Photo Credit: Ashey Jones
Call it progressive punk -though they hate that label-, call it psychedelic pop, or just plain rock… Either way, Cardiacs remain one of the most unique, most precious, wildest, and most influential bands in the memory of alternative music. After the demise of the band’s genius leader Tim Smith in 2020, his brother Jim joined forces with Cardiacs and all their friends to complete Tim’s unfinished album project. The result is LSD, a new Cardiacs record that both honors the memory of one of rock’s most original figures and directly carries his contributions and ideas. We caught up with Jim Smith on Zoom to talk about the album, as well as about Tim and the story of Cardiacs.
First of all, I want to thank you, as well as everyone involved, for managing to finish LSD. I love the album, and I think it’s a beautiful way to honor Tim’s legacy. How do you feel about finally releasing the record and sharing it with the fans?
Jim Smith: Very proud of it all. Very excited about it. I think it’s brilliant. I think Tim would love it. I’m just over the moon. I just think it’s terrific and everyone’s worked so hard and it’s a really nice culmination of everyone’s massive efforts to do this. And I couldn’t be more pleased with it. Thank you for your words.
You, as the executive producer, oversaw every process of bringing this album to life, and it’s an insane journey to say the least. You have gone through so many difficulties to make this happen. But then again, you have all these people working on the album, who all love Tim and Cardiacs. Was that sense of community helpful to you to get to the finish line?
Yeah. Was just 100% full into doing it. Didn’t have to get the big stick out and hit anyone or anything. Everyone wanted to do it and it’s taken four years, so it’s been a long slog. But we got there in the end and I’m really pleased with the result. It’s been great. I like your description of a community.
In the album notes, Rob Crow is noted down as being responsible for “drumf.ckery”. What does that mean?
We had some drum tracks which were a little bit messy, so we’d send them over to Rob Crow who chops them into tiny little bits, takes all the noise out. So in a few of the tracks, we sent the drum stems over to Rob and he came back with these perfectly set up different drum sounds or whatever. We kept the original sounds, but he tidied them and tightened them up perfectly. So that’s what it was about.
Is there a specific song on this album that went through the most change compared to the original version?
Apart from “Ditzy Scene”, “Gen”, “and “Made All Up”, which were all pretty much pre-recorded and we just had to add bits to, they were all just demos really. So the same amount of work went all into all of them. They were all built from the ground up, if nothing else, because all we had to go by was Tim’s guides he put down. And of course, Tim and Kavus and Bob had already started on some songs, so the groundwork was there on most of them. But that was just guitars, drums, and Tim’s guide vocals. He’d begun to do them before he ended up in hospital. So every little scrap, everything he has recorded of himself in there, we wouldn’t dream of replacing him with anything. So where he is, he’s up front. Apart from all that, I’d say “Skating” was the one that took the most work.
Awesome track, by the way.
Yeah, it’s pretty mad, isn’t it? I love it just the way it is, because it’s such a complex track.
Yeah. My favorites will, I assume, constantly change, but that might be my personal favorite at the moment..
It’s a great track. To be honest, they’re all almost like my little children now, so I can’t pick between them. But yeah, “Skating”’s the most wayward child there, so… (laughs) That and “Busty Beez”, which I think is enormous, are two of my favorites. “Volob” is also a great one. But I’d say none of them took super hard effort, apart from “Skating”, which just by its nature took the most work. I think it was pretty much the same for all of them.
What is the story behind the kangaroo we see on the album cover art?
Tim was on tour somewhere doing live sound for a band somewhere. I think they were in a pub and he saw the painting on the wall of the pub, and it was the pub owners who’d drawn it and painted it. It’s an actual painting on a piece of wood, and he fell in love with it there. He asked the landlady of the pub if she could buy it and she sold it to him for £25. He was really pleased with it, his original plan was to use it for the cover of the Guns LP. Until he got home, he realized he’d bought it in Hungerford in the UK, where they had a madman go around doing a mass shooting at some point. So he thought it would probably be in bad taste and bad karma to use the kangaroo from Hungerford on an album called Guns. (laughs) So he got shelved for that one. It just ended up on his wall at home. When we were starting work on LSD in earnest three or four years ago, we were sitting there looking at it, and we said, that’s gotta be the cover for LSD. That’s why we made the decision to use the kangaroo. He’s lovely, isn’t he?
Yeah. This is probably the most insane album cover story I’ve heard in a while. And honestly, everything about Cardiacs’ history is insane. So that really fits your legacy. (both laugh)
Yeah.
Before you announced this album, you shared a previously unseen Cardiacs concert film from back in 1988. Why did you choose that concert to share? Is it a special one for you?
It wasn’t special as much as it’s unique because it’s just a one camera shot video. So it’s almost like you’re in the audience watching it, rather than a full on, proper job. It gives it the atmosphere of being there, which is nice. A lot of it’s filmed from amongst the crowd, and strangely enough, we’ve got no idea who filmed it. It was in a case in Tim’s office. It had no information whatsoever about who filmed it. It just said where it was, what date it was filmed on, and we don’t know who the cameraman was. Nick Elborough, who used to do our videos back in the early days, put it together, and we just thought, let’s put it out. Kids deserve to see it. It has got that unique aspect. It was nice for me because I’ve never seen us. I’ve never been to a Cardiacs show. It was nice to sit there and see what it was like.
People have commented really lovely things under the video as well. Some were actually there that day.
Yeah. See? Seems to have lots of memories for different people. That’s great. I love the comments.
In the recent years you have put up numerous stuff that is very archival for Cardiacs. You have a ‘museum’ on your official site containing your old interviews, your music has come to surface on streaming platforms, you have a new visual history book… Do you have other plans to archive the band’s history further? I personally think a documentary film would be awesome.
It’s funny you should say that, because I’ve just finished an interview with a guy called Tomas from Finland, and he brought this up. He said, “I think Tim and the band deserve a biography.”
Totally.
That’s made me think about it, because I’ve got so much rubbish up in the loft, that’s all Tim’s scribblings and stuff. It’s on the cards. I’ve heard it mentioned before, and it’s probably a very fitting idea. I think we will probably do that, whether it be in film or just a book. Start from the very beginning…
Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
Yeah.
Your public reception has shifted over the years from being a more controversial band to receiving more and more love critically and commercially. You’ve had multiple sold out concerts last year, and it seems that you are gaining a younger audience in addition to your oldschool fans as well. What do you think about this shift?
Yeah. I think for this music, press and journalists now are much more open and welcoming. And with social media, we can pretty much advertise ourselves now, which is a major thing to consider. So I put a lot of it down to that. Plus it’s bloody good music. (both laugh) It deserves the wider audience it’s getting to. But I definitely think the changing dynamic is down to the Internet being more freely available and it gives you a worldwide stage, unlike the stage we performed at for so many years with such a close minded press. It was terrible.
We should also consider that social media is a form of press at this point, which gives a lot more people to share their opinion, which I think makes it easier for you to reach wider consensus on the beauty of your work.
It gives you a direct connection with who we’re playing to as it were, so they can comment and we can see what they’re thinking of things as it goes along and we can adapt to that. It’s a way of seeing what your audience is enjoying and isn’t, and you can slightly shift perspectives a little bit more now. There’s a more direct link with your audience, whereas before, you would do a gig and everyone would go home, you’d never see them again for another three months, four months till you get to do another concert. Now you can hear from them constantly, which is much more refreshing and I think it’s helped a lot. The Internet has been a big prime in us gaining a lot more popularity at the moment, which is great.
Let’s talk about the legacy of Tim. In the notes you sent me, Mike Vennart says: “There are a lot of things that we still don’t know how Tim did what he did.” When I first discovered your music, it was absolutely amazing to me that Tim was self-taught as a musician, considering all the amazing techniques and approaches he brought to the table, which made me think, “There should be something academic in this virtuosity,” you know? But on the other hand, let’s say he was musically educated. Would the result be the same? Would those approaches still come about? I highly doubt it. I think it was all about his authentic curiosity and whimsy. Would you agree?
Yeah, I agree with you completely. And he did that for multiple instruments. He started on drums when he was a kid, moved on to guitar after that. He also taught himself piano, trumpet, and even flute at one point. He could play pretty much anything. He’s one of those people. He did have little influences. We were influenced quite a lot by Devo in the early days. Tim also loved Henry Cow, Frank Zappa, which you can hear in parts of his art. I think he wasn’t scared to speak, so he said, “That’s what they’re there for, to be stolen!” (laughs) It’s not like he’s done it by numbers or anything like that. It was all him. It’s all from his head. I guess that’s what makes it unique.
Tim has referred to Cardiacs as a pop group, or a psychedelic pop group. I am here to say, I agree! I don’t know if this will make sense, but in a way, I see his musical intellect spiritually close to Brian Wilson’s. Wilson did groundbreaking pop with The Beach Boys, and Tim made groundbreaking pop with Cardiacs. Would you also agree that Cardiacs is a pop band?
Yeah, I would. And I’d also quote him. He always said it. He said, “It’s just tunes! (laughs) it’s not a genre, it’s just tunes. And that’s it. Stick to that.” We were quite big fans of pop bands. Everyone loves a bit of Prince and a little bit of ABBA. There’s all manner of stuff. We used to listen to everything. So yeah, we have our little pop influences. I was a massive Prince fan myself. I remember taking Tim to see Prince at the O2 in London, and he was blown away by that. So that was nice. One of my happy memories of my brother, seeing him convert to Prince. I agree. We are a pop band. Definitely. The one thing we hate is the term prog. (both laughs) That is the worst genre ever. So ugly.
I think Cardiacs deserved to have one big radio hit. Which song do you think it should have been?
“Is This The Life?” nearly did it. We nearly got there. There’s a story behind that. We got to number 80 in the British charts, and it was getting massive airplay on national radio. Then it just stopped, because Kylie Minogue released “I Should Be So Lucky”, and after that every record pressing plant in the country was pressing Kylie Minogue records, and we could not get any more records pressed. So we ran out of stock. That’s as far as we got. But are you asking if there’s one I think should be?
Yeah.
Because that song is not my favorite. I think there might be on this new one. I really like “Breed.” That’s a nice little song. It’s radio friendly.
Yeah, I love it.
“Volob” is really nice too. Oh, I don’t care. Any old thing will do.
Here is a question asked by a friend: Is LSD the grand finale, or is there more stuff coming out in the future?
No, it’s not the final album. I think we have got two more albums, which we will start soon. It’s not the end of the road. So you can look forward to seeing us all on mobility scooters or wheelchairs on stage. (laughs)
Let’s imagine we’re at a Musicians Theme Park 100 years from now, where every artist or band featured has their own memorial stone with a certain lyric by them written on it. Which one of Tim’s lyrics would you like to see written on Cardiacs’ stone?
Wow. You got me there. I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, Deniz. (thinks)
“That’s the way we all go”, I suppose. That’s a bit obvious, though. Let’s stick with that anyway.
You can check out Cardiacs’ official website here and Bandcamp profile here.
