UNCUT, April 2002

PASTORAL ENGLISHMEN BECOME THE TOAST OF TENNESSEE
"I think we're curiosities," offers Departure Lounge mainman Tim Keegan on the English four-piece's popularity in their adopted hometown, Nashville. "We're basically a pastoral English band on our own little musical adventure, exploring all these areas. People just responded to us really well. They'd come out and see us doing slowed-down versions of 'Ace of Spades', and 'Macho Man' by the Village People."

Eclectic ain't the word. Too Late To Die Young, the new album - recorded on a converted farm in the Northamptonshire countryside - evokes the rainbow-folk of love goosed up by Gorky's, the sideways psyche of the Soft Boys, a bucolic Beta Band cooking up James Coburn spy capers and the ambrosial afterglow of the Lilac Time.

"That first Lilac Time album is an absolute classic," agrees Keegan. "But we all come from different places musically. Chris is really into Robert Wyatt, Jake's into JJ Cale, I discovered Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen and Lindsay's into Talk Talk. And it comes together into this big soup."

Keegan formed his first band, Homer, in 1995 after stints as a guitarist for Robyn Hitchcock and The Blue Aeroplanes. In 1998, what began as a group of friends gathering in the communal warmth of each other's music (a bit like a therapy session) gave birth to Departure Lounge. Their debut, Out of Here, and instrumental follow-up, Jetlag Dreams, were impressive enough, but the new LP raises the bar, not least due to the mercurial production of French groovemeister Kid Loco. "Lindsay got hold of his Grand Love Story album," says Keegan, "and we just flipped for it. The production was so filmic and the grooves dead sexy. We thought 'that's our man!'"

The pond-hopping move (though guitarist Chris still lives in Brighton) led to their own Sunday evening radio show on Nashville's WRVU and long term residency at the Slow bar, where their live shows are often augmented by the local likes of Josh Rouse and Lambchop. One night, Keegan spied hero Lee Hazlewood, with pal Duane Eddy, watching from the corner. He'd already met Hazlewood after recording a version of 'If it's Monday Morning' and recalls: "I was quivering in my boots, but he was really sweet, sitting in the hotels lobby with his sunglasses on, baseball cap and gold jewellery. Like an old rogue, telling us stories, drinking us under the table." After the Nashville show, they hooked up again: "Duane told Lee he thought I sang his song better than he did."

And reaction to the new record? "People have told me it's about the quest for happiness and coming to terms with being an adult and growing older." A brief pause. "Yeah. Ok, I'll have that."
Rob Hughes