Embrace. Whenever a band gets hyped this much, one of two things can happen - Oasis, or Northern Uproar. Dave and James saw the band at Wolves Varsity, and asked Danny McNamara (vocals and opinions) - what’s the story?
Remember Menswear? They were great, weren’t they? Northern Uproar, remember them? They’re playing the Varsity (cap. 200) in a month or two. All quality bands with a big future ahead of them, apparently. Which should be of some concern to Embrace, the latest band to be caught up in the media publicity whirlpool potential kiss of death experience. Are they, as so often alleged, “the new Oasis”?
“I don’t think we’re as good as the Stone Roses were when they were at their best, yet, but I think we’re better than Oasis. At the moment, I don’t really like much that’s around. Last good band were probably Stone Roses, or Nirvana. It’s like... you stick Marvin Gaye on, or Aretha Franklin, and then you stick on Kula Shaker, and you just think, we were born in the wrong fuckin’ time.
“We’re being compared to The Verve as well, who are a northern band... I’m glad they stop there, they don’t start comparing us to the Proclaimers. Everything north of Watford, everyone puts into a scene, as though that’s the other half of the country. It’s sound. I’m happy with it, cos it means that a lot of people come along to see us.
“Noel’s ‘eard our EP, and he thinks it’s awesome. Everyone’s comparing us to ‘em and they all want me to slag ‘em, but I ain’t gonna do that, cos I think they’re really good... I really like ‘Slide Away’, and ‘Live Forever’, I think they’re fuckin’ brilliant songs.”
It seems Oasis are doing a pretty good job of being the next Oasis themselves.
“Exactly. They don’t write songs like we do, there’s a couple of songs we do that are a bit shouty, like, ‘Last Gas’ is a bit like that, but they’ve not written owt like ‘Retread’ or whatever.”
Embrace’s first release on Hut records, the ‘Fireworks’ EP, was successful enough - a mixture of “shouty” songs and rather nice acoustic numbers, the best of which is the beautiful Howard’s Way soundalike ‘Now You’re Nobody’.
“Yeah, everyone loved the EP. It was A-listed on Radio 1, which was a surprise cos we didn’t put a single on it, we just released four songs. The next one is a more obvious single, ‘One Big Family’... it’s coming out the same week as Oasis’s new single. That’s not by design, it’s just ‘cos it’s finished. I mean, theirs’ll sell ten times what ours’ll sell, easily, but... it won’t be as good.
“They’ve asked us to support ‘em, which I don’t know about. I don’t really wanna support anymore. I want to headline, y’know? When you support, you get that surprise reaction, where everybody’s cheering, but when you’re headlining, you get people coming along saying ‘go on then, convince me’. I prefer that.”
So Embrace would turn down the chance to play to 100,000 people?
“Well, we’re gonna do that anyway. We did a gig last week for Radio 1 at Shepherd’s Bush Empire which went out to a million people. I loved saying “Britpop’s over” on air.”
It was over about a year ago, wasn’t it?
“It was over about three years ago. It was over when Blur released ‘Popscene’. That was the first and last Britpop song.”
Having seen the band live and heard the EP, I have to admit I’m impressed, but not blown away. So, if Embrace are after world domination, what’s the masterplan?
“Well, we’re finishing work on the new EP, and then we’ll start work on the album, and then we’ve got some big dates lined up in July down in London, headlining. We’re playing pretty much all of the festivals n’all.”
Just in time for the media to knock the band back down. “Yeah, in a couple of weeks time they’ll probably say we’re shit, but... fills the place out, dunnit? Gives us a chance to show people what we do.”
It’ll be a shame if Embrace die the death of hype - they are, at best, a good band, not yet brilliant. If you get sick of the new Oasis single, buy the Embrace EP. It might be amazing.
Danny from Embrace was talking to Dave and James, in May 1997.