Andy Burrows

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Ishtar Music and Just Because present:
ANDY BURROWS



Who is Andy Burrows? No-one really seems to know. Is he a songwriter? A singer? A producer? A collaborator? A drummer? An ex-drummer? Pinning down this affably anxious 32-year-old is a tough task. Until recently, his Wikipedia page was a wonderfully vague entry that surmised the multi-instrumentalist-singing-drumming-songwriter thus: “Andy Burrows began his musical career as a percussionist in the Hampshire County Youth Band”. Burrows himself neither had the skills necessary to amend the page, and was too embarrassed to ask someone else to do it.

So let’s embellish the story of the Hampshire County Youth Band’s percussionist extraordinaire then, shall we? In the mid-‘00s, Andy Burrows was an out-of-work drummer. Two bands, both employing the late-‘90s one-syllable-four-letters rule of bandnames, User and Stag, had led him down a cul-de-sac of toilet tours and eventual splits. Then he joined an up’n’coming indie band called Razorlight, wrote their biggest hit, toured the world, headlined Reading, had fun, fanfare and fistfights along the way. Then he left Razorlight. His songwriting prowess already demonstrated, it seemed entirely reasonable that Burrows would embark on a solo career. And so he did. His last year with Razorlight had seen the release of his first solo album, the quaint lo-fi lullabies of Colour Of My Dreams, and in the summer of 2010, Andy release his first post-Razorlight solo album, the glorious glitch-pop of Sun Comes Up Again.

“I’m really proud of that record,” he says now. “But having come out of a band that seemed not to have a problem getting on the radio, it had become a bit of an obsession.” It was released under the guise of I Am Arrows, a slightly neurotic decision says Burrows now, but one borne out of trying to step out of the shadow of his former band. Now, on the cusp of releasing his third solo album, the I Am Arrows mask has been scrapped; Company is an album by Andy Burrows. “After I left Razorlight, I feel like the small amount of people who cared were like, Well, you’ve left a big band, what you gonna do now? I did feel that pressure. But now I feel like I’ve slowly been building stuff back up for myself, and I don’t feel like I’m making a record off the back of Razorlight. Now, I’m not worried about doing it under my own name at all.”

It’s an album that came about almost by accident. Having been a part-time member of We Are Scientists – he drummed on their 2010 album Barbara – whilst recording Sun Comes Up Again, Burrows played with them at their Glastonbury show that summer before returning to his solo duties. The problem, though, was that there didn’t seem to be any solo duties. “I just spent the next couple of months sitting around waiting for something to happen,” he explains. “Then, something just clicked, and I thought, I don’t wanna just wait. My ego isn’t big enough just to sit there and wait and think I’m that important. I wanna be out playing.”

What followed saw Burrows embark on an incredibly prolific purple patch. First he joined up with long-time friend and Editors frontman Tom Smith as Smith & Burrows for 2011’s Funny Looking Angels, an album of wintery vignettes and Christmas melancholy. Then, he agreed to decamp in New York to become a full-time Scientist alongside Keith Murray and Chris Cain. Before that, he released If I Had A Heart, a one-off single with independent label Distiller, wrote a song for promising starlet Delilah that appears on her imminently released debut, did the soundtrack for spy comedy Johnny English 2 with Ash frontman Tim Wheeler and embarked on an unfinished band/project with Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt. A new solo album was on his to-do list, he insists, but not for the foreseeable future.

“My plan was to put out a couple of singles whilst we did Scientists,” he says, “and then PIAS offered me a record deal. I thought, Fuck it, if there’s people who believe in me, I’d love to make a record. I wasn’t planning to, but I had the songs, so why not?” The result is an album that’s Burrows’ truest yet. If the radiant Sun Comes Up Again was imbued with a deliberate contrary streak (“I think there’s a few more bleeps on it than there would have been if I’d been more myself,” he says now), then here Burrows embraces a straight-ahead approach; write a song, put it down. It was an idea that had its roots on the Smith & Burrows tour. “We did a version of If I Had A Heart that was very stripped-down. It was getting such a good reaction that it made me realise, That’s what this record has to be about.”

From there, Burrows has built an album steeped in rock classicism and raw, melancholic melodies. He had tried once before to emulate the uncontrived approach that Elton John employed on 17-11-70, his famously stripped-down live album, but to no avail. Here, though, with the pressure off, Burrows sounds effortlessly intoxicating. Self-produced (“I’m not bothered about becoming a producer, but I’m not embarrassed to sit in the studio and say where I think the song should go”) with Smith & Burrows knob-twiddler Tim Baxter assisting him, some of the songs have existed in various forms for years. The plaintive, euphoric swirl of Hometown sits at the centre of the record. The album’s oldest song, it was demoed when Burrows was still a member of Razorlight song (“although,” says Andy, “it was just me doing it with piano and strings, I’m not sure the others even heard it”). A stark beginning that gives way to an orchestral whoosh before coming to a sudden end just as you think it might explode into a classic prog opus, it’s less-is-more approach sums up the whole record.
 
Then there’s the rock’n’roll stomp of Keep On Moving On – a song that Beady Eye, or, indeed, any of the last five Oasis albums, were crying out for. Emerging during Burrows’ studio time with Mark Ronson (Ronson has a co-credit) and Andrew Wyatt, Burrows’ decided he liked it so much he wanted to keep it for himself. Its Brian Wilson harmonies, summer-of-love groove and Guitar Hero solo (courtesy of We Are Scientists’ Keith Murray) showcase a previously-unseen swagger. When Burrows says that Company marks the first time he’s had to confidence to make a record “exactly how I felt musically and lyrically”, Keep On Moving On is the proof.

The enigmatic allure of the title track, meanwhile, sees Burrows at his most achingly reflective. “I always feel like I’m in dramatic situations,” he says. “And whether that’s with Razorlight, or my family, I think I’ve learnt recently that I thrive on drama. That it’s not everyone else – it’s me! That song is just an outpouring of emotions. Although all the songs on this record are…” They’re not always executed quite as delicately, however. Whilst the string swells and hazy, percussive march of Company, the bittersweet Lennon-esque Somebody Calls Your Name and the atmospheric dreaminess of Stars are delivered with a charming restraint, the incessant pound of Shaking comes across like peak-era Supergrass. All are injected with Burrows’ way with an earworming hook. As he says, with a simplicity that rather underplays his third album’s achievement: “there’s 11 songs on the album. There’s some slightly rockier ones.”

Company is the sound of an artist who’s thrown the shackles off and emerged as an bewilderingly creative tour-de-force. “I want for as many people as possible to hear this,” he concludes. “Every day, I just make sure I don’t sit on my arse. I wanna be working the entire time. I don’t wanna have a day off until I’m where I wanna be. I wanna have a hit record, whether I wrote it, recorded it or drummed on it. And I’ll keep making records until everyone loves it. And then they’ll go back and dig the back catalogue.” And that, in thrilling fist-on-the-table proof, is exactly who Andy Burrows is. 



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