I managed to catch up with Eliza Carthy to talk to her about her new album "Dreams of Breathing Underwater"...read on to find out the story behind the album

Where the title of the album came from?

It came from a load of dreams I was having while I was with Warners. Although the experience with the label as such wasn't necessarily all bad, I did feel squeezed and unsupported, that no-one was really paying attention to what was best or what was appropriate to me, just what was do-able in terms of a record. I felt a very strong sense of responsibility towards the folk scene and towards my band, and didn't feel it returned. To be fair, there was also a lot going on that I had no control over; whatever it was that I wanted to do to protect people was always going to be undermined and they saw that. That was when I started having drowning dreams, and I started to breathe in them when I realised that I did have some control after all. That was a relief!




What was the inspiration behind the album?

I've always written, I did think when we made Angels and Cigarettes that I'd be able to continue. Although Anglicana did so well it was conceived as a side project which led into working with the Ratcatchers, and I always felt I had some unfinished business. I didn't like letting down my songwriting band after the big label support dried up, the ideas kept coming and it was fun to do. When Topic said I could finish my business (as it were!) I was delighted, and the Ratcatchers taking a year off gave me the opportunity. The album is like a diary of the last while.




How long did it take to make?

Seven long, long years...



Were you looking at exploring new ground?

Just expressing where we've been all this time. In the last seven years I've worked with people like Bill Frisell, Paul Weller, Vartinna, Salsa Celtica, West African musicians, Sheila Chandra and Chango Spasiuk, as well as the influence that working with John and Jon has had on us. There's a huge amount a variety in there. I saw Joe Strummer in Las Palmas, Los de Abajo and Anoushka Shankar at WOMAD, and there's no way I'm not going to reflect all of that in what I do, whether it's traditional music or my own stuff. Traditional music should represent your experience, you are the filter. Everyone is their community's music these days. It was good to work with an epic palette, a cast of thousands, Lawrence of Arabia style. More camels! I also wanted to see what I could do with a few of my favourite traditional tunes without rewriting them wholesale, without taking the content of them as gospel, just using the melodies as a starting point.



Who were the Key players and influences behind the album?

All of the above, and Ben! Ben's a big Adrian Sherwood fan; he likes producers like Youth and Rick Rubin, and has experience of bluegrass and acoustic pop as well as his time with the Peatbog Faeries and La Boum!. Ben's had trouble in the past with running the studio and trying to be the recording artist at the same time, so we got Barney Strachan in, who is an Edinburgh-based producer and singer-songwriter, to take the load off him a little so he could enjoy it a bit more. Barney was a rock through the recording, spending hours editing as well as being right in with the writing sessions, especially with Rosalie and Two Tears.



What did you enjoy most in the making of the album?

The earlier sessions, doing Hug you Like A Mountain in Ben's old bedroom in 2001 or 2 with Heather and Sarah Roberts singing the backing vocals sitting on the steps to his platform bed; the later stuff it was the excitement of putting Mr.Magnifico together with Mystery Juice and Martin Green. That was the first session of the new stuff when we knew the album was definitely happening, I wandered around with just that on a cd for ages, playing it to people and watching their faces. Working the melody out for Two Tears in the kitchen doing the washing up and then phoning my Mam up to sing it to her down the phone. There were lots of gorgeous little moments. I wish I'd have been there for the string quartet, I'm a big fan of Macfall's, they're a bit of an institution around our way.



What tracks from the album are you particulalry proud of and why?

Mr.Magnifico, Follow the Dollar, Little Bigman. Little BM is my baby really. >From the original idea to working out the vocal sections, to Jon Boden playing the banjo, to the strings having such fun realising how to play it, to finally getting Gideon to play the tuba on it, which was the cherry on the cake. John Spiers not wanting to sing "a pirate's life is the life for me"....Follow the Dollar's core performance is just me, Barnaby Stradling and Willy playing live, and we've never bettered it. We tried to do it again and again with more controlled recording circumstances and it never worked as well as the three of us in Ben's house with the amp in the bath.



What do you make of the folk scene now and the alt-folk music?


I don't really know that much about the folk scene, it's changed so much since I was a kid and it felt like a big family. I think it is riddled with contradictions and hypocrisies, but at its core is still run by people that do it for love. There is a real dichotomy in the two tiers of the scene. I'm not sure that traditional music is relevant to it any more, when the aspirations of the middling-to-large festivals are so much geared towards professionalism and saleability. People feel aggrieved by that, people that have played traditional music for years being overtaken in gigs and fame and money. Is the scene creating its own traditions now? Is it possible for someone who wants to be a performer of traditional music to ignore commercial trends and still expect to get work, because they feel they are keeping something "real" or "alive"? Do we allow the scene to become completely commercial, do the traddies have to leave the immensely successful thing they created and go and form their own thing again? At their age?!
Most alt-folk seems to be about whiny girls & boys playing the glockenspiel!

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