Johnny Marr is in full swing promoting his new album Call The Comet which arrives this Friday. Today he appeared on BBC Radio 6 Music to discuss the new album and play a few songs.
Marr talked about recording Call The Comet in Manchester:
"I've got this new studio just on the outskirts, this big old factory, top floor of a factory. That was fun because those places are few and far between nowadays...The Smiths started out in the top floor of a factory, clothes factory, and that's where we find ourselves now. It's nice that 30 years later we've still got those kind of environments to work in really, a very rare and some of the tracks from the album have definitely been formed by that kind of industrial sort of space I think"
He also describes Call The Comet as a rock record and says he thinks modern pop music isn't very sexy:
Back in the Smiths days I never had a problem describing myself as a pop musician...The Smiths and what I was doing, my generation late 70s early 80s, wanted to get away from rock...I guess wanting to redefine what rock was or...shake off the old paradigms of what rock had become.
But I think on this record I'm not feeling like a pop musician 'cause I think pop is something else now, and there are things that certain kinds of rock or guitar music that a band can do that certainly current pop just doesn't busy itself doing.
"Like what kind of thing?" host Lauren Laverne asked. Marr's reply:
Sexy, I think. I have to say I love pop music and love when it pushes the envelope, but I find a lot of the modern stuff isn't sexy. And I think rock music has a sort of implication in it of, it can get it little out there; you can hang some pretty decent poetry on it and some pretty decent imagery and just sort of lose yourself in it a little bit whereas I think the almost defining things of pop is that it's supposed to grab you every few seconds which is great when it does it, and when it's really great it is that phrase "life affirming" and who doesn't like that? It's fantastic.
But sometimes I think, I was just feeling that I wanted to be, or was in a sort of place that was a little bit more, not reflective - 'cause I'm never that mellow - but, just in a different space, you know. I was alright without not hanging or sort of looking to write singles or anything like that.
Watch Marr perform "Day In Day Out" from the session below and stream the archive here.
Published June 13th, 2018