Lawrence Arabia
BIOGRAPHY
Unlike many of the bands featured as our artist of the week, Lawrence Arabia (or James Milne to his mother) has already released two albums, 2006’s Lawrence Arabia and 2010’s Chant Darling, the former on Honorary Bedouin Records and the latter being released by Bella Union in the UK.
Both LPs contain an eclectic mix of styles, incorporating, amongst others, hues of 60s pop, psychedelia and modern indie, much like Deerhunter have on recent albums, although the end product of the two bands couldn’t be much more different. Second effort Chant Darling was recorded after a move to London in 2006, in between shifts at Blackwell’s book shop on the Charing Cross Road. A great example of just how hard the sound is to pin down is single ‘Apple Pie Bed’ (see below for the video), which manages in snippets to sound like The Strokes, Camera Obscura, Fleet Foxes and Belle and Sebastian, but without its totality being anything like any of them.
Born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1981, Milne has also been involved in a number of other projects since he started the Lawrence Arabia project. His (now defunct) band The Reduction Agents released their debut album The Dance Reduction Agents on the same day as Lawrence Arabia, he managed to get two songs on the soundtrack to Kiwi comedy Eagle Vs. Shark (starring Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords fame), has been a member of much beloved Kiwi groups The Ruby Suns and The Brunettes, and toured with Okkervil River as a bassist. There’s also his new band BARB – a NZ super group of Lawrence, Liam Finn and Conan Mockassin, Eliza-Jane Barnes and Seamus Ebbs - whose debut album came out this year (download ‘Having A Baby’ here).
Obviously keen to distance himself from the ‘singer songwriter’ tag (Milne describes being associated with that scene as “a well of despair”, and doesn’t even own an acoustic guitar), Lawrence Arabia records and performs as a band. There’s also an excellently wry sense of humour at work here that further separates him from the rest of that often dour ilk. So, anyone approaching this music in the mindset that all singer songwriters are boring, soppy, overly romantic drippy types needn’t worry – James Milne absolutely despises all that stuff too.
Lawrence is currently working on a third album with initial sessions beginning in Surrey in October 2010, engineered by Joe Gubay and our very own Nick Abbott.
VIDEOS
ROCKFEEDBACK SESSION:
LIVE AT THE BUSH HALL:
DUET WITH CATE LE BON
’APPLE PIE BED’:
LINKS