Troublegum

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I was nervous,’ says producer Sheldon. ‘I loved Nurse and Teethgrinder, but I was so worried that people were going to say, what has this idiot done? I was so worried that it was such a radical departure that people would say I’d ruined the band. But of course, people loved it.’ The Mercury Music Prize nominated Troublegum from 1994 and Infernal Love, the follow-up from 1995, are both issued as multi-disc deluxe editions. The two albums spawned a number of UK top 30 singles in what was the band’s most commercially successful period.

Inspired by the effusive reaction to Screamager and their new-found status as Britain’s unlikeliest pop stars, Therapy? threw themselves whole-heartedly into the process of writing an album’s worth of material that took their first bona fide hit as a rough template. Although the gnarly riffs and extraneous noise of their early records remained a fundamental part of their sound, the band’s new songs were much more direct and melodic, leading to an album that brimmed with huge hooks and moments of unashamed crowd-pleasing simplicity.

11 Issues

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I’m in Cambridge and Neil the drummer is in Derby where used to be in Cable who you once produced. He’s got a great story about you when they were recording their album with you and the band ended up having a fight with Oasis and you had to break the fight up like you were the referee! The return to the iconography of the Troubles is about people who missed it first time around and think it’s a bit exciting,” says Cairns. Listen, Jerusalem is a city in the Middle East. The Jerusalem you’re talking about, this majestic utopia – it’s another one of your myths,” he says.We’ve always done things to suit ourselves. We’ve never been that devastated by stuff that has gone wrong There are places like East Europe and the Balkans which are great for us, Denmark and France used to be great but a bit more flat at the moment. We also play really interesting places like the Reunion Islands off the coast of Africa! We are open minded and we will play where we are asked to play. There is also North America where Troublegum and Baby Teeth were popular but it’s really expensive to tour it…We are a hard working band and people respect that and don’t forget us.’

Sinclair, Tom (11 February 1994). "Troublegum". Entertainment Weekly. Meredith Corporation . Retrieved 10 November 2018. When we first played Screamager to the record company they said, ‘We’re not sure your fans are gonna like this!’” laughs Andy. “But once they gave it a push it ended up being a hit, and because it worked everyone seemed to like it. [Chris] Sheldon was pencilled in to do the album and he was saying, ‘Have you got anything else like that?’ I had a song from an old band I’d been in that became Nowhere and I had Turn as well, so we demoed some of this stuff and it sounded great, and we just decided to make a whole album of it. But yeah, we do have that feeling where there's not a threat that we have to be contemporary anymore, because we're just comfortable in our own skin. We know that if a record that we release like the new one, if people like it, great. If not, there's no point in our 40s and 50s losing sleep over it, because it's not anything we can do.”

Troublegum came out a few weeks later. It busted into the Top 5, its themes connecting with people irrespective of the subculture they belonged to. “It didn’t matter whether they were metallers, goths, punks or people in baseball caps and Reeboks,” says Andy. “When you’re young, you’re this mess of emotion. And The trio's third album (and major label debut) saw them hit the big time with hits like Basket Case, Longview, When i Come Around and Welcome To Paradise. He’s a fictional character. Harry Potter has taken off – a lot of people are getting themselves into financial penury trying to send their kids to private schools over here. As well as the new Therapy? album – which we ’ll get to – you’ve got new music from your other band, JAAW, coming up. It used to be difficult for people from the North of the country. It was hard to be proud of where you were from without taking a certain side. You always had to straddle the middle of the fence.

You’ve just released Hard Cold Fire, your 16th album, and you’re 34 years in now. Would young punk Andy Cairns be surprised at all this?Michael: There's a lot that we all felt really good playing, and I know Knives is one of those ones. Just dynamically it all made sense, even before there'd been any vocals or lyrics on it. And when we did the original demo, I thought, 'Oh my god, this is going to be fantastic.' It was just screaming out to be the album's opener. That’s the one thing it’s still the same subject matter but with a 20 year on perspective. During the time of Britpop people would say how can you still be angry when you are 30? and I would reply ‘how can you not?’ When I was as growing up people left home at 19 and married the girl down the road and then you see them again at 35 two timing their wives, an alcoholic and you wonder about all the great advice they gave you about the lyrics. There is still also a lot of literature that comes into the lyrics and also we just see what is around us and the frustration and how we fit into the world and how people fit in with eachother and that’s what drives the songs at the moment.’ I remember my younger brother being like, ‘That's a punk band! Punks razorblade grannies, and they spit on children!’ That was a media outrage. Then I got into The Clash and the Sex Pistols, I got a little tiny spiky hair cut. When Therapy? came along, I was at probably the lowest point of my life. I only say this here so that you can understand why I have such strong feelings about the album that others may not share. It was a six month period that I muddled my way through not exclusively because of this album, but with the help of this album being a majority shareholder nonetheless. Every emotion I was feeling in my life at that time was mirrored in Andy Cairns music, lyrics and vocals on this album. However, Troublegum doesn’t remind me of that time at all, nor does it make me maudlin or upset because of it. Certainly it is still the best tonic to put on when I get down, or get angry. It does still draw out any anger I have in me when that is needed. What it does do is make me smile, because this is one of my magic talismans; an album I can put on at any time and draw from it the good feelings or power or inspiration or whatever it is I need, just from listening to it.