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The Review - MUSIC - grooves with RóISíN GADELRAB
Published: 12 February 2009

The Backhanded Compliments are set to play Hoxton bar and Kitchen

It’s more celebrity Sheffs

PREVIEW - THE BACKHANDED COMPLIMENTS
Hoxton Bar and Kitchen

DO WE really need another Sheffield guitar band? Haven’t we moved on to the next cool place on the map? Tom Rowley doesn’t seem to think so.
The former Milburn frontman is back with new band The Backhanded Compliments to play the Hoxton Bar and Kitchen on Monday.
When I speak to him he’s a little snowed in, staying home in the warm in Sheffield
“We went sledging the other day, it’s right good,” he says. “It puts everybody in a really good mood. The other night when it was proper pelting it down with snow I was walking down the street and everybody seemed in such a good mood, the streets were full and everybody were saying hello to each other.”
Rowley thinks it’s time the media got over its obsession with his industrial hometown and focused on the music instead.
“I don’t think it matters where you’re from. I understand a lot of the spotlight has been cast over Sheffield because of the whole [Arctic] Monkeys thing, but that’s died down. Certain publications focus on where people are from, that’s what they judge people on. As long as they are making good music it shouldn’t matter.”
Rowley has also been enlisted as the new guitarist in the ever-changing line-up of Sheffield’s Reverend and the Makers
“I like John [McLure] and he’s got a lot of good things to say,” says Rowley. “He’s very understanding and wants it to run alongside what we’re doing.”
The three-piece comprises Rowley, former Milburn drummer Joe Green and bassist Ryan Sellars, who all went to school together.
Rowley insists this incarnation is more mature than Milburn: “It’s a lot more loud and uncompromising. The songs are completely different. Milburn was more about the social scene, but just from the stuff we’re listening to – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Tom Waits, PJ Harvey – the lyrics are a lot more cryptic. It’s a bit more grown up.”
So where did it go wrong with Milburn? “Where did it go right? It ran its course,” says Rowley. “There was a bit of a difference of opinion and we went our separate ways. When you’re with a major record label you’re only in control of writing songs and a lot of the time people try to influence that, what songs are on albums, which are singles and it gets to a point where you’re not bothered anymore because there’s that many people trying to stick their nose in.”
Rowley describes the new EP as “very dark and loud...personal experience masked in another person’s point of view so it doesn’t seem so personal.”

• The Backhanded Compliments’ four-track EP will be available for sale at forthcoming gigs. They play the Hoxton Bar and Kitchen on Monday February 16.

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