If you’ve ever driven across the Pennines from Leeds to Manchester or vice versa, you’ll have no doubt noticed the solitary farm that splits the M62 halfway along. Popular urban legend suggests the landowner refused to move when the road was being constructed, leading the motorway’s planners to build around it. “It’s a myth,” says Tim Hann, singer and primary songwriter in the Leeds alt-rock band I Concur, “but I wondered what it would’ve been like to be the guy in that house at the time, when you could see the road coming through the mountainside, creeping up on you. It’s also about playing mind games with the road builders, refusing to leave the house – ‘What are you going to do? Go through or build around us?’”
The song in question, ‘Build Around Me’, is just one on the band’s debut album to have its roots in a story that might have passed most people by. See also ‘Decimal Places’, concerning the fraudulent stem-cell experiments carried out in the first half of this decade by researcher Hwang Woo-Suk, and the epic closer ‘Exits Are Blockades’, about the extinction of the prehistoric crocodile. Not, it must be said, topics often set to music.

I Concur

Then there’s the band’s new single, ‘Sobotka’, the subject matter of which will be familiar to viewers of TV drama The Wire. “It’s so uplifting and inspiring. I thought, I’ve watched about 72 hours of this, and now I want something else out of it!” laughs Tim. Frank Sobotka is essentially a good guy who makes some bad decisions, “strong but fallible,” as Tim describes him. “Going for a main character was far too obvious, so I went for one that was a little more understated.”
‘Sobotka’, like a lot of the songs on the album, conjures up very vivid visual imagery, and although a video is in production, it unfortunately won’t feature the band re-enacting scenes from the show. So anyone desperate to see Tim’s impression of McNulty will be sorely disappointed…
I Concur formed in late 2006, Tim and drummer James Brunger emerging from former band Nikoli, guitarist Chris Woolford having just left LaRusso, and bassist Toby Page being recruited via a small ad. They gelled over a shared love of The National, Wilco, Explosions In The Sky and Low, and make what James describes as “Americana indie shoegazey big noise with harmonies.” While that may be a bit of a mouthful, it’s a pretty accurate summary of the band’s sound.
Starting out, their combined previous experiences on the Leeds circuit led to a focus and ambition that lesser new bands sometimes lack; they locked themselves away in a practice room for five months before playing live, and shortly after released an EP – ‘Whatever It’s Going To Be’ – that clearly spelled out their musical game-plan. “We wanted to hit the ground running,” explains Tim, “and to have some momentum in the first eighteen months. Soon after the EP, Brew Records expressed an interest in working with us, released our first single (‘Lucky Jack’), and then another one a few months later (‘Oblige’). It all just fell into place.”
In March 2008, a recommendation from the BBC radio show Raw Talent saw the band heading to Maida Vale to record a session for Radio 1’s Huw Stephens. “It was great,” says Tim, “the equipment there is so good, and the engineers are amazing.” James takes great delight in recalling a story about one of the studio’s previous visitors: “We were in the same room where Joss Stone filmed her Flake advert!” Alas, Stone’s people weren’t given access to some of the studio’s resources when filming, so look closely and there’s a suspicious lack of even the basics. “They told us that even though there was a full orchestra, drums etc… there were no microphones.” No such fate awaited I Concur, with ‘Able Archer’ – recorded at the session with those missing mics – receiving its Radio 1 debut soon after.

I Concur

The links with Huw Stephens and Raw Talent then led to the band playing at last year’s Leeds and Reading festivals. “They picked us and Pulled Apart By Horses as the two BBC choices, and it was… boozy,” recalls Tim. “We were on at 12 both days, so it was a bit of a struggle!” They had a little trouble initially getting past the security at Reading. “We were saying, ‘You know where Rage Against The Machine park their buses? That’s where we want to put this one,’ and they said no.” And were you mingling with the stars backstage? “I think we managed to offend a guy from The Wombats; James made a remark about shit indie bands, and he managed to phrase it as if he was addressing this guy who was stood next to us.”
Single releases and festival slots in the bag, the natural next step was to make the debut album. A decision was made to record it in Bridlington with increasingly in-demand producer James Kenosha. “After we’d heard the work he’d done with Grammatics and This Et Al, he seemed the obvious choice,” says Tim. Studio time was booked for February, by which time London-based label Club AC30 had offered them a deal. The band had initially planned to fund the recording themselves, but the label ended up picking up the tab.
How was James Kenosha to work with? “He’s very good at suggesting things and getting it to go the way he wants it to go…” suggests Tim, “…but making you think you’ve come up with the idea,” concludes James with a chuckle. They then describe late night recording sessions where guitarist Chris’s intoxicated attempts at backing vocals didn’t go quite as planned. “We wanted the other two to get involved with the vocals…” says James, with a smile that suggests it won’t be happening again.
The album’s title track ‘Able Archer’ refers to a NATO command post exercise in the early 80s, where heightened nuclear threats led the West to carry out ever more realistic response simulations. Tim explains: “Reagan was throwing his weight around a bit and carried around a briefcase containing codes that could be sent to bases electronically if required. When they started using new codes the Soviets couldn’t interpret, the Soviets mistook it to mean that the exercise was genuine. We were just simulating and they were actually playing it out for real. We came very close to all dying!”
The resulting song is one of many breathtaking moments on the album, five minutes of rollercoaster tension-and-release that showcases a side of the band keen to experiment with song structure. The recording captures the power and intensity of what is often a highlight of the live set, topped off with a suitably frantic, impassioned vocal.
Less left-field tastes are catered for too, most notably in the shape of ‘Oblige’. Described as “an ode to the futility of being in a band which is slowly breaking apart at the seams”, the song, based around a riff Johnny Marr would sell his granny for, has a chorus at once melodically uplifting yet lyrically bittersweet, sounding almost like a message of hope for its writer: “Have patience, no pressure / All in good time…” Having already proved itself to be a highlight of the EP and then recorded again for a Brew Records 7”, it appears on the album in its third incarnation.
They burst out laughing when I ask how they approached recording the older stuff again with fresh ears. “We didn’t!” says Tim. “Head down, get it done!” continues James.
James believes the new versions are certainly superior to previous ones: “Without a shadow of a doubt. Some of the older material got a new lease of life. We said, ‘let’s get the ones we’ve done before recorded first’, thinking it’d be routine, but we got some really nice stuff out of them.”
“I looked at the album as documenting a point in time,” says Tim, “representing the first stages of what the band was, so a lot of the older stuff needed to be on there.” There is, however, new material already in development, which Tim describes as sounding like “Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine crossed with us.” The upcoming tour will see some of the new songs rubbing shoulders with tracks from the album.
So, having achieved more in three years than a lot of bands achieve in twice that, where do I Concur fit into the current musical climate?
“We’re not a pop band,” says James, “and we’re not in it to whore ourselves and make tons of money for about five minutes – we’re in it for the long haul. We just want to enjoy what we’re making and be proud of it, with no compromises.” Their intentions are clear – take a listen and you may well concur.