Interview & Review: Sparrow and the Workshop
Photo by Tom Sheehan
Instrumentally you do some interesting things — would you like to explain how you came upon the crash box and ‘bassterd’ and, indeed, what they are?
Nick: The crashbox is basically a large piece of sprung steel that Gregor [the band’s third member] straps to the front of his drum kit. He found it years ago at a music shop and has never seen one since, He reckons the guy just sold him a bit of steel, but it makes a pretty awesome, if terrifying sound. If it breaks he replaces it with some more sprung steel. The bassterd, or bassturd or basstard is half bass/half guitar. I made it out of my Burns guitar by putting in two separate pickups and outputs for each part. So the low E is now a bass string A. There are only the three of us in the band so it helps fill out the sound and makes a nice racket.
What do you miss most about Glasgow when you are on the road?
N: I miss the man who sits out on Victoria Road every day (who today is sitting in an armchair). We love the anticipation of coming back to the new blue motorway and seeing what building progress has been made.
Am I right in thinking Gregor has some hand in managing Where The Monkey Sleeps? Do the sandwich-making skills come in handy on tour? Considering the fantastic sandwich names there,a Sparrow-themed one should be on the cards…
N: Gregor does make some awesome sandwiches! He is the chef on the road when we’re able to make our own meal. Sometimes, though, our only choice is Roadchef. No matter how fancy and exotic a sandwich, the thing I really desire is plain cheese and ham. I once thought of a cheese-ham snack called ‘cheese-to-meat-you’, don’t know what the Monkey would think about that.
Word of mouth has been fantastic, and any press I’ve read has been extremely kind. Do you feel that support?
N: It’s funny, it’s always surprising and flattering to read the press we come across. It’s hard to know if we feel the support. No, we do feel it, but when you go out to other cities we mainly play to people who have no idea who we are, or sometimes to empty rooms so it’s like an undulating wave.
Most of the songs on Crystals Fall are reproduced versions of previously released ones, was it hard deciding which tracks to include?
N: It was difficult choosing the songs — in some ways we wanted everything on the album and in the end we went with thirteen songs. Our first EP, Sleight of Hand, we recorded ourselves, so a lot of the recordings and performances weren’t totally up to scratch or we felt like we could do better. We did another EP, Into the Wild, which we did at Divingbell with Marcus Mackay. It was a great experience, his studio is a barn he converted. After that, we were working on some new stuff with Paul Savage and the label were talking about putting everything on the album so we put the new stuff on and remixed the older stuff just as a way to keep some sense of continuity to the sound.
Jill, obviously your voice is pretty astounding, as anyone who has managed to catch a live rendition of Blame It On Me will attest, but were you always aware of the power of your pipes, or is that something that became apparent the more opportunities you had to sing live?
Jill: Wow, well thank you very much! I don’t know, I’ve always loved singing, but I’ve always been really shy. Way back in college my friend and roommate Katie heard me singing in the shower (cliche?!) and she was really the first person to say go out and sing, so she booked me a slot singing a capella in a big hall, it was a celtic song called Stretched on your Grave. I realised that night that while everything else was challenging for me, singing in front of people made me really relaxed and I felt oddly comfortable and happy. It grew from there.
You mentioned A Horse’s Grin was written after reading Geek Love, and a lot of your songs have a great narrative propulsion to them. Are there any other writers you would consider influences? Are you in the middle of anything now?
J: Yes indeed. It was actually Gregor who gave me that book and I just thought, this is disgustingly awesome. I am a big fan of Haruki Murakami, Flannery O’Connor, Dave Eggers, and more recently, the short stories of Raymond Carver. I usually read fiction but right now I’m reading Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin. It’s full of interesting stuff. Henry Ford was intense!
As active tourers it must be hard to hold down a supplementary job, how difficult was this to balance? Have you reached the stage where you are a full-time band yet?
N: Juggling jobs is probably the toughest part of being in this band; Gregor tries to keep the café going part-time, I work freelance as an art technician, and Jill gave up a nine-to-five job in Development Work and now works the odd restaurant shift when we’re not on the road… but we all live in the same flat which makes things a hell of a lot cheaper too. It would be nice to be doing this full-time, and fingers crossed that time comes.
Finally, tell us your plans for the summer.
We’re hoping to play a few shows in New York in June and then it’s festival time. We’re going to play Stag and Dagger in Glasgow, 2000 Trees, Pahoda festival in Slovakia, Bestival, Mosely Folk Fest, Newport Maindee, the Insider in Aviemore, Greenman Festival… hopefully some more too! Also, we plan on visiting some water parks and having a couple of water balloon fights too.
Sparrow and the Workshop – Crystals Fall
Sparrow and the Workshop open their debut album with Into the Wild, and immediately it becomes clear that the musical wilderness they chart is entirely their own.
Few songs here are without real thrust, achieved through the singular combination of Jill O’Sullivan’s silvery yet urgent vocal delivery, Nick Packer’s steely-eyed, pistols-at-dawn bass/electric guitar lines and Gregor Donaldson’s thoughtfully riotous drumming. Donaldson’s harmonies may be the band’s secret weapon in fact, neither afraid of the low notes nor the high ones, they paint a rich soundscape either side of O’Sullivan’s melodies, like a kite string both grounding them and helping them to soar. This vocal interplay is particularly commendable on Devil Song, a spectral western akin to the William Tell Overture played along the River Styx. Songs like A Horse’s Grin and Medal Around Your Neck exemplify their habit of moving from restrained verse to explosive chorus, diving headfirst into a musical melee before briefly extracting themselves to brush the dirt off their knees. I Will Break You is another tune perfect for a bar brawl, easily throwing up images of broken stools and shattered glass, yet giving glimpses of bruised beauty as O’Sullivan lets her guard down.
Sparrow’s power lies in their ability to explore both strength and heartbreaking vulnerability, often within the same song, and this is in no place more apparent than on album closer You’ve Got It All, compulsory listening for anyone with a pair of ears and a heart. This impressively tight group make a hot-blooded racket bigger than most bands double their size, with twice the hooks to boot. If big things don’t come for them I’ll eat my hat– more an act of frustration than a betting forfeit.
