Euros
Childs
Interview by Frank Valish
For the majority of his professional music-making life, Euros Childs fronted the Welsh quintet, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. A happy-go-lucky indie-pop collective that often mixed its English singing with Welsh, the band called it quits in 2006, leaving 2003’s understated Sleep/Holiday as its swan song. Since then, Childs has gone on to experiment with his pop music, releasing three solo albums: 2006’s varied Chops, the Welsh-only Bore Da, and, most recently, The Miracle Inn, which features, at its center, the 16-minute, multi-part suite that shares the album’s name. Childs took a few minutes during his current U.S. tour to e-mail some answers to Under the Radar’s questions.
Under the Radar: You are currently touring the U.S. with The Miracle Inn. Have you found that, since Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci split, you have had to reestablish yourself or reintroduce yourself to audiences, especially in America, or do you find that much of your audience has carried over and followed you from Gorky’s?
Euros Chids: We played our first gig in L.A last night and there were quite a few Gorky’s fans there.
UTR: Perhaps it was just me, but Gorky’s breakup seemed somewhat sudden and also a bit surreptitious in nature. Can you tell me about the circumstances surrounding that band’s dissolution?
Childs: It was anything but sudden. We played our last gig in early 2004 and split up two years later. I think we knew that we might have split up back in 2004. We mulled it over, realized we should breakup, officially split in 2006.
UTR: Was the split amicable?
Childs: Yes.
UTR: You started working on solo projects very soon after Gorky’s broke up, correct? Was there a feeling of newfound freedom that came with breaking up the band? Was there a renewed inspiration to create?
Childs: It was a new challenge to make sure that the records were up to scratch. It was good to start from scratch on the Chops stuff at home with a 4-track. It was very simple.
UTR: From the start with your solo recordings, you seemed to be trying new things—the country-flavored tune and short ditties on Chops, the Welsh-language album in Bore Da, the 16-minute title track on The Miracle Inn. Were there certain things you wanted to do but weren’t able to do within the confines of Gorky’s?
Childs: What was good about Gorky’s was that you could do anything so creatively. There was as much freedom with Gorky’s as the solo stuff.
UTR: What kind of reaction did you get to Chops when it was released? I very much liked it, with the differently styled songs and the short ditties that were interspersed (like a The Who Sell Out-kind of concept), but I know other people who didn’t quite get it. Did you ever wonder whether you had veered too far afield?
Childs: It was one of those records that people get or don’t get. I don't really care if people don’t get it. I got it!
UTR: Another new territory for you was “The Miracle Inn.” Can you tell me a bit about the genesis and creation of that song? Did you always envision it as a multi-part suite? Was it written all at once or as separate parts that were then pieced together? What was your overarching vision for the song?
Childs: It was a chance to do something I hadn’t done before and after writing for so long it was exciting to do something new. I wanted to tell story whilst veering away from prog or musical territory. I wanted it still to be pop music.
UTR: Surrounding that song on the album are some of the best more-traditional pop songs that you have ever written. Did you ever fear that those songs might get lost in the shadows of the epic that is the album’s centerpiece? In other words, did you ever worry that people might spend so much attention focusing on the mini-opera that the strength of the other songs on the record would get overlooked?
Childs: I’m not so sure. When we play live the other tracks on the album have been going down better!
UTR: Have you begun work on your next album? Do you have ideas for where you would like to go with it? Will it continue in this wave of experimentation?
Childs: Hopefully a new album will be ready to go next year. It will be a quite live-sounding record.
11/2007