Iglu & Hartly

by Jon Fletcher

New Noise gets totally out-foxed by California's finest... We think.

"Even the people who live in the trees that claim they’re environmentalists aren’t, because factories had to make the rope that they’re using, so fuck ‘em."

All pictures by Jon Fletcher.

“We had all the girls on stage and they were all shaking their booties and sticking out their asses, it was awesome.”

New Noise is on the phone to Jarvis Anderson (pictured, above and below), one of the two rappers at the helm of US rock-pop juggernaut Iglu & Hartly, and we’re in a pickle. Having witnessed the band launching a technicolour aural assault on an undersized audience in the slow-blooming Star of Bethnal Green a couple of nights earlier, we left convinced that this was a band steeped in irony.

For starters, Jarvis himself turned up in a vintage leather Bon Jovi jacket. When we ask about it, he replies without pause and with what sounds like genuine puzzlement, “Yeah, people like that jacket more than me. That’s why I wear it.” The rest of the band were equally strangely kitted out. In the short period onstage before they bared their torsos, fellow rapper Sam (who had been standing outside the pub barefoot for most of the evening) donned a pink shawl, while bassist Michael Boucher opted for skin tight, day-glo blue jeans.



When the tops come off, the sense of parody gets even stronger. It’s like watching Guns N Roses trying to lip sync to the Beastie Boys via Yazz & The Plastic Population, all grandiose rock poses and manic grins. This is a band apparently so aware of their own image that they’ve all tattooed the ampersand from their name onto their arms like the name of a first girlfriend. When we ask Jarvis what happens if the band breaks up, he is completely deadpan: “We’ll never break up as long as I have a say in it.”

At least, we think he’s deadpan; the phone call’s being routed to the band’s tour manager through a US-based mobile, which means Jarvis’ voice sounds as though it’s being played back to us through an audio cheese grater. Couple that with the fact that he’s got us on speaker phone and we’re struggling understand a word he says, let along pick out any subtle irony.



Even so, we’re still rather attached to the idea that, despite all evidence to the contrary (the band hail from California, not a state best known for its highly developed sense of sarcasm), Iglu & Hartly are engaged in a grade A wind-up. When we ask whether it’s worth listening to the band’s lyrics (we’ve already decided it isn’t), Jarvis replies: “Every song we make has a message. It’s stupid to make music without a message.”

Every song? After the interview, we head back to the band’s myspace, determined to find the hidden message. “I wear pyjamas at night,” Jarvis and Sam tell us on the uber-danceable ‘The Pajama Song’. That’s basically the entire thrust of the track, though they do helpfully spell it out for us, sort of: “I’m a / P A / G A / M A / S / I got my pyjamas on and I’m a do it the best / So you can pyjama with me / A jama at home / I got my pyjamas / Smell like a loan”. Jarvis reinforces his point by telling us he’s talking about all the lyrics: “Listen to them, read them, live them. That’s what it’s all about.”1

In fact, Iglu & Hartly’s music doesn’t sound as though we actually should be listening to the lyrics. Jarvis isn’t far off when he describes their sound as, “A mix between Tom Petty, Pointer Sisters and Tina Turner,” adding, “Ace of Base too. And Janet Jackson.” It’s as though the last thirty or forty years of pop have been distilled down into one, strangely incongruous but utterly compelling band cryogenically frozen in the early 90s. With a sound like that, pretty much everything they say or do is going to sound ironic.



That’s why, despite his protestations that, “we’re history buffs,” we’re not sure we believe Jarvis when he claims his band is named after the first ship to transport cinnamon between Hawaii and England (a quick scout on Google uncovers no evidence of this). Nor do we know what to make of it when, just as we’re about to hang up at the end of the interview, he cuts in: “You should put this in your interview too. We’re not like a band that goes into a high-polluting studio and makes their fucking music. We make it on a piece of shit Pro Tools system and then we have a buddy mix it.”

A high-polluting studio? Is he telling us this is a band with an environmental conscience? Apparently not: “We’re not really environmentalists. No-one really is if they fucking drive a car or use electricity. Even the people who live in the trees that claim they’re environmentalists aren’t, because factories had to make the rope that they’re using, so fuck ‘em.”

In the end, it really doesn’t matter whether Jarvis is operating on some exponential level of irony or not. Either way, no-one’s going to be trying to flog Iglu & Hartly as shoe-gazing geek-rock. As he himself puts it so succinctly, “It’s pop music baby,” and bloody good pop music at that.

1 For those sticklers who may be thinking we’re being a little too wanky website about this and that we should let the chaps off for one song, here’s a snippet from the otherwise superb ‘DayGlo’: “Now you only know the me that doesn’t think twice / It’s so cool and relaxed yeah I sing so nice / Funky free like a bird / I don’t fly much / And I like how you like my touch”. And from the equally brilliant ‘In This City’: “And I found that round here / In this city / That I won’t disappear / In this city / I got nothing to fear / In this city / In this city.” It's difficult not to feel as though you've had the blinkers lifted listening to that sort of insight.
Marcy said on June 22nd 2008 [report abuse]

Get the lyrics right or don't bother publishing them! Day glo: "Now you only know the me that doesn't think twice/Acting so cool and relaxed, yeah I SEEM so nice/FUCKIN free like a bird but I don't fly much/and I like how you like my touch."

Lovesoxxx said on June 23rd 2008 [report abuse]

The other week, I had to explain the concept of irony to a Venezuelan. “It’s when you mean the opposite of what you say,” I said. Then I thought about it. And I thought about it some more. And I came to the conclusion that irony is a ridiculous idea and not something we should get snooty about with Americans. Maybe Iglu & Hartly are right on this one. Although not as right as Alanis Morissette, obv. Yeah, and get the fucking lyrics right.* *Sarcasm on the other hand is ace.

Fletchy Fletch Fletch said on June 24th 2008 [report abuse]

Marcy, point well missed. Or was it? Oh god.

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