MUSIC | Turin Brakes interview with Olly Knights. 

Turin Brakes is Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian.

They’ve been compared to Simon & Garfunkel, they’re standout favourites in the UK’s New Acoustic Movement, they sell out massive shows all over Europe, and you’ve probably never heard of them.

That’s because Brit duo Turin Brakes has only just begun to make their mark in North America. But if their over-the-pond performance is anything to go by, they’re going to be huge.

Comprised of guitarist/vocalist Olly Knights and multi-instrumentalist Gale Paridjanian, Turin Brakes are a sort of folk/rock hybrid. The guys themselves are in their late twenties, cute enough to pass for boy-band dropouts, and talented enough to compete with the likes of Radio Head. They produce particularly accessible music that is both perfect for mellowing out, and complicated enough to stay interesting in the long term.

I caught up with Knights by phone during one of the duo’s stops on their recently-launched North American tour, and it turns out, the music isn’t the only thing about band that’s accessible. The boys are too. Knights seemed friendly, authentic, and refreshingly free of up-and-comer egomania.

Jen Selk: Hi! So, how’s the tour going?

Olly Knights: We’ve been touring for a few months, but we’ve only been in America for a few days. This will be, I think our third show in Portland, we played Boston and in New York already.

How do you like being in the States?

Well, I mean, it’s America. Sometimes it’s incredible and sometimes it’s really, really freaky. We really like Portland because it’s nice, and by the sea, and you can eat lobsters and things like that … stuff you can’t do in London. And of course, New York was really incredible, just because it’s New York.

Happy to be heading up to us in Canada soon?

We’re really, really looking forward to it. It will be our first time as Turin Brakes. Actually, it’s funny because Gale used to live in Toronto. He played in a band there for awhile, and because of that we still know a lot of people there, and have connections and that sort of thing. The band he used to play with – Mellanova – was this great sort of spacy rock group. They formed in the UK. We’ve been talking about playing in Canada for 5 years, and we’re both happy it’s finally happening.

The album Jackinabox just dropped June 7^th. How’s it doing?

Jackinabox album, Turin Brakes 2005.

I think it’s been doing good. I don’t have any hard numbers, but we spoke to the label recently and they definitely feel like we’re in a good place, that we’ve had the best opportunities in America so far. The set up of the album has been really good. We’ve shipped more copies of it here than we ever had before. Now it’s just a matter of getting people to fall in love with it. But I would say we’ve make a very, very promising start.

Critics are always comparing you to other musicians (Coldplay, Travis, Simon & Garfunkel are common ones). How do you feel about comparisons like that?

I understand the Simon & Garfunkel reference, of course, because it makes sense. There are two of them and two of us, but I think for it to really work they’d have to say we were like Simon and Garfunkel by way of Radiohead or The Verve or something. That would make more sense. But comparisons – I understand that it’s necessary for journalists to do it – but really, it just makes me laugh, because I don’t think we can really be compared to anyone. I’ve always thought that our sound was very unique and very much our own. I don’t think we sound like anybody else. Certainly, we’ve never tried to emulate anyone. We’ve always just been ourselves. And that’s what Jackinabox is really all about. It’s about cutting out the fat and making a very pared-down, simplistic, but unique bit of music.

Do you find American audiences differ from those back home?

Really, audiences are the same in the sense that you never know what to expect. They can be very similar in some ways, but they’re also different everywhere you go. We just played in New York, as I said, and the audience there was very much like a London audience. You know, they’re really cool, they’re used to going to shows and seeing bands, and when you play for a group like that you really have to play it cool, and avoid anything that isn’t authentic, because they won’t buy it.

Then, right after New York we played our gig is Boston, and they were very cool as well, but very different, and by the end of the night, I think we’d really won them over. The club we played at was little, and we loved that because we don’t get to play in little clubs in Europe and the UK anymore, so we really miss it. Having 150 people packed into a little space, and being so close to them, is really great. But what I’m really trying to say is that there’s just no way to predict how an audience will react.

When I first heard a Turin Brakes song, I actually thought the singer was a woman. (I’m sorry! I hope that isn’t offensive to say.)

[Laughs] We get that a lot, yeah. You’re not the only one. I guess it comes from the fact that I really grew up singing along with female singers. My mum and my sister were always listening to, like, Joni Mitchell and Carole King. And I guess I just developed a different way of singing as a result. Some people find it really weird, and some people like it.

I like it. Is it true that you boys joined a choir back in your school days because you wanted to sing for the Queen?

No! We didn’t want to sing for the Queen! When we were kids we auditioned to get into this cathedral choir, and that was kind of the tag-line that they offered. It was really hard to get it, and the choir was really good – so they got to sing for the Queen. So that’s what they said, but for us that line has always been a bit of a joke. Being in a choir did a lot for us, though. We spent five years learning to harmonize in this giant cathedral, and that experience, I think, has been very key to the sound we have going on in our heads. It did influence us. It taught us to take vocals really seriously. And when you have so many boys in a huge cathedral just singing their hearts out, that’s a very arresting sound.

Tell me about being on The O.C. soundtrack? It seems like it can be an intense experience.

I meet a lot of people who – it obviously meant something to them … that’s new. The big thing is that I think there’s a recognition here now. Sometimes when you’re playing a show where you know only a few people know who you are, that’s hard. The O.C. has been a really good way of relating to fans. You see their interest now.

So what can people expect from a Turin Brakes show?

The shows are very engaging, I’ve been told. It’s a five-piece band and we go from real extreme, subtle, heart-wrenching moments with minimal sound to explosions of wide-screen, epic sound. It’s an eclectic mix of music, but quite emotive.

What are you listening to right now in your free time?

Tracy Chapman, Let It Rain is a big influence on our new record. John Parrish. Very beautiful. John Legend – heard him in the UK, but he’s from America. Beautiful voice. Plays piano and is a bit of a genius. Classic stuff as well. After the Gold Rush [Neil Young]. Joni Mitchell. Pink Floyd. Good stuff.

Is there anything you’ve always wished to be asked?

I don’t think there’s anything I haven’t been asked in the last five years!

Sidebar:

The name Turin Brakes might not sound familiar but their sound might. The duo’s song “Rain City”, which first appeared on their 2003 album, Ether Song, also appeared on the first season soundtrack to the TV show The O.C.

An extremely edited-down version of this piece published in Dose on July 27, 2005 and a clipping appears below. More music stuff is here. More interviews are here.

2018: This is a great example of a piece that the geniuses at Dose butchered.

Basically, I liked Turin Brakes, secured the interview, championed the piece, and the dudes who were my bosses never really intended to use my work because they thought the music was too effeminate or something (this was suggested to me), and so they just … wasted my time. Cut the whole thing. And like, it happens. I’m not a princess about edits and didn’t even mind this one at the time, but what I wish was that someone at Dose had bothered to tell me before I did all the extra work. I could have written a 100 word promo piece in my sleep. The interview wasn’t necessary. But my bosses were dicks. That’s the short story.

I still like Turin Brakes.

I know this interview doesn’t exactly set the world on fire and that my questions were pretty banal, but I also don’t think it’s the worst thing I produced as a journalist. And I think the music is interesting and ephemeral and that it holds up, unlike so much music from the mid-aughts.

Anyway, note how the piece ultimately ran as a “Go Here” listing. As mentioned previously, this space was supposed to be nothing more than a glorified listing area, but as you can see here, what was expected in terms of reporting was all over the place. In this case, I did a full interview and my work was shoehorned in to a listing-length block, robbing me of a legitimate byline. In others, listings were “expanded” with text from the related press release, and Dose would tack on my name as if reporting had happened. The whole thing was sketchy as hell.

Published in Dose, July 27, 2005.