INTERVIEWS
Simon Middleyard talks to epicure, music fan and all-round enthusiast for everything, Cosmo Jarvis.
Cosmo walks into the backstage area at the moment the support strike their first note – time for a hasty retreat… to a bench in the middle of King’s Square, York on a damp, cold October evening. To kick things off, for those who haven’t come across you before: sell yourself with a punchy sales-pitch. Musically speaking? Experimental… kindof…well, it depends on the time. Sometimes just cheesy pop, I skip between genres a lot, but also storytelling kind of stuff. Any specific influences? Yeah, a lot of Tom Waits, Grateful Dead, Crash Test Dummies, Joni Mitchell, Eiffel 65, a random mixture of everything really. There’s not a lot of people who can go from Joni Mitchell to Eiffel 65 that easily. Yeah, I don’t really judge it by artist, I go by song; I’ve got favourite songs and favourite artists. Let’s hear some of your favourite songs then. “I Think I’ll Disappear Now” by Crash Test Dummies, “Anywhere I Lay My Head” by Tom Waits…. Ah shit, um… “Friend Of The Devil” by Grateful Dead… and there’s this thing called “Sofa” I think by Frank Zappa – it’s this acoustic thing. I don’t know what the fuck it’s called; it’s amazing though. (Thinks hard for a last example) Ah yeah! “Too Lost In You” by Sugababes! Really love that! I could go on for so long… The word ‘eclectic’ definitely fits you! Thinking about the singer-songwriter angle that you’ve taken, do you write about your own experiences? Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes it’s straight from me, sometimes it’s bullshit. Sometimes it’s stuff I dreamt, things I just wish would happen, or wouldn’t happen, wish would happen to other people – it totally depends. But yeah, I try to go round all those kindof styles of songwriting as equally as I can. Your Press Release makes a big deal of the sheer volume of songs you’ve written already (“enough for 10 albums and he’s only 21”) – how did you choose what made it onto your debut album? I argue the fuck with my Managers and the label guys, then we work out which are the most sellable or which will sit best with a new audience, and then we kindof come to a conclusion; which is why the stuff on the album isn’t chronological – some stuff’s really old, some of them are really new. I’m sure that, by album five, there’ll still be songs left over from when I was fifteen. So is your plan to start off with the songs that are going to please people, then slowly get more obscure? I know what you mean, but no – I’ll argue against that coz it’s what everyone says. It’d be too easy for me to do that. I’ve got a lot of songs, like “Jessica Alba” and stuff – songs that you could use to make an album that people just hummed along to, but I wanted from day one to fuck myself up by putting other songs in there. I have slowed myself – and my Managers – down a lot, bless them, coz I didn’t want to just sell out. There’s some people you know would bend down and take a cock just to make it, but I’m not like that, so I try to put in as many experimental things as I can, so people know it’s staying true to… whatever it is in the beginning. This may seem like an ordinary question, but in a perfect world, where do you see your career in three years’ time? With all my albums that I’ve written out so I can be currently releasing music – bringing it out as I write it; to be directing and acting in films of my own – and of other peoples’ – and writing film scores too. You don’t seem scared of the prospect of fame and notoriety… Yeah, I love working and being busy, and if I’m not then I start getting weird, so I just have to do it and deal with any side effects. It’s such a shame in music – I mean, you have such amazing actors like Daniel Day Lewis who manage to not really be pestered, not really be seen, and he’s known for what he does as a profession – but in this world, it’s all about what you wear; what Reebok shoes you get given because you might get photographed in them, but I think the more you go into the industry, the more that kindof stuff will go. I hope. Are you a big film fan? I’ve always made films, I’ve got a load of movies up on YouTube, I’ve always made short films, and I know I’ve got a lot to learn in that field, but I’m getting there. I’ve always edited stuff, and I’m as passionate about that as I am about music. With music you’re limited in that everything has to be audible – you can still say whatever you want – but with film you can do anything. I like getting people together to act in movies, even though they’re not actors – I never use actors, just people I know. Which one actor to you really want to be like? Daniel Day Lewis, man. He’s probably the best actor I’ve ever seen. Oh, and also Charlotte Gainsbourg in “Antichrist” – actors like that who can just totally lose it. But Daniel Day Lewis, yeah, coz what he does he just does so well. I’d love to be able to work as an actor myself without ever having to go through drama school; just learn by watching movies, which is what I’ve done with everything else! OK, moving back to the music… have you got a pre-gig routine? I always have to wash my hands, even if they’re not dirty. And I listen to this piece of music called…um… fuck…I’ve forgotten who it’s by, I think it’s Schubert – but it’s really good. But I can’t play guitar if I haven’t washed my hands; it just feels dirty and weird. Is that something about you and the guitar, or just for comfort? I think it’s me and the guitar. It’s cosmic. I can’t feel it properly if I’m not clean. I’ve covered film like this, so which musical person do you most aspire to be like? I’d say Tom Waits, but I always say Tom Waits every single time! So, I’ll say… shit…I really, really like Crash Test Dummies for the way they’re produced. Actually I don’t like them, I like the album “God Shuffled His Feet” coz that’s the only album I’ve heard where every song’s perfect – their other stuff’s a bit rubbish – but on this album, every song’s just recorded and performed perfectly. So if I could make an album one day like that, so when people sit down to listen to it every song they’ll want to hear, and won’t bore them, that’s what I want. Final random question – what’s your favourite cheese? (Long pause) Red Leicester! You put more thought into that than anything else I’ve asked you tonight! Well, it’s weird. I don’t like things like Brie, but my brother loves Brie – I can’t get into it. I like Cheddar and Red Leicester: wholesome big, thick obvious cheeses that you bite into and you know you’re eating a bit of cheese. With Brie you don’t know what you’re eating, it could be anything.
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