More Trivia

Okay, okay, so I've told the story before, but….

In January 1983, the 19 year old me saw an advert in Probe Records in Liverpool for a band called A Better Mousetrap who were looking for a singer. Along with groups like Echo & The Bunnymen and Magazine, they’d thrown in Robert Fripp and Peter Gabriel as inspirations. Suitably intrigued, I phoned the number and enquired. A week later, I was sent a cassette of the band’s music - which operated in a fascinating early 1980s Progressive-tinged Post-Punk grey area - and loved it. The singer Peter Goddard had an engaging and eccentric style and I wasn’t sure why he needed replacing, but I was willing to try and fill his larger than large boots regardless.

Auditions were held in a well-known Liverpool rehearsal studio - The Ministry - frequented by the likes of OMD, Echo & The Bunnymen, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Dead Or Alive and Teardrop Explodes. Introductions over, I spent half an hour or so bellowing wildly over the band’s extremely disciplined songs. After only having previously been in guitar bands, it was thrilling to see so many keyboards and effects pedals alongside a reel to reel that was being used to enhance the soundscapes and rhythms. Tony Wretham tinkled the electronic ivories, David K Jones beat the hell out of his bass and Brian Hulse produced intriguingly precise knotty rhythms on his guitar. It was a grand sound and I very much wanted in!

Despite my self-evident enthusiasm I failed in my attempt to persuade the Mouseketeers that I was what they were looking for. I received a polite ‘Dear John’ letter and was told that the band was moving towards a smoother Art Pop direction and my style was closer to where the band had come from. In other words, the lunatics weren’t looking for Peter Goddard MkII. The good news was that the audition went well enough for me to remain in touch with Brian and David and over the next few years our abilities and aims aligned and our band Plenty was born. Lasting from 1986 to 1988, prior to and during my initial involvement with no-man and Steven Wilson, Plenty created an extensive body of work that I still believe ranks amongst some of the best material I’d co-written. For many years I harboured a desire to do the music justice and help it reach more people than it did in Plenty’s short lifetime (marginally more than zero!). Nearly thirty years after Plenty's demise the Bowness/Hulse/Jones trio regrouped and re-recorded our original 1980s material in the way we'd always intended to and produced a belated debut 32 years after we’d formed (It Could Be Home, in case you’re wondering).

Happily, that record for the slowest debut release ever has now been conclusively overtaken by A Better Mousetrap’s re-emergence as The Mousetrap Factory, which sees Peter Goddard once more performing with David K Jones and Brian Hulse. The beauty of routine is a debut 44 years after the ABM’s formation. Almost half a century, Goddammit!

What we have on the beauty of routine is the fruit of two years of reassessing what was good about the venerable Mousetrap and taking it well and truly into the next century. Drawing on material written between 1979 and 1982, the music still possesses that distinctive Post-Punk with a garnish of Prog flavour, but it also embraces 21st Century Electronica and Indie elements ensuring that this is no act of self-parody or mimicry.

Jones’s bass still growls with menace and Hulse’s guitar can still precisely chime, but the sound has been effortlessly updated to take in contemporary advances in rhythm programming and texture. Goddard remains a glorious fusion of all the Peters - Hammill, Gabriel, Nicholls, Wyngarde and Goddard himself - and his voice perhaps has even more presence than it once did (recalling the last, thick sips of a hot chocolate drink with a hint of whisky added for extra kick).

If I saw the advert and heard the band in January 2023, I’d still very much want in.

Tim Bowness, January 2023