Keith Robert Haworth is a prolific indie songwriter, active since the 90s when he was in the band HunkyDory! Since then he’s recorded under a number of sobriquets: The Protagonist! Art School Chicks! and now as Drunk Keith! He’s worked with numerous collaborators and on various projects including films, and in the autumn will be appearing live at Queer Pop events in London with stage act Project Adorno, and on tour as a guest of fellow 90s veterans Subjagger. I got to know his work through his being a fellow fan of Momus, and he was good enough to let me speak to him about Perfumed Ponces! His new album available through Bandcamp. Keith has a startling number of songs ready to go, up to 50 albums worth, making him the Prince of bedsitter noir.
The album is a startling, melancholy collection of narrated incidents, detailing both sordid and rebellious aspects of life in the UK. It’s clearly similar in sound to some of Pulp’s output, deals with similar themes and uses similar imagery, as you’d expect from a contemporary of the scene. The album champions the outcasts, the outliers and soft-spoken rebellion in general, while having little time for toxic male behaviour or the irrational hatred and violence we’ve been witness to lately. The home-recorded software synths and instruments are enlivened by live instrumentation: saxophone, harmonica and other keyboard additions by guest musicians Selwyn Harris and Ian Matthews.
John Robinson: So Keith, would you like to give OL readers a little potted history of Drunk Keith!?
Keith Robert Haworth: I used to be ostensibly in an indie bands called Hunky Dory!, I felt that we were a pretty good band. But you know, as often happened back in those days, if you didn't, if you didn't kind of go along with what kind of potential record labels wanted to do, it was always a bit of a disaster. I felt like I was my own worst enemy. To a certain extent. It was kind of like The Smiths, but we had kind of like analog synths in it. So it was myself, a guy called Jason Lazelle, who has kindly helped out with the Perfumed Ponces! release. Kevin Paver, Ian Matthews and Selwyn Harris, who went on to write for Jazz Wise magazine. I'm still very friendly with those guys and some of them have helped out on the album.
KH: After Hunky Dory! failed to ignite you know, I was very depressed, and after that I started pottering about with a package called Reason, and then solo under the name of The Protagonist! I was gravitating more to alternative artists, and I'd always wanted to do the kind of stuff that Momus had done. But of course, I didn't have a computer or access to the software until a lot later. I did an album under the name The Protagonist! called Pinkfuzz! which was a kind of sleazy listening electronic drum and bass kind of porno album. Through a complete fluke, it ended up on the soundtrack to this film called Skateland, which was an independent movie that was at Sundance Film Festival in the states. I think everybody made a fortune out of that because people like Blondie and the Stones and so forth were on it, I think they paid me, well, at the Q&A they were joking “We paid that porno guy like a dollar for that track, man!”. It's an awful film. I didn't like it, but my mother was very happy to see me credited at the end of it, which is the best bit of the film.
KH: During that period, my father died. I then released an album ‘Exterminate, Annihilate... Destroy!’ after which my nan died, so it became apparent that the people in my family would sooner die than listen to my new album. I carried on making music for years and years and years Even though we've only just released Perfumed Ponces! it was kind of recorded a few years ago but in the middle of that I had, effectively, a mental breakdown. My closest friend that mastered the album was a guy called Charlie McIntosh, who died, he used to do a lot of work with (early 90s experimental rock band) Disco Inferno. He was a lovely, lovely guy. I was heartbroken because he was such a talent and he never got recognised for it. So the album was co-produced by a friend of mine called James Little, he kind of polished it so it didn't make people's ears bleed. Selwyn Harris plays a bit of keyboards, as does James and the old guitar player from Hunky Dory, and Ian Matthews plays the harmonica.
JR: Perfumed Ponces! is obviously an album that's taken a while to come together. So when do you think it started for you?
KH: The thing is that in my head I always kind of think of a title and then it builds up, I start imagining what the lyrics will be and then it kind of evolves and develops. That particular one was about eight years ago: I have about 50 albums worth of material available! That's all I did during lockdown alone, I made 20 albums.
JR: Good lord!
KH: Yes, there’s one called A Night Out With The Bomb Disposal Unit. That's a very good one. I've got another one called the British Brainwashing Corporation. And another one called All The Animals In The Jungle. And possibly the one I'd like to to release in the New Year. I just need to add some vocals, but it's one called Wife Swapping In Suburbia.
JR: You want to get these out, you don’t want them languishing!
KH: Yes, it makes me sound like Paddy McAloon! He’s got a few albums kicking around. I actually think, in fact, my favourite prefab Sprout album is a more recent one, Let’s Change the World With Music. Or I Trawl the Megahertz… That is absolute genius.
JR: So presumably Perfumed Ponces! is a reference to the film Withnail and I?
KH: I've got less than no sense of humour whatsoever, and it's certainly not one of my favourite films. I just like the sound of it. I just thought it sounded really cool together and the title track itself is kind of autobiographical. There's a lot of self-reflection involved and it touches upon themes of outsiders, you know, like all the artists I like, such as Luke Haines, The Smiths, Joy Division, or Lawrence. (Felt, Denim, Go-Kart Mozart) You know, he's very much under the radar, but sometimes I think, gosh, like, you want to live my life, Lawrence, then you’d know about being under the radar!
JR: Yes, for someone who is “under the radar” his name seems to appear on my social media all the time! Have you read the book yet? (Street-Level Superstar by Will Hodgkinson)
KH: It arrived the other day! I haven't had a chance to read it, obviously. But yeah, I noticed it was like #1 in the music charts or something. So at least he's had a number one at some point. You know I'm big champion of the marginalised and the outsiders and I gravitate to those kind of films and that kind of literature and just anybody that's got a peculiar worldview. I mean that on any level, music, writing, film. I think that if you can elevate life into an art form, and if you can offer an alternative or peculiar view of the world and then articulate that in a song with some beautiful melodies, hopefully some interesting lyrics that resonate, then I think that's a wonderful thing to be able to do. And it's not easy, especially being a musician currently. I would love to have a band, but I'm also very happy to just plug in the iPod and and then it becomes more of a theatrical performance, you know.
JR: You have some live events coming up, alongside Project Adorno and Subjagger?
KH: Yes, I wrote to Praveen (from Project Adorno) after lockdown, we were kind of friendly from Momus shows we had gone to together, and I had some of his albums. Praveen had made an album called When Morten Harket Hits The High Notes, which was genius, witty electropop, my partner and I would dance around to it when she had a break from writing.
JR: Your partner is a writer?
KH: Yes, a novelist, and she's just written a fabulous folk horror novel. I don’t have the patience to write a novel! (Olivia Isaac-Henry, Sorrow Spring, Harper Collins)
JR: So that’s when you got in touch with Praveen again?
KH: I talked to him on the telephone, and he invited me to perform at the Buxton fringe, and we cemented our friendship on the long drive. I suggested calling future shows the “Queer Pop Explodes”, a revue, like Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable! I have met a guy called Andy Pop, who is not dissimilar to Project Adorno, so we invited him, and now it’s an interchangeable revue with ourselves, Andy, and the band Sunset People. We’ll rotate the acts for the dates. We have one coming up September 19th at the Sound Lounge. I’ve also been invited on tour with friends of mine from Subjagger, who Hunky Dory! used to support. I’ve never done that kind of mini-tour before!
JR: On this album, there’s a lot of references to dogs, men as dogs, masculinity as a dog? There is a song called “My Life As A Dog”.
KH: Well, it’s like those terrible American talk shows, isn't it, like, something like the Ricki Lake Show would always have the strap line saying, “My man's a dog!”. And then, of course, they escalated that with people like Jerry Springer. I just thought to myself on the one hand, I'm not a very masculine guy myself… the people I get on best with, many of them are women! I just stole the title from the film. I don't think I've actually seen the film I just like the sound of the words and in my head, it has become a proto feminist anthem because it subverts things. You think it's about a very macho world view and that's why it's got stuff about Battersea because, of course, Battersea Dogs home, and then pissing on the streets because that's how dogs mark their territory. I thought I would try to inject a bit of humour in there but with a serious denouement, where at the end it says “they are not impressed by our misogyny”. It’s an apology to women who think we are dicks, which sometimes we are.
JR: There’s a line where you say “we are making babies with rabies”.
KH: Guess who that is from!
JR: Here, is it about parenting?
KH: I don’t know! I mean, I don’t have children. But sometimes, like because I've worked with a lot of young people, young offenders, unfortunately, I've seen the worst. I've seen the worst of feral kids, but I do love working with teenagers. Do you know what I mean? I wish I was one, you know. But it’s social commentary through a prism of my ideology and reflect the world as I see it. It has humour but also gravitas and emotional intelligence.
JR: It circles back to the sort of thing Pulp would address, with references to dogs, “Mis-Shapes” as well, about outcasts.
KH: Dogs Are Everywhere is a great pop song. I used to love it when they did My Legendary Girlfriend. I went to the Borderline to see them when that was single of the week in the NME. And honestly, there was about 10 people there. But Jarvis was still being Jarvis. And the theatricality… I was the bass player in a band and after seeing Jarvis I thought, you know what, I’m going to be a singer now! I was inspired by that and he did come to see my old band a few times. I’ve met him on occasion and he’s actually a nice guy, I would say.
JR: You work mainly with software now, what is your workflow, what do you use?
KH: My MacBook is on the way out, but I’ve got an old MacBook and use Logic. I’m a terrible musician but I can hear an atmosphere or a melody or something in my head and then luckily I can extrapolate it from my brain and then play it, pretty much everything, the way I'm hearing it in my head. As you will realise, I’m not a singer either, but I call myself a vocalist!
JR: It’s more narration isn’t it?
KH: Yes, lots of my songs are stories with a beginning, middle, end, but I also like the Burroughs/Ballardian thing of verses which act more like a thought experiment. I don’t get up and think “let’s write a song”, I get up and think, right, let’s have an experiment. There will be a mood or an atmosphere which I am feeling at a particular time, but when I start I can put down my coffee and start something. Five hours later I have been in a trance, a fugue state in which I am channelling energy. And it’s magic, a wonderful thing. I mean, I would love to be an author, I have half-a-dozen unfinished sci-fi novels under the bed. I don’t have the patience to see them through! My medium and passion is music and there is nothing in the world, ever, that I get a bigger buzz from than making what I believe is a brilliant song. I don’t know where they come from entirely. It’s a mental state, you need a certain mental agility, and know how to use the software, but I don’t like things that are too polished, I like the roughness and randomness, for instance in The Fall, or Eno.
JR: There’s a kind of genius in being able to follow that process as you do.
KH: I always think everybody can do it and anyone can make music these days. Let's let's face it. But just because you can do something, it doesn't mean that you should. But I am compelled to! I'm absolutely driven. I make music every day of my life. And if I'm not making it, I'm writing lyrics or thinking about some something. And sometimes I'd to put the brakes on. What's your take on the album? Have you got any favourite tracks?
JR: Perfumed Ponces itself, the title track, speaks to me as an outsider, and My Life As A Dog, and the instrumental opening, the overture. Concrete Jungle would make the best single!
KH: Jason and I had been talking about releasing the album. I was watching the riots and said, that’s everything that is in Concrete Jungle! We all despaired about what has been happening recently. These people are idiots, cretins. Society should be about elevating people, not regressing to Neanderthal behaviour. There have been 12-year-old arrested and while this is great in terms of material for an artist extrapolating it as social commentary, that isn’t an endorsement of the situation!
JR: Thank you for your time! Hopefully you will be able to get more material out and good luck with the live shows!
KH: Thank you!
Live Dates:
Queer Pop:
London Sutton Sound Lounge 19th September
London The Divine London 13th November
Supporting Subjagger (confirmed so far):
Bristol Thunderbolt 9th October
Brighton Brunswick 10th October
London Dublin Castle 11th October
