brother from another number
For the members of The Magic Numbers, every day on the road is a family reunion. When bassist and singer for the English four-piece Michele Stodart wakes up each morning, she’s greeted by big brother and band guitarist Romeo, and their life-long friends, brother and sister Sean and Angela Gannon. When Oyster asks how the brother-sister dynamics work within a hectic touring environment, Michele is refreshingly frank.
“It’s sometimes a good thing, but it’s also sometimes the worst thing in the world. Me and Romeo tend to be quite heated and passionate about what we do, and we both want it the way it sounds in our own heads but sometimes it doesn’t quite match up. When you’re on stage and you make a bum note, you have your big brother looking over at you and saying ‘you messed up’. It never stops being complicated, but also fun.”
With two sets of siblings comprising the band, there are two very proud sets of parents. “My parents are so happy, they get so excited seeing us on the TV and in the magazines. But I keep telling my Dad that it’s a different day and age, it’s all on the internet now,” Michele says, before adding with a laugh, “I keep telling him that he’ll have to get a computer if he wants to see us.”
The strong emphasis on family pervades every facet of the band’s work. In preparation for their latest album, The Runaway, the band set up their own studio in London, outfitting it “like a little house”. Stodart says that finally getting a space to call their own was a major influence on the record, and encouraged them to experiment musically in new ways.
As an example, Stodart singles out the album’s lead track, ‘The Pulse’, which was released on Youtube recently. The song showcases a “more cinematic, orchestral sound” as Stodart calls it, with string arrangements from the late Robert Kirby and vocal harmonies calling to mind bands like Arcade Fire. After self-producing their previous two albums, Stodart believes that working with Valgeir Sigurosson, the man behind records from Björk and Múm, was one of the principal reasons for the shift in musical direction, to transcend the now over-populated British folk-pop genre.
“From my perspective, our sound has completely changed…” Stodart says of their upcoming release. “We wanted to forget the usual way of recording, to forget the way we knew how to make a Magic Numbers song. We forced ourselves to think outside the box a bit.”
Sigurusson was chosen for his prior experience in creating the sweeping soundscapes and ethereal qualities that the band was searching for. While his work with the English four-piece is miles apart from his prior work with the Icelandic artists mentioned above, Stodart says that Valgeir’s contribution to the record cannot be over-valued.
“Valgeir added a lot of different things to the sound. So, playing live now, we have lots of different backing stuff going on, creating this wall of sound; there’s more instruments on stage, a few keyboards, a few extra hands. I think you can sense that the band has sort of moved on a little bit, its more grown up, and more focused. Whereas on the first two records, it was just like a band in a room, just playing songs… this one sounds more like an album!”
Josh Butler writes.