MUSIC

They came in search of Mark Stewart and found a sound that mixes punk abandon, dub textures and proper-job musicianship. Julian Owen greets Rock In Your Pocket.

Plenty of reasons to move to Bristol, of course. Far as we know, mind, this particular one has only previously been proffered by Nick Cave. “We came looking for Mark Stewart!” says Rock In Your Pocket guitarist Ben Fisher. He’s only half joking. Singer/bassist Charlie Beddoes shares the love for The Pop Group founder. “A tape of Mark Stewart & The Maffia is my prize possession,” she says. “I’ve got people to join my band from that tape: ‘What are you into?’ Listen to this! ‘Right, I’ll join.’ It’s got ‘Learning To Cope With Cowardice’ on it, one of my favourite quotes: ‘He lived a life of going to do, and died with nothing done.’ Repeat that to yourself each morning and you’ll get up and do stuff.”

In early 2009, top of the ‘to do’ list for the born-and-bred London pair was ‘move to Bristol’. On a previous visit here, recalls Ben, they’d “ended up jamming with someone, and things just happened; they didn’t in London.” Initially that meant just the two of them (“we’re a bit Spinal Tap with drummers”) writing and rehearsing “in a dingy garage in Easton. It just felt really good, after not doing music for a year in London, to let it all out in a wail of feedback.”

Eventually, amid the feedback, they found their sound. But only after a fashion, says Charlie: “It was like a journey through genres. One song sounded like Suzi Quatro, another like White Zombie, another like No Doubt – they didn’t have integrity as a whole. But it gave us the concept of Rock In Your Pocket, which is more all genres mixed together in capsule form.”

It most assuredly is. Rock Desk first came across RIYP when ‘Le Son De L’Argent (Dirty Hands)’ featured on an Inner City Grit compilation, the track coquettishly coming on like an extra chapter in the history of Serge Gainsbourg’s fantasy squeeze, Melody Nelson, this being the one where she’s held to ransom by Sonic Youth. Phwoar, we thought. It also made good on Charlie’s claims for the Maffia: “[Stewart’s] bass player Doug Wimbish is definitely an influence. Also Adrian Sherwood’s production, those epic delays, washes of dub.”

Next – and engendering ‘Ooh, this lot really are a serious proposition’ confirmation – we caught them live. Drummer Chris Langton was part of the set-up by now; “the most important part,” says Ben, in a band where punk abandon meets dub texture. “You need to have the big sticks and the little sticks; it’s all about the groove.” Which is precisely what we found: “RIYP’s Charlie Beddoes is all peroxide and eye shadow like Courtney Love’s classier younger sister, Dealing out woOoing propulsive bass to slashing thigh-slung guitar, tidily crash-rolling drums, and offering side roads into Slits-y dub. All told, punk intent allied to ‘proper’ musicians’ ambition, nowhere better than ferocious pile-driving roar of closer ‘The Ugly Face Of Rage’ with its Ministry-recalling speed and roil.”

Turns out we were right about the ‘proper’ musicians tag. Charlie has bassed for the likes of Emilíana Torrini, Trash Palace (with Brian Molko) and Michael J Sheehy. She and Ben met when both played with Martin Grech. “I’ve vowed not to session again, no matter how much the money is, which is hard when you’re skint,” she says. “Lovely as they all were, it’s much more satisfying to play to 50 people with your own tunes than 5,000 with somebody else’s.”

And your own ideas. From the name on down (“it’s the rock in your pocket that you’re not going to throw, but you could; suppressed aggression”), this is a band of thoughtful approach. New single ‘Doubtbox’ is a smartly named song about computing, “about paranoia and isolation from the point of view of being a text/Facebook/email addict,” says Charlie. “In the olden days you’d sit home and wait for the phone to ring; now it’s ‘I sent a message on Facebook and they didn’t message me back!’ Same old dilemmas, different context.”

“‘Let them eat cake’ is a phrase we’re throwing around a lot at the moment,” says Ben. “It’s ‘The Big Society’ and David Cameron is like Marie Antoinette: ‘Oh, let them all help each other.’ It’s obsessing us at the moment, which is why at the launch there’ll be free cake.” Of the single he says: “When we play it live it’s quite tribal, like The Birthday Party, but it’s also got a singalong chorus. I do worry sometimes that we’re too poppy for the noise scene and too heavy for the quieter side.” Charlie picks up the theme in talking about her “love of the great eccentric British pop single: The KLF’s ‘What Time Is Love’, The Sweet’s ‘Ballroom Blitz’. The only thing recently that’s made me think ‘great British pop single’ is Dizzee Rascal, ‘Bonkers’. It does it all, but in a really short, high-impact form. I love that about music. But then I also love early 80s industrial nastiness like Throbbing Gristle, where music isn’t music, it’s about metabolic assault. Really weird mixing up The Sweet and metabolic assault, how do you do that? I don’t know, but we try.”

ROCK IN YOUR POCKET LAUNCHED ‘DOUBTBOX’ AT THE MOTHER’S RUIN, BRISTOL ON THUR 2 JUNE. FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/ROCKINYOURPOCKET

Copyright Julian Owen 2011