Envy & Other Sins play guitars (and keyboards and drums), but not in the way that has come to define British guitar-pop in the last year or two. They do just what it says on the unique Envy tin: proffer Englishly thoughtful, singular lyrics wrapped in succulent three-minute melodies. Their musical references are Roxy Music and The Kinks, their visual guideposts Art Nouveau and Charlie Chaplin, and what they strive for is an experience that “takes you out of the everyday” and into a world of “faded glamour” - in other words, a life less ordinary.
“Marauding dandies,” the NME called them. They see themselves – slightly less peacockishly - as “purveyors of eccentric, erudite English pop music.” But before we continue, have a look at this (by no means complete) selection of the people and things that inspire Envy & Other Sins:
The Victorian age, Stratford-upon-Avon, gentlemen of the realm, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, damsels in distress, steam power, punctuation, expensive guitars (sometimes played loudly), unusual rural hobbies, H.G. Wells, clock towers, horse power, ancient pornography.
From which it should be plain that E&OS are cut from a very different cloth from the McBand next door. It’s not often you meet a group whose conversation roves from Toulouse-Lautrec (“Big influence on our artwork”) to the Flaming Lips (“We like bands like them, who have a great a visual experience when they play live – we’re also very visual”) without a hint of we’re-so-eclectic self-consciousness. And they could be the only band to have looked to “Paradise Lost” for a name, then decided that Milton’s epic poem could do with a bit of updating. “We were inspired by Milton’s sins, but we like to think that sinning isn’t confined to the ones he thought of – there are more modern ones.”
The crucible for this was, rather surprisingly, Birmingham. All four gravitated there from other places around the turn of the decade because, as Ali Forbes (vocals) puts it, “it was cheaper than London, so we could concentrate on the band, it’s really friendly. AND they’d just opened a Selfridge’s!”
Ali, a Hampshire boy, and Jarvey Moss (keyboards), who’s from Suffolk, had been playing music in Jarvey’s mother’s garage, before migrating to England’s second city, where they met Mark Lees (bass) who is originally from Foxton, Leicester,and Jim Macaulay (drums), who grew up in nearby Dudley.
The four met in 2004, andclicked, despite Jim's adolescent love of punksters like Rancid. As preparation for life as a fulltime band, all of them had university degrees that didn’t equip them for anything in particular: Ali studied philosophy, Mark geography, Jim a property development course and, most randomly of all, Jarvey studied experimental psychology. “Most of my contemporaries are earning enormous amounts of money,” he says wryly.
Once they began writing songs – unusually, all four contribute to songwriting – and putting together a live set, they decided their shows would be enhanced by the inclusion of some of their other passions. “A lot of what we do is influenced by old films, and I’m obsessed with Art Nouveau. We want to have that feeling of faded glamour,” says Mark. Visually, adds Ali, they’re into “anything from the ‘40s backwards.” In practice, their stage props range from Victorian headwear to hatstands, standard lamps and an antique “drinks globe.” Jarvey hastens to qualify this: “We may be eccentric, but it’s not a pastiche. It’s important to us that it doesn’t look like we're in costume.”
Envy quickly became men-about-Birmingham, sharing festival stages with the Super Furry Animals, Hard-Fi and Razorlight. They released a single called “Prodigal Son,” which received props from the NME and The Fly (“Dexy’s meets Talking Heads huge stomping rock’n’roll,” gushed the latter), and began to put together an album. Then, on a whim – this was mid-2007 – they signed up to compete in a Channel 4 talent-search program called Mobile Act Unsigned, which offered as first prize a contract with A&M Records. They were up against 1600 other bands. They won.
“The TV show has given us the opportunity to make an album, and we’ll stand or fall by it,” says Jarvey, who’s impatient with “this indier-than-thou attitude that pop is a dirty word. We’re a pop band.” “Some pop bands are self-consciously ironic, Guilty Pleasures kind of bands, but we’re serious.” Mark adds.
The album, We Leave At Dawn, has been produced by Danton Supple, who oversaw most of Coldplay’s X & Y, and as a guitar-pop debut, it punches above its weight. The breathless, dancealong first single, Highness, serves as both an introduction to the band and a statement of intent – it’s about deciding that “this pauper’s life is not for me,” and aspiring to greater things. Whatever happens to Envy & Other Sins, they’re confident they’re going to make their mark. As Jarvey says: “We’re never going to be a little niche band.” The future is Sinful.
Envy & Other Sins will release Highness on A&M Records on
March 3rd with their debut album We Leave At Dawn to follow on March 31st.
Envy & Other Sins play guitars (and keyboards and drums), but not in the way that has come to define British guitar-pop in the last year or two. They do just what it says on the unique Envy tin: proffer Englishly thoughtful, singular lyrics wrapped in succulent three-minute melodies. Their musical references are Roxy Music and The Kinks, their visual guideposts Art Nouveau and Charlie Chaplin, and what they strive for is an experience that “takes you out of the everyday” and into a world of “faded glamour” - in other words, a life less ordinary.
Ali, a Hampshire boy, and Jarvey Moss (keyboards), who’s from Suffolk, had been playing music in Jarvey’s mother’s garage, before migrating to England’s second city, where they met Mark Lees (bass) who is originally from Foxton, Leicester,and Jim Macaulay (drums), who grew up in nearby Dudley.