The Grifters, named after a Jim Thompson book, come from Mississippi and are highly conscious of the musical roots of their region. Since 1990 they've released records in the UK on a number of small labels. Nowadays they're signed to a Sub Pop label getting its second wind. LAST MAN ALIVE is the latest single and AIN'T MY LOOKOUT is the new album, both on Sub Pop.

We spoke to guitarist and vocalist Dave Shouse recently.

Report ...Kevin Ring

It's more of a press tour. There's a Rough Trade In Store, a Peel session. It's kind of to make up for lost ground. We haven't been doing anything in England for a while. We put out two records here through Southern that did fair at best. That was '93 and '94. We focused more on the continent. It's been an easy move to Sub Pop because of the nature of the label, because they began as a small label, that's good. It's really hard to tell exactly where it's all about. It's just now it's starting, everything has been pretty normal in our lives up until March when it gets kind of crazy. Later on this month we're going to Australia for the first time. Then it's three months touring in the States.

What's your profile like in the States?

It's ok. We're getting consistently favourable press, even people who pick up the record and don't know what to make of it kind of give us a polite kind of `scratch your head' kind of review. It's good. A lot of indie bands that haven't broken through to a whole lot of people....we're not in a hurry. We're taking our time.

You've had good press in Rolling Stone magazine of all places.

That was actually a record review by a guy that writes for a Chicago daily newspaper and he was able to send that in. It reaches a different readership. People who read Rolling Stone have kinda grown up with things, they're older, 30s, 40s. They see the kind of music we do as a kind of intrusion on the Tom Petty's of the world.

But judging from what he said where he makes comparisons with The Rolling Stones EXILE ON MAIN STREET, The Band, Big Star - you're really talking Rolling Stone magazine type music surely?

One thing we've always paid attention to is where the music is indigenous to the area such as Memphis, where it came from. We stay in touch with that but it allows us to stretch out. If they hear EXILE ON MAIN STREET maybe they're hearing the same kind of take that we have on the Stones music and Lightning Hopkins and Son House and all the Mississippi blues people and Big Star, The Beatles and The Kinks and stuff like that.

The album is fairly complex music?

We try to do as much group writing as we can. No matter what you hear, blues, pop, whatever, it's a collision of four people, their take on the idea. We all sit there and beat it out. We all come from different directions. We like that. Someone can come with an unorthodox approach and we end up scratching our heads but thinking it may work. It may sound more dense because it's not just one band idea. You look at certain songs and think - this doesn't need much. I think that's something we've learnt to do more so than we used to. As you grow older together as a band you start to be a little more sympathetic to what the song needs at certain times. I think this record is a little more focused than things we've done in the past.

My ears picked up around track five, which is PRETTY NOTES, it seemed, well, prettier?

That's a give away isn't! That's a song Scott had and he played it for us one night and we were sitting in a parking lot in Lawrence in Kansas...

Were you looking for William Burroughs!?

We actually drove by his house. The song was pretty simple. That song and LAST MAN ALIVE and even PARTING SHOT are a little sunnier. It's a sunnier kind of thing and maybe two years ago we wouldn't have recorded that. We might have been self conscious about doing something that was prettier or happier. You look at something and think it's a good song or not a good song. As long as things make sense when everything is done.

A lot of music coming out of America since about 1989, that whole grunge aspect, that was definitely influenced by the heavier 70s American bands. There wasn't much subtlety involved. Nirvana could always turn a pretty melody when you least expected it. It's scary to think in the middle of a show where you have all these people going in one direction and then to lay something down that's the exact opposite. We play a lot of slow, quiet stuff.

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