About a year ago I interviewed Monkey Swallows the Universe, a gorgeous pop band shortly to be going on “indefinite hiatus”. This was a bizarre turn of events for almost every fan because their second album The Casket Letters had recently broken pretty significant ground for the band, helped particularly by a plug on Gorilla vs. Bear, according to the band. They seemed to be on the way up, their audience was rapidly expanding, and people seemed to be getting really excited about them. They seemed, in short, on the up.

The indefinite hiatus came as something of a shock, and so I thought I might have a try at interviewing them before the Edinburgh date of their farewell tour. I was curious to ask about the past, what had caused the split and things like that, but if they didn’t want to talk about that then I was equally happy to discuss their plans for the future. What I got was interesting, funereal, and if the interview had been a professional assignment, something of a disaster.

The first question I asked was whether or not I was allowed to ask about why they were going on hiatus or whether they’d rather I just ignored it and concentrated on the future.

“Yeah, why are we going on hiatus? We’d all like to know that.” was the only response I got. There was an uncomfortable silence, into which Natalie Johnson, the lead singer, inserted some platitudes taken straight from the world of professional football when a manager’s contract is terminated by ‘mutual consent’: not permanent… still good friends… just exploring some different things… the usual way of making it obvious that the different parties to the agreement might well give some very, very different answers to the ones they were all presenting to the public, but that that was all the answer we were going to get.

Okay, so the future, then. I tried that one, but was met with the same sort of stony, glum, painfully awkward silence. No-one, it seemed, had any plans. And then it really struck me what sort of a situation everyone in the room was in. A guitarist without a band is really nothing at all. Everyone had just gone from being part of a much-loved, upwardly mobile indie band with modest but respectable ambitions and a healthy chance of achieving them to the equivalent of the bartender who calls himself an actor. A band is something. A musician, not so much.

Basically, it takes an incredibly long time and an awful lot of energy to build up momentum in the music industry, and that was now all pretty much for nothing. It’s like a relationship – part of the horror of breaking up is not just the personal loss, but the aching weariness of having to go through all that again. The only person who had any sort of direction for the future seemed to be lead singer Natalie Johnson, who already by this stage had a MySpace page with a couple of good songs up and at least half an idea of what was going to happen next. Now it is easy to suggest that the band split because she wanted a solo career and no-one else really had any say in the decision whatsoever, but I really have no idea. Based on the information I have, which is minimal, it seems plausible, but then so does almost any other hypothesis you could put forward.

Her solo career seems to be in good shape though, because she’s back working with the eminently splendid indie label Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation, after the equally excellent Loose Music (think Felice Brothers, Willard Grant Conspiracy, The Handsome Family, The Ralfe Band) released The Casket Letters. Her first single is now out, it’s called Dirty Rotten Soul, and it’s really very good indeed. There’s a little more country in the mix than in MStU stuff, but the lovely voice is intact, as is the knack for a sweet melody. The b-side, Mexico, isn’t quite as arresting for me because it doesn’t fell all that distinctive, despite its prettiness. The two bonus demo songs on the CD are lovely though, so it seems that something good might at least come out of the demise of such a good band.

It was a shame though, because I loved their music. At the end of the gig, as an unusually emotional Edinburgh crowd asked for an encore I suggested Chicken Fat Waltz, and the same band member who wanted to know the reason for the hiatus just started playing the song without waiting for an answer from his lead singer. I don’t know, I could so easily be making a mountain out of a molehill, but it seemed just a little symptomatic of the unhappy atmosphere in the dressing room before the show. Who really knows though. I certainly don’t, but it was a weird, weird interview.

Nat Johnson – Heart of Clay (Demo)
Nat Johnson – All This
Monkey Swallows the Universe – The Chicken Fat Waltz
Monkey Swallows the Universe – Sheffield Shanty

Nat Johnson’s Website | Buy the single from Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation