There's an interview with Tom Barman on French website Evene, with a video in which he talks about Girls in Hawaii (he doesn't really know their music, but he's happy that they're breaking through, and they'll be playing at several festivals where dEUS play -- but not working with them, as the interviewer wrongly wrote), Zita Swoon (he adores Giving Up the Hero, thinks Stef is a great songwriter, but he wishes the music were a little wilder at times) and Jacques Brel (he's just too great to be covered).
In the interview, Tom stresses the importance of Klaas in the dEUS sound, because he plays the violin in a unique way, and also does keyboards & percussions -- which makes him the sportsman of the band when he has to juggle between all those instruments on stage. Tom loves playing Sun Ra and Oh Your God because they are very physical songs. He says The Vanishing of Maria Schneider took its final form when he tried to croon like Iggy Pop on his debut solo album The Idiot. He also claims that he'd love to sing in French, but he'd end up sounding like a bad imitation of Serge Gainsbourg. He's written a few songs in Dutch, but since dEUS is his "ticket to travel", he sticks to English with the band. He recently bought The Gutter Twins' Saturnalia, because he loves Greg Dulli & Mark Lanegan, as well as the Beirut album.
Evene also reviewed Vantage Point: they give it 4 stars and think Oh Your God is the key song of the album.
Tomorrow at noon Tom Barman will be the guest of Belgian radio La Première's 'Culture Club' programme.
And right now you should tune in to the Beeb's 6Music website and listen to dEUS playing an acoustic session. So far they've done The Vanishing and they're now doing some sort of play-back performance of The Architect. I suspect the ghettoblaster's receiving some more love.
Interview with Tom on the website of French magazine Les Inrocks. Again, I'll only summarize any information not published in another interview.
- First, the interviewer writes that Slow is a dark diamond that would make Radiohead jealous.
- Tom feels that his "creative virus" is back. The idea now is to explore how far the current dEUS line-up can go, music-wise. He however still finds it hard to write new songs, and wonders about that "intervention", when you've been stuck for days and suddenly you write a whole song in just five minutes (like Eternal Woman, written right after seeing a Pixies documentary).
- Prince's Parade album was his main influence for Vantage Point. He likes that album because it's short, pop, rock, it's got ballads and it's fun.
- After the autumn 2005 concert in Lille (F), Tom wanted to call it quits for dEUS, but the Paris concert a few days after made him feel that "they were back". He quotes John Lennon to say that he just adapted to the new situation and decided to go on.
- The at times "spoken word" aspect of Tom's singing comes from his love for the 90's "white man rap", à la Beastie Boys, Massive Attack & Tricky. Back then he also enjoyed A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy & Wu-Tang Clan.
- He doesn't mind that dEUS has been labelled as "arty rock", because the brain is the sexiest body part. He also thinks that serious-looking artists are often actually the funniest and dirtiest people -- and the opposite is also true.
Highlights from dEUS-fr's summary of the Tom Barman interview in French mag "Noise" -- just the stuff we haven't heard from other interviews:
- It's still a mystery to Tom how Pocket Revolution had commercial success and allowed them to play in many major venues.
- He doesn't like the idea that his songs have to grow on people, even the ones he feels are "too commercial".
- The biggest challenge in songwriting is about being both direct and simple. He gives Beck as an example of someone who drew inspiration from Bob Dylan. The mark of great songwriters, besides their complex and ambitious work, is the ability to write songs which are like gifts to other musicians -- eg "Everybody Must Get Stoned" in Dylan's case.
- Tom thinks what makes dEUS stand out is that most songs have structural breaks: toying with rock'n'roll clichés in order to better avoid them is critical to the dEUS sound. He thinks that Lenny Kravitz is the king of plagiarism.
Tom Barman is again -- rather deceivingly -- on the cover of Le Soir, for a tiny quote in their special edition about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There's also a small article about the "embargo affair" in their "Swarado" kids supplement.
La Libre Belgique, another leading French-speaking Belgian newspaper, has decided not to publish Tom's interview, saying Universal Music's €25,000 fine was a "clunky, useless, inefficient and unacceptable measure". They strongly criticize Le Soir's very ambiguous position.
La Dernière Heure however didn't make a fuss: here's their short interview with Tom. Nothing new, except that Tom describes Alan as a "weird but great guy" ("un peu space, mais c'est un mec super").
The newspapers of the Vers L'Avenir group published the full interview in their paper edition, and excerpts of it on their Actu24 website. A few interesting bits:
- During the Pocket Revolution tour Tom noticed that their drummer Stephane Misseghers could sing, so he thought he should sing on the Vantage Point album.
- Even after Mauro & Alan joined dEUS in October 2004, Tom wasn't sure he would continue with dEUS, until their concert at La Cigale in Paris later that autumn.
- He doesn't think that dEUS are facing competition from bands in Belgium, but abroad.
- When (far-right party) Vlaams Belang scored lower in the elections following the 0110 concerts he helped organise, that was one of the best days in his life.
What Tom says in this video: Zita Swoon nowadays have many songs in French, but Tom says Stef Kamil Carlens couldn't say a word of French when he met him. He loves the voice of Mintzkov's Lies Lorquet, and wished she'd sing more in that band. He says their singer Philip Bosschaerts sings like Tom when he was 21, but that's his voice so he can't be blamed for that. He's amazed by the ease with which Admiral Freebee writes new songs. About Flemish-singing Will Tura: apparently he's going to collaborate with him. Tom was in love with An Pierlé "for about 2 hours in the 1990's." He likes the Arno song, even if he thinks he hasn't written many good songs lately. He also likes the Soulwax remix of The Klaxons, but he thinks their live set is too hard: "a lot of wax, too little soul". About Ozark Henry's Piet Goddaer: he admires him for deciding to live abroad in order to break outside Belgium. And he hasn't had the time to listen to the Blackbox Revelation's debut album, even though they are their support act on the spring leg of the Vantage Point tour.