Ask someone to name an Oxford band and who would they come up with?
Your respectable music snob type will immediately proffer Radiohead with a tone of detached superiority. Your asymmetrically fringed, cellulose-thin jeans-wearing type will say Foals (because it’s not the Foals, it’s just Foals, yeah…?) with a petulant sneer.
However, ask your finger-on-the-pulse-of-great-new-music type and they may just say Jonquil. Everyone’s favourite quality musical publication, NME, says the local six-piece’s songs sound like ‘beautiful Beirut-gone-English folk’.
‘We are not a folk band’, says horn-player Sam Scott indignantly. ‘I guess we’re in the same bracket as those Beirut and Arcade Fire style bands, but I don’t feel like we’re ripping them off at all, none of us listen to that stuff that much.’
Keyboardist, accordionist and frontman Hugo Manuel adds that ‘without sounding too lame, we maybe rock out a bit more…It’s not so rooted in the folky stuff; as much as people like to think we’re a folky band, it’s just not us.’
Their sound is actually harder to pin down than one would expect. On record, and on stage, the instruments involved include a heady mix of guitar, violin, drums, flugelhorn, bouzouki, double bass, melodica, glockenspiels and yet more whistles and bells making a sonic impression all of their own.
‘We all listen to really different things’, Hugo tells me, ‘At the moment we all like certain artists like Yeasayer and Fleet Foxes but there’s loads of other tastes within the band.’
Violinist Ben Rimmer is also keen to point out, ‘Three of us run this hip-hop label as well, it was spawned when we lived together and all we listened to was American hip-hop like Aesop Rock. That’s why we have such a mix of sounds; why we have an MPC drum machine and the horns go through pedals and outside of the band Kit [Monteith – percussion] even does some MCing.’
This clearly diverse palette defines the songs that Jonquil make, and when I first saw them perform, supporting Spoon, I was constantly surprised as each new song brought different, shifting harmonies and textures.
Holding their own as a support to an established and respected band must have been encouraging. ‘It was the biggest show we’d done and it was amazing. It’s fun supporting because you know most people don’t know you and you have to win them over’, Hugo explains.
As I talk to the band, punters are already pouring into the Oxford Academy, some to see the dubious delights of Mike Skinner’s cod-poetry of the streets, the rest wisely choosing to bask in the blissful experience of Jonquil’s homecoming gig following the biggest tour the band have done to date.
Hugo tells me ‘When we come back and play a headline show in Oxford it’s a different kettle of fish’. ‘More people know the words’, says Sam before self-effacingly continuing, ‘Because it’s our friends; we know probably 60% of the audience’. ‘We do know most of Oxford,’ jokes Hugo, and he’s not far off.
All six members grew up in and around the city and met though playing in different bands in the area. ‘We’re a product of the scene’, Hugo tells me, ‘We saw Sam in his old band Youthmovies, Jody [Prewett – guitar] played in a couple bands’. ‘And we’re still in contact and involved with all these other groups’, Ben explains.
After forming properly the band continued as a bedroom project, with Hugo writing the bare bones of songs, while the rest of the band chipped in their own multi-layered parts, and then refining the tunes by playing them live, many of the shows in venues around Oxford such as Port Mahon, the Cellar and, of course, the Academy.
The band have been ending their gigs for the last two years with the beautiful ‘Lions’ and when I ask, in a considered tone, whether the message I’m getting from the lyrics about break down in society is accurate I’m met with a smirk.
‘The lyrics?’, Sam smiles, ‘Absolute nonsense. It’s quite funny to us that it’s become this signature tune; it’s not even a song- it’s just an accordion line’. Regardless, it represents Jonquil’s sound perfectly – beautifully simple melody, rich instrumentation and powerful group singing.
When I enquire what’s next for the guys they tell me of the delights of better girls, beds, and audience reaction awaiting them in their first tour to Spain and Portugal. With all this constant travelling they suggest their next album should be entitled Abandon Your Friends.
They may have been joking, but once Jonquil’s beautiful music has you hooked, you may well be willing to uproot and forget all those close to you, just to hear it again.
