"This is the first time since we started that our kind of music has been in fashion." The Trash Can Sinatras' frontman Frank Reader raises a pint of Guiness to his lips. "When our first album came out the trend was for baggy and dance, with the second it was grunge. This time it's guitar music so maybe people will like us."
Snug in a Hammersmith hostelry, Reader is here to plug the Sinatras' nifty new single, "The Main Attraction", and the forthcoming genius of their album, "A Happy Pocket." His angular features and chunky specs reflect a looking-glass likeness of his singing sister, ex-Fairground Attraction Eddi. The affable Scotsman looks every inch the pop star he should have been years ago.
Back in 1990, the Sinatras served up their moist and creamy debut LP, "Cake". Their gorgeous folk-pop sound was quietly compared to The La's and Aztec Camera. But as Madchester raved on and repetitive dance beats clogged up the charts, there wasn't much call for a Kilmarnock quintet offering crafted, timeless pop.
Likewise in 1993. Nirvana's "In Utero" topped the charts, Pearl Jam's "Vs" reached number two. Meanwhile the Sinatras' stunning second opus, "I've Seen Everything" grazed the Top 50 for a week before it disappeared.
"It's dead annoying," says Reader of the band's criminal lack of success. "There have been plenty of times when I've thought that I should give it up but I've never wanted to."
Undaunted, the "five hungry Joes" continued. They spent their days touring America and Japan (where they were justly appreciated), getting "steamed" down their local and penning songs.
Now, after the success of guitar bands like The Bluetones, Cast and Supergrass, the Sinatras could at least have got their timing right. Although, as Reader phlegmatically points out, "we're not exactly a new band, we've been around for ages so people might just write us off. We hope that, if people like this album, it will prompt them to look back and discover our other stuff."
Largely recorded at the band's Shabby Road studios, "a small and grimy place" above a Chinese restaurant in Kilmarnock, "A Happy Pocket" is their best yet. A heady concoction of spiralling, chiming and dripping guitars, plaintive vocals and breathtaking harmonies, delicately laced with strings, Hammond organ, squeezebox and dulcimer, "A Happy Pocket" is a life-affirming warm glow of an album.
But it's their lyrics which put the Sinatras way up above the competition. Well observed, poetic smalltown tales all told with a painstaking wit and wordplay, each song displays a total love of language.
And the Sinatras will be appearing at a cinema near you very soon in a short, self-financed feature film. A tale of Glaswegian low-life based on an original idea by "Trainspotting" scribe Irvine Welsh, "Spooktime" will be on full release supporting a major movie in April. "We'll just be in a pub playing the ignored band in the corner," says Reader. It's a role that, if justice prevails, the Sinatras shouldn't be playing for much longer.
///"The Main Attraction" is out this week. "A Happy Pocket" is released on May 20. Both are on Go!Discs.///The article was accompanied by a photo of the band with the caption "The Trash Can Sinatras: doing it their way"
If you have any questions, comments, etc, e-mail me at jdimaria@gis.net