Hard-Fi – Small Town Heroes

Flanked by two of his three deputies– guitarist, Ross Phillips and bassist, Kai Stephens – Hard-Fi frontman Richard Archer is talking about Sergio Leone’s 1968 western, ‘Once Upon A Time In The West,’ while devouring a cheese salad baguette for lunch. “We love the film; we used to watch it on the tour bus quite a lot,” enthuses Archer, while peeling back the cellophane on his baguette. “We come on the stage to ‘The Man From Harmonica,’ which is on the soundtrack to that film. We’re big fans of Ennio Marroconie who did the film’s music, so the title has always been kind of knocking around. Someone suggested it and we thought, ‘You know what, this works perfectly.’”

Probing a band about a film isn’t normally one of your key questions, or normally a question at all, yet Hard-Fi have decided to name their second album – the follow-up to their number one debut album, ‘Stars Of CCTV’ – after the cult-classic. “You can see the little play on words because of where we’re from, West London. It’s sort of tales form where we’re from but also it suggests a fairy-tale,” explains the transparent eyed Archer, “fairy-tales like stories of tragedy but also hope, so it always felt like it fitted together and felt right – it seemed to sum up the album really.”

Indeed, listen to the band’s new album, which comes out in September, and watch Leone’s unconventional western, and you’ll soon see that the two productions have far more in common than a shared title – both in lyrical content and their cavernous structure. While Leone’s film follows intertwined stories of inheritance theft, love and tragedy, Hard-Fi’s ‘Once Upon A Time In The West,’ like their debut, continues their graphic snapshots of life in 21st century British Suburbia. Only this time, the pictures of routine employment, love/hate relationships, and, notably, the tragedy of death, are more far personal than on ‘Stars Of CCTV,’ not to mention more significant.   
 
Although Hard-Fi have always been ones for letting their individual musical influences leak into their own music – each member lists various exponents of ska, punk and house music amongst their personal musical tastes – two years of touring the last record, which included a five night residency at the Brixton Academy and collaborations with Mick Jones and Paul Weller amongst others, have seemingly made the band even more willing to experiment on ‘Once Upon A...’

“I think we just did what felt right as a song, just see what worked and what didn’t,” explains Philips, as he makes his first of two sporadic contributions to our conversation. With Hard-Fi, Archer is as much the frontman in interviews as he is on stage; consequently, he’s often left to continue from where his fellow guitarist stops. Using, ‘I Shall Overcome’ – a venomous funk beat inspired, N.E.R.D sounding song, as an example of the LP’s musical multiplicity, he reveals: “There is that beat and the acoustic guitar on there that we almost let come through more than the others on this [album]. On the last album, you know, tracks like ‘Tied Up To Tight,’ had a drum and bass beat, obviously until we stuck all the guitars over the top and then that drum and bass beat became a rock beat - so yeah, it’s weird how that comes around when you think about it.”

‘I Shall Overcome’ is one of three songs which Archer reveals dictated the entire construction of, ‘Once Upon A...’ The other two, the album’s first single, ‘Suburban Knights,’ an expansive slice of suburban patriotism (more on that later), and, ‘Tonight,’ which is the first of many glimpses into Archer’s personal life on the record, are perhaps significantly also the album’s opening three songs. It’s thanks to this that, once again like Leone’s cult western – which was heralded as avant-garde because of its unusual and unrestrained pacing – Hard-Fi have created an expansive yet breathable record where the album’s subtleties, like the “Massive Attack influenced snares” and the Will Malone (The Verve) conducted string orchestra are given elevated prominence. “We always had the idea that this record would have more space on it so that you’d hear those sorts of things and it would be a bit more moody, darker and a bit more downbeat but still kind of tough,” states Archer, sincerely. “On the first record we sometimes had to put stuff on to hide the tracks you know. The way it was recorded if you didn’t put a noise there you’d hear the planes going over, whereas on this one we spent more time almost letting it breath a bit more.”

Even, ‘Television,’ the albums anthemic standout track begins with seemingly all the aerobic freedom in the world. Built on the foundations of a repetitive “housey” piano riff, the song bursts into an exasperated assortment of crisp cymbals, rapturous guitars and the lyrical refrains of, “Halleluiah, halleluiah.” To date, it’s probably Hard-Fi’s most liberal moment.  “That was one of those tracks that was always there and it was always one of everyone’s favourites but just kind of sat there minding its own business,” reveals Archer. “We knew it was good so we didn’t spend as much time on it as we could. We knew that when we recorded it, it was just going to work and thankfully it did because often those ones don’t (laughs) - you know, you sit there for ages going ‘why isn’t this working?’