The Boy Least Likely To

Genre: Pop Hometown: Wendover UK
www.theboyleastlikelyto.co.uk

Friday, March 17   10:00 p.m.
Elysium   (705 Red River St)

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  The Boy Least Likely To - Be Gentle With Me
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THE BOY LEAST LIKELY TO
There’s precise, there’s particular, and there’s pernickety. And then there’s careful, as in full of care. Cheerfully, The Boy Least Likely To admit to being bits of all of the above. Their songs are breezy, soar away assemblages of banjo, fiddle, glockenspiel, funny-peculiar synth noises and sublimely heartfelt lyrics. They feel like they fell out of the sky. In reality, they only sound so brilliantly, effortlessly pop because they’ve been seriously, gleefully sweated over.
The Boy Least Likely To are Jof (lyrics, vocals) and Peter (music, instruments). They met when they were still at school and grew up together in the small Buckinghamshire village of Wendover. Here is how they made their first three singles…
(1) ‘Paper Cuts’, March 2003. Seven-inch, hand-stamped, Czech republic pressing, cut-out sleeves. ‘Five hundred singles all over my bedroom floor,’ remembers Jof, ‘waiting for the stamps to dry. Cutting the sleeves? Hah, this won’t take long. After 50 I couldn’t feel my hand.’ Peter: ‘You make a rod for your own back ‘cause then you have to do it on the next one.’
(2) ‘Be Gentle With Me’, December 2003. Slightly better plastic. Two days spent looking for children’s glockenspiel. Took three months to record three minutes and 50 seconds of music. Peter: ‘And we got it mastered properly. Jof: ‘I did the first one. Well, we gave this guy 20 quid to do it. He’d done all the Oi! bands.’ Peter: ‘Jof brought it back and I said, “what’s this? He’s just made it louder!”’ Jof: ‘So we thought we’d get this one done properly. That was our first major investment.’
(3) ‘Fur Soft As Fur’, July 2004. Still vinyl, still limited edition. Peter: ‘Yeah, eight months later. We were so slow because we were doing everything on my PC and eight-track recorder and they kept breaking down.’ Jof: ‘But the Rough Trade shops said people “wouldn’t hear a better bedroom pop record all year.” We were happy because we’d done it all ourselves, and released it on our own label, Too Young To Die. So maybe it was worth it…’
That summer, Jof and Peter decided to make a go of an album. When they were growing up they had spent many a happy weekend scouring countryside car boot sales and picking up cheap albums. Their tabula rasa was a set of Smash Hits magazines, found on one of their weekly expeditions. Perfect condition, 1981 to 1985. All for just three pounds.
Jof: ‘They made us realise what pop music was. They were all there on the cover – Haircut 100, Adam And The Ants, Altered Images. All great pop bands.’
Peter: ‘Even serious bands like The Jam and The Smiths and Orange Juice were in there. You could be pop then in a way that maybe you can’t now.’
Meanwhile they had been putting together a collection of weird and wonderful instruments found in second hand shops, craft fairs and the early learning centre. And gradually their debut album began to take shape. Jof and Peter recorded it themselves in Peter’s bedroom, only bringing in friends such as Sweet Amanda Applewood (recorder), and Drummer Boy (drums) when their musical ambition outran their abilities. A mysterious artist, simply called ‘Tim’, supplied the band’s identity via charming cartoon visuals. He can draw like a gifted toddler. Perhaps he is a gifted toddler.
The songs on the album formed a loose narrative. One that followed the arc of a relationship, or a friendship. Or a party. And so fittingly Jof decided to call the album, The Best Party Ever.
Jof: ‘It starts off quite happy, then dips as all good parties do, then you get that last burst at the end.’
They had to sell 780 copies to break even, but two weeks before the album was due to be released on Valentine’s Day 2005, the Rough Trade shop made it their ‘Album Of The Week’, and The Best Party Ever immediately sold out of the initial 1000 copies pressed.
By the time autumn this year tumbled round, lots of record companies were coming to see the men from Too Young To Die, keen to sign The Boy Least Likely To. Finally they signed a deal with a more established operation.
Peter: ‘We got to the point where we had to sign a record deal or we probably wouldn’t have been able to make another record. We were so busy with all the administration and paperwork involved in running a record label. That’s the trouble with the whole DIY ethic, you really do have to do it yourself.’
Their new partner was the neophyte label established by 19 Management. With cash and help finally coming the way of their homemade bedroom operation, they were able to repromote their album and prepare for a new digipack edition, with bonus tracks on a separate disc and everything.
Peter and Jof were aware of the connotations surrounding the company run by Simon ‘S Club’ Fuller. But 19 were the only outfit who fully understood Peter and Jof’s pop sensibilities.
Even their most ‘contentious’ decision so far was properly thought through. The Boy Least Likely To recently supported James Blunt on a UK tour. Now, Peter and Jof thought there might be a few raised eyebrows. A band playing ‘disco music with a country heart’ and ‘sublime pop moments tinged with an English folk eccentricity’, who operate with the aesthetic, rule-based rigour of a Dexy’s Midnight Runners or a Belle & Sebastian, supporting James [Your Derisory Nickname Here] Blunt? On paper, a bit odd, certainly.
But they weren’t expecting ‘hate-postings’ on their web forum, the threats to burn their CDs, or the concerned communications from their friends on myspace. But that’s what The Boy Least Likely To got.
Did no one understand? That to The Boy Least Likely To, pop was not a dirty word? That Blunt’s management picking their CD ahead of 139 others was a supreme compliment. ‘We liked the idea of going head-to-head with the mainstream,’ say the pair. ‘We’d like to be a part of that, but doing what we do. Take them on!’
For The Boy Least Likely To, it’s as much an achievement to make it to the final round of the Ones To Watch Award at the 2005 Smash Hits Poll winners’ Party (as they were) as it is to be playing the Rough Trade Album Club Christmas party (as they are).
Genre snobbery. Classism. Popophobia. The Boy Least Likely To are here to battle all of that, using the sword of melody and the shield of good humour.
‘I know it’s childish,’ admits Jof, ‘but part of the reason for doing the Blunt tour was to annoy those cooler-than-thou indie kids. It’s like Bonnie Prince Billy doing all his Palace Brothers tracks again and making them really heavily produced. It’s to wind up people who are who are too precious.’
‘Yeah, but our party political line had been not to do gigs,’ counters Peter. ‘Does doing a 20-date tour of big theatres not make us look hypocritical?’
‘Maybe,’ muses Jof. ‘But playing to the 30,000 people on that tour means we have to do less gigs.’
‘Well, you’re just lazy,’ replies Peter.
This February, to mark the release of the lovingly rendered digipack version of The Best Party Ever, and to celebrate the re-appearance of ‘Be Gentle With Me’ and that hard-won children’s glockenspiel, The Boy Least Likely To will be touring properly for the first time. Yes, there will be playing at some traditional ‘Barfly-type’ venues. But they and their five-piece band will be accompanied by all manner of delights. ‘There will be bubbles,’ is all they’ll say for now.
‘We want to make it like a real party,’ says Jof eagerly. ‘You know Andy Kaufman’s last show, where he took everyone in the audience out on a bus trip for milk and cookies? We want to take people back to that childlike thing.’
For these joyful enthusiasts and their sparkling and bountiful album, the devil is in the detail – and so is the magic.
Peter: ‘We wanted to make a record that everyone would forget then years later, a magazine would declare it a lost classic.’
Jof: ‘Like Vashti Bunyan.’
Peter: ‘That was our dream. As long as we’re happy.’
Jof: ‘Then 35 years later we’d get back together and make another one. The Second Best Party Ever!’

Craig McLean, December 2005.