Interview: New Model Army

IN an industry where entertainment deity Simon Cowell calls the shots, Justin Sullivan is something of a rarity in that he actually has something interesting to say.

As frontman and founding member of cult band New Model Army, the Bradford-based singer has spent nearly 30 years making music that has defied being pigeon-holed and deflected the slings and arrows

of a business he has little time for.

The band was forged in Punk's dying embers and quickly gained a reputation for its cathartic and politically-charged music, although Sullivan believes this made them as many enemies as it did friends.

"From the beginning, we made no secret of the fact that we believed the world started at Calais, rather than ending at Dover.

"We've never been beholden to the British music scene which, in truth, is parochial. It thinks it's important but it isn't really," he says.

"We've got a good following everywhere even though we've been blanked out by the media, which along with the music industry sees us as a curious phenomenon.

"The British are slightly uncomfortable about naked emotions. They like their art to come with a large slice of irony and they've always found us a bit much, but it's different everywhere else in the world."

Sullivan is speaking from Leipzig where the band have just played the latest gig of a tour that started last September and lands in Yorkshire next week.

"Leeds will be about the 100th gig of our tour; it's always charged when we play in West Yorkshire and it will be good to get back because so many of the songs are written about the place."

It's more than a quarter of a century since New Model Army's debut album Vengeance was released, setting the band apart from the New Romantics that were de rigueur at the time.

"We've always done our own thing at our own pace and we've never been interested in playing the so-called fame game," says Sullivan.

"We're a bit like Groucho Marx, in that we could never belong to any club that would have someone like us as a member. We've been called a punk band, folk-rock, metal, indie, we were once even described as 'Leonard Cohen meets Killing Joke'.

"We've had every label thrown at us, and none stick because we draw

on all kinds of different musical influences."

Melodic and literate, their songs give voice to social and political frustration and can be seen as an antidote to the glorified karaoke music thrown up by today's TV reality shows.

"We play by instinct and we have faith in the magic and sacredness of music. For me, music makes sense of the universe when nothing else does and it tells the truth in a way words don't."

The band has undergone various incarnations during the past three decades but Sullivan rates their present line-up as among the best. "The current band is the best since 1985; the five-piece now is very strong and we have complete trust in each other."

Any band named after the Parliamentary army formed during the English Civil War is unlikely to sit on the political fence, and Sullivan says their latest album, Today is a Good Day, was inspired by the global economic meltdown.

"The whole album was written in October 2008, just after the Wall Street crash, and the title track was about the collapse of Lehman Brothers. People say it was a terrible thing, but it was always going to happen, it couldn't have been avoided. Watching the bankers looking panicky was quite gratifying, so it was a good day, even though they ended up getting off scot free," he says.

"For the last 20 years since the collapse of communism we've been told that market capitalism is the only game in town, creating wealth out of thin air. So we had to bite our tongues until two years ago when this idea was exposed as a big fat fraud."

But while Sullivan is scathing about modern politics, he sees hope in music. "We were doing a gig in Slovenia recently and afterwards we were in a club and the DJ was playing record after record of songs from the last few years that I'd never heard of before, and they were all brilliant. Which proves there is some wonderful new music out there, you've just got to make a bit of an effort to find it."

New Model Army play Leeds 02 Academy on March 19. Box Office 0113 389 1555.

NEW MODEL ARMY

The band was formed by singer Justin Sullivan, in Bradford, in 1980

They are named after Oliver Cromwell's revolutionary English army

Sullivan had a deeply religious Quaker upbringing

The band works as an organisation and has more than 10 former members

Their present line-up features Sullivan on vocals and guitar, Nelson on bass, Marshall Gill on lead guitar, Michael Dean on drums and Dean White on keyboards

Sullivan's long-term partner and collaborator is Bradford novelist, artist and poet Joolz Denby, who was also the band's first manager

New Model Army's 11th studio album, Today is a Good Day, was released in September, 2009