Hoovers and shakers

Fyfe Dangerfield would like you to know he has never in his life attempted to play a vacuum cleaner on stage.

Yes, Dangerfield and his band, Guillemots, go to lengths to tinker with the expectations of their (fast expanding) fan-base, audaciously banging out melodies on drills and children’s toys. But vacuum cleaners? Oh now, that would be silly.
“We’re not a novelty group, we’re not wacky,” says Dangerfield, no matter that his sweater’s lurid stripes make a convincing plea for the prosecution. “The vacuum cleaner thing – that never happened. It’s a myth.”
A disheveled Brummie with a voice pitched so highly you may wonder if only dogs can hear his upper range, Dangerfield has assembled Guillemots as a vehicle for his lush soft rock ambitions.
Late last year, the band, whose supporting cast is drawn from South America, Canada and Scotland, released an EP called Jets To Brazil, which appeared to articulate some kind of world-view.
In the best sense, the record, a rag-bag of brassy prog and frantic free-jazz, is all over the place, lurching between moments of jauntiness and deep moroseness. Lyrically, no punches are pulled : “The prophets and the bombs have had another success /I’m wondering why we bother at all,” warbles Dangerfield, at once ebullient and despairing.
They repeat the trick on their debut LP, From The Cliff, a strange mood–piece that suggests a rather conventional indie outfit champing at the boundaries of their genre (Dangerfield dismisses it as a ‘mini-album’, saying the sequel, which he is already working on, will be far more definitive).
“I want to create music that has the spirit of jazz, without being up its own arse,” says Dangerfield, who, in conversation as in performance, tends to overshadow his monosyllabic bandmates.
“When I first went to London to put a group together I hooked up with a lot of musicians, but all they wanted to do was jam. It was such a cliché. For me, the idea was to capture the chaos of improvisation.”
Dangerfield believes he has finally found collaborators who can help make real his vision of a free-wheeling indie rock (a term he sniffs at) ensemble. They are guitarist MC Lord Magrão from Sao Paolo (his real name is even longer, apparently), bassist Aristazabal Hawkes from Canada and drummer Rican Caol, an earthy Scot.
Each, the band leader has hand-picked. Would they otherwise be friends? Dangerfield toys with his glasses, unsure of how to answer.
“I think it’s fair to say that our relationship is largely musical,” he proffers, while the others giggle and roll their eyes. “But that’s okay, because we’re a perfect combination.”
In that case, why the gimmicks – the drills, the kids’ toys? In a scene, spilling over with dashing young bands, are Guillemots entering a plea for special consideration?
“When we use a drill on stage, it’s not to get attention,” insists Dangerfield. “It’s because it fits the song. Everything is to serve the music. We play drills in a serious way.”