CityLife

Live and (not quite) dangerous with Liam Frost

GRRR: Liam keeps a close eye on the exhibits

HE cuts an incongruous figure among Manchester Museum’s prime exhibits with a guitar slung across his shoulder, but Liam Frost is trying his best to blend in.

“I feel really tight ’cos all the kids want to look at the tiger and I’m in the way,” he says, sheepishly, eyeballing the Victorian trophy in the Mammals Gallery as he poses for his latest CityLife close-ups. 

On a normal day at the museum, Liam may well be a less engaging draw than the baby elephant, the polar bear, the cabinet of apes and the enormous sperm whale skeleton hanging overhead.

But on Friday night he’ll have to compete against them all when he plays the first music concert the museum has staged inside its lofty galleries. 

Organised by Smirnoff Night Vision, the Museum Sessions offer a unique opportunity to witness music in the most unconventional of settings – for Liam, that means a hushed gallery surrounded by a thousand glass-eyed stares (and 150 human ones). After hours.

The museum has previously hosted literature events and plays, but music nights present a whole different set of problems, says curator of public programmes Anna Bunney.

She explains: “Sometimes, when the buses go down the road you see the objects wobbling so we’ve made a choice to do acoustic bands because of the vibrations from the music.

“You’re not really allowed food and drink in the museum because you get parasites that eat the collections, and access at night is a health and safety issue.

“But we’re really keen to use the museum in a different way, and we’d like to seek sponsorship to do this more often. Not too often, though – I think it feels like such a special place because it’s so unusual to see a music event here.”

Liam agrees. So far, the strangest venue he’s played is Sacred Trinity church, in Salford. It was a sensation he enjoyed.

“The acoustics in those places means they always make more sense to play, because what I do always sounds ten-fold better,” he enthuses.

“The museum doesn’t seem that likely a place to have a show – all those cabinets and the narrow gallery, it’s quite awkward in some ways. And I think I’ll be looking at the sperm whale waiting for it to drop on me.

“I’ve been in the museum loads of times before as a kid,” he starts nostalgically, then laughs. “Actually, I remember going, like, a year ago and running round shouting, ‘******* dinosaurs!’.”

He’ll be playing solo on the room’s imposing staircase, which doesn’t leave much room for putting a foot wrong.

“As long as I don’t have to make a grand entrance, I’ll be OK – ‘Hello Manchester, I have returned’,” he announces with an Orson Welles-like boom. “I’ve got really clumsy these days.”

It’s a good job, then, that on a professional level Liam is imbued with a new, quiet sense of confidence. The reason? His forthcoming album, due out on his own imprint (Emperor Records) on September 28.

We Ain’t Got No Money, Honey, But We’ve Got Rain

After months of delays, talks and troubles – caused by a long-drawn out separation from Columbia – his long-awaited sophomore record We Ain’t Got No Money, Honey, But We’ve Got Rain is ready to go.

Recorded in New York with his current band and produced by Victor Van Vugt, the album features a much Twittered-about duet with Martha Wainwright that Liam co-composed with Ed Harcourt.

Issued as a free download last week, Liam reckons his dirty love song Your Hand In Mine gives ‘Ike and Tina a run for their money’.

For CityLife’s money, one of the most compelling and characteristic aspects of it is the way their voices (Liam’s Prestwich-heavy candour and Martha’s Brooklynite baritone) – unlike Ike and Tina’s – are such an unnatural fit but gel so snugly.

“We had great feedback on the website about the song,” he says.

“Although you do get some people saying, ‘No man, I’ve been following this track for ages and you’ve done it all wrong’.”

Anyone who got down to Liam’s month-long residency at the Ruby Lounge in March will have heard him road-testing many of the new tracks.

Motown-influenced

And they’ll have noticed a distinct difference between them and the songs from his debut Show Me How The Spectres Dance – less Dylan-esque stories of love and leaving, more Motown-influenced tales of love and seeing it through.

There’s even one really ‘camp one’ that Liam wrote with Martha Reeves & The Vandellas’ Heatwave in mind.

Booked while he was still signed to Columbia, the residencies proved to be year zero for his career as well as his new sound.

“I went to speak with Jay (Taylor, Ruby Lounge’s owner) and I was on a bus going home writing down other bands in my notebook that could play with me.

"I was about half an hour into the bus journey and my boss from the label rang and told me he’d been fired. I just closed the book immediately and said, ‘Right, that’s it then’.”

The show did go on, and the reaction he received was reassuring.

“I feel so fortunate to have come away from a major now. That probably just sounds really bitter, but I’m genuinely happy – I’ve got my own label. My manager always tells me I’m like an A&R anyway.”

A tumultuous time, though, it has been. We Ain’t Got No Money, Honey… was written in a period when Liam ‘went a bit mental and lost my mind for a little bit’, and it ended up reflecting some of those experiences.

One of those was Liam’s trip to the Arctic with Cape Farewell, done on three days’ notice after former-Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker pulled out. “I had to go to that army and navy store on Tib Street and get a load of olive green army thermals,” he smiles.

“When I got there, everyone else was from London and they’d all been to these really posh shops and I showed up in these 10 quid thermals.

“We nearly died; (comedian) Marcus Brigstocke thought he wasn’t going to see his kids again, and (Canadian artist) Brian Jungen chartered a £3,000 helicopter to fly him out early.

“But I wrote some songs. I played one on the bow of the boat, straddling the end of it over a frozen lake playing Shipwrecked from the album. 

“They filmed it and on the fourth take when they finished I blew my hands to warm them up and when I open them up they were bleeding from all the skin cracking.”

Seasick and tired, Liam wrote the saddest song on the new record – Leading Lights And Luminaries – but decided not to let his sombre side set the tone. In fact, as CityLife and Liam part, its Liam’s endearing japery that comes through loud and clear.

“I want to move out of Manchester so I can get a dog – we want a pug. I’m sick of singer-songwriters, ******* introspectives,” he smiles.

“Maybe I can write an album for dogs that’s at such a high pitch only they can hear it? Auto-tune my compositions right up.”

Frivolous talk it might be, but it brings on a sudden realisation – that the date of his latest show has a particularly good omen hanging over it.

“I moved into my flat on July 31 three years ago, when I ‘made my money’,” he laughs. “Isn’t that weird?”

Looks like Liam finally has Lady Luck in his corner.

Liam Frost plays Manchester Museum on Friday, July 31 with Jamie Scott & The Town and Kathryn Edwards. £8.50. Call 0161 832 1111.