Well, this is a bit different from the usual gig experience, and definitely a new venue: the launch of the latest LUSH album, Best Day Of All Time, was at its Oxford Street premiere store, with music from three of the artists featured on the album. We’ve reviewed a couple of these releases previously, but here’s the lowdown: Lush Co-Founder and devoted music enthusiast Mark Constantine has championed what we might call tribute albums for particular decades. There’s been songs from the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, and now the Noughties, around three dozen songs given new life in the hands and voices of musicians who are mostly, but not exclusively, better known for folk music. It’s a passion project; depending on one’s ears, some of the songs are unsaveable no matter who sings them, some are given a whole new life and some sound quite like the original. It’s a concept that’s always worth the investigation, though.
The evening had an interview with Mark Constantine at its centre, bookended with half-hour sets from artists featured on the album, starting with Clara Pople, Essence Martins and then Americana UK favourite Beans On Toast. It was a pretty relaxed event, as befits a party; there were drinks and nibbles, and a few famous faces. Sam Lee appeared halfway through, but sadly only as a partygoer.
Clara Pople does have a band, but tonight she’s solo, and as she explains, she doesn’t play an instrument, but she can sing and produce backing from looping her own vocals. Describing her music as “Neo-Celtic Trip-Hop“, she’s certainly not your everyday folksinger, with first impressions maybe pushing the names “Toyah” and “Enya” to the front of the mind – whether or not that counts as a compliment we can’t say, but the first is for the fashion sense, and the second is the waves of “celticy” sound that the first songs feature. One song is introduced as inspired by The Lark Ascending, an indication that Pople pulls on a wide range of influences. She also runs regular small-scale gigs on her houseboat, moored up in South London.
It fell to BBC Radio6 presenter Chris Hawkins to interview Mark Constantine. Questions took a while to get around to the album itself, as also new from Constantine is a book of business advice in the form of poetry, an expanded edition of the biography by his friend Jeff Osment, and the small matter of how big the company is now (850 stores and 13 spas). And why he misses The Body Shop: he watched their mistakes, and then decided not to copy them: that’s no longer an option.
When discussing Best Day Of All Time, Hawkins asked about how Constantine’s musical tastes have changed, adding was it fair to say he was more about folk these days. There was an emphatic “No!“, which might seem surprising considering how the LUSH albums mostly feature what can broadly be called folk artists, but it was explained that it made sense because folk musicians are “the ultimate cover artists“. A perspective not many music listeners have when they pick up on a tune is how it might become a bathroom product, but to Constantine, there’s always the chance that “you hear a tune and think ‘I could make a bubble bath like that’“.
Next up on the music side was Essence Martins, who, with her two backing singers and herself on acoustic guitar, was much more in the realm of the conventional folk singer-songwriter with a beautiful voice. This was a hometown gig for her; she used to work in this very LUSH outlet. Her music is decidedly upbeat and can lead into a certain innocence; Brussel Sprouts is an ode to the love she has for her twin sister, who even got her to eat that vegetable. To Martins’ surprise, a quick room check indicated it was quite the favourite amongst these central London partygoers. Red Velvet is about cupcakes, which Essence Martins declared her undying love for, but it’s also about an ex and how it hurts to find, “I was your favourite, now I’m no-one to you.” There’s some sweet bitterness here, and this little bit of edge moves her music a little way away from the purely comfortable folk of the likes of Honey And The Bear.
It was left to the final musician of the night, Beans On Toast, to articulate how unusual a gig this was for him; normally it wouldn’t smell so nice, and the lights would be turned down a bit more, and he’d have a beer rather than a fancy can of pop. Nothing daunted he launched his way through a half dozen songs with his down-to-earth assessment of the importance of family life and taking time to take in the world. Before singing his contribution to Best Day Of All Time, he noted that as well as being surprised to be asked to contribute, he’d also thought he’d blown it when his suggestions of different songs by The Libertines got rebuffed. Rather appropriately, it turned out that instead they’d wanted him to tackle Keb Mo’s Life Is Beautiful, a perfect fit alongside his own songs, such as Any Given Tuesday, which rightly idealises the minutiae of being a parent to a seven-year-old.
And so, back into the night, with Oxford Street already gearing up for the Christmas rush and, yes, with a Gift Bag in hand and the reflections that it is possible to indulge one’s interests (and that’s not a disparaging remark since it is undeniable that releasing triple albums of covers of the boss’s favourite songs by a variety of new and established mostly folk artists is in no way the core business of LUSH) and at the same time produce something that is worthwhile doing.
