Ian Broudie, purveyor of shiny Britpop classics with the Lightning Seeds, has moved into a whole new realm with his first solo album, writes Brian Boyd'IT'S NOT THE SORT OF ALBUM WHICH WILL LEAD TO MEJUMPING UP AND DOWN ON CD:UK BUT THAT'S FINE.
The audience for a solo Ian Broudie show at Dublin's Sugar Club are a strange bunch. They sit, politely absorbing these stripped-down songs. It's only when you take a good look at them you realise that about half of them are acclaimed musicians in their own right. That's the type the Liverpudlian attracts: those who appreciate the craft of a finely worked pop song.
To a wider audience, Ian Broudie, ex-leader of The Lightning Seeds, is still associated with the Cool Britannia/Britpop era. His big, bouncy production on Lightning Seeds albums, not to mention the Euro 96 anthem penned with Baddiel and Skinner, evoke the time just as well as that oft-used photograph of Tony Blair shaking hands with Noel Gallagher.
Now going under his own name, Broudie has released a stark and subtle solo album, Tales Told, which is at a complete remove from his previous work. Since he disbanded The Lightning Seeds in 1999, Broudie has been working as a producer, most notably on two Mercury Music Prize-nominated albums by fellow Liverpudlians The Coral and The Zutons. While his solo album isn't quite part of that "Scallydelica" sound, it's a fair assumption that working with such young and maverick talents has obviously influenced his new sound.
Or is it? "I think we both influenced each other; it was a two-way thing," Broudie says. "What impressed me both about both bands was they were so good live, so my job as producer was to capture that directly and get that live sound straight onto the record without banks and banks of sound interfering with what was already there.
"So when I came to record this album, first of all I put it out on The Coral's label, Deltasonic, and I decided not to add too much to the sound. So it's a lot different from what I've done before. 'Scaled back' is the phrase I keep hearing from reviewers."
Broudie has quite a pedigree. At just 18 years of age he found himself producing Echo and the Bunnymen. He was also a member of the seminal group, Big iJapan, which also featured Bill Drummond (who went on to form KLF) and Holly Johnson (later of Frankie Goes to Hollywood).
"With Big in Japan we were just part of that general explosion" he says. "We weren't really that good, but it was great fun. With Echo and the Bunnymen it was just a case of being mates with them - we used to hang around the same pubs and record shops. I love the band, I still believe they didn't live up to their potential. A song like The Killing Moon - they were genius."
Having done what he calls "the doomy northern raincoat type bands", he formed The Lightning Seeds as the complete opposite. "I wanted to do pop music. It was a big, shiny, pop time and the success of the band did take me a bit by surprise. We had hits in the US and stuff. As the band went on, though, I just realised that the sound wasn't me. It felt like a different pop planet at the end. I think I was writing for The Lightning Seeds and not for me.
"When the band stopped, I remember buying loads and loads of records. I was really recharged and I decided to use my own name and write songs more from my own direct experience."
The Tales Told album is a quiet gem. Featuring many traditional instruments - banjo, accordion and mouth organ - it's a moody and bluesy affair. The lyrics hint at troubled times. Broudie's scaled down approach is illustrated by the fact that two of the songs come in at less than two minutes and the whole album is less than 40 minutes.
"In all my recording career with all those different bands, this is the first time I haven't used any other name," he says. "I think what I was trying to aim for was a sound somewhere between See Emily Play and Be My Baby - in theory at least. It's a very personal album in the issues it deals with. I think that just might be the stage I'm at now.
"You know, it's not the sort of album which will lead to me jumping up and down on CD:UK but that's fine."
Producing The Coral and The Zutons showed Broudie how musical risks could be taken, how pop could be bent into many different shapes, and how sometimes a musical risk is worth taking if the alternative is only the tried and tested.
"James from The Coral was very supportive of me doing this type of album" he says. "And I do think I've reacted to how The Coral and The Zutons go about music, but in my own way. It's a strange thing about this album, but I see it as a type of stepping stone. It's sort of like when you look at the solo work John Lennon put out after leaving The Beatles or when Neil Young left Buffalo Springfield - they both seemed to react against the bands they were in and they both produced very raw albums. Maybe something similar happened here with me.
"After The Lightning Seeds, I just felt I had to do something that was the opposite of what I had done before. People say it's brave, but it's not really. It's just what I felt needed to be done."
Tales Told is on the Deltasonic label
