Sugar Darling… the unconventional entertainment you need.
Alright, the band goes by the name Sugar Darling. A beautiful Italian movie from a couple of decades ago explained, during a rather crucial sequence, the importance of deciding how to exist in the world. Now, as I begin to organize my thoughts to talk to you about this band, and I confess, I wouldn’t know where to start, that cinematic quote appears in my mind. Sugar Darling and their leader George O’Connor have decided how to exist in the world, I would simply clarify, upfront. This must be said because everything that follows is a whirlwind of jokes, accelerations, pranks, gloriously ridiculous moments, and prime music lessons, a true mad blender yet following a precise plan, as if written in the manual, with the final paragraph — in bold — stating that the little appliance will go crazy but there’s nothing to worry about because everything is supposed to happen. If you didn’t know it… well, now you do.
Their show I attended was made of a dozen songs, all rather short, all overwhelming. When, days later, I meet George to better understand what’s on his mind, he immediately tells me that, for him, a concert must disorient and stimulate you, and it almost doesn’t matter how that is achieved. Just like the live performance of his Sugar Darling, where with every passing minute, the act on stage in front of me becomes more interesting and deeper, behind a simple appearance voted to simple entertainment. I immediately ask him about the name “Sugar Darling” and George explains to me how the band’s name itself has no specific meaning. Simply, he wanted something that sounded good, made of two words, each with two syllables, so that it could be printed nicely and clearly, like a sticker or a label or a logo. Sugar Darling then, perfect. Also easy to pronounce. His explanation makes perfect sense, really — I am subtly amazed.
George O’Connor writes the songs, distributes them to the rest of the band, and then they enrich them together. The lyrics, also quite unconventional, seem to follow the same logic as the band’s name: the important thing to achieve is that they sound good, almost regardless of the meaning. This seems to be the strong and stimulating form of artistic coherence that George carries with him. When, at the end of the concert, I thought I had witnessed almost a kind of music lesson, I wasn’t wrong: Alasdair Poon on guitar, Billy Harold on bass, and Flynn Everard on drums are all three people who work teaching music and who have agreed to dive into this sugary sea of ideas. Anything and everything happens during their show, and everything proceeds so smoothly and quickly, they tease each other, make funny faces, George throws his t-shirt into the air. They swap instruments, and one of them being a Yamaha keyboard that survived from the ’90s, complete with a half-broken piano key and original sounds from a time that no longer exists, and that no one misses, yet tonight… Later I ask him to tell me about that Yamaha keyboard, and he simply says he bought it for ten pounds, obviously second-hand, that they have fun with it, that it has everything they need, and that it weighs a ton to carry it around. Yes, because the guys are based in Guildford, a town on the outskirts of London, and they go wherever the wind takes them to showcase this show halfway between cartoon music, heavy metal, Beach Boys vocal harmonies, and a lot of humour. A good example of their track? “Changing Games” from their first and only self-produced album: I think it takes three or four plays to tame such a track. Another example to get the attitude of these four phenomena? Their video for “Baboon!” (“Climb the jungle gym, clever and lean. I’m a monkey boy, making a scene” … what a caffeine-fuelled song). I would like to avoid it, but I can’t help but ask George about Zappa, specifically mentioning “Does Humor belong in Music?”, an album that I’m sure George is familiar with and is also a source of inspiration. Instead, he confesses to knowing little about Frank Zappa, and he appreciates “Jazz From Hell”, the album of electronic music entirely produced on the Synclavier (which is essentially a dated music computer) by the genius from Baltimore. Among about sixty albums, the leader of Sugar Darling knows and chooses precisely one of Zappa’s most visionary, eccentric, yet brilliant works. George, by the way, also writes electronic music. I have the feeling that he, in general, doesn’t think twice about his ideas and accepts them, thinking directly about how to develop them further and turn them into a tangible outcome. He surprises me a bit when he names the Beatles as his favourite band… but then he throws out artists like Focus, Mr. Bungle, Gentle Giant, Genesis, Secret Chiefs 3, Allan Holdsworth… in short, a panorama of names as wide as absolutely free from categorisations. Personally, his band also reminds me of Primus, especially in intentions, and Less Than Jake, I would dare say, in the determination and explosiveness in some passages, especially live. In short, a crazy mix, wonderfully crazy, free.
Returning to the lucky evening when I found them in front of me, when Sugar Darling climb onto the small stage of the Cavendish Arms, the bassist Billy wears a shark-shaped hat and the drummer Flynn a voluminous yellow squid-shaped headdress, which he will keep throughout the concert. The reason? I don’t know, I didn’t ask him, but I strongly believe it was just intentional nonsense, fresh from the fish market, and stunning. These two, Billy and Flynn, play their important part in this unstoppable blend: Billy Harold with his pick playing and total control of the instrument, plus an eternally over excited facial expression. Flynn Everard with ever-changing and effective drum patterns, and also a microphone stuck to his face because, in the band, practically everyone sings. As if it were refined music for cartoons, George explains to me that one of the concepts behind their upcoming (complete) album release lies in the idea of seeing his music and compositions go through different levels, from track to track. Literally, he says, like in a video game where the character goes through the fire scenario, the ice one, the forest one, and so on. This, of course, leads us to agree on the beauty of the album thing and the artistic uselessness of singles. With that video game explanation I just think about how George O’Connor, who had started the conversation almost shy and apparently without that much to say, is instead a kind of true and naive visionary. Clear ideas, not a single label, whether it’s trash metal, electronic, or humour, he does what he likes with the sole desire to capture the audience’s attention — through good musical technique, evident writing skills, and awareness of his means. Always having fun, making mistakes that no one can ultimately notice, with short songs at eighty miles an hour. Just after their amazing performance, I catch them in the green room, Alasdair the guitarist accepts my compliments and directs me towards George, who first opens a box that looks like a large pizza box, and inside there are cassettes, tapes, and CDs. He finds a yellow and pink sticker of the band and gives that to me, and now we can talk, officially. Then, when I meet him again after a week, I find him modest and calm in the first minutes, then he lets himself go and does nothing but come up with simple pearls of wisdom that seem to be the glue to his tiny musical universe. A universe that he honestly loves to talk about but, as often happens understandably for those “trying being genuinely different”, he is surprised when someone is truly interested in knowing what is behind and inside their stuff. After a little over two hours at the Waterloo Station pub, we say goodbye, and George emphasizes how nice it was to talk about music, which, as banal as it may seem, reveals to me the need for artists like him to continue having space and ears available, for the sake of all music and visionary dynamite sticks like Sugar Darling.
(adapted/translated from the original Italian article on SpazioRock.it)
