Moke

Moke, Holland’s finest are back. The success of 2007’s golden debut Shorland is a hard act to follow. But rest assured the second album The Long And Dangerous Sea hits home with a vengeance. Backed by a symphony orchestra, it’s of Ocean Rain grandeur . This is clearly their masterpiece. What’s more? It comes with wonderful pictures by fellow native Dutchman, the world’s most prolific pop photographer and U2’s staff pics man, Anton Corbijn. More? First single Switch hits you KO, OK? Arenas should be in sight now.

It looks so normal now, but is it really? Only two years ago they suddenly came out of the blue: Moke from Amsterdam. After a few shows in London supporting their friend and mentor Paul Weller, the ball started rolling. It literally did with the band’s theme music to the highlights of the UEFA Champions League on Dutch public TV. Holland’s biggest TV talk show embraced the lads straight away and gave them a monthly stint on the show. Next top fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld decided to dress them. In no time they were successful. Audibly, the cliché of the always difficult second album did not get a hold of them. If you see it as a big challenge to top your successes, then the perspective is completely different. They started working so eagerly and ambitiously, that it felt like second nature to do the second album. That’s what you get, when you do what you like most.

Repetition is a sign of weakness in pop music. That’s why so many bands are scared to follow up a success. Moke obviously hasn’t shied away from the challenge: The Long And Dangerous Sea is very different from Shorland, which put the band firmly on the map in the first place. Making a Shorland Vol. 2 would have been the easy way out. But that’s not the way they work. ‘We are our own biggest critics,’ affirms singer Felix Maginn openly. ‘We deliberately have not gone into the domain of the previous album. No copy cats please! We wanted it to be totally different. As it was it will never be again.’ This one was meant to go further than the first one and take us into new musical areas.’

Talking about challenges, the sky was the limit. The second CD The Long And Dangerous Sea simply had to be better than its predecessor Shorland from 2007 that went beyond gold (over 30.000 copies sold). Well, mission accomplished. Just listen: it is better. First single Switch coming with a great video shot in the Spanish Navarra desert sets the tone straightaway. Moke’s ambitions are instantly clear, if that wasn’t apparent already by the album’s photography by Anton Corbijn. Normally this man only works with worldwide household names such as U2 or Depeche Mode. Very sparsely he adds new names to his list of clients, like the Killers in recent years. And now of course Moke.

Musically and design-wise Moke are proof of an out of the box mentality. Moke are still Moke, with Brit-oriented indie pop, but possibly on an ‘arena level’ now. ‘This way it remained exciting for all of us,’ claims front man Felix Maginn. It all sounds very logical now, but try to do it with a ‘safe’ golden album in your hands. For less you would already get the shivers. The expectations were sky-high to say it with a silly cliché. Maginn adds another smart one on op of it: ‘It should’ve come straight from the heart.’ And it does.

The big success of Shorland slowed down the plans for its follow-up album considerably. Meanwhile, Moke picked up various awards, highlighted by a 3FM Award (2008) for Best Alternative act. The band was so much in demand with festivals and clubs – with the show at Pinkpop’s main stage in 2008 being the undisputed live peak so far – that there was hardly any time to actually start cutting the album. The last domestic club tour was as good as sold-out. The pressure got even higher thanks to a growing demand for shows abroad due to a German release on Universal’s Island label imprint. Add to this the many European dates with the likes of Paul Weller, Keane, Razorlight and Amy MacDonald, and you get an idea of a truly successful band. How on earth did they find the time for recording? However, at one point the ICP studio in Brussels was booked, staff producer Joeri Saal was hired, the album was mixed in his Amsterdam-based Studio 150, and see, here it is: The Long And Dangerous Sea. A prestigious stint at Grolsch stage at Lowlands 2009 is the direct result. The band was made the public face of the beer brewer’s TV campaign. As of 2010 Grolsch will put pure style and elegance before populism.

Where do we really see the evidence of those big ambitions and big gestures? What’s the difference with its fantastic predecessor? Well, we hear strings and rich arrangements. And isn’t that Benjamin Herman’s mind blowing sax, racing like a Vespa in the sun, on the track & Blue? Yes, it’s him the British jazz cat living in Amsterdam. The musical focus is slightly different with a slight accent on keyboards, without dominating the music entirely. Whereas Shorland put two guitars upfront, The Long And Dangerous Sea has a different balance, guitar plus synths. But Phil Tilli’s Big Guitar and Eddie Steeneken’s keys never push each other away, while bassist Marcin Felis and drummer Rob Klerkx take care of a solid rhythmical foundation. ‘The Long And Dangerous Sea is clearly the work of a collective, a real band,’ Tilli adds. ‘The final result is less obvious than it looks like now. It has cost all of us serious blood, sweat and tears in the recording studio.’

Maginn sums up the artistic process: ‘If you shoot over the top, you might hit it.’ Whereas the lyrics on the previous album had a very political load - they dealt with Maginn’s youth in Northern-Ireland, torn apart by sectarian violence - The Long And Dangerous Sea is lyrically probably less one-dimensional. ‘Writing songs is always about crying a lot, and seeing what comes out of it,’ he describes. ‘A song like Love My Life is about thinking how great my own life is but how much better it would be shared with a certain someone.’ However, once more there are two very political songs on the new album, firstly the wonderful ballad Nobody’s Listening about the plight of the youth in Palestine, (something Maginn can mirror to his own youth) and secondly the title track and album opener The Long And Dangerous Sea. That one harks back to ‘the disputed genocide in Ireland in the 19th at the time of the great famine.’ Not only big gestures, but also a message, that’s the trademark of the born Irishman. Moke remain a ‘Catholic band.’ Make the sign of the cross, raise the flag and all aboard for a trip across The Long And Dangerous Sea.

Line-up:

Felix Maginn: guitar, vocals
Phil Tilli: guitar
Marcin Felis: bas
Rob Klerkx: drums
Eddy Steeneken: keyboards