After two decades of music, between quirky post-hardcore band Reuben and his more recent solo material, Jamie Lenman has certainly made a name for himself. Leading up to the release of his latest solo album and this year’s iteration of his own festival Lenmania we caught up to discuss his new album The Atheist.
Related: Jamie Lenman – The Atheist | Album Review
To anyone who hasn’t heard the album yet how would you describe it in three words?
“Positive, Indie, Atheism.”
On the new album and live show you’ve brought in another guitarist Jen Hingley (False Advertising), how did that change the writing process for the album?
“It was actually the other way around, the tail wagging the dog in that instance. I wrote the record and recorded it before bringing Jen on board. All these songs had extra elements, if not a big guitar solo then definitely a bit of “jingly jangly” going on, I wanted to make it richer in that respect. You get those bands where the rhythm guitarist is holding it down and the lead guitarist is always doing something. I wanted to write a record like that and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get that with just me and Jack [drummer Jack Wrench].
On the last three records it was mostly root notes on the bass so we could play everything live with just two people, maybe a little sample here or there but I knew we couldn’t do the new album with samples and I didn’t want to get into backing tracks, fuck that, the only way to conquer it was to bring in a whole extra player. That’s always a challenge logistically but Jen was a standout candidate, we already knew each other very well from touring together. We’d remained in contact since the tour we’d done with False Advertising, often you don’t, you’re best buddies crammed in a tin can for weeks and then completely lose touch, you can always tell who the good’uns are if they still answer your emails after so she was the obvious candidate!”
What is your favourite track from the new album?
“That’s an easy one. It’s called ‘This Town Will Never Let Us Go’, from the second side of the album, just because it’s real contemplative. As much as I do like the positive stuff and I wanted to make a positive sounding album I do have a large strain of melancholy in me and I like listening to more thoughtful music. This track is where I really went for that, I went for the jugular on the melancholy. It’s kind of the soul of the record even though it’s at odds with the positive vibe. The record is funny, the first sort of half is six radio hits, it’s all sunny day and big smiles, the second side gets a little bit more introspective.”
“The record is funny, the first sort of half is six radio hits, it’s all sunny day and big smiles, the second side gets a little bit more introspective.”
Always have to ask the nerdy question, what was your favourite piece of gear you used on the album?
“This was the first album where I didn’t use my old Yamaha guitar, for a number of reasons. I don’t take it out live anymore because it doesn’t have the sustain. It still sounds great but because the neck is in so many pieces you get a beautiful note for like, a second but then it falls away which is a shame. On this record part of the idea was to push away from my standard sound and so instead I used the Revstars. Yamaha gave me a couple of these really nice guitars, a blue one that’s in all the videos that I got after the record but they gave me a lovely cream one around the time of Download Pilot and I was like, this is way too nice a guitar to play King of Clubs on so I’m gonna save it for The Atheist. that was my main guitar for this whole record and it sounds beautiful. I had a lovely bass from Ibanez, they sent me a Talman which I tracked everything with. I do love guitars but I’m not a gearhead, I’m not the kind of person who’s like “it’s made of this wood”, I’m much more like “oooh shiny”, it’s so shallow but I love the way they look. That’s what attracted me to the Revstars, I’ve had nice looking guitars that sounded like shit, I’m lucky that these have the whole package.
You use the Submarine pickup live to emulate a bass too, when did you start using that?
“When I made Muscle Memory I was writing it in weekly sessions with the whole of The Heavy Mellow Band and they’d suffer through me going “what should we do next?” every time. By the time I was writing Devolver it was just me and my drummer Cav in the rehearsal space because we worked out that we didn’t need everyone to be there every week, just me and a drummer, that was so fun and freeing that I thought “shit maybe I could do it with just a drummer”.
Originally I was going to put my whole guitar through a POG Octaver to thicken it up which is what a lot of two pieces do but I wanted to play chords as well, a lot of the songs were just bass too which made it difficult. At one point I was designing a guitar that could do both, my producer Space was like “look man don’t chop the neck off a bass and add it to a guitar, just get this Submarine pickup” and I’ve never looked back. So much so that when I did add another band member I added a second guitarist, not a bass. On the record I play an actual bass guitar for the sake of ease but live I do rhythm guitar and bass at the same time.”
You’ve been touring for over 20 years now, how is it different now to when you first started?
“It’s completely different, the way I tour now is so comfy. It’s natural because when you’re young you run full speed into a van, you maybe eat one crisp and you can do thirty shows, you’re so springy and full of expectations that you don’t need any comfort. Touring in the early years was uncomfortable but we didn’t know that it didn’t have to be, the longer you do it the more you work out that it doesn’t have to be greasy hell. Now we’ve got to the point where I’ve got a fucking cheese board in the dressing room. On those early Reuben tours we were doing 29 shows over 30 days and I remember us screaming at our manager about the off day telling him to book us a show, we didn’t need a day off! Now I’ll do 2 shows a week and that’s it, that’s fine.
Life changes so much, when I was originally on tour there wasn’t much to get back to, I was living with my folks, I didn’t have a significant other or another job, all I had was tour so why would I go back? Now my home is fucking sick, I’ve got a full sized Dalek in my room, a wife and a life outside of the tour, that’s the key difference.”
“On those early Reuben tours we were doing 29 shows over 30 days and I remember us screaming at our manager about the off day telling him to book us a show, we didn’t need a day off!”
You’ve mentioned in the past that you’ve got a ton of really different sounding projects in the works, can you say anything about any of them or are they still top secret?
“Buddy, there’s no way I could even give you a one word intro to any of those projects that wouldn’t just send you spinning off in some bizarre direction. There’s so many albums I wanna make and I’m forty! I’ve got five or six almost completed albums in my head now, it’s frustrating for me, I hope I can get them all out before I fucking snuff it, not that I’m planning on snuffing it any time soon. I can’t tell you about them because a lot of the fun is finding out what it’ll be. What I can say is that they’re all wildly different from The Atheist, and they’re all wildly different from each other. I’m hoping that by now, after a quarter of a century, I’ve managed to carve out enough of an identity that at least within my own catalogue it’ll make a kind of sense.”
It’s nearly the end of the year, what’s been your favourite album that’s been released in 2022?
I guess my favourite album that’s come out this year would be the new Nostromo album that came out a few weeks ago. I love Nostromo and they came out of nowhere with this new album, it’s still brutal as fuck. My most listened to album was probably Dare by The Human League this year but that came out nearly forty years ago. I do try to keep up with music, I’m running a festival called Lenmania and some of those bands don’t even have an album out, there’s lots of great music out but the list of albums for me is short.
Thinking of Lenmania, who’s the one band you’ve booked for that that you’re really excited about?
“It’s gotta be RAD PITT because I don’t think anyone knows them.”
I’m a huge fan of RAD PITT!
“Why would you not be! They’ve got a bit of a following but not enough people know them. They will after December 18th they’re gonna tear that place a new eyehole. All the other bands I know in some way, we’re buddies, we’ve crossed paths a lot but I’m generally more excited to make a new friend than to reunite with old ones.”
One final question, you’ve always been a big Doctor Who fan, what did you think of David Tennant coming back?
“I think it’s really fun. When I got into Doctor Who at the start of the ‘90s it wasn’t on telly and my favourite doctor was Colin Baker and I was bummed out that I’d missed his run. I thought it would be cool, if they ever came back, they’d regenerate him backwards into Colin Baker so I could have some more of him. That was nuts, they’d never do that but now they have! You can’t deny that David Tennant had an impact, for years Tom Baker was the definitive doctor, to the new generation of fans, that’s Tennant.”