Top bloke

While it’s not Toploader’s fault that this ‘summer’ was a dank, palsied midden of unfathomable rancidity, I have trouble resisting the temptation to ask Joe Washbourn where the fuck he gets off writing songs like ‘Lady Let Me Shine,’ ‘Following the Sun’ and the joyous, 30-degrees-in-the-shade single ‘Time Of My Life’, even as these islands buckle under the weight of a ceaseless, apocalyptic downpour.

But I do resist, seeing as how the songs are all from Toploader’s upcoming second album Magic Hotel, and the band’s debut Onka’s Big Moka sold 1.5 million copies, and he’s a nice bloke and all.

Outside their fanbase, the band have had to struggle to shed the ‘one-hit-wonder’ label applied so blithely after the massive success of ‘Dancin’ In The Moonlight’. This, together with the fact that their line in positive, upbeat anthemry is squarely at odds with Britain’s current predilection for moody, introverted alt.rock, has never endeared them to critics or ‘serious’ music fans.

“We still get flak about that,” explains Washbourn. “I mean, from the start we didn’t fit into anyone’s niche or pigeonhole. People would ask, ‘Where do you fit it? You don’t sound like Radiohead, you don’t sound like Travis.’ I remember thinking, shit, do we need to? We’ve always thought that we were a band that could have been around in the ‘70s, so we don’t really concern ourselves with being ‘up-to-date’ or trendy.”

True to form, the new album continues in the vein of Onka, if anything becoming even more grandiose, rocky and ebullient. “There’s more of a live feel to this album,” says Washbourn. “We did so many live shows, we spent 18 months touring the first record and there were a few songs that didn’t really work live. But all the songs on this album we’ve written and recorded from a live point of view.

“The songs are much stronger,” he continues. “The last record had some great songs on it, but also a few in which it was quite evident that this was a new band doing their first album, trying things out and not quite sure of themselves. This time we knew exactly what we wanted to do and what sound we were going for. It’s a much more confident affair.”

‘Time Of My Life’, the first single, is a fairly accurate précis of the album as a whole, with its Motown beat, ‘60s shapes and big-hair vocals. “I actually wrote that on piano,” says Washbourn. “To be honest, it sounded a bit like Queen to begin with. I often write rock songs on the piano, but they don’t quite sound like they should. You can hear what’s going on in your head, but no-one else can!”

Magic Hotel is therefore unlikely to win over the scornful indie vanguard who’ve given the Toppies such a hard time. To his credit though, Joe Washbourn doesn’t give a shit.

“It’s funny, the leftfield alternative people think we’re too pop, and the pop crowd think we’re too alternative.” Which is it? “Fucking hell, man, I don’t know! I don’t think we’re even in the middle, we literally do our own thing and because it isn’t miserable, people have trouble putting us in the indie scene. It’s not a question that bothers me at all. The fact that we do what we do and people seem to like it is all I need to know.”

However much you’d like to, you can’t argue with that.