Official Carnival Girl press release
"I've spent this summer blasting Kardinal's 'Belly Dancer', Sean Paul and the Clappas rhytm, Glass Candy and The Rogers Sisters, plus those lovely Donna Summer-esque Ewen Pearson remixes and, of course, that great Beyonce single...I live in a world where all these sounds and songs live happily together. That's the sort of world we made this album for. The music world is dead? No way. C'mon, open your ears..."

Sharleen Spiteri
August 1, 2003

Sharleen Spiteri and her band, Texas are back. Back with an album chock-full of gorgeous hooks and future radio anthems, an album made in a dream pop universe with key recording studios in London, Liverpool, Toronto, New York and, crucially, Glasgow. Texas have made a record that could only have emerged in 2003. It's called 'Careful What You Wish For'.

Many months in the making, 'Careful What You Wish For' is Texas' most diverse and ambitious album to date. It is the record that was brewing while their 'Greatest Hits' collection cruised to five million wordwide sales, while a hot, new guitarist was broken into the band and quickly taught the difference between the mighty machine sounds of Lenky and Just Blaze... and it was made while modern pop icon Sharleen Spiteri just tried to keep her head down and do some fun living as Britain went paparazzi snap crazy around her.

Its a hell of a story.
And it's all on this new record. Somewhere.
Featuring collaborations with underground West London dancehall crew Suncycle, uber pop producer Trevor Horn, Liverpool studio legend Kingbird, cult drum and bass obsessive ceri 'Sunship' Evans, the songwriter's songwriter Guy Chambers and the renowned 'Madonna Mixer' Spike Stent, this Texas record was always going to be a vivid and varied affair. But when the hot-as-a-pistol raggs rap MC, Kardinal Offishall, was enlisted to sing alongside Sharleen on the album's first single 'Carnival Girl', the colourful picture was complete. Goodbye myriad recording studios, hello Top Of The Pops, hello CD:UK, hello a Jonas Akerlund video featuring both the inimitable Kardinal and Sharleen on a skateboard.

"Kardinal came in and shaped it with us," reveals Sharleen. "He was like, 'let's make it a story every homegirl everywhere can relate to'. He didn't just bang out some quick rap in a spare hour. I was thrilled, because I'm really into his music, and what he's just done with Pharrell and The Neptunus on 'Belly Dancer' is as good as it gets right now. I love the way those guys are fusing rap with rock with reggae in a new way. And there's a real respect for songwriting there too."

While arguments began to rage about which tracks should be selected as the key singles of Texas' new album, Sharleen claims she was single-minded that 'Carnival Girl' would be the best way to kick off the new start for her band. "I hope there's a few hit songs on this album, of course," she says. "I have lots of favourites:I think we've written our best ballad yet, some really, really good guitar tunes and then some more dance-orientated stuff that should sound great on the radio. But for me 'Carnival Girl' was the perfect summer single to start things off for us again. It's got energy and joy and it doesn't sound like any other British band out there, People have said in the past how Texas have been influenced by people like The Fugees or TLC or whoever, and that's something I'm proud of. We're a pop/rock group,but we're very ambitious and we've never wanted to make carbon copy music or be part of any little 'scene'..."
Ivor Novello Award winners for what the revered songwriting academy deemed "a stunning body of work", the Sharleen Spiteri / Johnny McElhone writing partnership has in many ways been characterised by a combination of classis books with ambitious stylistic productions - whether it be the sweaty Northern Soul velocity of 'Black Eyed Boy' or the moody Ry Cooderesque stylings of 'I Don't Want A Lover'. In a rare 'In The Studio' interview feature with Q magazine, Johnny McElhone emphasised film soundtracks and modern R&B as prime influences on the Texas sound. Pressed now on this subject, Sharleen and Johnny both cite the experimentation of the punk and postpunk era as important too, an era McElhone experienced as a 15 year old founder member of new wave prime pop movers, Altered Images.

"That whole New York new wave thing feels fresh because bands are back in," says Johnny. "How can yoy be cynical about real musicians making really good pop records. It's what we've always believed in. "Johnny and I shared this huge love of early Blondie when we first met in the late Eighties, and also of very early Siouxsie and the banshees," says Sharleen. "So all these punky guitar bands now emerging in the wake of The Strokes are inspiring to some extent. I especially love Glass Candy, because they've got these cool discosleeves and there's a Siouxsie meets B52s thing in there. The Rogers Sisters too for that raw, kocky guitar pop sound."

There's certainly some great raw guitar sounds on 'Careful What You Wish For', and some raw emotion too. New guitarist Tony McGovern has brought in some edgy riffing to do battle with Johnny McElhone and Ally McErlaine's stylish power chords, while Sharleen, the selfprofessed "rhytm queen", kept their eye on the dancefloor too. Both 'Broken' and the LP's title track were honed along side Ian 'Kingbird' Brodie, current producer of Liverpool's The Coral and The Zutons, and a longtime of great Mersey bands ("working in Elevator studios was really fun," says Sharleen.
"Everyone up there couldn't believe we were so happy in such a rough and ready studio like that. We told them they should come see our place...". And then another great Liverpool pop moment was revived when the man behind Frankie Goes To Hollywood's epic 'Relax', Trevor Horn, signed on to produce the stirring album opener 'Telephone x', a riff-heavy three-minute gem about dark telephone sex. And why telephone sex exactly, Ms Spiteri?

"Telephone sex is better than all that really sinister internet chatroom stuff, that's all I'm saying... but that is a dark sex song and Trevor Horn understood it totally's says Sharleen, always a woman with a couple of quotes up her sleeve. "Trevor made just about the most expensive record of all time in the Eighties, 'Slave To The Rhytm', and weirdly our keyboard player Eddie knows this submissive dungeon-slut who was born in the Eighties and who will only talk to him on the telephone. This whole album actually all connects in strange ways... and if you play it backwards all the songs sound really strange too."

Thank you Sharleen. But before you try spinning your CD backwards or pressing the rewind button to find some obscure nonsense track, just check out the storming crowd-pleaser "And I dream", surely destined to open a few festival appearances next year. Lose yourself in the Sunship/Suncycle collaboration "Place In My World", a record that takes classic New Order sounds to West London's Stonebridge Estate and introduces the prodigal Suncycle frontman, Dolomite, to the wider world. Then swoon to the gorgeous Twin Peaks-esque album closer "Another Day", featuring a haunting bass sound to rival Paul Simenon's on "Straight To Hell". And if Sharleen Spiteri's aching vocal on the stunning ballad "See It Through", written in an inspired half hour with Guy Chambers, isn't all over the radio this Christmas then there is surely no justice in our pop charts.
Texas have now sold 20 million records worldwide to date. Their last three albums all reached number one. Texas have no intention of stopping here.

Texas are:
Sharleen Spiteri
vocals, guitar, keyboards
Johnny McElhone
all instruments and machines
Tony McGovern
guitars, programming
Eddie Campbell
keyboards, programming
Ally McErlaine
guitars

'CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR'
IS RELEASED ON 20 OCTOBER 2003


Back to the Articles page

Back to the Articles & Concert Reviews main page

If you don't see a toolbar on the left then please click here