Looking Back 30 Years to the Creation of Pale Saints’ In Ribbons

The cover art for In Ribbons, the second full-length from Leeds-based shoegaze band Pale Saints, has long been a mystery to me. Created by Vaughan Oliver and Chris Bigg, two members of 23 Envelope, the in-house design team of the band’s label 4AD, and using a photo by Kevin Westenberg, the front of the album shows what appears to be a cooked chicken that has been either torn apart or stomped on. It was a far cry from the colorful, eye-catching designs that tended to accompany releases on the label. It was stark, brutal and a little gross.

In talking with Ian Masters, the musician who, with guitarist Graeme Naysmith and drummer Chris Cooper, formed Pale Saints in the late ’80s, the use of that photo on the front of an otherwise gorgeous collection of dream pop started to come into focus. Whether it was Oliver and Bigg’s intention or not, that smashed up poultry were a fine representation of the state of relations within the band when the album was released in early 1992.

Although Pale Saints was on solid creative footing at the time with the introduction of Meriel Barham (formerly of Lush) who brought some added guitar punch and lucid vocals to their work, Masters was frustrated working within what he saw as the rigid musical structure the band had found themselves within. His desire to break free of what they had done before caused much friction within the group and led to his departure in 1993.

None of that tension is apparent when listening to In Ribbons. The album is pitch perfect, playing out like a slow motion film of a fireworks show with vivid explosions of guitar overdrive and volume and long, shimmering falls into oblivion. Barham’s contributions are crucial to the record’s success with her more measured songs providing a perfect counterbalance to Masters’ often-feverish compositions.

With a reissue of In Ribbons in stores and online now, which includes a second disc of demo versions of the album material and two covers of Pale Saints songs covered by the Tintwistle Brass Band for a 7″ single that was included in the initial pressings of the LP, Paste spent some time on Zoom with Masters from his cluttered home office in Japan to talk about the history of this album, his departure from the group and why he didn’t even want their cover of Slapp Happy’s “Blue Flower” to be released. The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Paste: Before you made In Ribbons, Meriel Barham joined the group, and as the story goes, she came via a recommendation of Miki Berenyi of Lush. Is that true?

Ian Masters: We’d been using Ashley [Horner], the guitarist from a friend’s band, the Edsel Auctioneer, and they were getting busy so they couldn’t do it anymore. We were just kind of searching around for somebody. I guess the recommendation came from Miki.

Obviously having a second guitar to fill out the sound for live shows was great, but was this something you were looking for in terms of studio work and to help out with songwriting?

Well, as I said, we’d been using this other guy to fill out the sound, and it worked well. Having been a three piece and then an occasional four piece, it was much better with two guitars. So we needed a permanent member. The message was relayed to Meriel. She came and met us and it worked almost immediately. It really changed the dynamic of the band completely from being a lad’s band to being something a whole lot more interesting.

The demo versions of the songs on In Ribbons that are included on the new reissue gives an interesting glimpse into your working methods — with you singing the melodies to the song without real words. When it came to finally writing the lyrics, how did those come about? Was it you responding to the music in some way?

Mostly the lyrics came from the atmosphere and the spirit of the music. For the ones that I wrote. I don’t know where Meriel’s lyrics came from, but one of hers is dedicated to someone she can’t even remember anymore. There’s obviously some kind of inspiration for that one. It might have been “Thread of Light,” I can’t remember. But mine were listening to the music that we’d made and feeling what would not be abrasive in conjunction with the music.

Was it a comfortable process for you to cede some of the songwriting to another person within the group context?

Yeah. We were not a particularly prolific band so anytime anybody had ideas and brought something which we could work on, it was welcome. Meriel’s songs were immediately liked by everyone. There was no sense in which anybody was going to disallow somebody who’d only just joined the band from writing songs because they were good songs. I think she wasn’t really used to writing a song from beginning to end. In one case, she had difficulty in finishing it. I can remember sitting on the stairs at her little house in Leeds with a couple of guitars and we just kept on playing ideas until something seemed to fit. Generally that’s a lot of what we would have done in the rehearsal room.

Could you sense that you were being influenced in some way by what Meriel was writing or vice versa?

Not especially because I think we were on a pretty similar wavelength in terms of the emotional content, the kind of musical juxtaposition of certain types of harmonies which weren’t major thirds. They would be major seconds which would give the song a bit more tension.

You had previously worked with Hugh Jones on the Flesh Balloon EP. Why did you want to get into the studio with him again for the album?

Ivo [Watts-Russell, owner of 4AD] suggested him and everybody in the band liked some of the music he had produced. I think most of us were Echo and the Bunnymen fans. Those LPs were well produced back in the day. We met him, and he seemed like the kind of person who would be easy to work with in the studio because we’re a band who argued constantly. He would be able to mediate between us, and also we’d get some fairly rugged beautiful mixes at the end of the process. He’s fairly legendary for taking a long time to mix. After all the tracks were down, he would spend at least another 12 – 15 hours fiddling, drinking cups of coffee and chain smoking, during which time we’d wander in and out to make sure that he hadn’t taken the track in a completely different direction.

And actually the relationship between me and Graeme [Naysmith, guitarist] and Chris [Cooper, drummer] had got to such a low point. I was at a stage where I was so frustrated with the lack of experimentation and the desire to push the band in a new, interesting direction that I was really on the point of leaving before In Ribbons was recorded. But having had the meeting with Hugh Jones, it seemed like it would be worth doing. It would be worth not bailing out at that point when, maybe, a good result will be achieved. In Ribbons isn’t the album that I particularly wanted to make in that way, in that style or as well-polished as it was, but at least it was a fairly pleasant recording process.

In Ribbons was your first album to be released here in the States. Was that something 4AD was pressuring you on — to make some inroads over here, commercially?

The only thing that I can really remember was having an argument with Ivo who wanted to put “Blue Flower” on the LP. We came to a compromise whereby it would go on the U.S. version, but not on the U.K. version because I didn’t want it on there. I really didn’t want it on the album at all because I didn’t think it was that good.

Really?

It was just a retread of Mazzy Star’s version, really.

Those did come out fairly close to one another.

I’m pretty certain we would have heard that and not the Slapp Happy version. It seemed unimaginative. It was really only ever meant to be filler, but I think Ivo and whoever was in charge of the U.S. office at the time saw it as an opportunity to reach a wider American audience.

Is that part of the reason that that song and the other b-side from the “Throwing Back The Apple” single didn’t get included in this reissue?

I think it was more or less a decision to try and keep to the tracks that were on the original LP, demos of those and the brass band recordings because it would have been too expensive to have a double LP plus 7”. Those may get put on another compilation at some point.

Speaking of, whose idea was it to record those brass band versions of your songs that ended up on the single that came with the original vinyl issue of In Ribbons?

One of my best friends in Leeds was a guy called Simon Westwood who recorded under the name Gentle Despite for Sarah Records. He put out a couple of 7” EPs. His girlfriend at the time was the daughter of a brass band leader. We were in the pub, getting drunk and talking silly nonsense and I said, “It would be great if you could ask your dad if the brass band would arrange and play a couple of [my] songs.” I had no idea if it would happen or if it would be successful or if it would be used at all. I thought, it’s just a stupid idea that might produce something interesting. If you try and fail, that’s fine. But if you don’t try, you certainly won’t get anything. She relayed the request to her dad and then about a month later, we were in a little hole in the middle of Yorkshire with a brass band watching the sessions be recorded. It was a glorious sound to be there in the same room as the instruments. And Ivo was into it. I think he liked the version of “A Thousand Stars Burst Open” so much that he put it at the end of the Lilliput compilation without crediting it. He put it there as a secret track.

How much touring did you do after In Ribbons was released?

We didn’t do a whole lot. We did some U.K., some in the States, some in Europe. A small tour of Japan for the second time. That’s about it.

As you said, you were ready to leave the group even before recording the album. Was it a pretty short time after the tour was done that you finally walked away?

More or less immediately.

Not a tough decision for you, I take it.

It was a tough decision because if only I could have persuaded the others to go into what I thought was a more interesting direction, then I would have gladly carried on. But it was fairly clear that they wanted to go mainstream. They wanted to become more of an ordinary rock band. I knew I’d be miserable. I knew I’d hate it. So I decided I didn’t have any choice. I had to say, “That’s it for me. I’m gone.”

How was it to see them continue on without you?

It’s fine. I was surprised they didn’t change the name of the band, but I didn’t really think too much about it. I was busy starting work on the Spoonfed Hybrid album.

With all of the reissues of your work with Pale Saints happening, has there been any call for the band to reunite and play some shows?

I’ve never had an official invitation from any promoters at all. But it may be because I’ve said I won’t do it anyway. I’m totally disinterested in going backwards. If I was living hand to mouth and I had a serious drug habit to support, then perhaps my decision making process would be entirely different. I’d rather use what energy I do have into making new music.

As someone who does like to keep looking and moving forward, how does it feel for you to be asked to keep looking back in order to produce these reissues?

It’s okay as long as it doesn’t take too long. It requires a lot of concentrated listening to music that I haven’t listened to for 30 years, to make sure that everything sounds good. We went through a lot of bad lacquers and not so good test pressings in an attempt to get as close as possible to the sound of the original. That was pretty tiresome. You hope that when your label has got enough money that they’re going to utilize technicians who can reproduce the sound of the original. But in the midst of working on that, some of the people who were working on it got COVID and possibly their hearing, when they were well enough to work on the mastering, was a little bit affected. So it did require a lot of going back and forth, back and forth to get something that was as close as it is to the original.

Was the work of dealing with all of this primarily on your shoulders, or were you sharing the burden with the rest of the band?

I did most of the liaising because I’m not in contact with Chris and Graeme, and I’m in infrequent contact with Meriel. They were kept in the loop by 4AD and constantly asked for feedback. We didn’t have any band meetings. I just did what I thought needed to be done to make sure it was done properly. Hence the constant checking of multiple copies of each test pressing to make sure that what I was hearing was not what we needed, then having to go back and say, “Please do it again, and this time make sure the engineer has an original vinyl copy of the album for reference.” Which didn’t seem to have happened in the first place.

What are you working on these days?

Me and Tim Koch, who lives in Australia, started working on Isolated Gate about three or four years ago, producing two long EPs that are more or less the length of LPs, and we did [the album] Universe In Reverse. We’re in a place where we’re not actually communicating with the record company because of differences of opinion about how the LP was promoted. So that’s slightly on hold for the moment. I’m making an album with an Italian musician called Stefano Guzzetti who was a Pale Saints fan at the time In Ribbons came out the first time. He does some electronic music and a lot of piano. The project started with him doing an orchestral arrangement of a song I wrote probably 25 years ago and it was so good, I said, “Well, we should make an album together.” So, in between his other work and my other work, we’re doing that. We don’t have a label for it yet because we haven’t actually completed the tracks yet. I’ve got some improvised musical saw and saxophone to record soon, which I’m looking forward to. I don’t get to do a lot of improvising. Apart from that, Isolated Gate will make another album in the next few months or so, and whether that is picked up by said label or not is another matter.

Also, when my dad died in 2018, I went back to the U.K. to spend time with him because it was clear that he wasn’t going to last long. It was quite upsetting so I tried to take some calm moments by playing the family piano, which had been moved into the garage. My dad’s car had been sold because he couldn’t drive it. He was bedridden. I would go in there with my coat on, my gloves on and a hat on because it was winter, and just improvise and try to allow my brain to recover from the sadness of watching my dad die. I’m gradually going through those recordings. They’ll come out at some point.

I can imagine those must be difficult to listen to, considering the memories associated with them.

Yeah, it’s something I can’t do much of often. But I’ll get there. Even if it only comes out on Bandcamp, if that still exists by the time it’s ready, it’ll come out. I’m fond of it.