Mojo - The Music Magazine

Back to Part I

Trailer Park was an original fusion that became very influential: the post-clubbing rediscovery of folk, the so-called "comedown" genre...
I didn't know anyone who went home and listened to Nick Drake. I was practically laughed out of my house. I lived in a house that was kind of behind enemy lines. But when I met Heavenly, I didn't need to explain why I liked this music. They loved the music I loved and more. I knew about Jeff Buckley - I was there when he first played London, Upstairs at the Garage - but I didn't know about Tim Buckley. They introduced me to that.

How did you deal with Trailer Park's success? Were you scared? Elated? A combination?
Amazed. A bit freaked out. A bit paranoid. If I'm really, really honest, I have to say I didn't really understand it. Why do they like it? What's going on? Why am I doing gigs? I'd be on my way to a gig and I'd be thinking, This makes no sense! I can't even sing! What's happened? I don't understand? I thought it was all my band. I couldn't own it at all. That was a strange feeling.

How long did that feeling persist?
A long ,long time. It carried on into the making of Central Reservation [1999], the touring of Central Reservation. Then, the cruel irony of it, when it came to Daybreaker [2002] I was like, Yeah fuck it! I can do this! I tried to be confident, and I tried to enjoy it. And it turned out to be the least successful album I've done!

Then I fell out with my manager. I fell out with everyone. It was shit! I was trying to be a normal person - trying to be what normal people are meant to be like - but feeling so strange. Everyone else seemed to take my success in their stride. But sometimes I'd get to feeling that it was all a joke at my expense.

That you'd get onstage to receive your Brit Award in 2000...
...and they'd say [flicks the vees], "Ha ha! You're a f___in' twat!" That's quite mad, isn't it?

A bit, yes.
When I won the Brit, they said my name and I didn't hear it. [Manager] Jeanette [Lee] was saying, Get up there! I was like, "What?!" Inside, I was in a complete, "Whaaaaaaaagh!?" Outside, I was trying my best to pretend that this was really normal.

So even in 2000, you were on this trajectory of, This is weird and wrong?
I tried. After I'd won the Brit I tried really hard to be normal. But that was when I just started to cry. I'd have meetings and I'd cry. I'd be crying all the time. In the end people just said, We can't work with you. I couldn't tell anyone, I still can't really tell anyone, how unusual it felt. Maybe I was having a breakdown. I just couldn't stop crying. Then I made Daybreaker and I split up with my management and then I cried even more.

After that, I tried to steer things more... I wanted to do this album with M Ward. I did an acoustic show with him around the corner at the Union Chapel and I thought, I am finally owning this! But even that went a bit weird. I got this manager who was kind of a bit weird, and M Ward was a bit weird, and his career started to go like this [mimes ascending plane]...

Then I met Jim O'Rourke, and that was really amazing for me. He's f___ing great, and he helped me actualize something. I contained it and I made it happen. And that was the Comfort Of Strangers album [2006]. But then I didn't have a manager, I released it and then I got pregnant! I'm just not very good at this career thing, am I?

What was great about working with Jim O'Rourke? Isn't he a bit crackers?
[Hushed giggle] Yeah. I sometimes wish we'd done more vocal takes. I sometimes wish we hadn't recorded it as bluntly as we did, in a week. But we had an ethos, and we made rules and we stuck to them... What do I like about that record? I liked that Jim had this thing of "keeping it in the hand", of never taking it away from me. And he was funny, and he's had a tricky life. He didn't make me feel like a freak who has to apologize for being emotional.

But whenever I see you live, you seem utterly on top of it. Playing to thousands at Glastonbury, you're like, "My people!"
That's because I'm from the stage, dahling! [laughs] But even then, the singing was always an issue. The idea that I was going to sing was just... I remember going to play at Reading Festival [1999], and I was like a kid being dragged to school. And of course I went on and all that nervous energy worked in my favour. On stage, that stuff can actually help.

And where's your head at now?
I'm writing at the moment, and having had a baby I've had a lot of time to reflect. I've had two years off. It's been so good for me, it's been so healthy to stop, to seek some solace and some communication here and there. To establish that this did happen and that I'm not mad, even if I am a bit weird.

How do you find songwriting? Easy or hard?
It's the difference between having a difficult conversation and an easy conversation. When you write you have to have a difficult conversation, and that's alright. I'm alright with having that conversation. You might ask why, if the whole thing has proved so tricky, why do I bother? But I do it because I really, really love what I do. Funny, isn't it?

With the pressure and the touring and the acclaim, you'd be weird if you didn't go a bit mad.
That's what I finally found out. A lot of my reaction to what was happening to me was actually quite normal.

Why does the music business insist on working artists until they break? There's no management of the resource. Isn't this what "managers" are meant to be doing?
[Claps hands together] Thank you! That's just it! They don't realise!

Is part of your dilemma the fact that you had options? There was acting, for a start. If songwriting was the only thing you could have done, would you have fretted less about your "entitlement".
No. As soon as I found out that I was allowed to sing and write songs, that was my thing. Now, to me, acting seems a bit undignified. This way I get to write my own script every time, and I get to put the production together, like a little kid putting on a play for my friends. Wheeee!

So no more frustrated alternative careers?
Well, I always thought criminal psychology would be interesting [laughs].

When the expanded edition of Trailer Park was being compiled, did you put yourself through the process of listening again? How did you find that?
Last summer I listened to it in the car driving around Norfolk. And I listened to it as a mum. And you know what? How Far is a dreadful, dreadful song! And I will always be annoyed by the violin part on Someone's Daughter. But I Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine is beautiful. And Galaxy Of Emptiness is incredibly sad. I just heard the little girl who recorded those songs and I felt great compassion and I didn't feel judgement. And I didn't pick it apart for the first time ever. I just let it play, and I enjoyed it. Wow - I did that.

And I think it's timely. Because I had a baby and I took two years off, releasing this gives me breathing space. And it led to a lot of reflection. Hopefully this can mark the natural end of something and the beginning of a new time, I hope. Not that "Legacy" should mean "The End". Although I do like the idea of having a "Legacy"! [laughs]

How much is the loss of your mum the central fact of Trailer Park?

I had a mum for 19 years and now she's been dead for 19 years, the anniversary has just gone. For me that was the end of an era. Now I've got to move on. 19 years is a long time to miss someone. Becoming a mother myself has completely changed my life. Actually experiencing birth for the first time and not just death - the death of friends, the death of my parents... Being a mum has levelled me out. It's having a family again, which I've missed so much. It's having someone to love, someone who needs me. This year I forgot my mum's birthday. For the first time ever! That's brilliant. I'm not being bad. I love my mum truly, but it was time to be liberated.

Interview by: Danny Eccleston

Photos courtesy Ellen Nolan / Simon Fernandez

Trailer Park - Legacy Edition is out now on Sony/Heavenly.