Mojave 3’s third album, Excuses For Travellers, was released in early September of last year, but they’ve just started their American tour in February. Frontman Neil Halstead, bass player Rachel Goswell, guitarist Simon Rowe, keyboardist Alan Forrester and drummer Ian McCutcheon are travelling along the East and West coasts, including a stop at Maxwell’s on Saturday, Feb. 16 at 10 p.m., to play their soft, simple and intimate music. But before their flight over from the U.K., Halstead talked to the Current about the new album, his future solo project and his resentment for Hoboken’s most famous stage.
LT: Your latest album has been described as very folk-country, and I know that you’re not crazy about that description. Why do you dislike being called country?
NH: I don’t know if I really dislike it. I suppose the only reason is because everybody’s heard that, so you get to a point where you like, ‘OK, think of something else.’ I think a lot of the influences are American and stuff, but I just think that if you put pedal steel in something, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s country music. It just means it’s got pedal steel in it. I do get slightly peeved, because I think that sometimes just ’cause we use pedal steel, I think people like to say it’s country music.
LT: Do you think you might drop the pedal steel on the next album to avoid the country classifications?
NH: No, we wouldn’t drop the pedal. Well, we might if we felt like it, but I think it’s a really beautiful instrument. I guess in England, it’s also something you don’t hear very often, especially in a live context. But we never really have much idea about what we’re going to record until we actually get into the studio. Maybe we’ll just throw a fit, and throw the pedal steel out the window.
LT: I read in a few reviews that this album was technically perfect. Would you agree with that?
NH: Technically perfect? I think it’s far from technically perfect. I’ve never read that anywhere. Where did you read that? Did they mean that in a good way, because if someone told me something was technically perfect, I wouldn’t really like that. So I find that comment quite amusing.
LT: How would you respond to the album review on Pitchfork.com that said that this new album is kind of boring?
NH: I think that’s probably a fair comment. It’s a very subjective thing, isn’t it? I suppose we’re incredibly boring to a lot of people, and people are entitled to their own opinion.
LT: I read you used a lot of different instruments on this album.
NH: I think there are certain tracks that definitely use a lot of instruments, but there wasn’t much planning of it like that. It was just the case of recording the basic track, and someone would say, ‘Why don’t we try putting a trumpet on that one.’
LT: Or a ukulele on another. Isn’t that kind of random?
NH: Do you think so? That’s great. We’re technically perfect and random. I think particularly on Ian’s track. Ian actually wanted to put a little more on that track, and we had to sort of physically restrain him. I think he wanted to put everything but the kitchen sink, orchestras and everything. We just couldn’t afford it. I think that track probably ended up costing as much as the rest of the album. But I think we were always quite aware that it was easy to detract from songs, so I think we tried to keep some sort of balance. We could’ve gone completely overboard and made a really horrible record that would probably be quite interesting to a few people, but to most people it would be horrible. And that will probably be our next record.
LT: Are you going to record the next album soon?
NH: I’m working on an album myself, which I’m hoping will come out next year. I’m going solo.
LT: What kind of music are you going to be making?
NH: It’s been described as folk psychedelic surf something or other. It doesn’t really sound like Mojave 3. The thing is, when you work with a band, there are always certain restrictions whether they’re meant to be there are not, just because there’s this inevitable part of working with a group of people. So, in some ways it’ll be quite nice. But there’s going to be a Mojave record that we’re going to record in April.
LT: Are you performing any of the new songs yet?
NH: No. We got new guitars for this tour, so we’ve just been rehearsing, sort of bringing them all up to date with all the songs we normally play live. I think we’re playing a few songs that we haven’t played live before, but they’re not new songs.
LT: What songs are you playing that you haven’t played before?
NH: I think we’re playing ‘Always Right,’ which is one we haven’t played before; one of Rachel’s songs called ‘Bringin’ Me Home’; and ‘Keep It All Hid,’ which I think we have played before but really badly. We’re going to try playing a bit better this time.
LT: Why were you playing it badly?
NH: I don’t think we had much choice in the matter. I think that’s the way it sort of occurred. I don’t think we wanted to play it badly, but it just happened that way.
LT: You’re known for your really intimate songwriting and intense lyrics.
NH: I think a lot of the songs are quite personal, and I think, for me, it’s the only way to write songs. I can’t write impersonal songs particularly. But sometimes if you write a song about a particular person and they’re there, that can be a bit strange. I once wrote a song called ‘I Want You’ or ‘All I Want;’ well I don’t know what it was called, but I’d written it for someone and I dedicated it to someone else at a gig, and that was a bit embarrassing. But all my songs are about people that I know.
LT: Are your friends afraid of ending up in one of your songs?
NH: It’s the only way I talk to them; I talk to them through songs. They’re just happy to be in communication with me.
LT: Are you really a bartender when you’re not playing?
NH: I’m an occasional bartender. That’s what I basically do when I need some money. I haven’t really been doing it for the last couple of months. I live in on the South coast of England, and it’s a holiday sort of town, so it’s really busy in the summer, and in the winter, it’s completely dead. So they don’t need too many bartenders in the winter.
LT: Do people know who are when you bartend?
NH: No. We’re actually massively quite under-successful in England. UK is home to a lot of really bad house music. Most people don’t really believe I’m in a band; they think I’m a spy because I disappear for months and come back and don’t say too much about what I was doing.
LT: So have you ever played Maxwell’s before?
NH: Yeah, a couple of times. I hated it. It’s got the smallest stage in the world.
LT: Isn’t that good for your kind of intimate music?
NH: You think so? Well it wasn’t. The last time we played there, it wasn’t. It was awful. I think it was probably because we were supporting Gomez the last time we were there and we could hardly fit on the stage because they had all their equipment on the stage.
LT: But Gomez has a lot of guitars and equipment.
NH: They have a lot of cymbals as well. I think we counted, and they had like 22 cymbals.
LT: They have way too much money.
NH: They have a lot of cymbals; I don’t know about money. They’d probably have more money if they had less cymbals. I don’t know why anybody would need 22 cymbals.