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| Money – New Band Up North #25 | Money – New Band Up North #25 |
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| Money have captivated many new music lovers over the past two years. The brewing concoction of beauty and sadness in their music makes your heart twinge and your mind flick through your internal catalogue of memories, ambitions and dreams. It makes you want to cry but it makes you feel alive. It inspires you to think, to live, to dream. | Money have captivated many new music lovers over the past two years. The brewing concoction of beauty and sadness in their music makes your heart twinge and your mind flick through your internal catalogue of memories, ambitions and dreams. It makes you want to cry but it makes you feel alive. It inspires you to think, to live, to dream. |
| After talking to Londoner-turned-Mancunian Jamie Lee, their vocalist and guitarist, for a couple of hours one evening over a dodgy Skype connection, I feel like I know a little more about the group that's remained fairly mysterious since its conception. | After talking to Londoner-turned-Mancunian Jamie Lee, their vocalist and guitarist, for a couple of hours one evening over a dodgy Skype connection, I feel like I know a little more about the group that's remained fairly mysterious since its conception. |
| Lee met his bandmates Charlie Cocksedge (guitar, keyboard), Scott Beaman (bass, keyboard) and Billy Byron (drums) at Manchester University and last year they started releasing material on Salford's SWAYS Records, a new label releasing some outstanding music and putting on gigs in an underground bunker near Strangeways prison. | Lee met his bandmates Charlie Cocksedge (guitar, keyboard), Scott Beaman (bass, keyboard) and Billy Byron (drums) at Manchester University and last year they started releasing material on Salford's SWAYS Records, a new label releasing some outstanding music and putting on gigs in an underground bunker near Strangeways prison. |
| Working with a group of like-minded people and playing in the bunker gave the band complete freedom. "We felt we could do literally whatever we wanted — as people and as musicians." Lee explains. Since then they've been sporadically releasing material and are now working on their debut album, which will be released very soon on the Bella Union label. | Working with a group of like-minded people and playing in the bunker gave the band complete freedom. "We felt we could do literally whatever we wanted — as people and as musicians." Lee explains. Since then they've been sporadically releasing material and are now working on their debut album, which will be released very soon on the Bella Union label. |
| Although not originally from Manchester, Lee says his heart is there and the band is back in the city to finish what will be their debut. "Being around the right people, music, ideas and places helps a lot. I've been so lucky with Manchester. It's had such an effect on me." | Although not originally from Manchester, Lee says his heart is there and the band is back in the city to finish what will be their debut. "Being around the right people, music, ideas and places helps a lot. I've been so lucky with Manchester. It's had such an effect on me." |
| We talk about how Manchester music is full of melancholy but also how uplifting it can be too. The greats like Joy Division and The Smiths cooed sadness while singing about loves, laughs and good times. Money is a band that adds so much to the history of music that's come out of the city. Lee thinks they're "being very honest" to Manchester. He doesn't feel indelibly "woven into the musical past of the city but more into the themes that are apparent in it that other musicians have picked up on – its boisterousness, its intellect, its violence, melancholy and absurdity." | We talk about how Manchester music is full of melancholy but also how uplifting it can be too. The greats like Joy Division and The Smiths cooed sadness while singing about loves, laughs and good times. Money is a band that adds so much to the history of music that's come out of the city. Lee thinks they're "being very honest" to Manchester. He doesn't feel indelibly "woven into the musical past of the city but more into the themes that are apparent in it that other musicians have picked up on – its boisterousness, its intellect, its violence, melancholy and absurdity." |
| This adopted Mancunian four-piece is doing something new. Money's sound is awe-inspiring yet devastating at the same time. The Sea starts with waves of guitars, euphoric noises that twitch and flicker through your ears and drums that sporadically knock on the door in rage. Suddenly Lee's voice tears through you with anger and passion as if you've just punched through the wall after a bad argument. You can hear the tears filling his eyelids, building up until he can't see and suddenly the water that's gathered bursts and pours down his cheeks. The distress comes across even more as Lee cries the lyrics "under the sea, under the sea" over and over again. | This adopted Mancunian four-piece is doing something new. Money's sound is awe-inspiring yet devastating at the same time. The Sea starts with waves of guitars, euphoric noises that twitch and flicker through your ears and drums that sporadically knock on the door in rage. Suddenly Lee's voice tears through you with anger and passion as if you've just punched through the wall after a bad argument. You can hear the tears filling his eyelids, building up until he can't see and suddenly the water that's gathered bursts and pours down his cheeks. The distress comes across even more as Lee cries the lyrics "under the sea, under the sea" over and over again. |
| From that gruff, angry, sad vocal to one that is pure and angelic in So Long (God Is Dead). There's so much space for Lee's vocal to float up into the sky and disappear. The hymn-like song is overwhelmingly thought-provoking and that's down to the perfect combination of Lee's voice, dappling guitars and splashing cymbals. | From that gruff, angry, sad vocal to one that is pure and angelic in So Long (God Is Dead). There's so much space for Lee's vocal to float up into the sky and disappear. The hymn-like song is overwhelmingly thought-provoking and that's down to the perfect combination of Lee's voice, dappling guitars and splashing cymbals. |
| Lee tells me all his songs are about capturing a moment in time before it's gone, so he's constantly filling his wall with "Post-Its full of rubbish." Lee explains how the songs we've heard before and the ones on their debut are all about feeling "betrayed by the world". We talk about the way you feel when you're younger: "It's as if you're living in eternity at that age and it's wonderful." But then one day someone metaphorically comes along and tells you the truth about life. | Lee tells me all his songs are about capturing a moment in time before it's gone, so he's constantly filling his wall with "Post-Its full of rubbish." Lee explains how the songs we've heard before and the ones on their debut are all about feeling "betrayed by the world". We talk about the way you feel when you're younger: "It's as if you're living in eternity at that age and it's wonderful." But then one day someone metaphorically comes along and tells you the truth about life. |
| To Lee "the world suddenly does not want to know you. You feel betrayed. I think that's a very powerful time for everyone. It's a sense of loss and I think that makes you want to recover and savour it." | To Lee "the world suddenly does not want to know you. You feel betrayed. I think that's a very powerful time for everyone. It's a sense of loss and I think that makes you want to recover and savour it." |
| There's an urge with Money to create something that's meaningful and beautiful. Something they've already done but will continue to do. He thinks it's a "terrible loss" if people don't live life to the full. The band is trying to express feeling betrayed by reality but also "the acceptance of the futile", which is the main theme of their debut album The Shadow of Heaven. It explores the frustration of never quite getting to your own utopia or what you imagine heaven to be and how the human imagination takes you far beyond what you can ever really achieve or experience. | There's an urge with Money to create something that's meaningful and beautiful. Something they've already done but will continue to do. He thinks it's a "terrible loss" if people don't live life to the full. The band is trying to express feeling betrayed by reality but also "the acceptance of the futile", which is the main theme of their debut album The Shadow of Heaven. It explores the frustration of never quite getting to your own utopia or what you imagine heaven to be and how the human imagination takes you far beyond what you can ever really achieve or experience. |
| It's obvious that Lee is a writer and a big reader so when he tells me that "reading plays a big part" in the writing process it makes sense. After reading more and more he "improved vastly as a songwriter", yet Manchester also "has a lot to do with it". | It's obvious that Lee is a writer and a big reader so when he tells me that "reading plays a big part" in the writing process it makes sense. After reading more and more he "improved vastly as a songwriter", yet Manchester also "has a lot to do with it". |
| The writing process for the band works in quite a lot of ways. Lee tends to go back to London to write because he finds it less distracting. "I normally make music late at night, everyone's gone to bed and there's a piano downstairs and that seems to work." For Lee music is a "night-time phenomenon – not because it is made or influenced by things that only happen at night but because it is intensely private and lonely." | The writing process for the band works in quite a lot of ways. Lee tends to go back to London to write because he finds it less distracting. "I normally make music late at night, everyone's gone to bed and there's a piano downstairs and that seems to work." For Lee music is a "night-time phenomenon – not because it is made or influenced by things that only happen at night but because it is intensely private and lonely." |
| This intimacy hits you right in the chest when listening to Goodnight London. You can picture Lee sitting at his piano pouring his heart out over the keys singing about "every girl I ever loved" and "every boy I ever loved". It's as though his mind is seeping out. The track is simple and beautiful. Although it's 6 minutes and 38 seconds it could be a timeless soundtrack. After feeling as though you're sat next to Lee at the piano the track ends with another voice who's come into the room: "Jamie I'm going to bed..." and you slowly come back down to reality. | This intimacy hits you right in the chest when listening to Goodnight London. You can picture Lee sitting at his piano pouring his heart out over the keys singing about "every girl I ever loved" and "every boy I ever loved". It's as though his mind is seeping out. The track is simple and beautiful. Although it's 6 minutes and 38 seconds it could be a timeless soundtrack. After feeling as though you're sat next to Lee at the piano the track ends with another voice who's come into the room: "Jamie I'm going to bed..." and you slowly come back down to reality. |
| Listening to Money allows your mind to visit thoughts, ideas and memories you forgot were even logged in your head. What they're doing is truly amazing and when they release The Shadow Of Heaven I don't think I'll have the words to explain the way it makes me feel. | Listening to Money allows your mind to visit thoughts, ideas and memories you forgot were even logged in your head. What they're doing is truly amazing and when they release The Shadow Of Heaven I don't think I'll have the words to explain the way it makes me feel. |
| • Emily Brinnand is a freelance journalist, radio presenter and producer. You can follow her on Twitter @EmilyBrinnand. If you're in a northern band, Emily wants to hear from you so please Tweet her links to your music | • Emily Brinnand is a freelance journalist, radio presenter and producer. You can follow her on Twitter @EmilyBrinnand. If you're in a northern band, Emily wants to hear from you so please Tweet her links to your music |
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