Mojave 3 Torn Between Country and Englishness

I don't think this is a country record. It's not a country record," insists soft-spoken Neil Halstead, singer/guitarist and primary songwriter for the deceptively named quintet Mojave 3. "There's an element of country, but there is an Englishness to it as well."

Whatever his argument may be, fact of the matter is, Mojave 3's sophomore album, Out of Tune (also a misnomer), sounds more like it emerged from the arid landscapes of the Wild West than the sandy beaches of England's southern surfing town of Cornwall. The album is full of wide-open spaces and twangy guitars, with Halstead's understated, rough-hewn vocals gently placed on top. The barroom ballad "Some Kinda Angel," the pleading "Caught Beneath Your Heel" and "Baby's Coming Home," which manages to be light-hearted and weighty simultaneously, make this ten-song collection a surefire underground classic, in the U.K. and the U.S.

"Most of our influences are American -- Gram Parsons and Hank Williams and bands like Wilco -- but we never thought, 'We're gonna make a country record,'" continues Halstead. "We just wanted to do something a bit different." And though Out of Tune may be filed under Americana, the roots from which it grew are decidedly English.

Back in 1989, Halstead was making some blistering feedback and esoteric melodies with the aptly named Slowdive. Signed to Creation Records on the strength of a demo tape, Slowdive gained a following as three-minute, dream-pop bands moved into popularity under the umbrella term "shoegazer" music, but fell off the press-darling list when that genre was deemed passe back in 1994. By 1995, Slowdive had left their label due to promotion/marketing disputes, and Halstead found himself out of a job.

"We left Creation, Nick [Chaplin, bass] and Christian [Savill, guitar] had left the band and we sort of just decided to call it quits," recalls Halstead. "We got to the point where we were kind of quite bored with the whole thing, and I think everyone wanted to do something a bit different." Taking his American influences and distaste for the Britpop scene in stride, Halstead quickly regrouped with Slowdive singer/guitarist Rachel Goswell, recruited percussionist Ian McCutcheon and pianist Christopher Andrews, and headed back into the studio. "Slowdive was really about loud guitars and just making strange noises," Halstead remarks. "But we didn't really want to be part of a British scene. So we just went into the studio and put some sounds down, seeing if we could get a record deal."

After recording a six-song demo tape in just two days, Mojave 3 were quickly snapped up by 4AD, home to acts like This Mortal Coil and the Cocteau Twins, from whence shoegazing sprang in the first place. But even with the label known for ethereal and spacious sounds footing their studio bill, Halstead et al guided their sound in a different direction. Mojave 3's 1995 debut, Ask Me Tomorrow, with its country-twinge and stripped-down sentiments, spoke nothing of the contemporary music coming out of England at the time, and drew more comparisons to Nick Drake and Bob Dylan than to Oasis, Blur or Pulp.

"I don't think there's anything unique about what we do. I mean, we're a band, and we write songs. I don't think we are doing anything terribly original," Halstead says modestly, adding that fame is the least of his goals. "I think we're getting better known; I mean, I think we've always had that sort of core fan base. I don't think it will ever be crazy."

Obviously, Mojave's forthcoming tour with the Mercury Prize-winning Gomez has yet to kick off, or Halstead would know the meaning of crazy.

HEIDI SHERMAN(January 14, 1999)