The Magic Numbers
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{2007}
{2007}
Biografia
No time wasting, no agonising over new directions and, hallelujah, no songs about how tough it is to be a famous rock star – just 17 months after their first ray of sunshine, The Magic Numbers’ difficult second album is ready to breeze effortlessly into your life and prove that Romeo Stodart’s bucket of incredible heartwarming guitar-pop remains full to the brim.
If it seems as if they’ve never been away, that’s because they haven’t. Tireless touring to show off the songs from their double platinum, self-titled debut culminated in a show at Brixton Academy in February this year, before the foursome crossed the ocean and set about converting the Americans. They locked themselves away over the summer to record this second album, but have already been on the road again since, touring the US Midwest with the Flaming Lips and Sonic Youth and giving British crowds at the V Festival and Eden Project an early glimpse of their remarkable new music.
“We haven’t really stopped,” says Romeo, [29], who writes the lion’s share of the songs and swaps harmonies with his bassist sister Michele, [23], and multi-instrumentalist Angela Gannon, [21]. Angela’s drumming brother Sean, [30], completes the close-knit quartet. “We did think about having a break, and the record company wanted us to have a break, but we had a bunch of new songs and were just so excited to get back into the studio. We didn’t want to chill for months and then come back feeling rusty.” So yes, ‘Those the Brokes’ has been written mostly on the road, but the distractions of major success and living from a suitcase have failed to fray Romeo’s outstanding natural abilities. Great songs tumble from this man’s pockets like loose change, as demonstrated by an array of fine B-sides and the exquisite ‘Gone Are The Days’, the ballad they spared for last September’s ‘Help!’ album for Warchild. It doesn’t matter what else he’s doing – there’s always another one fizzing around in there somewhere. “As much as I love the four of us hanging out all the time, I tend to find my own space,” he says. “I sleep at really weird hours, so when everyone else is asleep on the bus I’ll be at the back with a guitar.”
And the speed with which the band have returned doesn’t signal a lack of musical development, either. Their first strings are here, most notably on the waltzing, complex ‘Boy’. A nine-piece orchestra was arranged by Robert Kirby, the man who handled the strings on Nick Drake’s ‘Five Leaves Left’ and ‘Bryter Layter’.
The naturally shy girls have become bold enough to step to the front too. Michele swoons all over the heartbreaking ‘Take Me Or Leave Me’, a composition of her own on which she played nearly every instrument. Angela sings the lead on the vibrant vintage soul of ‘Undecided’. The concert crowds that go so wild whenever she lifts a finger on stage are going to keel over this time around.
In fact, this most unassuming of bands have increased in confidence all round. Convinced that no one else could realise the sound they were after, the Stodart siblings even worked the production desk on the new album, with the help of regular engineer Richard Wilkinson. Inspired by the view from Allaire Studios, the mountaintop estate in Woodstock, Upstate NY, where most of the album was recorded, they have created 13 tracks that possess a new level of richness and depth of emotion. ‘Those the Brokes’ will move your feet and break your heart too. Romeo’s lyrical inspirations remain the same, but if his love life was simple, classic singles such as ‘Love Me Like You’ and ‘I See You, You See Me’ might not exist, let alone new favourites ‘Take a Chance’ and ‘You Never Had It’. “I really wanted to be more observational and bring in a lot more imagery,” he says, “I think there's an element of that to some of the songs but on reflection it's an album that yet again is hugely personal'
As for the early days, it’s a simple tale of childhood friendship in a London suburb, complicated somewhat by a military coup. The Stodarts spent their formative years in Trinidad, where their opera singing mother had her own TV show. But after radical Muslims attempted to take over the republic in 1990, the family moved to stay with relatives in New York, then settled in Hanwell, west London. Romeo was 16 and Michele was 10. Neighbours the Gannons were their first friends, and Romeo and Sean soon started making music together, inspired by classic songwriting, be it from any genre. Their younger sisters, having first been fans, were eventually persuaded to join the band and make music that was bursting with energy and pure joy.
Regular gigging spawned a fervent fanbase long before a record deal was on the table, crowds that sang every word back at Romeo as he grinned in amazement. After a couple of years the audiences were getting unusually big – the band sold out the 2,000-capacity Forum in May last year, before they had released their first proper single. When that first album finally appeared in June 2005, it immediately nestled up alongside Coldplay, Oasis and the White Stripes in the top 10 and looked right at home. Brit and Mercury nominations and a Mojo Best New Act award soon followed, as did prestigious support slots with U2 and all-time hero Brian Wilson. Now a second Beach Boy seems to have given the Magic Numbers his endorsement. ‘Carl’s Song’ was written after the late Carl Wilson sang it to Romeo in a dream. With a fanbase that apparently now extends into the afterlife, this band just keeps getting bigger. They may not have been gone long, but they’ve definitely been missed.
