One evening last May, Razorlight mainman Johnny Borrell picked up the telephone to be greeted by the Duty Sergeant at Southwark police station. “We have a Carl Dalemo here, he said, “and he has your Visa card. Do you know him?” Unnerved, because this came the day before a crucial London show, Borrell assented. “Can you describe him?” Borrell didn’t have to hesitate: “He looks like a fucking superstar!”
Indeed, Dalemo does look like a superstar, and so do the rest of his band. They’ve got the clothes, the cheekbones and the looks to adorn a thousand bedroom walls. Their fansite includes a whole “dreams of Razorlight section”, which features such delights as a fan’s sexual fantasies about Borrell’s hair. And, crucially, they’ve got the tunes too, as the three-minute surge of melodic punk that is debut single ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Lies’ attests. You are going to be hearing a great deal about Razorlight.
First, though, a little explanation. Dalemo, the band’s resident lord of misrule, had been arrested for urinating on Whitehall during a Mayday march. He had Borrell’s Visa card, because, so confident were the band that they’d be signed within a few months of forming, they were living on credit, crisps and big dreams. When the police didn’t give Dalemo back his bus pass, he was so brassic he had to walk all 5 miles home. Within 24 hours of this, however, the band’s dreams were realised, and schlepping home became a thing of the past. They signed to major label Mercury, after a mere nine months’ existence, for a no-more-night-buses quarter of a million pounds.
Razorlight were formed ten months ago by Londoners Borrell (after a brief spell in the Libertines) and drummer Christian Smith, finding lead guitarist Björn Agren through an ad, who in turn recommended Dalemo, from the same village in Sweden, as bassist. Although Dalemo had never played bass before, Borrell wanted him in the band on repute alone.
“He went to see Guided By Voices and got kicked out before the gig started, then tried to get in through the roof and nearly fell into the venue! I thought, someone who cares that much about music is worth having in a band.”
Their sound is indeed all about incision and concision – all chiming, syncopated Television guitars, poppy melodies and tightly wound restraint. “The perfect pleasure leaves you unfulfilled,” says Borrell, “so we just give you a bit of something really good – we like to keep it compact, not meander.” While their debt is to 70s New York, Borrell’s delivery is none more English, an evocative, emotive tickertape of words, spilling out into the tight spaces of the music. And the name? One night their manager misheard Borrell gibbering “s’all right” at the end of rapturous stop-start-speed-up-slow-down set closer ‘In The City’ as “Razorlight”.
“It’s incisive and illuminating,” says Borrell. “The naked moment when you see things as they really are. At the end of the fork. It’s the perfect name.”
Toby Manning