The Pineapple Thief's Bruce Soord

Story by Bill Kopp

Progressive rock band The Pineapple Thief recently released their latest album, Someone Here is Missing. In my wide-ranging conversation with TPT leader and songwriter Bruce Soord, we discussed the concept of album-based music, the new record's distinctive artwork, and the inescapable comparisons between The Pineapple Thief and a couple of other well-known bands. Here's part one of our conversation.

Bill Kopp: The Pineapple Thief seems to fit in well with the growing consensus among some artists and fans that the album is an art form, or at the very least a viable medium, that should be preserved. In the face of download culture, you put together albums that are, if not thematically or conceptually linked, then sonically linked. When you’re writing music, do you think in grand terms of crafting an album? Or do you just write songs that reflect you current concerns and then pick and choose the ones that seem to hang together?

Bruce Soord: Good question. Ever since I got into music, it was always album-based. I was never thinking, "Let's listen to this snippet here, that one there." Apart from when the mates made me mixtapes, maybe. So when I'm writing, I definitely think about the album. And I've always got a definite idea in my mind what the order's going to be. I generally try to picture myself at the end when I'm listening through to the album. You can't just have twelve tracks that are all sonically similar, even if they're all shit-hot songs. So I'm always thinking, "To make the album work, it's got to go in this direction." And sonically it's got to have this feel, and you've got to move away from that and go into this direction. So I'm always thinking of the album as a whole. I'm from a generation that was really before the i-generation, as it were.

Bill Kopp: Both 3000 Days and Someone Here is Missing are released in these extra-nice “super jewel boxes.” Is that a standard K-scope thing or is it something you lobbied for?

Bruce Soord: The best thing that ever happened to me, and to The Pineapple Thief -- was when we signed up to K-scope. Before that, we were on a tiny label called Cyclops. Now, at the time, that was brilliant, and I thanked my lucky stars that we could have albums pressed and distributed. But the guy that ran it had no money. So we just had the basic jewel case with a six-page wafer-thin booklet. And I had to come up with all the artwork and deliver the entire packet.

But with K-scope, I think what they're doing is trying to fight against the sort of disposable "let's download an MP3 and maybe pay for it" [mentality]. I want something I can hold in my hand. I want to have an album. I remember growing up with vinyl, and with gatefold sleeves and massive booklets to flip through while you'd sit down and listen to the album all the way through. And that's how K-scope shifts their units: they make it something that you want to hold.

Bill Kopp: There was a time -- certainly during the seventies — when you bought something, you got something. In those days, in the USA, we only paid four or five dollars for an LP. But they were often in a gatefold sleeve, and there were pictures, and you could actually read the type. It was a total experience. And that's been lost. So to me it's encouraging that there are artists trying to hold onto that. And not coincidentally, they're the ones who often take the most thoughtful approach to the music as well.

Bruce Soord: I hope so. What I've noticed is that you may be viewed as a great success if you're top of the download charts with one of your singles, but ultimately it's a really fickle audience. The ones who buy the albums and stay with you -- like our fan base, which is quite small — they hang around. They come to the gigs, they buy the t-shirts and the albums. And I think it's because they appreciate that the albums are more substantial.

Bill Kopp: It's the difference between LPs and 45s for people, really. If you bought a 45, you didn't necessarily care anything about the band; you just liked the hook in one song, so you bought it. And there was generally a throwaway on the b-side. So for you, do you look back upon a certain past era of rock music as a sort of Golden Age?

Bruce Soord: When me and my mates were growing up back at school, it was in the New Romantic era and into sort of the grunge era. So we "rewound" and went back to listening to music from the 70s. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, all that stuff. And all the amazing artwork and packaging came with it. That was always the golden age; I would have loved to have grown up and been able to go to gigs in those days.

Bill Kopp: The minute I saw the album artwork, I said out loud: Storm Thorgeson. There’s something ineffable about his work that just establishes it as his. Not quite like Roger Dean, because with him you think of Yes. With Storm, it’s more about a certain feel. His work brings on what I might call a “welcome unease.” I think in some ways, it might serve as a sort of coded shorthand to potential fans: “Look everybody, Storm did this cover." That tells you this is worth hearing if you like, well, anything else he’s been involved with. Do you think prog fans -- or rock fans in general — think that way?

Bruce Soord: I think so; I certainly do. I remember my memories of flicking through secondhand record shops. If you came across a cover that was really, really carefully constructed -- like all of Storm's, and all of the Hipgnosis work -- you'd think, "Well, if they've gone to all that effort, then surely there's thought behind the music as well. Even if I don't like it, give it a bash. I'll buy it."

And the other thing about Storm, he generally works on projects only if he likes the music. Because he has to be inspired by what he hears before he comes up with the ideas. If you look at the work of Hipgnosis, the albums they've worked on, there's definitely a theme. And it was definitely a good move for us. I'm really glad to have had Storm work on the album art.

Bill Kopp: So how did you end up working with him?

Bruce Soord: Through Scott, K-scope's main design guy. Storm was doing an exhibition of his work at a London gallery. And Scott went down and had a cat with him, asking "Do you ever work with smaller acts?" Because he was pretty much only working on Muse, Biffy Clyro and Pink Floyd stuff. Do you know Biffy Clyro out in the States? They're a big rock band here.

Bill Kopp: No.

Bruce Soord: That's so funny...they're huge here. They're just turning into a stadium act. They're pop-rock, a little bit of Rush influence...good band. But anyway, they're a major signing to Warner Brothers, and that's the project that Storm had been working on. Check out their covers, and you'll recognize Storm's work straightaway.

Bill Kopp: And I might dig the music, as we've said...

Bruce Soord: Right. Anyway, so Storm said to Scott, "Yes, if I like the music." So that was it. They sent him the early demos, and Storm had me on a train up to his studio before I knew it. That was the beginning: I had a real good sense about the album if Storm was up for working on it.

Bill Kopp: So he was hooked by the demos, not early or rough mixes?

Bruce Soord: Yeah. The way that I record, I do most of the playing on the demos, so you can get a sense of how the song's going to sound quite early on [in the process]. The way it works, [the other musicians] play really loud, and then brainstorm all their ideas, their sketches.

Bill Kopp: When you're putting an album together -- and you spoke about this just a second ago -- are the demos fully developed?

Bruce Soord: I tend to put everything together. So when the band hears it, as far as the song goes, it's a finished product. The only difference is that they might say, "I don't like this bit; let's change it." I'm not entirely a dictator when it comes to the band. But that's the way I've always worked.

But the band's perfectly happy with this approach. They put their own stuff on it. John, the bass player, puts on his bass playing...and we get what we get at the end.

Bill Kopp: I have to admit that I was as guilty as anyone upon hearing 3000 Days, my first exposure to your music, of thinking you sounded like a cross between two bands I won’t name...

Bruce Soord: Well, I read your review. And I remember commenting that I really enjoyed reading it.

Bill Kopp: That said, I liked the music very, very much. If you don’t mind my making a slightly different sort of comparison, both of those bands, over the course of their first several albums, faced similar criticism. the music got good reviews but was viewed — by some — as perhaps too similar to other artists. Now, of course 3000 Days was a compilation of your material up to that point. I hear more of a distinctive The Pineapple Thief sound coming through on this album. So, do the comparisons annoy you?

Bruce Soord: Ever since day one -- even with the band I had before The Pineapple Thief -- where I wasn't really even the creative force -- we were getting Porcupine Tree and Steve Wilson [comparisons]. And this was back in '96, back when he was doing his more ambient stuff. I don't know why -- maybe there's not enough people in this kind of arena, doing this kind of music -- or, was I guilty of having the same set of influences. Or...of hearing Porcupine Tree and not realizing when I was in the studio that I was nicking something. I really don't think I was. But a large proportion of the reviews picked up on that.

In the early days — when we were struggling to build up a fan base — if anything, it helped. Because loads of fans would come over and say, "I found out about you in a Porcupine Tree forum" or whatever. But then as we got bigger, we started to think, "No, this isn't helping." And you picked up on it. When I listen to the Porcupine Tree catalog, I personally can't hear where the link is. But clearly, other journalists are.

So I do think it made me a little more retrospective after 3000 Days. I thought, "Hold on, mate. If everyone's saying this, then I've got to think about where my influences are, and what direction I want to take this band in."

Bill Kopp: For what it's worth, from my standpoint -- and I'm just one person -- the feeling that I got was that it was not that you were nicking them, but that you grew up with the same set of influences, likes and dislikes as Steven Wilson did.

Bruce Soord: That's true. We've both obviously grown, but we both listened to Pink Floyd as kids, and listened to all the progressive acts of the 70s. And in the 80s and 90s, there was a period when neo-prog was the happening thing: Marillion and bands like that. I wasn't listening and thinking, "I'm totally turned off by that music." But I wanted to take progressive influences and move them on. I wanted to get all the interest and emotion from the 70s, but bring all the modern influences. And I just think that's exactly what Steve Wilson was doing, before me. And there didn't seem to be a lot of other bands taking that same sort of trip.

Bill Kopp: I’ve been playing Someone Here is Missing constantly these last few weeks, and I really like it. The album has a curious effect on me, though. Similar to the other of those other bands whose name I won’t mention — their breakthrough album [OK Computer -- ed.] quickly became one of my all-time favorites. It really knocked me on the head. But to this day I probably can’t identify more than a song or two off of it by its title. I think of the whole thing as a piece, and that’s how I listen to it. I put it on and sort of let it wash over me. That rarely happens with me, but it’s happened with your new album. So my question: is it just me, or did you approach the album a unified piece of work?

Bruce Soord: That's a good thing; I'm the same way. I've gotten similar experiences with all of Radiohead's albums, and I do listen to them. The other day, I was talking to someone, and he said, "'Wake Up the Dead' reminds me of blah-blah-blah by Radiohead." And I had no idea what he was talking about, so I had to Google it, find it and play it. Then I said, "Oh yeah! That song!" Because it's just music to me.

Bill Kopp: A number of critically-acclaimed bands have made a point over the last few years to re-release their earlier material, which is otherwise quite difficult and expensive to obtain. Does that sort of approach — re-releasing the early stuff, which may or may not have much of a sonic connection to what you're about now -- does that hold any interest for you? Even as, perhaps downloads only?

Bruce Soord: That's a really good question. K-scope are wanting to do just that. And that was a big part of it when they signed us; they didn't just like the music, but they could see that we had a back catalog that was out of print. At the moment a lot of it's going on eBay now. The Cyclops one [Abducting the Unicorn] is going for about £100 now.

And it's stupid. It's annoying for me as an artist to think that fans are paying that to hear it, to get a CD. So for that reason, I'm keen to get the back catalogue out. And I know K-scope are. But as an artist, it's always about the here and now. I do look back on my career and think, "At the time I was proud of that, and it's made me who I am today," but I haven't got the same kind of energy for remastering and getting the back catalogue out as I have for "Let's think about what I want to do next." Because as a songwriter, I'm just desperate to think, "Right, what's the 2012 album from The Pineapple Thief going to be like?"

So it's mixed. Because it's out of print and because the fans want it, it's got to be reissued. And I think K-scope are on the case, doing that.

Bill Kopp: Artistic considerations aside, from a purely economic standpoint it makes more sense for you to make a couple pounds from your work than to have some clown make a couple hundred from selling one copy. Because it's your stuff.

Amongst fans, a few of your live shows have been recorded and traded, including three shows from last year. What’s your position on fan recording and trading?

Bruce Soord: The main thing about people trading live stuff is, a lot of the shows you just wouldn't want them to be out there! [laughs] I had a look around Youtube the other day, and was amazed at how many people are filming songs on their phones. Again, I have mixed feelings about that. The problem is, I just don't think you can fight it. The internet is such an anarchy that if someone wants to record you on their phone, you can't stop them putting it on Youtube and sharing it. So it's a tricky one.

Bill Kopp: Speaking of live shows, when will we get to see the band in the USA?

Bruce Soord: At the moment, we're really focusing on Europe, only because that's where our promoters are getting us the gigs.

We've only played the US twice. Philadelphia, a good couple years ago, was an absolute disaster. It was a terrible gig. It's awful, because it's not like taking a band and driving half an hour down the road to a venue, doing a bad gig and going home. Flying across the Atlantic, doing a bad gig and flying home...oh, that was a long trip home!

So we came back this year, and we played Nearfest. Which is quite a unique experience. But a great crowd.

Bill Kopp: If they didn't know your music already, you probably gained a whole lot of new fans there.

Bruce Soord: We did, and you can tell. Especially with the modern prog connection, there's a lot of people who wanted their sort of technical, difficult-to-describe music. And when we come along, with more melody and modern influences, I think some people didn't get it. But most people did, and we got a great, great reaction. And everyone there was asking, "Why can't you come and play my town?"

It's really frustrating, because we'd love to just get on a bus and drive around America for a couple of months.

Bill Kopp: But that's not practical, because the US is so spread out. And in my experience, rock acts are less likely to come to this part of the country (southern Appalachia) because it's harder to get people out for that sort of show.

There are exceptions. A couple of years ago Smashing Pumpkins came here (Asheville NC) and played five nights at the Orange Peel. But in general it's often prohibitive for acts to tour all over. Even American acts.

Bruce Soord: I was talking to our manager about that. I was asking, "What do you do?" We'd go on a tour bus maybe around the Northeast, and then you sort of turn east and drive across land until you get to San Francisco and L.A.! So it's bizarre.

I'd love to, though. I'll have to speak to Steven Wilson, to see what they do. Because I know they do a lot of dates around the States.

Bill Kopp: Not to belabor the comparison, but I think that anyone who enjoys what Porcupine Tree does would be interested in what you're doing. In the same way that someone who likes Pink Floyd might like Led Zeppelin.

Bruce Soord: [laughs] You've taken one of my quotes almost exactly! People keep saying the Porcupine Tree thing, or the Radiohead thing. And I say, yeah, well, in the rock arena we're not really a million miles away compared to, say, Celine Dion. We still make completely different music, but...yeah.

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