Artist spotlight: The Disappeared

TO define Manchester, it would be sensible to say it’s a cultural hub that spawned some of the greatest and most important bands in music history.
Yeah, yeah, we can name drop all day (joydivisionthesmithsandmorrisseyneworderthedurutticolumnthefallbuzzcocksthestonerosesautechre….and breath) but what about the current Manchester bands gigging hard in front of a daunting backdrop that is the city’s illustrious music past?
The Disappeared are a four-piece indie/rock band that take the best bits of their predecessors and main influences (The Clash, Bloc Party, The Cribs, LCD Soundsystem) and package it into a fiercely infectious, guitar-driven sound – with attitude.
Songs Welcome Back, Take Me to Manhattan, Step It Up and Karen Silkwood are superbly well-written and already have the band’s stamp of quintessentially British catchy guitar hooks entwined with passionate vocals – which is even more impressive as they only formed in late 2008.
Take a slab of The Jam, sprinkle with a touch of Wire and gloss with Inspiral Carpets and you’ll have something pretty close to The Disappeared.
Luminous Plectrum took time out with The Disappeared’s Jeremy Santhouse, whose voice and vocal style is similar to Mark E Smith’s but clearer and with more conviction, to find out a bit more about them.

LP: Who do you sound like?
I think that, like most bands, we probably still sound like some of our influences. It's inevitable, really, for anyone working in any creative medium. I guess if you're a writer just starting out, you'll probably be writing a little in the style of your favourite author or journalist. Same if you're an artist or a musician. It takes time to find your own voice.
LP: Who are your influences?
Lyrically it started with people like Joe Strummer and Paul Weller. Both of them produced songs which changed my life and my understanding of the world. More recently, though, I think people like Mike Skinner, Jarvis Cocker, Guy Garvey and Alex Turner have all produced amazing work.

LP: What are your musical influences?
They tend to vary according to what I'm listening to. I'm very easily influenced. Right now I love the Cribs, Editors, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Queens of The Stone Age. Hmm, all quite "guitar-ey" too, I've just realised. I'm listening to a lot of Oasis again as well. And I keep re-discovering Revolver by the Beatles. It's my favourite Beatles album, because of the arrangements, and the sheer quality of the song-writing.

LP: Do you play live often? Have you got any future gigs lined up?
We've gigged a fair bit in the last 18 months, mostly around Manchetser and the North-West. One of our very first gigs was at Chorlton Arts Festival last year, which was slightly nerve-wracking! I'm just in the middle of writing some new songs now, so when they're finished we shall definitely be out gigging again.
LP: Where would you like to see yourselves in the next five years?
It'd be nice to think we'd be popular or well-known (which aren't necessarily the same thing). One of the big difficulties we face musically is the current X-Factor/Britain's Got Talent culture. It's empty, it's shallow and as Sting recently identified, it does little more than produce a succession of Mariah Carey/Whitney Houston/Boyzone clones. There's nothing original about that.

My upbringing was by courtesy of The Clash, The Jam and numerous other bands who made my head spin with excitement. Even today, I find very few bands putting out songs whose lyrics make me go "wow". Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys is a fine song writer; Mike Skinner of The Streets broke ground in his delivery and use of English, advancing on what Eminem had done some years previously. But a modern-day "Setting Sons" album? A 21st century "Sandinista" with that giant sweep of politics, history, social comment and rock'n'roll? Don't make me laugh. Nobody's even coming close.

Sure, you can find examples of folk bands and singer-songwriters who are prepared to put their hearts on their sleeves (Billy Bragg, I'm applauding you here). But where are the mainstream rock bands who are trying to take on the mass market with some intelligence? My list consists of the Manic Street Preachers, perhaps The Cribs too, but precious little else.

So here's the dilemma. Should I be writing songs to fill that gap? Listen to the songs on our website - I'm happy tackling the untouchables as Radio 1 might call them (politics or religion to name but two subjects). Or should I just say "fuck it" and stick to Moon/June, Love/Above and similar rhymes?

Actually I know that the answer is to stick to my guns, stay focussed and write about the stuff that's important to me. As Edwyn Collins says in A Girl Like You: "....Too many protest singers, not enough protest songs." Maybe *that's* part of what we need as an antidote to X Factor music: less of this empty vacuous rubbish and more protest songs, more commitment, more statements of intent. You can count me in.

You can listen to The Disappeared by clicking here.

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