Joe Lean & the Jing Jang Jong on NOT being indie

“If I thought that I was in an indie band,” declares Joe Lean while smoking out of the window in Brixton Academy dressing room, “I’d probably kill myself.” Looking down, Vicarious begins to regret agreeing to conduct the interview on a third-floor window-ledge. “We regard ourselves as a pop band,” clarifies the ringleader of the Jing Jang Jong, who have been ‘rather preposterously nominated’ for NME’s Best New Band Award. “Labels in themselves are kind of detrimental anyway; they’re just for the CD shop. The only label that sits alright with me is pop-band. It’s got the kind of ethos that it’s constantly changing, progressing. It fearless, it’s not confined by anything. It’s the idea of creating something so bombastically.”

So upon signing the band, the head of their label flew Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong to Stockholm, to “hang out, buy jeans, drink drinks” and err…create, bombastically. This was not Joe Lean’s first visit to the land of Ikea and Ulrika Jonsson. “The band I used to be in, The Pipettes” he explains, “were really popular in Sweden.” There, in a forty-five year-old EMI studio, Joe Lean and his posse aimed to capture the sound of “more primitive recording, say from late 50s early 60s.” “We love that old sound,” says Joe Lean, glowing, “the recording of the sound was so much simpler so when someone opened the song with a chord, you could really feel it there, all the frequency there, and nowadays guitars are compressed and thinner-sounding.”

While Joe Lean may not be ‘thinner-sounding,’ he certainly is ‘thinner-looking,’ dressed in pencil jeans and a top and necklace that will probably only find its way into Topman in two seasons time. Nevertheless, Joe Lean maintains that they’ve all “been wearing the same clothes for about three years, the EXACT same clothes.” “Having released so few tunes, quite a lot of people have tended to talk about our clothes. People in the media feel that they need to write something about us despite knowing so little about us at the moment” he comments, softly-spoken as ever.

However, whatever the verdict of the press or the public, Joe Lean and The Jing Jang Jong are keen to stress that they make music for themselves. “So often since we’ve started a band we’ve had to justify what we’re doing. Why should I? I’m trying to do something that I’ve never done before and we’re writing songs that people have never heard before and we’re just doing it to satisfy us really.”

Indeed, despite having toured as a drummer for The Pipettes before, this is all new to Joe Lean. “My ex-girlfriend was in the Pipettes and it’s just a different existence. Also they are less busy.” “Everything that’s happened with this band has been so romantic, electric,” Joe Lean relates in an airy voice, “and we formed this band as an excuse for us to hang out and now we’ve had to opportunity to make a record.”

In fact, Joe Lean formed it without having heard the other members play a note. “I almost kind of formed a band out of embarrassment. I kind of created this idea of a band in my head about a year before I started it and my oldest friend turned round to me and said, ‘You are going to actually do this band aren’t you? Because everyone thinks you’re doing it’ and I was like ‘yeeeah….’” Joe Lean grins uncertainly. “I just feel so grateful to be here,” he gushes ‘I-want-to-thank-my-mum, -my-dad-and-God’ style. “It matters to us, we’re doing everything for the first time so everything matters so much.”

While many things are a novelty to Jing Jang Jong front man, Joe Lean, (he’s never been to Japan, for instance, where the band are heading next), performing is something he’s been doing all his life. “I acted professionally for a few years…I like acting but I don’t like camera acting because its really boring. It’s so stilted. I’ve been in some really cool shows- Peep Show, Nathan Barley, made a film with John Malkovich. But I’m really thoroughly concentrating on this now.”

Nowadays, Joe Lean dances to his own tune. For him there is “no dichotomy between us performing it to people and us performing to ourselves… we behave the same on stage as we do in the studio. It’s just how it comes out. There’s a spontaneity because were still a bit ramshackled and we’ll always be that way because were messheads.”

‘Messheads’ they may be but they don’t go as far as the singer from Oxbow, one of Joe Lean’s favourite performers. “He’s really intense. I saw them at SXSW last year. Really monstrous- he takes his clothes off and has these kinds of sexual instances.” Joe Lean won’t be doing any of that tonight- for a start his trousers are too tight to pull off in any situation, let alone in front of an audience. “Incredible. He performs really well its just like much more interesting than having someone go ‘love love me, love love me.’"Like stripping off is really going to solve the problem with Mika….

He sips his beer nervously, anticipating tonight’s performance before scuttling off to get ready. Later that night he swaggers confidently on to the stage and shimmies around energetically to the band’s single ‘Lonely Buoy’ like a pre-wrinkled Mick Jagger. One thing is for sure, Joe Lean won’t ‘Relax’ and ‘ Take it E-e-easy.’ It’s just like Joe Lean says, “if you’re a front man, you can’t just stand there: you’ve got to perform.”

MK