The ever durable Simon Rivers tells all on his new solo LP as Poor Performer, Oldfield Youth Club, The Bitter Springs, collaborations and more
After discovering the Teddington-based Simon Rivers somewhat indirectly via his still-jaw-dropping guest spots on Piano Magic’s 1999 album Low Birth Weight – as retrospectively profiled on Concrete Islands – he’s been an on/off/on component in this writer’s musical diet ever since.
Not having previously picked up on Last Party, the group Rivers co-founded and doggedly marshalled across two long-players and a slew of singles/EPs from the mid-80s to mid-90s, the listening relationship has primarily been via The Bitter Springs, the ensemble whose opening trilogy of dark-witted albums – namely 1997’s From the Parish of Arthritis, 1998’s Five Die Filming This Lazy Lark and 1999’s Benny’s Hill Wardrobe – remain revelatory mixes of wit, grit and amorphous musicality, refracted through English suburban living.
Although slightly losing track of the band in the intervening years, following said initial triumvirate of long-players, 2019’s late-rebirthing seventh – and possibly final – album The Odd Shower brought these ears properly back to The Bitter Springs. Recalibrating Rivers’s singular yet unconfining world in redemptively rousing widescreen arrangements – with warm lateral echoes of Hunky Dory-to-Aladdin Sane-era Bowie, T-Rex and even a splash of disco – the album satisfyingly showcased a resharpened lyrical toolkit.
Things have moved on further since The Odd Shower, with Rivers sustaining his latter-day purple patch. Aside from setting-up Oldfield Youth Club – with erstwhile Last Party co-players Kim Rivers and Neil Palmer – as a rougher around the edges live-friendly trio and prepping an enticing expanded reissue of the aforementioned Five Die Filming This Lazy Lark for arrival next year, comes the first Simon Rivers solo outing under his new Poor Performer pen name.
As a creative by-product of multiple external and internal life events, the resultant Like Yer Wounds Too and the crucially appended In Appropriate Attire EP – unveiled as a vinyl album and CD EP bundle by Tiny Global Productions – is one of the finest double helpings from Rivers to date. Packing songs with laden humour and pathos into settings that mix together various strong shades of The Kinks, Dexys Midnight Runners and mid-to-late-period Leonard Cohen as well as mariachi, northern soul and vaudeville vibes, the eighteen gathered tracks demand devoted repeat airings.
Brought in for questioning, the rambunctious and ribald Rivers had plenty to say on most of the above… with plenty of extra things on top.
Firstly, a bit of housekeeping. Have you really ended The Bitter Springs for good or has the door been left ajar? If it’s the former, why did you make that big decision?
The Springs as they were had run their course when Dan (Daniel Ashkenazy) left. Without it being me and Dan, it wasn’t The Springs anymore. I finished the Everyone’s Cup of Tea LP without him and made two more – Cuttlefish and Love’s Remains and the first ever vinyl LP by us, which also turned out to be our last LP, The Odd Shower.
It’s not easy keeping a band together with six people when you were as unsuccessful as us. There may or may not be another Springs record in the future but it’s not the name that’s important, because whatever it comes out under – OYC, Last Party, Poor Performer, Bitter Springs or Simon Rivers – it’s just the record I want to make.
You seemed a bit deflated on your C86 podcast interview appearance last year that The Odd Shower didn’t receive the attention it deserved. I think it’s one of the very best Bitter Springs albums…
The Odd Shower was well liked, and I was happy with it and you can’t ask for much more than that. But I do get a bit annoyed at lesser so-called artists gaining tons of exposure. I don’t consider myself an artist, but I work hard making songs. Once I’m over the disappointment of say, no radio play, no reviews, or whatever, I’m saying to myself, “Right, dust yourself off Rivers and get on to the next one.” And really, I think minimal exposure is good artistically [as it] keeps you on your toes.
Why did you opt to trade under the Poor Performer alias as your first official solo album?
When I worked for Royal Mail as a postman, there was a lad named Ray Baker from the year above me at school and he used to run the room where people would come to pick up the parcels from, and when I’d bring him a docket back with the details of a person’s parcel my handwriting was so bad he couldn’t read it properly. Sometimes I’d have scrawled a new song on it as well – so he used to shout, “Simple… poor performer” in a high-pitched voice and I always thought I’ll use that someday, so I did. Ray had been at the office since school and sadly he passed away recently without getting to enjoy his pension. There’s a dedication to him on the LP.
You’ve described Like Yer Wounds Too, which came together during the covid lockdowns, as “a record I didn’t really plan to make.” Can you elaborate a bit on its writing circumstances and recording chronology?
When the world turned upside down with covid and lockdown my father was dying of a dementia-related illness, I couldn’t bear to work at Royal Mail anymore with all the bullshit and hypocrisy. There was other stuff going on that I won’t go into, but things were a mess. After Dad passed away, I was at his house with Iris, his widow, and I started to mess around on his Yamaha keyboard. He’d been having lessons back when he was still well enough. I asked Iris if I could take it home, she said sure, so I did and quickly found out that it had a lot of great pre-set drum patterns and instrument sounds.
So I got out all my song folders – the ones I’d written on my old busted up Casio – and went through the process of matching them with rhythms, and along with four or five new songs written during and about lockdown, I did something I’d never had the luxury of doing before – [as] I’d got some unexpected pension money – I booked a whole month of continuous days with Jon Clayton at his studio in Crystal Palace and began whittling them down to the Like Yer Wounds Too LP and accompanying CD In Appropriate Attire.
I get the impression that you ended up with quite a stockpile of pieces to take in the studio when the time came. Were there a lot of outtakes or leftovers that might have an afterlife for another solo release or elsewhere?
No outtakes. Over the years of paying for my own music every second is precious so no wastage – I’d turned up with about eighty songs and after a week or so Jon said, “Si, you really need to sort out what you want here, we’ve already got eighteen backing tracks.” So, we just worked on finishing the ones we’d done so far. Since then, I’ve added another eight or so new songs towards the next Poor Performer record – it already has a title, AWASH. Although that may change. I’ve started on the first two tracks “The Party Boat” and my Andy Williams tribute – where I position Andy as a festive cardigan-wearing superhero – “What Would Andy Say?” and this time I have the brilliant Kirsten Morrison doing some string arrangements.
Despite it being ostensibly a solo record, it’s still quite an ensemble affair, albeit with perhaps more musical diversity than some of your official band-centric releases. Did you find an accommodation between being fully in charge whilst still calling in guests, that gave you the freedom to stretch things out more stylistically speaking?
Well, no, not really, it was just me and Jon in the studio doing everything and then we’d get Paul McGrath from The Springs to put real drums on. Jon did all the bass – he’s brilliant. I’d say “Jon, these are the chords” and he’d just look at me like, “Shut up Si, I can work it out.” My wife Kim sang backing vocals, Terry Edwards did some trumpet and Jon’s girlfriend Aggie did some violin.
Picking through a few specific tracks now… Did you purposefully sequence the pastoral “Gold London Leaves” and the more rocking “Kempton Park” back-to-back at the start to confound expectations of what a solo Simon Rivers LP should sound like? Can you tell me what inspired both songs?
I took a long time getting the running order right, although I don’t really know if it’s so important to anyone else, but yeah, I worry about all that stuff. I did want to start with “Gold London Leaves”, though I think it sets the tone. “Kempton Park” is the only guitar-type song on the record, and that’s probably because it’s the only one written on a guitar. For years I’ve had recurring dreams of being able to fly and “Gold London Leaves” is me as a leaf floating around in the wind looking down on the city in all its shit and splendour
“Life You Chose” seems to transplant 2020s celebrity cultural commentary into a 70s Kinks setting – am I at least half-right?
Yes, you are right, it’s that Talking Heads thing of “how did I get here?” There are a lot of personal jokes in my songs that maybe wouldn’t make much sense to anyone else… the way the word ‘paparazzi’ was adopted by all these wannabe celebrities. I much prefer the Englishness of The Kinks to The Beatles and all that pseudo-American nonsense The Stones came out with. A lot of these songs I’d been learning on the keyboard for years and I’ve just got better at playing them during lockdown.
“Hard to Be Happy” stands out very much like a centrepiece statement – that’s a massive earworm and so strong you also had to include an alternative version on the bonus EP. Can you lift the lid on what went into that one?
It was too long, so we cut it in half and treated them as two different songs, changed the sounds and drums. It was my old ‘too many verses’ thing. Once I’d had the original idea, I could go on writing verses forever. [With] “Life You Chose” we actually got rid of half the song because we wanted it to fit on the vinyl and for me that’s like chopping my head off, but it’s all the better for it I think.
“No Escape from You and Me” unfurls very much like your personal reflection on stay-at-home lockdown boredom and frustration or is that too simplistic a deduction?
As I mentioned before my dad died during lockdown, and that was complicated. I do tend to turn tragedy into comedy and vice versa, my way of coping I suppose. Comedy done straight is great, people can’t tell if I’m mucking about or being serious most of the time. “No Escape from You and Me” is about Kim and me being stuck at home during lockdown because of a lung operation a while back. I was considered vulnerable, and Kim was working from home, so we spent a few months indoors, which actually was one of the good things about that shitty time. We were lucky to have a garden and we painted our tree into a woman and got a picture in the newspaper.
“Right as Rain” and “Frog’s Tale” suggest you been listening to Dexys a lot and you even namecheck Kevin Rowland in the aforementioned “Hard to Be Happy”. Would you admit to being under a Midnight Runners influence whilst assembling Like Yer Wounds Too?
On my way to the studio, I had two CDs in the car, Cat Power’s The Greatest and Leonard Cohen’s Death of a Ladies’ Man. Musically Death of a Ladies’ Man was a reference point as I wanted to try and make a very musical album. With Dexys, the songs and chords are always so uplifting and singable and I was trying to make a record I’d like to sing along to, which has never really been my concern before.
The songs on the bonus In Appropriate Attire EP pack in as much weight and breadth as the main album. “Daylight Robbery” appears to be one of your most downbeat songs – what fed into it?
We didn’t want to leave any of the songs we’d recorded out, so John at Tiny Global suggested an EP to go with the LP, so then it was deciding what to put on which. “Daylight Robbery” is rather downbeat but it’s no use hiding from the darkness.
“For a While” is a very lovely but also very sad song. Who or what steered you there?
That’s a little-known Frank Sinatra song from a great record called Watertown. I learnt to play it because I really wanted to sing it. We recorded it all in one take, me on acoustic guitar and singing, with Paul playing drums – then Jon put bass on after.
Contrastingly, “The World Has Had Enough” sounds like a rousing sibling to both The Bitter Springs’ “Love Rat” and the aforementioned “Hard to Be Happy”. Would you agree?
That was my attempt at a James Bond theme. They’re all shit and unmemorable these days. I think I’ll play it live as a ballad.
“Up Them Stairs” has quite a vaudeville vibe. Were you in a bit of a theatrical mood when you put that together?
I wrote that for my mate Vic Godard to sing and I thought I’d called it “Fagging for Godard’’ but when I got the LPs back it seemed I’d called it “Up Them Stairs”. I loved Vic’s “Hey Now I’m In Love’’ period of songs when I was a kid and I intended for him to sing it, but because of lockdown he wouldn’t come out, so I got impatient and sang it myself.
How do you expect to translate these songs into your upcoming live shows? Will you play with some accomplices or strip them into entirely ‘one-man’ incarnations?
I’m playing these songs live as they were recorded, just me and Dad’s Yamaha keyboard. I’m okay with the playing now, but it’s the pushing of the right buttons at the right time which can be tricky.
What else have you got in the pipeline beyond the Poor Performer LP? Is the long-discussed Oldfield Youth Club album reaching fruition?
The OYC LP is finished and will be out on Tiny Global next May, it’s called The Hanworth are Coming and we are very happy with it. It is in part inspired by Neil, Kim and my experiences growing up in the late 70s / early 80s. Like I think I said earlier, once one project is finished I’m already planning the next, so Poor Performer LP two is underway but I’m taking that slowly. Studio time isn’t cheap.
I’m also working on songs with Alex Abajian in our Pills By Post incarnation. We did a ten-inch single together a couple of years back and we’re hoping to put an LP together. He visited last week and we came up with a great tune together: “The Dog’s Dinner”.
Now that you appear to have more free time to devote to music, since you finished your long-running day job, might you consider more one-off collaborations? Personally, I’d love to see you reconvene with Glen Johnson, formerly of Piano Magic.
I had started a solo LP with Glen and Jerome [Tcherneyan] from Piano Magic a few years back now, but mysteriously the tapes disappeared. I wasn’t best pleased with Glen and Jerome – no hard feelings now though. That LP was to be called Like Yer Wounds. That’s why the Poor Performer LP is called Like Yer Wounds Too. “Sleepy Little Town” was from back then and so was “Words of Love” which I recorded as The Bitter Springs on The Odd Shower album. I did a duet with Angèle David-Guillou [called] “Who Loves You More’’. That was a good song – sent it to Robert Lloyd of The Nightingales, [who] said he was gonna record it….
Speaking of your work with Glen, I’m still struck by the two songs – “Crown Estate” and “Dark Secrets Look for Light” – that you recorded with Piano Magic on 1999’s Low Birth Weight LP, which I talked about with him a few years back on Concrete Islands round its anniversary reissue. Can you remember what led you into writing those extremely bleak – but brilliant – almost novella-like songs? And how do you feel about them now? They’re like nothing else you have done since….
First and foremost, I’m a lyric writer, I don’t consider myself clever enough or disciplined enough to write novels, but I can put a story to music, so I enjoy it when I’m gifted some great tunes as I was with Glen’s three [Piano Magic tracks].
You also did another track – “England’s Always Better (As You’re Pulling Away)” – with Piano Magic on 2007’s Part Monster. The words seem to have taken on a greater resonance in recent times – would you concur?
Yeah, that was great. Glen had set the mood with the music and his words, so that came easy. But yeah, Christ, the way this country is run now fills you with despair.
How have your songwriting processes evolved over the years in general?
Not that much to be honest. I still agonise if I lose something I’ve written down. I trust myself, in that if I had the idea to a song about a certain thing, I’ll follow it through to the end. Might not turn out to be the best idea, but at least it was mine.
As someone who has operated at a largely DIY level since the mid-80s, you must have experienced a lot of change in your corner of the music industry. How have things transformed for the worse and for the better? Is one of the current biggest challenges just fighting for listening space amongst the sheer volume of new and old things appearing from all directions, compared to when you started out?
Getting listener space has always been hard for us, so that hasn’t changed. But being with Tiny Global and John Henderson has helped get my music out to more people and I’m in good company on that label, some top top writers. The Nightingales are the best they’ve ever been. [Band of] Holy Joy [and] Blue Orchids [are] making excellent music. There are too many people making music nowadays. In some ways it’s too easy. I’ve said it before: music should be nationalised like the old national service. Everyone should be taken away for two years to make an LP.
You’ve predominantly self-released your musical wares since your early days with Last Party. Has passing some of that responsibility to Tiny Global Productions in recent years eased some of the logistical headaches?
Yes, it’s great being with them. It was a bit of a change going to the vinyl format because in the past we’d do CDs and fill ’em up, so now though I think that was a good thing, like I mentioned, I’d write ten verses so they all had to go on. Now I’m editing myself a bit more.
If you hadn’t become a songwriter and musician, what alternative creative outlet would you have pursued instead?
I think I was always going to do this. It was always in me, so I don’t agonise over that – but back years ago I never knew what I wanted to do with my life work-wise, and now I realise it’s because I was already doing it… making up songs. If you said to me “now give up all the songs you’ve recorded, and you get to score a winning hat-trick for England in the World Cup final” I wouldn’t change that. I want both please.
I never think of myself as a musician as such. I only took up the guitar because our first guitarist was into heavy metal, so he had to go. Dad was a builder and I worked with him a lot and I enjoy that now, patio work and a bit of fencing, gardening, creative stuff – don’t mind a bit of hard work. And teaching – I get on well with kids but I’d get sacked for teaching them swear words.
Finally, if you had to stop making records tomorrow, which ones – in your various guises – would you be most proud to have put out into the world?
I’m as happy with Like Yer Wounds Too as I’ve ever been with a release and for the first time I think my singing is bearable, almost good. Always the next one I’m working on. If I listen to older stuff I’ll usually think I should have sung it better, the guitars [are] too loud, I could’ve made that line better etc. etc. etc.
Feature photo credits: Peter Tainsh
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