After two albums themed around human progress and space exploration, UK band Public Service Broadcasting looked closer to home for their third, Every Valley.
Public Service Broadcasting Photo: supplied
For a band whose albums play like musical documentaries, complete with archival footage, having a concept to hang an album on is crucial.
So why was bandleader J Willgoose Esquire drawn to the story of the coal mining industry in South Wales and its subsequent collapse?
“[I was] reading about the history of mining in the UK, and realising that [I was] trying to tell the story not just of the commodity coal, but also the story of the community which it fueled and which depended on it.
“Once I realised that it made it more specific in a way but also broadened it, and it started becoming applicable to all sorts of industries.
“A lot of service-based economies have seen their traditional manufacturing, working-class jobs disappear or fall by the wayside, in terms of foreign competitors being able to do those jobs more cheaply.
“In the UK it was managed terribly. To the extent that the miners were betrayed by their government and treated as the enemies within.
“I just thought it was an interesting thing to explore”.
Public Service Broadcasting made their first two albums around themes of human progress. Every Valley actually contains a song called ‘Progress’, but it’s more about the humans that get left behind.
“That song is us saying ‘we believe in progress’. But it’s sung with a very strong hint of tragedy and irony, because the people who were sold these technological advances in the mines, those machines were going to take their jobs.
“It’s a very current, prevalent theme in Western society.
“The Track ‘People Will Always Need Coal’, we can look at that and say ‘no they won’t’. And that’s good, because it’s a dirty fuel. It’s good that a million people aren’t employed in an extremely dangerous and dirty job that pollutes the atmosphere. That’s fantastic.
“But what happened to the people that were employed by it?”
The band immersed themselves in the concept of the album, building a makeshift studio in a community centre in South Wales. This afforded J the opportunity to interview the townspeople about the industry that had abandoned them.
One of the interviews appears on the album, along with an abundance of news and documentary audio that over the course of the album tells of the rise and fall of the mining industry.
This translates into the band’s live show, as they play in front of the footage they sampled for the album.
“It’s been re-edited to fit the music. It ends up looking like the music fits the material, whereas actually it’s making the material fit the music.
“It’s quite emotionally involving, and can be quite overwhelming. There’s a lot to take in.”
Public Service Broadcasting play Auckland's Powerstation on May 3rd. Every Valley is out now.
