited for most of the stuff you recorded (Martin). How is this in Paperlung? How is the music making process in Paperlung done?

Sice: I think, because that’s the way I’ve been used to working – that’s also the way it is with Paperlung. I will take a bunch of songs into the studio and we hammer the hell out of them trying to find the right way to play them. That may change as the band goes on – as I say, it may well just be a comfortable way of working for me, because it’s what I’m used to.

…more Boo-related: - The first time I heard your voice after the Boo’s split-up were on the Brave Captain-track “good life” in 2004. How was it working with Martin again, and are you still seeing him? What about Tim Brown or Rob Cieka?

Sice: I see Martin all the time. We text or speak every few days. I don’t think we could stop being friends even if we wanted to. I wish I could see more of him, but life and circumstances dictate otherwise. He’s been incredibly supportive with Paperlung – coming along to any gig he can get to and offering lots of advice.
I don’t hear much from Tim or Rob these days – not through any bad feeling, it’s just that we’ve got our lives to lead and as we’ve all got families now, it takes up a lot of your time. Tim moved to Ireland a couple of years ago (which makes it difficult to see him) and we all went up to his house and had a drink or three like the old days.

the Boo Radleys

- What is your best and worst memory from the time in Boo Radleys?

Sice: My best and worst memory are the same one. We were in Wallasey (where we come from, near Liverpool) and our album, Wake Up, had just gone to number one and we were driving along in the tour bus, past all the houses that me and Martin used to walk past when we were kids. We were shouting out of the windows and screaming in exultation that we proved them all wrong and that we’d made it. It was a great moment.
But, looking back, I think that was the moment that I started to lose interest. The journey was complete. In a sense, we should have stopped there. It makes me a bit sad now when I think about it.

- I guess the Boo-connection is unavoidable when you are promoting your new band. Does this bother you? Is it a good or bad thing to have to talk about the past a lot when you probably want and need to focus on what’s ahead of you as the singer in Paperlung? How do you cope with “old fan writers”, like me?

Sice: I’m incredibly proud of having been in the Boo Radleys. I have no problem whatsoever discussing the past. There’s plenty of room to talk about the past AND the future. My only problem for me, is coming to terms with the two ways that the Boo Radleys were viewed. People either see us as maverick pop geniuses who made some of the best, most eclectic albums ever – or those twats who did Wake Up Boo.
I guess people’s view of Paperlung will be coloured by whichever of these opinions they hold.

the guitar from the Boo’s “wake up”-cover

- I had a really strange experience when the “wake up Boo!” single came out. Today, you can hear the top indie bands in shops and on the radio (at least here in Norway), but back then, hearing indiemusic other than on specialized indieclubs or small radiostations were unlikely. Suddenly I started to hear my favourite band’s music coming out of passing cars or being played in the clothing shop where I was to get a new shirt… Back then, it felt strange. The Boo Radleys were at one point the most unlikely popstars I’ve ever seen. How did you as a band experience the sudden success, where more than the typical Boo-fans were humming to “wake up it’s a beautiful morning”? I guess it must have been a two sided feeling?

Sice: Nobody believed us when we said we wanted to be popstars. It was taken as a joke. To us, the sudden success and mainstream radio play only seemed like the culmination what we had been striving to achieve. We didn’t realise then that the mainstream exposure would start and end with Wake Up Boo.

- The period after “Wake up”; What actually happened on the “inside of the band” between the “Wake up!” and “C’mon kids”; from a highly accessible pop-album to a twisted, distorted and semi-psychedelic rock album. Did you discuss the change inside the band, or was this a natural change? Was your intention to scare away the hit-kids?

Sice: We didn’t want to scare away the hit-kids, we wanted to take them with us to somewhere that we’d not been before. All we wanted to do was make a different type of album than Wake Up. To us it would have been pointless making another 12 song pop album – we’d just done that, why do it again? All we wanted to do was try something new – to keep ourselves fresh and interested. We were very surprised to find that it was seen as a deliberate attempt to scare away newly created fans. That would have been an extremely foolish thing to do.

- How do you look at the UK music scene today compared to when you started? Has it changed a lot, do you think? Any bands you like more than others?

Sice: It’s exactly the same. The music business as a marketing vehicle has been successful in it’s current form for fifty years. Ian McDonald (Revolution in the Head) said that popular music pretty much pushed the boundaries as far as they can go between the years of 1963 – 1973. I think I agree with him. Everything else from then has been a mix of all that has gone before. But it’s like chemistry – just because all the elements already exist, it doesn’t mean you can’t still mix them up and find some wonderful new stuff.
One thing I’ve realised though, is that I don’t like bands on the whole. I like songs. Some awful bands are capable of writing some great songs. It’s rare that I’ll enjoy a whole album by a band. ipods are great for that. It’s so easy to put together a great album these days.

Sice’s TOP5:

Sice: Ok… uh… top five modern Kids cartoons.

1. Spongebob Squarepants.
2. Powerpuff Girls
3. Kids Next Door.
4. Charlie and Lola
5. Dexter’s Laboratory.

Find out more about Paperlung and listen to their single at myspace and their website. Boo Radleys has a website here and Martin Carr and his Brave Captain-project is very present on his own self-written brave captain-website.