It’s 6.30pm at Manchester University Students’ Union. “They’ll be with you in
a minute – they’re just de-sweating,” comes the word from the Whip’s
dressing room. This is just the soundcheck – the indie-electro quartet
aren’t due on stage in their home town until 10pm. This is a band who keep
the pedal to the metal, even in rehearsal. And they inspire similar
commitment from their fans – the pavement outside is already plastered with
eyelinered, skinny-jean-clad Mancunian youth.
The Whip have been quickening pulses since their anthemic single Trash was
featured last year on a compilation by the ineffably hip French label
Kitsune. A riot of electronic throbs, jackhammer beats, squealing guitars
and strident vocals, Trash is easily the equal of anything concocted
by their dance-rock contempories Simian Mobile Disco, Hadouken! and Does It
Offend You, Yeah? It encapsulates a band with a visceral capacity to thrill
– especially live, as they will prove in about three hours.
“Our stuff has been described as ‘electronic sweat music’ – which we like –
and ‘Jean-Michel Jarre gone bonkers’ – which we don’t,” reveals Bruce
Carter, the band’s affable – and still slightly moist – singer and
guitarist. He is sipping vodka and Coke, his long limbs folded on to a sofa
alongside drummer Fiona Daniels, synth-player Danny Saville and bassist
Nathan Sudders, while roadies, friends and family members drift in and out.
In the middle of a gruelling tour and with barely four hours’ sleep in the
past two nights, the four should be dead on their feet, but they show no
signs of slowing down. Their new single, Blackout, is a typically
rumbustious affair that takes its name from that quaint acid-house tradition
in which clubs such as the Haçienda switched off their lights at the climax
of a tune, leaving a roomful of dancers whooping in the dark. Remixed by
Graham Massey of the original Manchester rave outfit 808 State, the track
sends a seductive message: we were there, veterans of the second summer of
love.
Except that none of this lot, aged from 25 to 30, are old enough to have
tasted the Haçienda in its glory years. Daniels knows people who would snog
the bouncers in exchange for entrance, but that wasn’t an option for her,
given that she was five years old in 1988.
“We were a bit too young,” concedes Carter. “But all of us were totally aware
of it. I had an acid-house badge in the playground when I was 10.” “I
remember graffitiing ‘Happy Mondays’ on the bus station wall when I was at
school,” offers Sudders.
“We may not have been old enough but we managed to soak it up anyway from
older brothers and friends,” Saville insists.
Spurred on by the regeneration that followed the IRA bomb in 1996, Manchester
has transformed into a smarter, but more regulated, 21st-century metropolis.
“In a way I feel quite sad because I missed out on it all,” says Daniels.
“You can’t really get away with anything like you used to.”
It certainly hasn’t stopped the Whip from trying. Daniels has become something
of a face on the scene, infamous for her three-day house parties. “She’s an
animal,” says Sudders, her ex-boyfriend, admiringly. “Everyone at her
parties usually ends up dressed like Marc Bolan – shades and feather boas.”
The band are also regulars, as both punters and performers, at the Warehouse
Project, an ambitious musical venture in an old air-raid shelter beneath
Piccadilly railway station that is the Noughties equivalent of the Haçienda.
“It’s a grim area where the prossies hang out, with water and moss all over
the walls, but you get all the high-end dance acts playing there,” says
Sudders.
But it’s not just the pills, thrills and bellyaches era to which Carter and
company hark back. While it has the energy of the acid-house dancefloor,
their debut album, X Marks Destination, also owes much to the
preceding, less euphoric Manchester generation, with Frustration
recalling New Order at their most expansively melancholic and Sirens evoking
the bleak intensity of Joy Division.
While some middle-aged critics have sneered at such obvious touchstones, the
teenagers who flock to the Whip’s gigs couldn’t give a monkey’s, and Carter
relishes the comparisons. “We were in the studio trying to get the vocal
right for Sirens,” he remembers, “The producer and the A&R
guy took me down to the cinema, bought me hotdogs, popcorn, the works, and
we watched Control [Anton Corbijn’s film about Ian Curtis].
Afterwards we went straight back to the studio and did the vocal.”
There is certainly plenty of authentic Lancastrian angst mixed in with the
hedonism. So if Curtis and co had the fagend of punk and the gloom of
Thatcher’s Britain to fire them up, what gets the Whip’s goat? “We’re not in
any way related to any sort of politics,” Sudders says firmly. “A lot of the
motivation just came from our frustration at trying to get the band going,”
adds Carter.
This is Carter and Saville’s second shot at the big time. Their previous
group, Nylon Pylons, was one of the first to explore the indie-electro
inter-face in the early Noughties, gaining recognition in the “Manctronica”
movement and signing to London Records in 2003. But band disputes and record
company tensions – as opposed to their rubbish name – toppled the Pylons and
they split in the same year. Carter and Saville then withdrew to a damp,
strip-lit and reputedly haunted cellar in a Salford pub – very Joy Division
– to hone their sound. Six months later, the Whip were born.
With the changing demands of the download era, their emphasis has always been
on live performance. “It’s just large-scale busking these days, really,”
Carter says. They’ve been getting plenty of pennies tossed in their
metaphorical hat, with chaotic tours of Japan, a slot later this year
supporting the Breeders in America and an ominously busy summer festival
schedule including Reading, V, Creamfields and Ibiza Rocks.
Some of their most explosive receptions, however, have come at the 14-plus
concerts that are now a staple of many bands’ gigging strategies. “We
weren’t sure at first,” admits Sudders. “But those gigs are mental – a
thousand kids outside the venue at 7pm, screaming.”
The late teens and twentysomethings streaming through the doors tonight are
geriatric by comparison, but the atmosphere still crackles as the Whip take
to the stage, silhouetted against a purple backlight. Shrugging off their
tiredness, they bring the house down – storming to the front of the stage
for the guitar-led numbers; retreating to punch the air as their machines
take over during the more electronic tracks.
It feels more like a club at 3am than 10pm on a school night – all hands in
the air, dancefloor hugs and feverish cheers. And, of course, buck-etloads
of sweat – Carter’s fringe is plastered across his forehead as he belts out
his gruffly emotional lines over the staccato melodies. They encore with a
triumphant version of Trash that has the whole place jumping.
“There’s no place like home,” yells Carter into the mike, before turning and
following his bandmates into the Manchester gloom.
YOUR GUIDE TO MANCHESTER 2008
THE RECORD LABEL
Melodic Recordings: the sound of leftfield Manchester. Recent signings include
Working for a Nuclear Free City.
THE RECORD SHOP
Piccadilly Records: in its thirtieth year, still the place to go for new
releases whether your thing is “avant-post rock.drone” or
“electroclash.newrave.bmore.punk-funk”
THE UPSTARTS
Cats in Paris: forget the Ting Tings, everyone’s ears are now tuned to these
wonky indie-poppers.
THE LOCAL HEROES
The Longcut: experimental three-piece who give Elbow a run for their money in
the much-loved, yet overlooked stakes.
THE BAR
Dulcimer: ultra-cool
Chorlton venue dedicated to rare folk and fine ales.
THE FANZINE
High Voltage: edgy
fanzine, club night and label.
THE CLUB
The Deaf Institute:
from hard liquor and cake at Your Mama’s Cookin to beards and beads at Down
at the Red Bricks.
Blackout is out on Southern Fried Records on July 14 2008, and the Whip
peform today at the Wireless Festival (www.o2wirelessfestival.co.uk).
For further live dates, see www.myspace.com/thewhipmanchester
It rests its head on your shoulders and whispers in your ear
