Goodnight Lenin have emerged as one of Birmingham’s best-loved local acts in recent years, with sell-out shows in their home city, high profile support slots and plenty of festival appearances across the country. And now with their much-anticipated debut album finally ready to be unveiled, it’s time to really sit up and pay attention. Frontman John Fell tells Josh Allen why they now have a record that does them justice. “It took us a long, long time,” confides Goodnight Lenin frontman John Fell with a mix of understatement and frankness. He’s sat in the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath reflecting on the process of recording their long-awaited first album, the appropriately titled In the Fullness of Time. “It took us about four years to get it right,” he continues. “We must have recorded it about four times all-in-all, but it wasn’t right, it just didn’t reflect the development of our sound.” The reason for the record’s long gestation appears to lie in a marriage of method and craftsmanship. Goodnight Lenin proudly describe their sound as ‘old school West Coast Americana’. As such they lay claim to a musical pedigree that includes such illustrious names as Neil Young, Phosphorescent and Wilco. Since their 2011 formation, Goodnight Lenin have doggedly sought to pick up the standard of this scene, becoming along the way part of a growing band of artists committed to analogue recording mediums. “It just wouldn’t sound right making our kind of music any other way,” John says, explaining the band’s commitment to anachronistic, kit-like tape decks with their finely-tuned headstacks, widths and speeds. “Digital just doesn’t cut it,” he insists. The vibrations fan club includes some of the biggest names of the last decade, with everyone from Taylor Swift to Radiohead, via Jack White, getting in on the tape deck action. In a digital age, it says something for analogue’s warmth and soulfulness that Amy Winehouse’s epochdefining Rehab was captured for the recordbuying public on recording equipment so ancient and rock solid it had to be tempered back into
shape by gangs of mechanical engineers wielding soldering irons. This dedication to analogue brings its own challenges though, and not just for fans in terms of waiting time. “We had to all sit in one live room and record,” John reflects. “It really puts the pressure on, because it can take 10-15 takes to get it spot on…if you mess up you have to do it all over again, so of course you’re worried that you’ll get to the bit you got to last time and mess it up again. All in all it took us a year to put together the final record.” Luckily, given the potential tensions inherent in using such an intense and demanding process, as a collective Goodnight Lenin go back years. “Some of us have known each other since we were five,” John explains. “We’ve all played in different bands with each other at one time or another so that means we can be honest.” That closeness has undoubtedly helped make the painstaking process an awful lot more bearable, heck, maybe even fun. And it has also given them the patience to make sure they made the record that they wanted to make. “I accept it was quite frustrating for people,” admits the frontman, “for our fans, who just wanted us to push on and do well. But we just wanted to get the development right. We now [have a record] we’re really proud of.”
nostalgic record in that sense. I think that [given our strong roots in classic Americana] we’re a very nostalgic band.” It is clear that Goodnight Lenin have a very clear sense of setting, of their place within a strong musical community and tradition. “An absolute career highlight has to be getting Jonathan Wilson [who produced In the Fullness of Time] involved. He’s one of our idols, and an utter lodestar for the West Coast scene, he’s just someone who’s been flying the flag for a long time. “It’s a real bonus that we’ve finally shrugged off the folk band tag and are being recognised for what our influences actually are.” And that much is evident. With its piano sections and soft but ever-present electric guitars, In the Fullness of Time is far too grounded in American alt’s broad canon to be thought of as purely a modern folk album. “Also there’s a slight tendency to lump all Birmingham bands together just because of where we come from, frankly I don’t think that does any of us justice,” John adds. That isn’t to say that Goodnight Lenin completely dismiss the influence of their home city, which has spawned songsmiths as gleefully diverse as Joan Armatrading, Broadcast and Mike Skinner.
Fittingly for such a hard-won album, John says that a lot of its songs are meditations “on the passing of time.”
“We don’t write a classic sort of tune,” John adds, “we’re very much songwriters and I think in a sense that’s very Birmingham. We joke around a lot, we aren’t that serious. That’s very Birmingham, I guess.”
“The whole process has been a great reflection of how we’ve developed as a band, it’s quite poignant. Sorry if I sound pretentious, but every song is a nod to what I have or what I’ve had. It’s a
Goodnight Lenin are live at The Institute, Birmingham, on November 29. Debut album In the Fullness of Time is out on Static Caravan on November 24.
“There’s a slight tendency to lump all Birmingham bands together just because of where we come from, frankly I don’t think that does any of us justice” November 2014
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