Interview with King Creosote

Kenny Anderson, a.k.a. Scottish indie folk legend King Creosote, is certainly a character. As an interviewee he is a cross between a dream and a nightmare, delivering answers that are simultaneously charming, funny and infuriatingly elliptical. When I ask the beardy troubadour how he feels regarding his Mercury nomination, his response is typically both contrary and revealing: “It feels a bit like it did when I opened my second-year report card to read I’d been awarded 86% and an A for music when I knew full well I’d only scored 68% in the exam – hot face and a curious tingle in the gut, a fear of being found out.” It seems that despite releasing forty-plus albums and setting up a distinctive and widely admired record label, King Creosote is still uncomfortable in the face of the establishment.

Anderson’s self-deprecating attitude to his sprawling career is perhaps unsurprising. He certainly knows better than most the fickleness of an industry that has a tendency to swiftly spit out acts that it once wholeheartedly touted. For years Anderson has apparently been content to plough his own furrow. In 1997, tired of slaving away for a break that seemed ever more unlikely and fuelled by a potent combination of “frustration, desperation and pride”, Anderson established Fence Records in his hometown of Fife, with the simple intention of providing a relaxed environment for independent musicians to make the music they wanted free from industry interference. The result was the growth of The Fence Collective, a motley band of distinct and often overlooked talents united by a loose indie folk aesthetic. Over time the collective has included the likes of James Yorkston, Lone Pigeon, Pictish Trail and (perhaps surprisingly) K.T. Tunstall, as well as King Creosote himself. These artists may not be household names, but a quick Youtube is enough to confirm that those clever folks at Fence are creating some of the most interesting, anarchic and downright exciting music you’ve never heard. Go, on give it a Google. You won’t regret it.

Anderson’s prodigious output over the last twenty years would make even the most fecund of today’s eager wannabes blanch. Inspired by the birth of his daughter and unhindered by a “proper job”, Anderson spent much of the late 1990s and early 2000s writing and recording in a haze of creativity resembling addiction, fretting if he didn’t manage to complete at least two albums a year. Nowadays, the day-to-day drudgery of travelling, accounting and budgeting has slowed the creative process somewhat, but the skittish experimentalism of his seemingly endless back catalogue makes Anderson a difficult talent to define. An attempt to describe his own sound is perhaps appropriately un-illuminating. “I’m a songwriter, I play acoustic guitar to about grade two, and accordion to maybe grade five? I love wordplay, cryptic crosswords, Xbox RPGs and historical fiction. I’m a bit of a musical magpie… and I’m not ashamed to make the mistakes work over the same four chords.” This is all well and good, but it’s selling the King somewhat short. What makes Anderson special is hard to pin down, but it might have something to do with his uncanny ear for lyrics that are somehow simultaneously witty and devastating (‘There’s None Of That’ opens with the immortal line: “You know when hands touch and there’s that spark of electrical something or other?/ Well there’s none of that”). Or perhaps it’s that voice, a lilting, uncompromisingly Scottish burr that has the power to elicit audible sighs from the unprepared first-time listener. Or perhaps it’s the sheer, pigheaded unpredictability of an artist that can veer from traditional folk to dance in a heart beat.

Whatever it is that makes Anderson special, one thing is for sure: he deserves more listeners. In 2005, KC Rules OK, released on the Names label, seemed to represent a small breakthrough, attracting a mild critical buzz and significant interest. The follow-up, Bombshell, purported to present a slicker, poppier King Creosote, the sleeve notes complete with uncharacteristically po-faced black and white photographs of KC gazing pensively into the middle distance (words of advice from Anderson himself: “if your record company suggests you try wearing a scarf, or cravat, for a particular photograph, and that of course you’ll get the final say on which photos are to be used, don’t be fooled. You can expect to see the same effing photographs gracing your local rags for years…” ) Although Bombshell once again impressed critically, some of Anderson’s hardcore fans felt he had sold out. Anderson dismisses the idea that he diluted his sound for the record, although he admits that the label encouraged him to tinker slightly with a guitar part. “When the record label heard at least four radio friendly singles they gave it this ‘stab at chart success’ tagline, probably in the great white hope that it would indeed succeed,” he says candidly. “Given that my audience had been built up largely through the Fence and Domino labels, and they all saw me as an indie outsider, these five additional guitar notes might well have put them off, thus depriving me of at least a dozen sales. Maybe if I’d stuck with the original album title Israeli Hand Span, I could’ve clawed those twelve sales back and gone into the chart ten places higher.”

First time listeners unfamiliar with King Creosote’s sprawling, lo-fi back catalogue would probably find the idea of Bombshell as a safe stab at the pop mainstream vaguely laughable. This is after all an album that opens with the lilting, funereal dirge of the beautiful accordion lead ‘Leslie’, (apparently described by the label as “commercially suicidal”) and also includes the Morricone-esque theatrics of ‘Now Drop Your Bombshell’ and the brilliantly ironic haunting hush of  ‘And The Racket They Made’. When looked at from this angle it seems hardly surprising that Bombshell wasn’t the runaway commercial success the label had hoped for. Was Anderson disappointed? “Given that nothing with my name on it has sold in any great quantity, it did as well as I could’ve hoped. I know of better records that sold less, but not by me… I saw [the album] for £4.99 in Borders before it closed down – that was gutting… Now I hope that it’s Diamond Mine that becomes a quietly roaring, runaway success and that people discover Bombshell as an album made in much the same way, by the same people, with the same heart and with much of the same cast.”

Anderson may exude Zen-like calm now but the follow up to Bombshell, self-released after he was dropped by Names, appears to tell a different story.  Flick the Vs, as the title suggests, seems to be an anarchic statement against the industry’s mores. Standout single ‘Coast On By’ reflects how the loneliness of the touring musician can brim over into frustration: “You’ve seen me wading through reviews I don’t deserve” Anderson sings at one point, elaborating later “I don’t like leaving my village no more/ even though I go to do the thing I love the most/… this music thing is all that can be done.” Was Anderson disillusioned at this stage? “Flick the Vs is a two finger salute to myself as much as anything or anybody… In good faith I did take part in a whole lot of record company malarkey … you know, expensive photo shoots with stylists and runners, video shoots with stylists and runners…  and not only did I end up looking like a tit, the music banjoed regardless. You get diverted from what is supposed to be all about the music, but when it happens to you for the first time, you just think ‘what the hell’ and order an Addison Lee cab at King’s Cross instead of lunking an accordion, guitar and rucksack onto the Northern Line.” Significantly Anderson returned to his old studio and collaborators to record Flick the Vs, thus producing a quintessentially “Fence Collective” record that was subsequently snapped up by Domino, an irony that Anderson clearly relishes: “I was back on Domino, merrily flicking the Vs to all of ’em.”

Now that Diamond Mine, a collaboration between King Creosote and Jon Hopkins, has been Mercury-nominated, Anderson certainly seems to be having the last laugh. It is a record that no one could accuse of pandering to its audience, a remarkably tranquil and rather lovely soundscape tribute to the Scottish landscape, complete with snippets of recorded dialogue. Hopkins and Anderson had worked together before on odd songs and bits of production, and the collaboration appears to have fallen together organically. Diamond Mine may be another apparent musical U-turn, as mellow and immersive as Flick the Vs is stomping and immediate, but it feels natural for Anderson to return to the peaceful acoustic folk of his earlier homespun recordings. It is also, like Anderson himself, a difficult nut to crack, a subtle album that forces you to turn up the volume, stop what you’re doing and properly listen.

Whether the Mercury nomination will finally provide the breakthrough for which Anderson has waited for so long is unsure. One thing is for certain, though: he’s not giving up any time soon. He has just finished a new King Creosote album and will be promoting the EP throughout the winter, as well as touring with both Hopkins and The Burns Unit, a sort of alternative folk supergroup. I was lucky enough to catch the latter at a festival and enjoyed a surreal and slightly ramshackle knees-up, although KC looked a little worse for wear and they were missing their MC (no joke). I doubtfully ask Anderson if the Mercury nomination will change his life. “It already has. Twice now I’ve been stopped in The Co-op and asked why there’s no plectrums in amongst my loose change, and on Monday there I had a drink bought for me from the far end of the bar. It’s my own fault” he deadpans. “I probably shouldn’t have gone out drinking on the quietest night of the week wearing my hand-painted “I’m a Mercury nominee” T-shirt…”

For all his flippancy, there can be no doubt that while Anderson’s single-minded, uncompromising approach may have led to rather lovely music, it hasn’t necessarily proved the easiest lifestyle choice; Anderson is quick to joke about “robbing stage coaches up on Magus Muir”. Let’s not forget that the Mercury Prize is not just about prestige, but also involves a cheerful £20,000 cheque. I for one would rather see that go towards KC’s Crail council tax than Anna Calvi’s lipstick fund or Tinie Tempah’s bow-tie collection. For once, lets have a nice surprise at the Mercurys – KC rules, OK?

The winner of the 2011 Mercury Prize will be announced on 6 September