MONKEY SWALLOWS THE UNIVERSE

interview by Ste Mills
photoshoot by Chris Saunders



Two years ago Nat Johnson spent a soggy Yorkshire afternoon penning Sheffield Shanty, a song in which she imagined what it would be like to sail her house around the Steel City if it rained so much that the entire town was underwater.

We're not sure if she was gazing into a crystal ball at the time, but this summer her apocalyptic vision pretty much came into being when the seven hills became seven seas and Sheffield spent a few surreal days coping with the worst floods in living memory.

'I'm not a witch,' insists Nat - singer, principle songwriter and general mastermind behind Monkey Swallows the Universe - when Sandman points out her freakish prophecy.
'I didn't cause it, I promise. Although after I'd first written that song, every time we played it then it would start to rain.'

However, Sheffield Shanty was more than just a spooky premonition. It was an early indication that MSTU had the talent become one of Yorkshire's most treasured musical acts, providing a perfect example of Nat's unwavering ability to paint deft lyrical pictures with her brilliantly tender voice. To date it has been downloaded more than 34,000 times from their MySpace page and upon hearing it, Richard Hawley deemed it to be one of the finest songs ever written about his beloved hometown.

In fact, Hawley was so impressed that he asked the band to open for him on his UK tour - a daunting prospect, considering Nat and fellow band founder Kevin Gori had only recently expanded the line-up to include Rob Dean on drums, Cate Tully on violin and Andy George on cello and dodgy dancing.

'They were our first big gigs and it was very stressful as we'd only been a band for a few months' explains Rob, recalling how the five-piece nervously took to the stage in front of Hawley's fans.
'Hawley took us aside and told us "you're green now, but you won't be green for long" - meaning we'd soon learn what the music industry was all about,' Nat adds.

Hawley was dead right. After spending much of 2006 and early 2007 cutting their teeth, MSTU have emerged as a much more assured and confident outfit, and now stand teasingly on the brink of a significant mainstream breakthrough. After going on tour with the Long Blondes, recording a number of live radio sessions and making a load of UK festival appearances, the jittery bashfulness of their early live shows has been replaced by a joyous playfulness and a sparkling belief in their music.

That growing belief has been mirrored by their ever-swelling fanbase. The band's gigs increasingly became must-see events and after selling out the Leadmill last year, their show at The Grapes in Sheffield last July was so rammed with punters that Hawley and a couple of members of Pulp were forced to watch from the venue's fire escape.



But it was at the Across The Tracks Festival in Leeds last summer when Rob really felt like they were getting somewhere.

'The stage was massive and everyone was really nice to us. And we felt like real pop stars when we went in the artists' toilets and they had a moisturising balm to wash our hands with. A moisturising balm!!'

However, while the band went from strength to strength, the music industry seemed strangely reluctant to buy into their acoustic, anti-folk sound. Debut album The Bright Carvings had been released by cult Sheffield label Thee SPC, but Nat wanted a bigger company to put out her new songs and give them the national attention she felt they deserved.

'Every band in Sheffield that sounded like the Arctic Monkeys seemed to be getting a record deal and we were getting nothing,' Rob explains.
'It's not like we weren't just getting offers. We weren't getting conversations. We weren't even getting rejections!' Kev adds.

An odd turn of events soon changed all that. Nat wrote a song called Little Polvier, which took its title from a Grand National-winning horse that she had bet on as a young girl. She sent the track to Loose Records boss Tom Bridgewater and - unbeknown to her - his wife was the daughter of the trainer of that horse. The strange coincidence convinced him to sign them up.

'The song was originally called Into Winter. If we hadn't changed it we probably wouldn't have a deal and I probably would have killed myself by now,' claims Nat.
But while Little Polvier clinched the band a record deal and became their first single on Loose, it is the depth of their material that presumably convinced the label to snap them up.

The band's second album The Casket Letters, which was released in August, doesn't have a bad track on it. From the unashamed pop of latest single Bloodline (a song written based on Nat's frustrations at not being able to land a deal) to the spooky malevolence of Elizabeth and Mary (which sees the band use - shock! - electric guitars for the first time), the album showcases a timeless quality and a band at ease with their musical strengths.

That confidence is perhaps most overtly expressed on album highlight and closing track When The Work Is Done, a strings-laden epic about spending hazy summer days in the arms of the person you love.

'It's a love song and I don't normally write love songs,' Nat explains. 'It's about lying down on the grass and being content. There's no nod of irony anywhere in it and it's actually about love without being sickeningly sentimental. I suppose the fact that we're more confident as a band means I can write stuff like that.'

Lyrically, The Casket Letters is a world away from the giddy childishness of some of their early work and sees Nat becoming increasingly versatile as a songwriter.
Daft, youthful fairy stories have been replaced with more mature themes such as the passage of time and a desire to cling on to an ever-retreating youth. There is also a haunting preoccupation with death throughout the album.

'Someone pointed out to us that across the record we kill a dog, a married couple and the whole of the human race - which is a bit worrying given how we predicted the floods,' Rob observes.

'There's a lot of death on it,' Nat agrees. 'If it was to have another name it would be called Happy Songs About Death. I just wanted to have more stories on this album and stories, inevitably, involve death.'

It's important to point out that The Casket Letters is not a maudlin affair. Indeed, its triumphant optimism has been rewarded with glowing reviews from publications as diverse as the NME, The Guardian, The Sun and even the racing pages of the Daily Telegraph. The excitement around the record saw them become the 'ninth biggest mover and shaker' on Amazon and copies of the LP sold out within days after its release. Hopefully enough should now have been pressed to cope with the demand.

Plaudits have been pouring in from some unusual places too. The band fondly recall how Terry Wogan said their name on his radio show and they high-five each other with excitement when Sandman informs them that Adam and Joe had been discussing them on their show. But it was the acclaim of a TV sitcom legend that perhaps marks their most surreal moment to date.

'Su Pollard gave us bacon sandwiches,' reveals Rob.
Now that's a sentence you don't hear too often.
'We played on Loose Ends for Radio 4,' Nat explains. 'We had to follow Lauden Wainwright and I was so terrified I could hardly sing. And Su Pollard was there the whole time while we were playing. She said we sounded like "fairytale music".'

But while MSTU are more than happy for their cult heroes to lavish them with praise, their increased profile has also attracted some slightly more unwanted attention. A creepy group has been set up on Facebook, for example, which admires the female members of the band for more than just their musical talents.
'That's weird,' Nat admits. 'There's often creepy people at gigs. Cate gets quite a lot of them, so it's good that it's not just me. We saw a weird blog where people were debating my rainbow guitar strap and whether it meant I was Christian or gay. Those were the only two options! It couldn't possibly just be because I think it's a pretty guitar strap!'

The next few months will see the band take a break as Kev becomes a father for the first time, although he insists the newborn child will have been taught to play the bassoon by the time they embark on a full UK tour early next year. New songs - including a possible Christmas effort - are in the pipeline and Nat is desperate to keep up the momentum that they've developed over the last 18 months.

'Basically I'm 27 now and if this band doesn't work out then I've got no savings, I've wasted years not getting any work experience and I'm just going to end up as a penniless, 40-year-old hag,' she moans.

At this point, Nat buys a raffle ticket from the bar and is soon left disappointed when the pub landlord doesn't pull out her number. Proof perhaps that she can't actually predict the future. However, Sandman is convinced that if she and her bandmates stick to what they are good at - making spine-tinglingly beautiful pop music - then their futures will be very bright indeed. And you don't need a crystal ball to see that.

http://www.mstu.co.uk