I like jangle pop, so anytime I find such a band that's new to me, I'll listen. Speed Of Sound I really like, both for the music and for a good, unusual concept--a museum exhibit. But it is a lot more than that.

John Armstrong, guitarist, songwriter, and one of the vocalists for the band, was kind enough to answer some questions for me.

Andrea Weiss: For those who don't know you, could you give a short musical history of the band?

John Armstrong: The first EP was 17th September, 1989 so Museum Of Tomorrow is exactly 32 years on from that; it wasn’t planned that way but it is tidy that it ended up there. Over the decades there have been 19 people in the band (which is a lot less than have been in The Fall!). The line up has been stable for the last four years, with the addition of keyboards. This our fifth full length album.

AW: Who are your influences?

JA: Everyone listens to different music and brings that to the sound. Kevin is a huge Rolling Stones and Northern Soul fan, Anne-Marie trained as a classical singer, John B would say Rush is his major influence, and I listen to a wide range of music from Beethoven, John Coltrane, and Joni Mitchell to The Who, and a whole lot more, too. The ones that made me want to pick up a guitar for the first time were Small Faces and The Chords.

AW: Would you say jangle pop bands are an influence? I hear a lot of that style in your sound.

JA: It's that 12-string Rickenbacker sound that adds the jangle. There is a thing The Byrds do where the music rushes along while the vocals pull it back and that is something that naturally happens in our music a lot. I think there is a definite parallel evolution with bands like The Primitives and The Darling Buds. We share a lot of influences and the oldest songs we still play live are from 1983-4, so not so much an influence as parallel.

AW: I like that the concept is a museum exhibit. Where did you get the idea for that?

JA: My first job was as a museum guide; museums are fascinating places, and the idea that although we are continually living at the point where the future meets the present, that moment will move into someone else’s past. We like to release our music physically and that in itself makes it an artifact that could be found by future archaeologists and end up in a museum. The idea is a future society is trying to understand the early 21st Century as a lived experience based on these songs.

AW: I also like how sci-fi is used here as a way of the past informing the future. Why did you want to make it like that?

JA: There are science fiction themes running through the album from the opening line “We were offered Star Trek but they fed us Soylent Green,” and yes; if you look at old science fiction like Star Trek it actually has formed the future. Technology boffins and designers grew up looking at Kirk’s communicator and Uhura’s ear piece and now we have mobile phones and in-ear devices. The past makes the future. I’ve always been interested in science fiction and the songs were written with the idea that they would be thematically linked and presented as an album rather than simply a collection of individual pieces.

AW: You write very good melodies. Is that something you strive for?

JA: Thank you! I think it's derived from the chord structures of the songs. There are a lot of unusual voicings and passing chords and a generally unresolved feel to a lot of the music, which pulls the vocal line in directions it wouldn’t go if it was only straight major/minor chords, so its a natural thing with the way I write. The lyrics always come first. They’re written separately, essentially as poetry. They’re set to music later, which means the music can fit the feel of the words. I find that much easier than doing it the other way around, of starting with a melody and bending words to fit that. It gives much more freedom.

AW: Is “The Day The Earth Caught Fire” about climate change?

JA: It is about climate change; or ‘climate malfunction’. There is a really good British science fiction film with the same title, but it was the fires around Manchester in 2018 that inspired it; they were nowhere near as serious as the fires in California or Australia, but I could see them from the day job office window and they were much bigger than anything we’d had here before. The following February we had temperatures here in the mid-20s (75F) when it should be snowing, or at least very cold and wet. There is still an uplifting and joyous feel to the song, not exactly a ‘party at the end of the world,’ but more a realisation that there is still something we can do about it. As with the rest of the album, it is very dark subject matter, but presented in a bright and hopefully engaging way.

AW: What advice would you give to someone just starting out in music?

JA: Do it. Find your own voice and use it. Don’t worry about what is fashionable, make music that you want to hear and music that means something to you. Go the DIY route and retain control, plan ahead, (a long way ahead!) and enjoy what you’re doing. That bit is very important!