Life’s full of surprises. We initially asked DAVE GRANEY to write a track-by-track guide to his latest album, 'Knock Yourself Out'. What we got instead was a mediation on the London expat scene in the ’80s, African-American influences and what it means to be funny. Not that we’re complaining. Cover art by TONY MAHONY.

When we were in the Moodists and living in London in the ’80s I got exposed to a variety of black music that I’d never heard much of before. I was really hopped up on it. I guess I dropped out of caring what was indie rock or not back then and have never been in the discussions. I came along to a rehearsal one day, all fired up for us to do a version of Sly and the Family Stone’s ‘Life’. It just didn’t sound the same without the organ and the horns (and the chops and the cultural flux) so we started to goof around on an unreleased Stooges track we had a cassette of called, ‘She Creatures of the Hollywood Hills.’ It had been handed and taped from Henry Rollins to Rowland Howard to us. We were in the thick of things. The Moodists were a real unit and we were connected to other real units and things happened for reasons. We were right!

It’s funny when people talk about that time now and all they can say is “Triffids” or “Go-Betweens”. That’s what happens I guess. All the people who liked those acts are the ones that are doing the talking now. Both acts were our friends and peers I guess, but in the Moodists, we thought they were funny. I mean in the way that Warren Beatty would talk of things he enjoyed. He always said, if he liked them, that so and so was “funny”. That’s the way we were. We thought they were funny. We thought we were funny too, but better than them of course. (None of those people who talk about those acts now ever refers to them as being funny). In most areas, we liked funny things. I don't mean funny as in “ha ha”. I mean funny as in ambiguous or full of shady stuff. Not dodgy – though that's OK too – just funny. The Birthday party were funny. Really funny. And so were the Beasts of Bourbon and the Scientists.

Of course, I can easily see, in my life that the majority of stuff has appeared to me to be not funny. If I was to look around today I would say that the Wagons were funny. And so too for Kes Band and the Ancients and Robyn Hitchcock and Dr Doom and Lil Wayne. Radiohead and Coldplay are not, to me, funny. Shoot me. Same for most bearded Yankee slow poke sad sack woodcore acts too. Toss their skinny white asses in the river!

Anyway, I’m supposed to be writing about my new album. I just thought I’d give you some background. How I’ve always approached things from a certain attitude. Alright, with a certain attitude too.

The first song on my album came from a vocal I was asked to do for a little cameo for the very brilliant Melbourne drummer and hip-hop beat man known as Plutonic. I provided too many words and he couldn’t use it. While I was away on a tour I asked Clare Moore to write me some music and she cooked up this whole track and grabbed that vocal and flew it into it and there we were! We had a way into making some music from a different direction. The song is called ‘Knock Yourself Out.’ I always wanted to do a couple of things with a lyric and a song. One was to be a little bit like the posthumous Doors album, An American Prayer, where the band kept using known motifs and figures from their own songs and dropping in some of Jim’s daydreaming talks. His drifting words. I don’t have that many recognisable motifs to allow me to do that so … maybe in the future!

The other way was a lyrical style. On Sly Stone’s ‘Thank You Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Again’, he keeps dropping titles of his own songs and they seem to make a new kid of shorthand sense in this larger songs. He goes something like, “Dance to the music/All night long/Everyday people/Sing a simple song.” He does more, of course, and the music and the groove is so great that he did two versions of it.

“I had laid out a whole litany of my own songs, stringing them together in a kind of story like a bragging blues about my own drama.”

So on the title track of ‘Knock Yourself Out’ and on Plutonic’s cameo, I had laid out a whole litany of my own songs, stringing them together in a kind of story like a bragging blues about my own drama: “Rock’n’roll is where I hide/Wasn’t that great?/You’re just too hip baby/Don’t mess with the blood/I’m not afraid to be heavy.” The main chorus or “hook” of the tune were a few lines I remembered (again, from that time living in the UK) being declared to a journalist by Morris Day from the Time. (They were Prince’s rivals in Purple Rain and the band also featured super producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. I loved all that stuff they did, like the super suave Alexander O'Neal). Morris said to this hapless writer, “As a concept, I know! I am incredible! But I’m a reality!” I always loved that line so I took it from my brain and fried it in this tune.

So, the rest of the album? I tried to follow the approach of getting the lyrics to a beat first rather than sweating over chords and arrangements. I call this record a filthy r’n’b set or an electro boogie album. Its a solo album, but it’s not a guy with an acoustic guitar. I play most of the instruments except for the drums which Clare Moore takes care of – either her trusty vintage Gretsch kit, which she has had since the Moodists days, or she took the sounds from her keyboard and arranged them as she saw fit. (Her keyboard is the same one that Timbaland uses). I wrote all the lyrics and music except for three which Clare either set up for me or worked on with me. Stu Thomas plays amazing bass on two songs and sings on others and Stu Perera plays lead guitar licks on three. I play electric guitar, bass and keys on all the others. I recorded and mixed it at our studio, the Ponderosa.

Lyrics? I guess I’m touching on identity (‘Bodysnatcher Blues’), sex (Throwin’ One Into The World’), music (‘I Need My Guitar’), mythology (‘Dylan The Indie Fake’), tough guys down on their luck (‘Oakleigh Bowie Blues’), trips to the country (‘I Don’t Wanna Go Bush’) and sellouts (‘Sellout!’). A lot of is just as driven by the musical setting as the lyrics. In ‘Dylan The Indie Fake’ I put my voice through a vocoder to set it more deeply into the groove rather than be a text-based kind of thing. My favourite parts of the song are the dive bombing octave runs after the vocals finished. I used a fair amount of fuzz and octave and wah on my guitar and mixed my vocals way up front like on a classic country record. I also love to use slap delays on my voice and reverb. I mix the guitars way down low and off to the sides and keep the voice and the drums and the bass right dead centre, where we believe they should be.

In general, there is another boxing allusion in the title of the album, same as the last album, We Wuz Curious. I don’t know why I’m still in a kind of combatant or adversarial mode. It’s my attitude I guess. Where I came from, the direction. Again, its funny a lot of dopes who talk about rock music, if they have to talk about my stuff, do so in terms of it being “laid back” or “smooth”. I guess I must have screwed up some signals somewhere along the line. People who say stuff like that have rarely heard my sounds. That bugs me and fires me up I guess. Stupid.

Quixotic? I love playing music with my band the Lurid Yellow Mist. and their comradeship inspires me. We are having to really rehearse up this material to play it live, in a way I never have had to do before. It’s my music but we have to get into it like we’re doing cover versions of it. It’s all expanding to another level. And yes, it’s funny. The album is funny and my band is funny and the live shows are funny. Clare Moore and I have played in so many scenes. We’ve been hot and cold. In the end, you do have to “knock yourself out” because people's attention is unpredictable and scatty and fickle and you can’t always live in other peoples’ eyes only. That way, there is no funny.

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Dave Graney’s Knock Yourself Out is out now via www.thedavegraneyshow.com.