When I reach Gary Jarman, frontman for UK buzz-sensations the
Cribs, he’s holed up in a fancy New York hotel and a complete nervous
wreck. Is he nervous about the high expectations of Men’s Needs,
Women’s Needs, Whatever, the band’s well-hyped major label debut
that has them poised to break out in the States? The recent controversy
over onstage comments at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, where the
band played to over 175,000 people? Their Conan O’Brien performance
scheduled to tape in a few hours? It was none of those things. Jarman
was nervous about playing the Doug Fir, and his first return to his
newly adopted home, Portland.
“I never get nervous about shows, but this [Portland] show I’m
really scared over, because I have a lot of friends that I know who
will be there.” He adds, “In England everyone knows me—I’m this guy in
a band—but when I come to America, my friends there, they don’t really
know about that side of me too much. It’s going to be so weird playing
in front of them all.”
Jarman is in love with our town. So much so, that when he wasn’t
busy leading this band of brothers (including fraternal twin Ryan on
guitar, and baby brother Ross on drums), he uprooted himself from
England and relocated here. Much like all new transplants to the Rose
City, he’s a little defensive of his new digs. “I’ve never really been
that type of person, but, for some reason, Portland is just the one
place where I really do feel protective of.”
The Brothers Jarman grew up in the downtrodden city of Wakefield,
England, a monochromatic former mining town. “Back in the ’80s, under
Thatcher, all the mines were shut down. I remember growing up there,
everyone seemed really angry all the time because the industry fell
apart,” says Jarman. “But growing up in Wakefield is one of those
things I’m really proud of in a perverse way—it’s given me some of the
values I have now.”
That rough upbringing has translated well to Men’s Needs.
It’s a punchy record of desperate youth anthems and
back-against-the-wall street poetry made by—and for—bored kids wasting
away in dead-end towns. Despite Warner Bros. writing the checks, the
band adopted little major label sheen on the record, instead turning
over the producing duties to friend Alex Kapranos, lead singer of Franz
Ferdinand. While Men’s Needs—from the punk opener “Our Bovine
Public” to Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo making a spoken-word cameo—is a
well-rounded effort, Kapranos really flexes his muscles as a hit-making
pop star with the single, “Men’s Needs.” Quite possibly the best import
single in years, the song is a frantic dose of bouncy pop, complete
with larynx-shredding backing vocals and some jabs at their peers in
the music industry.
Back home Jarman is a celebrity whose face, along with his rowdy
brothers, is splashed across the newsprint of NME, but here in
Portland, he’s just another guy in love with his new home. “That’s one
thing I love most about Portland,” says Jarman. “I feel like I have
more in common with the people there. They’re our contemporaries,
rather than all the shit we get lumped in with back in England.”