Marr's Modest moment

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Big hit: Johnny Marr

Capitol records: Hillary and Sir Elton

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OFF THE RECORD
Finally, Johnny Marr has got people to stop asking him about Morrissey. The Smiths never made it to Number One in the US, but the iconic band's former guitarist has just done it, with American five-man combo Modest Mouse. And he's already talking about the follow-up.

At 43, after a few years of making music of lesser interest with his band the Healers, Marr has hit a new creative peak and he knows it. The Modest Mouse album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, he tells me, is "equally as good as the other two best albums I've made, which are The Queen Is Dead with the Smiths and Dusk with The The. It's one of the rare things that I've done that I may even play for my own personal pleasure in a year or two."

Marr has been a musician for hire since he broke up the Smiths in 1987 (though he bristles at the term "session guitarist"), working with some of the biggest names of the Eighties and Nineties, including Oasis, Talking Heads and The Pretenders.

Even so, no one could have predicted the union with a band such as Modest Mouse, all five of whom are a good decade his junior. They were so unlike his previous foils, quirky, very American - and largely unheard of in this country.

Marr first went to Oregon in late 2005, expecting to be involved in 10 days of collaborative songwriting. By the end of the first day, he and the band, led by 31-year-old Isaac Brock, had composed Dashboard, a glorious pop song driven by Marr's loose, funk guitar and Brock's growled vocals, that became an American hit single this year. The other tracks on the album came soon afterwards and in a second, fortnight-long session hastily organised a few weeks later.

"I stopped feeling like an outsider after the first two or three days of writing in Portland," says Marr. "Friendships and loyalties quickly developed. They couldn't be more welcoming people. If I'd met them in a bar, I would want to hang out with them again."

Modest Mouse's former guitarist, Dann Gallucci, left the band in 2004 after their fourth album, Good News for People Who Love Bad News, became a platinum-selling success in the US. For Brock, looking for a replacement by coldcalling one of his childhood favourites did not seem like such a ridiculous idea.

"I needed a strong personality, not someone who would just play me what they thought I wanted to hear," the lisping, baby-faced 31-year-old says.

The end result was a collection of songs that have Marr's familiar lightness of touch, though his ef forts are fully, coherently absorbed into a sound that also incorporates harder, jerky rock and gypsy and folk influences.

With Marr on guitar, Modest Mouse played at the Albert Hall this week, an impressive venue for a band yet to have a hit in this country. After a summer of festivals and probably more autumn gigging, Marr will be completing a second solo album with the Healers and recording another collaborative album with Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante. But he fully intends to carry on with this unlikely success story as well.

"The Smiths really does feel like a million years ago now. I hope people can see that there's more value in moving forwards. All I've ever done is be led by the music."

Elton's song for Hillary
You can't vote in the US elections, but you are permitted to have your say on Hillary Clinton's official song.

The Democratic presidential hopeful is turning her campaign into a one-woman Eurovision at www.hillaryclinton.com/ action/spotlight, offering a predictably bland choice between anthems including Beautiful Day and City of Blinding Lights, both by U2, Ready to Run by political pariahs the Dixie Chicks, and Suddenly I See by KT Tunstall, last heard accompanying the pratfalls of Ugly Betty.

Bravely, after the shortlist of nine, Clinton has placed a blank box for your own suggestions.

If the blog chatter on the subject is anything to go by, this means that if her team count the votes correctly and there are no problems with chads, she stands a very real chance of climbing rostrums around the country to the rousing strains of Elton John's The Bitch Is Back.

AN EARLY LISTEN TO...

Untitled
(EMI) Former Moloko singer Roisin Murphy briefly charmed the mainstream in 1999 with her group's dancefloor-friendly hit, Sing It Back. Otherwise, she has been making wilfully bizarre electronica that irritates more often than it enchants.

Her second solo album, due in October, sees her using new, more accessible collaborators to make a full-blown assault on Kylie's fanbase. July's comeback single, Overpowered (already at www.myspace.com/roisin murphy), is a slick, squelchy synth number co-written with Seiji from dance act Bugz in the Attic. Next single Let Me Know is classic disco from Groove Armada, Murphy's smoky voice drifting over pounding piano and swirling strings.

Fans of her previous work with eccentric production egghead Matthew Herbert may be disappointed with a pure pop album, but new admirers look certain to arrive in droves.

NEW ON THE NET
Parisian punk and world music kingpin Manu Chao is kicking off the campaign for his first album in six years by giving away new track Rainin in Paradize at www. manuchao.net. It's a chugging rocker complete with police sirens.

And if that wasn't generous enough, there's a whole album being handed out at www.adultswim.com/williams/mu sic/warmandscratchy for no good reason that I can see. It's something to do with an American comedy show and features rare tracks from impressive indie names such as the Rapture, Broken Social Scene and TV on the Radio.

For those who prefer to exchange their money for music, Stereophonics are making their long-awaited comeback on Monday with the download-only track Pull the Pin, in all the usual digital stores.

 

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