Bido Lito! February 2015
LOST AND Lost Brothers
FOUND
The Liverpool of The
Words: Sam Turner / @SamTurner1984
“On the last night of recording our new album, Oisin and I took
a late-night stroll around some of the old places. Walking past
Elevator Studios, we stopped and stood outside. This is where I
recorded my first record with The Basement, under the production
of Ian Broudie. Around the corner was the rehearsal rooms – a
massive building with fifty-odd rooms, all filled with bands playing
into the night. We stood outside and looked up at our old rooms,
mine with The Basement and Oisin's with The 747s.
I spent so many hours, days, weeks, months and years up in that
room. I even lived up there in a period of desperate hopelessness.
We stood listening to the beautiful racket of a hundred songs
falling onto the street until someone exited the building, leaving
the door ajar and we ran inside. The place still smelled the same
– a mixture of urine, metal and weed. Knowing the perils of the
dreaded lift, we opted to take the stairs to the fifth floor.
Back when we practised there, those stairwells echoed with
the sounds of The Coral, The Zutons, The Bandits, The Stands, The
Little Flames, The Cubical, etc. Now they sing with a new song.
We knocked on the door of our old praccy room until someone
answered and kindly let us in. The room still looked the same,
only the humans were different. Our dust was still there, our pen
scribblings still on the walls, and I looked in the corner to see the
old piano that could never be tuned.
The piano came from the cellar of the building. Paul Speed (the
owner) told us that if we wanted it we could have it. Too big and
heavy to put in the lift, we somehow dragged it up six flights of
stairs. We took it in shifts. It took two days. When we finally got
it in the room we noticed it was impossible to tune, and it sat in
the corner, unused for the five years we were there. And there it is
still. Untouched. In its place. In its home. In a corner. Covered in
cobwebs and dust. Along with our ghosts.”
Mark McCausland
Liverpool clearly has a special place in the hearts of THE LOST
BROTHERS. The two Irishmen, Oisin Leech and Mark McCausland,
now based north of Dublin, formed on Merseyside around 2007
after cutting their teeth in an assortment of bands: Mark’s band
The Basement were briefly attached to Deltasonic, which put them
in touch with some of Liverpool music’s noughties luminaries,
while Oisin’s 747s recorded a version of Baby I’m Yours with Arctic
Monkeys after releasing their underappreciated record, Zampano.
Zampano
Those were the tail end of some golden years for music in the
city: national and international music press were taking notice of
The Bandwagon night at the Zanzibar, The Coral had ushered in a
Scousedelic renaissance, and Liverpool bopped again
Despite moving away, the Losties – as they’ve affectionately
become known – have travelled extensively, playing and
recording in cities across the globe. Last year saw their return
to Liverpool to record their fourth album, New Songs Of Dawn
And Dust, at Parr Street Studios, with production responsibilities
going to another restless product of those kaleidoscopic times,
Bill Ryder-Jones. “We are fascinated by Bill’s work as a solo
artist. His two albums are stunning; I really respect what he
is doing and the sounds he is getting,” Oisin tells me while
having some well-earned downtime in Ireland between
touring. “So we wanted to bring these songs – travelogues that
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Illustration: Chris Coll / facebook.com/HauntedBoyStuff
we had written on the road – to Bill, and he brought things out
of the songs that we didn’t even know were there and added
his magic dust.”
“One of our favourite Liverpool rituals was to go to the
Marlborough pub beside The Jacaranda on a Monday night. It
was a tiny corner old man’s pub with red velvet carpet and winecoloured cushioned lounge couches. Every Monday there was
an old-time New Orleans jazz band that played their hearts out.
These guys were very elderly and were literally playing for their
lives. The energy was amazing. Pints were £1.40 so it meant I could
buy the entire pub a beer and still have change for the jukebox
when the band was done. The jukebox had Fred Neil records on it.
I found those Monday nights very inspiring.”
Oisin Leech
As well as jazz, folk and beat luminaries of the last 60 years,
the sounds of heartbreak, hard work and lives of romantic
recklessness can be heard in all of the duo’s long players. But Oisin
sees the characteristic sadness in the Losties’ tunes differently: “I
don’t see them as sad songs; all my favourite songs – whether
they’re Randy Newman, Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan songs, as
well as the inherent sadness in Irish folk music – really warm my
soul. I think a really sad song punches through everything and
restores your faith to bring you out the other end.”
“Another fine Liverpool ritual was to call down to Jongo's Guitar
Shop on Aigburth Road. We would come back to Liverpool after
a long tour and just sit off in Jongo's shop and talk about music.
Jongo has gypsy blood in him and he lives and breathes good
music. He once helped produce a demo of a song I wrote called
Rainkiss. We recorded it round at the now-legendary Honza's
house. Honza... there's another character who was very good to
us in the early days. If Keith Richards and Tom Waits had a baby
wizard it would be Honza.”
Oisin Leech
The Lost Brothers are musicians who, true to their name, live in
their songs as well as the sonic aesthetics of various decades. As
such, they have spent their care