Theirs is a tale of fate, fortune and a great big fire. But first, our story begins with Adam Shaw, now the singer, playing drums in a band with James Durrant, now chief songwriter and bassist and guitarist Ali Boyd. Confused? They were. “We were all playing the wrong instruments,” admits James. But their hard-won years of gigging in toilet venues up and down the country did see them named ‘band of the year’ in a Manchester battle of the bands, winning them free Domino’s pizza for a year. (They’ll be winning better things than that before long).
Learning the lessons of their first incarnation, they organised a line-up reshuffle, and then another and another before finally recruiting drummer Ben Townshend following “a brief bromance,” and burrowed down to the serious business of plotting their debut album.
When the band felt their songs and sound were good enough, they went looking for a deal. They were lucky enough to find themselves signed by the first record company to hear them, snapped up by B-Unique Records under cloak and dagger after just one showcase, which was organised by their then manager, Chris Kimsey.
The band were then packed off to Los Angeles for test sessions with producer Butch Walker in a wooden house in Malibu borrowed from Flea, the Red Hot Chili Pepper. The sessions went well – too well. On their arrival back to London, the wild forest fires came and destroyed the house, and almost everything in it, in just 20 minutes.
James explains: “Of the few things that were saved from the fire, no joke, our master tapes which were on the hard drive were one of the only things that got out. The ceiling was apparently collapsing in.” The engineer on duty grabbed a bunch of hard drives, a few family things, bundled the cats and dogs into the back of the car and drove for his life. It really was – being a gated community, the security system was shutting down the gates. The guy made it out with seconds to spare.
Explains Ali: “First of all we were thinking ‘fuck, the poor guy’s house had burned down. Then we thought ‘fuck, all the instruments, all the nice amps, they’ve burned. Then we thought ‘shit all our master tapes. But you can’t really say to a man whose house had burned down, ‘yeah so, could you look for our band recordings, they’re really important to you. It took a week to confirm that the tapes had survived.”
The following six months saw the band record 7 tracks with Butch and another 5 tracks with producer Toby Smith. The album was recorded in a succession of better fireproofed buildings on a rollercoaster journey that saw them holed up in Charlie Chaplin’s mistresses’ old house, a building owned by Tito Jackson, recording in bedrooms and hotel rooms and inheriting a crossbow from Jarvis Cocker. Sorry Jarvis, but they’ve grown rather fond of that crossbow. With the album complete, and California a surreal memory, they’re ready to take it out to the world.
Adam and James used to fight like brothers and from that came up with the band name Kin of Kane. It was soon shortened to Kinkane, and it’s now about to become a by-word for songs of dreams and destiny and drama. Of bringing out the grandest of gestures have been missing in rock’n’roll for too long. Their ambitions are refreshingly immodest, their songs custom-built for stadium moments. They list with pride inspirations such as Queen, Peter Gabriel and Roxy Music. “In terms of bands like Queen, we like bands that do things on a big scale.”
“It’s not particularly introspective,” admits Adam of their resolutely swaggering canon of songs. “We don’t sing about pain and suffering, except for most of the time but it’s not navel gazing – it’s bigger and louder than that.”
“All of the songs are heavily descriptive of the political situations in the world,” says James, tongue firmly within cheek. “But it’s very hidden, under ‘yeah yeah yeah’ and ‘la la la’. I think that’s important.”
Dour confessionals they may not be, but the songs do speak volumes about the human condition. Take first single, the instant anthem that is ‘Still Feel The Same’, a break-up song of sorts that ends up being delivered as a clarion call of hope. “Sometimes the most upbeat songs musically can be the most downbeat lyrically,” says James, “it just ends up like that. Then there’s the peacock strut that is ‘Clever Science’. Or ‘Because Of You’, a die-cast hands-in-the-air moment if ever one existed.
All these delights await you in 2009, and Kinkane are out, and proud, to own the next 12 months completely. “What we’re really bored of,” says Adam finally, “is bands who don’t seem to be having it.”