Ready for the return of Kloot

THAT his gigs this weekend are his first in Ireland in seven years is a shock to John Harold Arnold Bramwell, the song-writing linchpin of the enigmatic I Am Kloot.

Thu, 19 Feb, 2015 - 00:00

“Time seems to speed up, as well,” the 50-year-old says. “I’ve noticed that as you get older. I was thinking it was about two or three years, but is it really that long?”

That same period was a high point for the band. Their 2010 album, Sky at Night, was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize and their sixth studio album, 2013’s Let It All In, gave I Am Kloot their highest UK chart placing.

Yet Bramwell describes his solo Irish gigs as a rebirth.

“I’m hoping to just come and start again, really, with me and my guitar, and see if I’ll be welcomed,” he says.

Why would he have any doubt?

“As you say, it’s a long time since we played. It’s a bit of a shot in the dark, really. Well (a), a lot of people will have forgotten about us and (b), they’d be like: ‘Well, we were fans, son, but you never bloody came and played’,” he says with a rueful chuckle.

As their name makes obvious, I Am Kloot have always been a contrary proposition. Based around themes of astronomy and insomnia, the success of Sky at Night had much to do with its coherence as an album. Bramwell takes pleasure that with Let It All In they returned to their usual eclectic selection.

This resistance to easy categorisation has remained since they began in 1999.

“There was this thing the NME started, they tried to put us in, ‘Quiet is the New Loud’, and we refused to be interviewed,” he giggles.

Regrets about not playing the game? Not a chance.

“I don’t think we could ever fit anyway,” he says. “I didn’t realise how much this industry, and the media and all of it, they’re all tied together in some way.

“And I do know now, more than I used to know then, about the business, but it doesn’t really alter the attitude of my approach. I think my aim is to put something more powerfully poetic into songs and I can see that, on a commercial sense, that’s not necessarily a strong horse to back.

“I know now how much money goes into certain bands to make people believe that they’re really great. Obviously, being from the standpoint I’ve taken, a poetical standpoint, it means that you’re never backed in that way.”

Bramwell has seen the rise and fall of enough artists to realise he’s in a privileged position. “It’s just a bit of a miracle I’m still here and this is still what I do,” he says.

I Am Kloot will release a live album this year, but things are otherwise quiet with the band. Bramwell sees these gigs as a chance to try out new material, while treating fans to songs from their whole catalogue.

“I think, sometimes, it’s maybe difficult for people to get hold of us and understand what it is we are, and I can get that,” he says.

“I like to retain mystery in the lyric and mystery in the song. I’m up for a good laugh at gigs and I like to tell a lot of stories, but, I think, within all of it, there’s quite a lot of mystery. I think that’s something I’d like to keep.”