Plumhall: ‘We’ve really got the bug of writing music for film now’

Plumhall’s second album, The Ghost of Noise, marks a new direction for the Yorkshire-based couple Michelle Plum and Nick B Hall.

After the acoustic stylings of their debut disc, Thundercloud, which came out in 2014, its successor has “a bit of an electronic feel”, says Hall, a singer and musician who in his own right has supported the likes of Fairport Convention, Hugh Cornwell and Kate Rusby as well as being a member of the Hall Brothers band.

“We still use traditional instruments on this, but it’s mixed in with electronica as well,” says Plum, formerly of Chumbawamba, Waking The Witch and The Accidental Tourists, and touring member of the Chris Norman Band. “There’s a bit of a fusion thing going on there.”

“Our producer, David Crickmore, was in the band Fiat Lux in the 80s,” adds Hall. “They’ve reformed while the album has been going, which is really exciting. A lot of old synths have been dusted off and some new synths have been added to the studio so we’ve had a lot of fun building up electronic sounds and David’s brilliant at doing that.

“It’s been nice to have a lovely old acoustic guitar sitting next to a treated drum machine and an interesting synthesiser or sequencer sounds as well. But we’re not jumping on a dance bandwagon,” he chuckles.

“There’s everything in there - even a box of nails,” says Plum. “There’s no rules.”

“There’s some recorded birdsong, a bit of some found sound,” Hall says. “We just wanted to paint the palate a bit broader this time.”

The video for current single A Darkness That Won’t Leave The House pulls together clips from fans and friends filmed during the Covid-19 lockdown. “They’re all lighting a candle,” says Hall. “The song is about hope and mental health issues, and we’re going to include links to mental health charities and organisations to the description of the video.”

The album’s last track, Closing Down, was written for The Runaways, a film starring Mark Addy (The Full Monty, Game of Thrones), Tara Fitzgerald (Brassed Off) and Bafta award winner Molly Windsor, set in Whitby. “Apparently our names came up in a pub in Sheffield,” says Hall, explaining how the duo came to the attention of writer and director Richard Heap. “Considering all the great musicians that come from Sheffield, we were very lucky.

“They were looking for someone who knew about folk music and would be comfortable on camera. I initially met Richard and we had a chat about the script and he said, ‘There’s a particular moment where the oldest girl in the family sings a song that she knows really well in a folk session in a pub in Whitby’. He’d written a bit of a chorus and then run out of ideas because although he’s a brilliant scriptwriter he’s not a songwriter. He said, ‘Could you do something with those words? You don’t need to use those words but you can if you want’.

“I started off with that bit of chorus, tweaked it a little and then wrote a song around it. With Michelle, we came up with a tune. The actor Molly Windsor had never sung before and was very nervous about it, so it was an easy folk tune and with simple words that fitted the theme, because it’s a reflective, quiet moment in this pub in the film.

“We came up with the demo of the song and sent it off to Richard, which was scary in itself, and luckily he really loved it. Then Michelle coached Molly to sing the song.”

“She came round to our house,” Plum recalls. “In fact pretty much all of the children in the film came round to our house to be coached.”

Plumhall also ended up in the film scene. “We were there running the folk session in the scene,” says Hall. “Molly was actually supposed to sing the song a capella but said, ‘no way’, so we ended up accompanying her as well.”

The pair also helped curate the traditional songs dotted throughout the film. “The pub scene had to have a certain amount of songs that were heard there,” says Hall. “We worked with our friend Nigel Schofield, he used to be the boss of music for Pennine Radio and he’s a real expert in folk music. We talked to him about some songs that would fit, then we chatted to the director. Often you find folk songs that appear to be traditional but when you do a bit of research you can actually find the person who wrote them, so it was trying to work out how out of copyright they were. There was one song that the director really wanted but that song is one of the most litigated about folk songs. A lot of people say ‘trad arr’ but the writer claims they’ve written it. Nigel went to the very source material and we sang a traditional version of it that no one could say we stole. I even wrote a verse to try and make sure no one could claim it.

“Then dotted around the film there are elements of the children singing songs. There’s a beautiful scene of them at sunset walking down over the heather and they sing Donkey Riding – it was my dad that came up with the idea for that song, and the kids sing it beautifully.

“Not to spoil the ending, but there’s a scene back in the pub at the end of the film that we had to ask a New Zealand folk singer if we could use it. He was very excited about it going in the film, so that was very nice.”

Although this is Plumhall’s big screen debut, Hall has appeared on TV before. “I’ve appeared in Coronation Street as a musician, it was a Christmas episode a few years ago,” he recalls. “Then I ended up acting as a policeman in Emmerdale. But this was the first song we’ve ever written for film.”

“We’ve really got the bug now,” says Plum. “We’d like to do more.”

The Ghosts of Noise it out now. www.plumhall.co.uk

The Runaways is available on DVD and digital. therunaways.film