50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2010

“What’s it got to compete with?” laughs These New Puritans’ drummer George Barnett, his confidence charming rather than dickish. We’re in a basement somewhere in the nether regions of the NME building, and George is talking about, oh, the usual: beauty, vibraphones, pop music. He doesn’t yet know that ‘Hidden’ is our album of the year, but he’s confident it should be. When his brother and TNP lynchpin Jack bursts in, all fluid angles and gentle intensity, with news that they’ve topped the poll George looks triumphant, vindicated, while Jack allows a suggestion of a smile.



Landing at the top of NME’s yearly pile is the fitting coda to These New Puritans’ 2010. This time last year the band were custodians of an album that only they could have predicted. If you saw it coming, you’re a liar. ‘Hidden’ redrew the boundaries of popular music so completely they spilled off the map, onto the wall and out the door. Publicly, historians may well see January ’10 as the point when music ruptured into what came before and what came after. Privately, it’s the moment when a band went from being another post-punk indebted band (albeit an intriguing one) with another set of influences to something far more special.



“Just doing something really beautiful and really strong is much better than making music that sounds like four other records that you kind of liked when you were 15,” states George as if he can’t understand why everyone isn’t putting out groundbreaking records like it ain’t no thing. As Jack casts his mind back to this time last year, before the broadsheet eulogies, children’s choirs, before everyone knew what Taiko drums were, he looks thoughtful. “I was relieved to have finished the album,” he recalls. “I knew I wouldn’t mind what people thought about it because I was happy with it – it is exactly what it is and it’s perfect for what it is.”



What is it? Eleven months later and we’re still not sure. What we can be certain of is that it’s a response to anyone who has suspected that to be alive now is to be lost in a stagnating soup of retro and revivalism, everything a rehash of what’s come before, diminishing until you can measure out creativity in half life. Of course ‘Hidden’ has its histories, its debts to Benjamin Britten, Steve Reich, dancehall and dubstep, but rather than playing on the novelty of oh-so-postmodern eclecticism, it deconstructs its influences, shearing them of context and re-arranging the components until they slot into a hybrid whole. If we’re all resigned to the religion of mediocrity, Jack is the heretic on the margins, showing us the true way. “We always take risks. There was obviously a huge number of risks involved on ‘Hidden’ during the recording of it,” notes Jack, “but there’s an unspoken agreement, or trust, that These New Puritans is worth doing.”



Perhaps that’s what is truly remarkable, the implicit trust, between members of the band but also between band and audience. From the lithe muscle of ‘We Want War’’s militaristic tattoos and Foley techniques, or the Elgar-at-right-angles ‘Drum Courts – Where Corals Lie’, through to the fragile pop melodies of ‘White Chords’, ‘Hidden’ expects the listener to keep up. You might not get it right away, but its blood-red vitality means you’ll sure as hell try. Trust was repaid almost immediately. “I suppose it was in January, there were quite a lot of good reviews,” Jack remembers, modestly. “People always say, ‘Oh I don’t read reviews’, but that’s rubbish, it’s lies, of course you read reviews! I don’t want to get carried away though, the whole spirit of the music is do something that we believe in.”



While it was a jolt out of nowhere for the rest of us, such an artefact didn’t just land on the mixing desk after a few late-night jamming sessions and multiple listens to Britten’s //Peter Grimes// opera. According to Jack its gestation was already underway, perhaps unregistered, during the sessions for the band’s debut, ‘Beat Pyramid’. “It was the kind of thing where I had a hunch for a certain kind of music. It had been percolating for quite a while. ‘White Chords’ and ‘5’ I started writing years ago.” Later, he looks like a man trying to grab some obfuscated memory and shake it out. Failing, he shakes his head. “I can barely understand the person that made ‘Hidden’ really, but the person who made ‘Beat Pyramid’ just seems like someone completely different.”



“I just think wanting to write the most beautiful thing that you can is a good place to start,” offers George. “I remember living in this flat with just me and Jack and Jack had loads of music all around him – his own music – because he was learning to notate. Then we had a weird time with Jack living on LA time where he wouldn’t sleep because he was talking to [hip-hop producer and ‘Hidden’ mixer] Dave Cooley constantly.”



That image of Jack, the tired-eyed visionary, surrounded by reams of manuscript is such a departure from the usual rock star image that it’s hard to reconcile with the band who were once – wrongly – accused of being just another bunch of photosensitive east London scenesters. Sure, they’re still ineffably cool – Salem’s remix of ‘Hologram’ resulted in bloggers wanking into their tumblrs – but they do things their way. It just so happens their way has taken them to the art institutions, The State Hermitage Gallery in St Petersburg, London’s Barbican, finishing off the Centre Pompidou, Paris. A natural progression for an album that has parts written for bassoon and oboe? Yeah, right. For These New Puritans courting the establishment with their carpeted auditoriums and clean walls was just another opportunity for subversion.
“We didn’t want to make it just like a classical gig,” George explains, “we wanted to make something that’s not classical and not pop music, it’s just something else.” Indeed, the charge of taking sides, of being – whisper it – highbrow that still rankles most. “What I mean is that it’s not experimental for the sake of it,” Jack suddenly seizes the opportunity to put the matter to bed. “That’s why I said in interviews that we’re anti-experimental. I didn’t want people to have the excuse to say, ‘Yeah, this is an experimental album, so no-one has to listen to it’. I felt that this was an album that would mean something to people, hopefully.”



Such accusations strike a nerve with George too. “I don’t like the way people assume things about These New Puritans. I get the impression that people think we’re a bunch of pretentious wankers, that they think we need to be loved, that we need taking to England’s bosom.” He smiles, the disdain palpable. The truth is, such charges are irrelevant to a band so disengaged with what the rest of the world is doing. That sound is just the noise of everyone else trying to catch up. With the success of Hidden Live, Jack is finally wrestling this chapter to a close – his highlight? “The Barbican.” He enthuses, “There’s something about seeing three vibraphones all together that is just great.” He pauses. “That was the highlight, the vibraphones!”



Of course, the issue of how the hell to follow up ‘Hidden’ is edging ever closer. For George, such an impending backlash comes with it. “I just think the next thing we do is going to be slated, because I don’t think we got a bad review.” There’s also talk of a film but details are sketchy, not even Jack himself certain of the details. “It’s an idea for something that could be a film but it could also manifest itself as a performance as well possibly, that can go with the film.” George is even less specific. “I just think it’s this really beautiful idea.” Ultimately, when the band’s currency is ‘beautiful ideas’ you know you’re in safe hands. “We always have a million things to work on, different ideas, this film thing we’re going to make, instruments we’re going to build. I might build a Hydraulophone, which is a water-powered instrument.”
One last question remains. With ‘Hidden’ already being hailed as a modern classic, do they think they’ll ever be able to better it?
“We’ll be able to //different// ‘Hidden’,” asserts Jack. “Yeah you’ve got to believe that. It would be terrible if this was the best thing we ever did, at the age of 23.”



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Louise Brailey