Edge Festival 2010: The Phantom Band

“It's like we've thrown more shit at the wall and more of it stuck this time.” Speaking from the studio on the final production day of The Phantom Band's second album, Rick Anthony gives the impression that the Glasgow sextet's 2009 debut Checkmate Savage was an exercise in bland austerity, when really it was anything but. “Yeah, well it wasn't enough, this time there's more,” Anthony elaborates. “I think there's a bit more pop, more blues-folk, a wee bit of Prince in there. We're ideally taking it further in both directions.” And those directions would be? “In one sense it’s more immediate, but at the same time also more strange and diverse.”

Diverse is probably the most appropriate way to explain their debut; a surging, shimmering cascade of inventive nous, oh, and extremely listenable too, the plaudits rained down thick and fast. So, how did it feel to be unilaterally acclaimed? “Fuck yeah. It was really nice," starts Anthony. "We didn't know how the album was going to be received. We'd never done it before, and have never been particularly careerist in terms of our own abilities and vision of the band. We didn’t imagine it as being this thing that anyone else would necessarily get. When we made the album, we liked it, but we weren't sure of the process. It was like 'I guess this is how you make an album, I guess this is what our album sounds like', then it comes out and people seem to like it, which is great. It vindicated us in the sense that we feel we were doing the right thing and that's given us the confidence to push the boat out a bit further.”

A confident Phantom Band is a prospect to relish; it certainly took them a while to get there. Checkmate Savage was the end result of a near decade’s worth of meandering experimentation. Playing gigs under a variety of guises (bingo if you’ve ever seen Les Crazy Boyz, Tower of Girls, Robert Redford or Robert Louis Stevenson perform a set) allowed for experimentation with different forms of music and an admirable refusal to be pigeon-holed or typecast. Choosing the name Phantom Band thereafter was a self-referential nod to their previous elusiveness, but only came about when they finally felt comfortable with their own musical vision.

Well, comfortable-ish. Anthony gives the impression that the debut effort was comparatively tame according to their ambitions, and that only now are we going to see exactly what it is these guys are capable of. “We were pretty lucky with the reviews,” he says with unnecessary modesty. “The positive reaction made us feel like there might be no harm in taking it a bit further and seeing if people are willing to go the extra step with us. We wanted to take a few more risks; not necessarily that we didn't take risks with the first one, just that we didn't really know so much what we were doing, we were just going along with what was happening rather than taking a positive decision. With this album there's been a much more conscious effort to try things.”

According to Anthony, a couple of tracks from the new album will be aired for the group’s Edge Festival performance, with a caveat. “I don't think we'll play too many, just keep it to one or two per show. We don't want to give people too much of an idea.” True to form, there’s no word on what the second LP might actually be called; the band themselves don’t have a clue. “Nooo, c'mon. We'll probably name it after its release. It will in all likelihood come out unnamed and then we'll come up with various titles for it afterwards.”

He is, promisingly, confident that it will be well-received. “I think that people who liked the last album for the right reasons are going to like this one. They're into the diversity and the atmosphere, and there's a lot more of that this time around.”