HELSINKI

As the name may suggest Drew McConnell’s HELSINKI is the side project of Drew McConnell, bass player in Babyshambles and musician to the stars, judging by his vivacious CV and the rollcall of musicians on ‘A Guide For The Perplexed’.

For as well as the guest artists such as Pete Doherty, Albert Hammond Jr, Fionn Regan and Emma Gillespie, the free-flowing HELSINKI band vibe incorporates the stellar talents of drummer Seb Roachford (Polar Bear), double bassist Spencer Brown (Andy Sheppard), guitarist Matt Park (Mystery Jets), keyboardist Stephen Large (Squeeze, Paul Heaton), percussionist Jamie Morrison (The Noisettes, Stereophonics) and violinists Johnny Fielding (Larrikin Love) and Gillian Maguire (Soko, Swim Deep). These are the industry’s backroom dreamers helping to haul Drew into the limelight.

Indeed the sweet irony is that the lead-off single is the terrific ‘Rising Heights’, released on February 23rd, in which Drew stars on his vocal lonesome. Like the rest of ‘A Guide For The Perplexed’ it is a song with its heart on its tattered sleeve and its tattered sleeve reaching for the ragged sky, a coy melody uncurling from a nonchalant gumbo of organic acoustic soundscapes which are jaunty and sulky and trampy and ever-so-gently riotous, frequently all at the same time. At one choice moment in ‘Choices’ you will experience the exotique sounds of French reggae, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Somewhat amazingly ‘A Guide For The Perplexed’ was recorded live over TWO DAYS in Ben Hillier’s studio, the Pool Room in Bermondsey, by engineer Mark Rankin (Adele, QOTSA, Florence & The Machine). “I guess you could say it was produced by me,” says Drew, “But really I just played the guys the chords a couple of times on the acoustic guitar and told them loosely how I’d imagined it to sound arrangement-wise. I know all these guys so well and have played with them all so much that we have a kind of shorthand with each other musically. It didn’t even strike me as an odd way to do it until I’d spoken to people about it afterwards. It does give the recordings a certain freshness though, as for everyone in the room the songs were literally brand new. The parts you’re hearing are being imagined, executed and recorded all at once.”

He knows his musical onions, does Drew: as well as this here Helsinki project and the Babyshambles day job he went barking mad with Mongrel alongside various Arctic Monkeys and Reverend And The Makers, and has performed with a multitude of other characters, from The La’s to Lethal Bizzle to Africa Express with Damon Albarn, Gruff Rhys and Flea in Lagos and Paris – all this alongside his long-term involvement with the Love Music Hate Racism movement. Heck, his provenance is so profoundly impressive search hard enough and you’ll find that a baby-faced Drew appeared on fierce panda’s ‘Mosh & Go’ compilation a few lifetimes ago as part of a punk band.

So he’s lived a few lively lives, has Mr McConnell. Even so, the free-flowing communal musical vibe of Helsinki is surely light years away from the fight club gang mentality of, say, Babyshambles, right? “Well, the guys that play in Helsinki are all my closest friends, really,” he ponders. “Besides being the folks I look up to the most musically they’re also the folks I drink with, go on writing holidays with, walk in parks talking about girls, art, politics, arguments, breakfast cereals, astronomy and dishwater tablets with. They’re the people that populate my life – I share a flat with two of them. The record makes me so happy because I hear their personalities all over it.

“A gang? Well, you might not find us bowling through Soho together wearing leather jackets, but it’s not unusual to see a handful of us stumbling through Highgate Cemetery arguing about Miles Davis and the Arab Spring…”

Drew on the ‘Coast of Silence’ project:
My name is Drew McConnell. I am Irish, though I have lived in Spain, France and Cornwall. Now I live in London. I play in a band called Babyshambles, which is my main job and something I love doing. I also play with Fionn Regan, The Lost Brothers, Seb Rochford and more oddballs besides. I also do this thing called Helsinki, which is a nickname my friend Jamie Morrison gave me many moons ago. Jamie (a fine drummer) and I have played together around London for years, with a gradually increasing pool of musician friends. Whenever a show consisted predominantly of songs I had written, it tended to get billed as “Helsinki”. I guess it kind of stuck. I like it because Helsinki can be anything… Just a name that covers music I make, alone or with my friends.

About a year into Helsinki’s burgeoning gigging life, the bands existence became further galvanised when we were asked to record a song for a Love Music Hate Racism CD. We ended up cutting four songs (but only released “Ampersand”). Late 2013 will see the Helsinki mob return to the studio with Producer Stephen Street to finish a full band album. Excited about that.

Now a few words about this project/phase that Helsinki currently finds itself in. A little over a year ago I was in a pretty horrible accident. A car hit me while I was on a bike, breaking my spine in 3 places, 5 ribs, a shoulder, knee and basically mangling me up good and proper. While recovering, I decided to spend a little time in isolation on a tiny stretch of coastline called The Coast Of Silence. I didn’t speak to anyone for over a month. The chaos, noise & carnage of the recent past fell away, leaving me on the shore, staring at the ocean in front of me, infinite and comforting.

Anyway… during this welcome exile it became born upon me that I hadn’t written any new songs for quite a while. I figured since I was here alone, with my body in so much pain and my mind racing, that I may as well try. Over the course of two weeks 22 songs pretty much fell out. Twelve of them seemed to fit together, so I threw down demo versions. I saw the process as a form of therapy, never intending to play them to anyone, let alone release them.

When I came back to London and eventually played them to my friend Mark, he told me the fact the songs were not intended to be heard by anyone was precisely what was good about them, and I should put them out as they are… a species of private diary entries, written from the edge of the end of the world.

Though the recorded music is just me, the project has of late become very much a collaboration. In this instance however not with other musicians, but an exceptionally talented artist called Barney Bodoano (although he is also a phenomenal guitarist & composer, check out his band Cat Meat at catmeat.bandcamp.com). Barney has succeeded in representing, in the most remarkable way, the exact feeling of the music from the Coast Of Silence in visual form. The art & music collaboration we have going at drewhelsinki.com has me the most excited I’ve been in years. We plan to continue releasing a song every 2 weeks, but also to increase artistic activity as the weeks go by. Elaborations on themes in various forms, including GIFs and videos, and lots more. We’re building a little Helsinki universe here, come visit us as often as you like. Yours, standing on one leg, Drew.