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 06 July 2008 14:52 BST

Get Cape: Stop calling me 'political'

Thursday, 15 May 2008 14:51
Get Cape's new single is released on May 19th.
inthenews.co.uk's Lewis Bazley talks to Sam Duckworth about perseverance, politics and playing Glastonbury.

Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly - aka Sam Duckworth - earned critical adoration in 2005 for his charmingly-rendered emo-folk, all Death Cab-esque vocals, laptop-produced jerky backbeats and impressively intricate finger-picked melodies of love, loss and longing.

Already famed for his outspoken stance on Fair Trade and racism, few have been surprised to see Sam's concerts mildly interrupted by calls to action from the young troubadour and so earnest and honest were his exhortations that it never seemed an irritant.

Then something happened. Despite Find the Time, the lead single from his second album Searching for the Hows and Whys, containing the same joie de vivre that had empowered his debut, critics chose almost exclusively to focus on the 'political' songs on the album, (namely I Could Build You A Tower, prefaced by snippets of news reports of the Virginia Tech shooting), and started to label Sam "naïve" and "immature" and reject the richer content and delicate production of his sophomore album.

New single Keep Singing Out sees him rising above the criticism and to herald its release, inthenews.co.uk's Lewis Bazley talks to Sam about perseverance, politics and playing Glastonbury.

So what's the message of the new single Keep Singing Out?

It's quite similar to Call Me Ishmael in that it's a song that I wrote for myself but also for other people I know quite closely and it becomes just a reminder every time I play it and every time I hear it that, regardless of the situation or circumstances, to not give up and plough on with what you're doing. If you've committed yourself to do something and you've spent time working for something and it's something that you believe, then regardless of what goes on, just keep doing it, to the best of your abilities.

Is that something that's applicable to the rest of your music, in that it has a social agenda of sorts?

I don't know if I'd say a lot of it has a social agenda, I think a lot of it is based around the notion that you should go out and do the things that you want to do and achieve the things that you want to achieve. It's more something that you can take on board personally. This song is about being yourself and that's something I've always aimed to be, whether talking about social affairs, politics or being introspective.

Check out the video here:


The album version of course has the intro from Billy Bragg - working with such a hero of yours must have been exciting?

It was amazing. He was in town promoting something and originally he was just going to play some guitar on a track. And logistically, it was getting quite tight because it was quite late in the evening and we only had a couple of days left to finish the record. But I suppose what he's saying, the "keep singing out, keep singing proud" line, I guess it's a message that's quite central to a lot of Billy's music. But yeah, to be in the same room recording with him was quite nuts for me.

And Kate Nash is on the record as well - how did that come about?

I saw Kate a couple of years ago with a guy called Ben Kweller and I love watching Kate because she does her thing and she's got that unique voice. I originally played Better Things on my own and we thought it could work better as a duet so Kate sang it with me a couple of times live when she was touring with us. And in the process of her singing it with us live to us recording it for the album, she kind of blew up and became globally massive. But when we did it, it's still just a couple of friends making a track together, which is nice, I think.

Who other than Billy would you most like to work with at the moment?

I'd love to work with Massive Attack. I had the pleasure of going out to Africa with them and you got a handle from talking to them of how they work and the way they do things, which would just be really interesting to be involved in.

To read the rest of the inthenews.co.uk interview with Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly, click here

Lewis Bazley

Keep Singing Out is released on May 19th.End of story


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