Hue and Cry were always a pop group apart, and their journey through the last three decades has been as mercurial as it was unique. Intellectual rigour met blue-eyed soul; instant hits met rapidly changing markets; developing successful career diversification met expanding families. And not one single punch-up between the two brothers going through all these ch-ch-changes. After over 20 years of collaboration, the Kanes – that’s Patrick (vocals, the Cry) and Greg (self-confessed studio geek, providing the Hue) have reached Open Soul, Hue and Cry’s first pop album in 16 years. Pat and Greg previously made their mark in the late ‘80s with the hugely successful albums Seduced and Abandoned and Remote, spawning smash hit singles such as ‘Labour of Love’, ‘Violently’, and ‘Looking For Linda’ along the way. Their award winning style of strongly written pop songs fused with a unique brand of soul brought them continued success as the band marched into the nineties releasing more acclaimed work including the chart-storming Top Ten album Stars Crash Down, amongst others. Then they left pop and Hue and Cry behind – Pat dove into media work, from journalism to lectures, and a book, The Play Ethic, which proposes the "player" as a new identity for a productive, creative and meaningful life. Greg dove into soundtracks, sessions and the studio. But their collective pop voice refused to lie dormant. Mercifully, Open Soul underlines how Hue and Cry’s take on the mainstream remains singular – and how they’re slaves to no trend, nor any play-the-hits ‘80s bandwagon passing by package tour, only to the gut feeling that originally shaped their mainstream assault back in 1986. As Greg points out, “We haven’t tried to mimic, or fit in with, modern music. We make music that comes from us.” This means a reprise of the taut, intelligent, rigorous craft that typified them at the point where Scotland exploded with pop-tainted soul music – labelled “blue-eyed soul” in the early ‘70s to categorise Hall & Oates, Boz Scaggs et al. Alongside Hue and Cry, there was the likes of The Big Dish, Del Amitri, Danny Wilson, Deacon Blue and Texas. Yet none of them released singles that, say, described “the story of a working class Tory who’s fallen out of love with Margaret Thatcher,” as Hue and Cry’s second single ‘Labour of Love’ did. The track was also Hue and Cry’s debut hit single, delivered right after Virgin offshoot Circa has signed the Kanes after hearing their debut 45 ‘Here Comes Everybody’ (released on Glasgow indie Stampede). Pat was fresh out of university; Greg wasn’t even 20. It was a very proud No. 6 smash, and a declaration for three-dimensional pop melody, rhythm and communication. For starters, the band name - from the ancient expression (in Latin, hutesium et clamor, "a horn and shouting") used to alert the public to a criminal act. The songs could also be read as acts of public service, promoting the left-wing ideals - part polemic, part empathic – that represented the anti-Thatcher insurgency of that confrontational time. For the Kanes, the pop ’n’ politics fusion felt totally natural. “We always loved Stevie Wonder and great soul,” says Greg, “but we’ve always been frustrated with a lot of soul music because the lyrics let you down. People would say, ‘If you want to be angsty, why not sound like Bob Dylan or Billy Bragg?’, but can’t we deal with those topics and still be soulful and smooth? We know, Gill Scott Heron and Spearhead have done it too, but they’re very revolutionary, while Pat and I weren’t revolting against anything; we were just trying to get people to think about certain topics.” So what’s brought Hue and Cry back to the big, bad pop mainstream? “It’s the idea,” argues Pat, “that it’s worth putting your own complexity into the best songs you could possibly write, and then to connect that up to as big and popular an audience as possible.” This helps explain why, in April 2005, the duo took the brave/crazy/credibility-mashing decision to jump into the lion’s mouth of entertainment by accepting the offer to join ITV’s Saturday evening pop-competition show Hit Me Baby One More Time, where artists – mostly of an ‘80s hue – played their ‘greatest’ hit and then performed a cover before a public vote decided who was best. Playing ‘Labour Of Love’ and Beyoncé’s smash ‘Crazy In Love’, Hue and Cry won the fourth-week heat before narrowly losing in the final to (lest we forget, Glastonbury 2008 headliner) Shakin' Stevens. Pat: “The impetus behind Open Soul is partly from that show. The experience of singing pop songs in front of a huge audience had stopped about 1991, but it felt right to try again, to write three-minute songs again, without extended solos. To clear away all the rubbish and think, ‘what would be the songs you’d write without anyone standing over you?’. It was our attempt to find our own classic style again.” The title track’s concerns apply to all of us: “We now live in a demanding environment, a very fragmented culture, so how do you stay sane and coherent and persistent with the world? My own personal politics are pretty clear but there’s a lot more questioning and doubtfulness in these songs, rather than being too propagandist and militant. And that’s probably a good thing.” That said, ‘Headin’ For A Fall’ is a comment on Pat’s “uncertainty about politics and public life. ‘Labour of Love’ was a very defiant, strike-into-the-heart song, but I’ve got very cynical about politicians, and how the media has also robbed us of our capacity to see what’s true or false.” ‘European Child’, meanwhile, was inspired by Pat’s travels by public transport (he doesn’t drive), “a great place to pick up human stories. I met this little girl on a plane coming back from a gig in Monaco in 2000, who was flying between parents in different countries. My god, she was an absolute life force – spoke three languages… she seemed like the future of something, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. To this wee girl, Europe felt like her backyard, the way we’d regard running across town. And then 9/11 happened. Now the idea that the world is our oyster, and globalisation, is not necessarily a good thing. It’s one of the lyrics I’m most proud of on Open Soul.” So, Hue and Cry, 2009 – less hair, more experience and various accolades: they won the Lifetime Achievement award at Scotland’s Tartan Clefs in 2005 and they’ve performed alongside U2, James Brown, Van Morrison, Madonna and Simply Red. Two major UK tours followed the release of Open Soul, and February 2009 saw the release of a definitive selection of the band’s earlier work. Entitled ‘The Collection’, it includes hits, rare mixes, extended versions and B-sides and provides an all round accompaniment to Open Soul. In addition to the album/single releases and touring, the duo’s website (www.hueandcry.co.uk) has also incorporated into its platform innovative interactive elements, namely The Hue And Cry Music Club, with access to five channels – Public Stage (audio and video clips), Private Stage (unseen footage), Music Lab and Lyrics Lab (insights into songwriting and production) and History City (Hue and Cry’s ‘Fans Reunited’ social network). Right now, they’re pop musicians again, “and I’m going to enjoy the craziness this time rather than bemoan it,” Pat grins. “First time around, everything was high stakes and high anxiety – chart positions led to despair! – but not this time. I’ve had too many adult experiences to worry about things going out of control.”. As they gear up to engage new fans, with a new album, new shows, and new recordings to come, the brothers Kane have a long-term plan to stick around and continue to do what they do best – writing and producing classic pop music with a contemporary edge. - MARTIN ASTON
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