As anyone who’s watched Grant’s magnificent solo career develop across his solo albums will tell you, Grant specialises in bracingly honest songwriting. These LPs have brought commercial and critical success to the notoriously self-critical Grant. But before this solo acclaim, there were The Cza...
The Czars
The Ugly People Vs The Beautiful People
Bella Union, 2001
Issues with the sleeve notwithstanding, Grant loved the title and at least some of the songs. Sadly, it bombed.
GRANT: We recorded this in Denver, with Simon Raymonde and Giles Hall producing, and Colin Brooker engineering. This is my least favourite Czars album because I hate the cover art. And I picked it out, ’cos I thought it was edgy or something. That cover [a shot of a naked girl’s legs] sums up how I was getting it wrong at that point. The title’s good, though, as are some of the songs: “Killjoy”, “Lullaby 2000”, which was written by Roger Green. I was getting closer but the songs are never fully realised. I felt the people around me in the studio were like, “Yeah, you’re sort of getting it, but you’re not really busting it out like you should with the talent you have. We know you’re holding back.” But they still believed I was going to someday. Why weren’t we successful? I felt that was because I wasn’t good-looking enough and I was a disappointment as a performer. And we just couldn’t get a break. At one point Chris Blackwell’s label Palm Pictures were going to pick us up and then, after taking a year and a half to get to this point, Chris Blackwell came in on the day we were supposed to finally sign, and said: “No. I don’t like it. Bye.” It was always like that. I always blamed myself and that’s what made me so difficult to get along with. And I wasn’t a good performer because I was afraid of being called a faggot. I developed horrible depression and crippling anxiety disorder, which developed into alcoholism and cocaine abuse just as a way to cope.
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The Czars
X Would Rather Listen To Why Than Suffer Through A C Of Z’s
Bella Union, 2002
Oddly titled stop gap release, and something of a collectable among Czars fans – it was given away on tour. An interesting footnote in the band’s history.
GRANT: This is often referred to as a live EP, but it isn’t. We just recorded it live in the studio in Denver. We produced it ourselves. The eclecticism of the four songs is exactly what was wrong with The Czars. It’s like a patchwork quilt. I love patchwork quilts. But not in music. I love a lot of different styles, but my heart belongs in electronic music. And on this record I didn’t know what the fuck we were doing. The title comes from a dictionary of Russian idioms, and refers to the formulas they used for idioms. My friend Lawrence Epstein, who became Schwa, the guy I wrote “Sensitive New Age Guy” on Pale Green Ghosts about who committed suicide two years ago… he came up with this title. It’s strange, because this was my favourite thing by The Czars for a long time. But it still didn’t fit into who I was. I really wanted to be making music that sounded like Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy and Alien Sex Fiend.
