The Bitter And The Sweet This interview originally appeared in the MTV To Go Magazine January 1990. Words by Kris Nicholson

What's so striking about Mighty Lemon Drops music is that when you hear their songs they seem familiar, though you're certain that you've never heard them before. You might even be tempted to compare them to other 80s pop bands - Echo and The Bunnymen is often the choice - but even while you do this, you realise something there's else, some spark, some contagious element, something restless that arouse feelings like those you experienced the first time you heard a good, melodic rock song. If the Echo and The Bunnymen comparison conjures up images of doom and gloom bands England is infamous for spawning, you should know that the Lemon Drops are a happy band - happy enough their third, and latest, Warner Brothers album laughter. Lead singer Paul Marsh expounds "A lot of people file us in the category of those dark and introspective bands, and then when they meet us they've surprised to find out we're having a good time. Of course, we were influenced by many of the same bands as were The Bunnymen, but I think what people were hearing had a lot more to do with feel rather than anything else. With Laughter, I'm pretty sure the comparisons will go away. Tony Linehan - our former bass player and co-writer of many of the songs on our first two LPs, and a big fan of The Bunnymen - is no longer in the band. On this album all of the songs are written by our guitarist David Newton. I think his writing alone is giving us a stronger sense of who we are. We've developed a more identifiable sound. And we've become more experimental since we've been working with our new bass player Marcus Williams. We have more freedom to try different things, and Marcus' enthusiasm has given the whole band a real shot of inspiration"

Laughter was recorded in Peter Gabriel's studio in Bath, England. Paul explains that "We wanted a residential studio. a place where we could live and never have to leave. We're not big on studios in big cities. We feel the atmosphere at Gabriels's studio made us more provocative. Peter came round every day making sure things were fine. He was genuinely concerned. It made us feel comfortable and confident. The studio was designed especially for performance, so the recording process was pretty close to live. All of the guitars, bass and drums were recorded together. For the vocals, instead of being locked up in a room on my own, we put a mike in front of the monitors in the studio and turned them up really loud. I did it like it was a live gig. I got to move around and let loose. It felt really natural. There were plenty of people around. I'd be doing vocals and people would be walking around having fun, socialising. It created a really good vibe. Also, there were about 20 people working on the staff, so it was like having an audience. The end result was the best record we could have ever done and we feel it's our best record so far."

When you listen to the music of the Mighty Lemon Drops you might be surprised to hear the diverse list of groups that inspire and appeal to them. This might explain why they sound both familiar and original at the same time. Guitarist Newton's favourite group is the Replacements. Lead singer Paul Marsh listens to a lot of Motown singers and also enjoys the contemporary music of The Pursuit Of Happiness, Jesus Jones and New Order. In addition to this eclectic potpourri, Paul notes that "We all grew up listening to Slade. They're from the same town as we are, Wolverhampton. To this day they are local heroes; you can see them hangin' out in local pubs and they still play music after all these years.

Would Paul like to be around as long as a band like Slade? "It all depends on how it's going," he says. "When it starts to become a job, we'll stop. Right now we're enjoying it. We get a great deal of satisfaction from writing songs and playing for ourselves. It's also real rewarding to get a good audience response. We love it when people come back after a show and want to talk to us. In America things are really good for us because of college radio. We don't have anything like that in England; I don't think we could exist without it. It's the same thing as video; it really gives people a chance to see us and hear our music. We want as many people to hear our songs as is humanely possible. We also want them to get the same pleasures from the music as we do."

So try Laugher. As they say, it's often the best medicine.