Even the very best bands must first emerge from the most humble of
beginnings. Here is a snapshot of a couple of years past: it is a cold winter's
night, and Jay Leighton and Pete Ainge are driving the 200 miles from their
Leicester home to Bristol to play a show at the city's Fleece and Firkin. It
takes them ages, and the petrol is hardly cheap, but it's a gig and they are
keen, and so it is worth it. But when they eventually arrive, a surly promoter
tells them they've been double booked, and unceremoniously pushed. A
mistake, apologies; goodbye.
"It was not," Jay says now, "one of our better moments."
And then it got promptly worse. As they stood there outside the venue wondering what to do next, a seagull flew over and shat on Pete's head, a
moment painfully redolent of a bad sitcom in which the hero is revealed a
laughing stock.
"We drove the 200 miles home, poor Pete still covered in shit, and
spent the entire time discussing the state of our lives and wondering quite
what the hell it was we were doing. The acts we had been in were going
nowhere. We needed a change, a new band, a different direction, a fresh
incentive."
Thus immobilised, Jay soon put his house on the market, the
proceeds of the sale going towards funding their new project, which would
now also feature Pete's younger brother Graham on piano and keyboards.
They would call themselves Buffalo 77, and it would be the making of them.
Two years on, and the gamble appears to be paying off. Buffalo 77 have just completed their debut album. It's called Memento and it's an
uncommonly rich collection of pop-rock tunes that recall U2’s widescreen
emotion and Keane at their most strident, but with more grit, more muscle
and, in Jay's case, more facial hair: "If I shave, I look 12," he points out.
It's early days yet, but 2009 might just have found its best new band already.
Jay, 26, Pete, 25, and Graham, 23, grew up in and around the Midlands.
They've been friends since schooldays, and have spent the better part of a
decade playing in a succession of bands that taught them not just how to sing
and play their instruments, but also just why a smaller band is better than a
larger one.
"Three members," says Jay, "fit into a minivan much better than five..."
Jay had been obsessed with music since his midteens, and claims his personal turning point came the moment he first saw Nirvana on television.
"I remember watching their MTV Unplugged performance and being blown away," he recalls. "And that was it for me. I knew that music was what I
wanted to do with my life, all thanks, pretty much, to Kurt Cobain."
He is being slightly disingenuous here, because there was another band before Nirvana that also meant the world to him. But we'll come to this
particular act (from Norway, if you're asking) later.
After school, he and Pete spent their evening plying their trade in various local acts which were influenced, variously, by punk and emo and
straight-ahead rock, while Jay worked in bars by days, and Pete for his father
selling pumps for oil rigs. Demo tapes were regularly sent out, which
prompted enthusiastic responses from the likes of Steve Lamacq and Island
Records, each encouragement enough to keep their dream alive.
But it was only when they formed Buffalo 77, named with a nod of honour to Jay's all-time favourite movie Buffalo 66, that they finally came good
on all their by now highly honed potential. The inclusion of Graham Ainge, and
his collection of keyboards, immediately leant Buffalo 77 an irresistible allure,
as did Jay's increasingly romantic way with a pop lyric.
"Well, after 10 years of near constant songwriting, I hope by now I
know how to write a good song," he says. He certainly does. Many of the
songs on Memento are informed by grand topics such as love and life and our
very reason for being, and tracks like Won’t Forget and Cheap Champagne
soar with a bruised but beautiful melancholy, while Happiness & Good
Intentions is an exquisitely limpid ballad that confirms Jay’s skill in crafting the
kind of sad songs that cannot help but uplift the listener. You will want to listen
to it time and again. And if many of the songs here are so pregnant with
1980s-coloured melody that they practically float, it’s because that the other
band that so informed Jay's formative songwriting years were none other than
A-Ha.
"Let's face it, A-Ha really did write the most wonderful pop songs,
didn't they?" he says of the band Coldplay and The Feeling also cite as major
inspirations. "I know I went on to Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins, but I'd be
lying if I said A-Ha didn't hold a special place in my heart."
But unlike A-Ha, Buffalo 77 have an extra dimension to them,
something that is revealed when they play live. Suddenly, that exquisite pop
sensibility gives way to brawn and muscle, and the wall of sound that these
three young men produce suggests that they also harbour a soft spot for the
likes of Foo Fighters.
"We always like to give a little bit more on stage, to sound more
ragged," Jay says. "I mean, what's the point of perfectly reproducing your
album in a live setting? People want more than that, don't they? We try to
deliver more."
They succeed.
In February, the band will release Memento on the Autonomy label, perhaps
the best debut album ever to be funded by the sale of a Midlands house.
These are songs that were born for heavy rotation, songs that could become
national anthems, songs that could well run and run.
"As I get older," Jay says, "I get increasingly obsessed with the
passing of time. I very strongly feel that we are only here once and that we
shouldn't waste a single moment of our lives, which is why time is such a
massive element in all my songs. I hope, if nothing else, that strikes a certain
chord."
This seems entirely likely. Memento is a wonderful record and Buffalo
77, finally, have arrived.
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