Crazy P

Toad The Wet Sprocket. Bingo Reg And The Four And A Half Heart Attacks. Bill Murray’s Prostate. Bulimia Banquet. It is true that whatever name sounds good after a bag of skunk and a good session, may appeal less a year down the line. Few bands survive t Toad The Wet Sprocket. Bingo Reg And The Four And A Half Heart Attacks. Bill Murray’s Prostate. Bulimia Banquet. It is true that whatever name sounds good after a bag of skunk and a good session, may appeal less a year down the line. Few bands survive the trauma of their reckless follies of youth. But one did: Crazy P. If you’re a veteran of the acid house wars, you may remember they were once called Crazy Penis, but as lead singer Danielle Moore explains, “I never felt comfortable telling my nan what the name of the band was. It just sounded wrong.” There were other reasons, of course, like getting denied entry into the US without having a 300lb border official break out the rubber gloves for an intimate interview. Prior to the ending of the early years, it had all been something of a lark for the duo whose penis it originally was: Jim Baron and Chris Todd. The name change signalled something much more important: taking their God-given talent seriously. “I was working as a solicitor in Manchester and Toddy was down in Nottingham,” recounts Jim. “But we were still working together. We got an offer of a summer season in Ibiza once every two weeks and I’d already used up all my holiday by April. So we were like, ‘Fuck it, let’s give it a go.’ I jacked my job in and that was it. We’ve been at it ever since.” Indeed they have. The pair initially met in Nottingham where Chris was studying music at uni, while Jim was doing his law finals. They started messing about in the studio, chucking samples in to see what happened and increasingly finding themselves on prestigious labels. The big break was with the Manchester-based label Paper, with whom they recorded their first two albums and those same contacts yielded Danielle Moore, a livewire Mancunian with a mean line in Tiger Bay tributes. “They heard me doing me Shirley Bassey impersonation at an afterparty, which wasn’t me auditioning, it was me being off my tits and yelping for joy,” laughs Danielle. “Then they asked me to audition based on that shit singing! But it went really well.” Sometimes, more is Moore. Their debut studio session yielded what has now become a staple of their live show: ‘You Started Something’. An appropriate title, not least since Southern Comfort snaffled it up for a prestigious ad. Since then, they have built up an enviable reputation, firstly for increasingly accomplished forays into the studio (this is their fifth album) and an energetic live show that now includes drummer Matt Klose and bassist Tim Davis. Apart from the welter of increasingly brilliant remixes they have served up over the past few years, we now alight upon their new album, WHEN WE ON and it shows the leaps forward they have made since 2008’s Stop Space Return (itself no slouch, either). There’s the episodic anthem ‘Beatbox’, with its freeform acapella work, grinding Prince—style guitar and haunting strings or the reflective ‘Eruption’, driven by a rave-piano figure and Danielle’s plaintive “Let me be the one you run to” or at the other end of the scale is the Detroit techno-esque ‘Sonar’, with its increasingly frenetic payoff. It’s an album full of singles potential. They might be crazy, but they know in which packet the tunes are located Unsurprisingly, the whole modus operandi changed for the making of this album. “With Stop Space Return we wrote the majority of that as a band,” explains Jim. “For this, we decided to strip it back to me and Toddy writing with Danielle. The other thing is we gave Danielle the Loop Station and she’s really taken to it. You can layer vocals, you can hear harmonies immediately, so she can jam along with us now. It shaped a lot of the vocal sound for the album. There’s a tune called ‘We Can Only Be Who Are’ which has big vocal layering, and there’s a lot of that. It’s probably a bit more… grown-up.” Chris expands on the theme: “We had quite a big year last year for lots of different reasons and we had difficulties too and I think a lot of the writing came out of that. It’s a little bit more reflective and thoughtful than previous albums.” For Danielle, it’s been a revelation – revolution even – in the way they work. ““It was back to basics,” she says. “So I’d have a go on the keyboards using two fingers or I’d have a go on the drum machine. It was like being at school or in a huge sandpit where you’ve been given loads of buckets to muck about with. We had a loop station as well which I’ve always been very nervous of it and this time it was like right let me have a go of this and it allowed me to record my vocals. I could instantly record my vocal ideas and add harmonies. On ‘Beatbox’, we just all sat around a microphone making noises. It made me hunger for getting back in the studio.” You don’t have to listen to the lyrics for long before realising Danielle’s personal life is the thematic story of this album. Someone older, wiser and yet with her characteristic raw honesty intact. Yet for Danielle, the album narrative is the camaraderie between its protagonists. “Their friendship came through in creating this album. The way we worked created a lot of intimacy between us and a definite warrmth to the album.” Despite the suggestions of melancholy from the band, this is hardly Nick Drake territory. They know how to emote when the moment’s right, but they haven’t forgotten how to party. “We’re open for service, we’re open for love,” sings Danielle. Crazy but true. Words – Bill Brewster read more read less