Captain
Prefab five: With the wellspring of 1980s synthpop starting to run dry, bands are having to look towards the more indie-ish acts of that decade for their musical template. Guillemots have been channeling Aztec Camera, but Cambridge band Captain have been digging the melodic pop sounds of Prefab Sprout and Deacon Blue on their debut album This is Hazelville. The band's gangly, eccentric leader, Rik Flynn, could be a modern-day Paddy McAloon, or an upgraded Jarvis Cocker, combining songwriting nous with a certain misanthropic charm, and a resolutely old-fashioned dress sense. "I'm influenced entirely by my grandad," admits Flynn. "He always looked so right somehow, and I've been trying to emulate him ever since."
Odd jobs: Flynn's cohorts in Captain are co-singer/keyboard player Clare Szembek, guitarist Mario Athanasiou, bassist Alex Yeo and drummer Reuben Humphries. Flynn and Humphries were previously in a band called The Junket, who were influenced by Placebo (forgive them), Ride and Swervedriver. Szembek used to be a vocalist-for-hire to numerous dance acts, who needed a sultry siren's voice to entice clubbers onto the dancefloor. Her voice combines beautifully with Flynn's on such tracks as Frontline, Summer Rain and This Heart Keeps Beating for Me. Greek guitarist Athanasiou moved to the UK after finishing his military service, and failing to get into the Greek Army band because they didn't like his rendition of Radiohead's Karma Police. Bassist Alex Yeo played easy-listening music for old age pensioners on a cruise ship, then joined a Danish circus, playing backing musician to a troupe of performing dogs.
Around the Horn: With such a motley crew of musicians on board, Flynn's vision of an epic outfit full of drama and grace was close to realisation. All they needed now was a maestro in the producer's chair, and who better than Trevor Horn, the man behind Buggles and, more recently, pervy Russian girl duo Tatu? "We tried to think of the most unlikely, but brilliant, producer we could possibly work with, and that's how we came up with Trevor," explains Flynn. Horn clicked immediately with Captain's exuberant art-rock sound, and helped gather the band's wildly disparate ideas into a coherent album filled with boy-girl harmonies, euphoric brass and wild mood swings. "Whether it's melancholy or we're singing stories about people dying of cancer, we still want to cheer everybody up," says Flynn.
Glory be: Recent single, Glorious, hit the UK Top 20, and the album has just gone in at No 23, so Captain are well on the way to cheering up the record-buying public. By the way, the band's name comes from a dog (not a performing dog) that Flynn owned as a child.
