Firstly, we'd like to know more about your new recording project and the Bathers line-up for the next tour.

I've got a few irons in the fire right now. First of all the priority is to complete a new album. Hazel and I were working on some backing tracks at the end of August and came up with about 16 things....4 of which were reworkings of "pursuit of an orchid", "2 cats on the piano", "reason to feel", "memory fever part one" from Sweet Deceit. I am very wary of re-working old material, especially as there was such a distinct mood and atmosphere to the whole Sweet Deceit period. However because the masters are impossibly tied up with Universal the only way of making the album available again is to re-do it. I am going to work at that this winter alongside the new stuff. In a way I'll have to get inside the head of my early twenty-something self which will be a bit of a challenge. I think it might work because the original album seemed to have a nostalgic quality about the songwriting. Feeling nostalgic for something you are currently living: A neat trick.
The new backing tracks sound really exciting. It's a bit of a reversal of the usual writing process ie. working from the groove up ...although I think this worked well on "angel on ruskin" and "pissoir"....so we'll see what happens.
I hope to finish the album so that it will be available next spring. If the Sweet Deceit project works out "artistically" then it will be released in 2001.
It really frustrates me that we haven't been able to do more shows to promote Pandemonia. It's pretty expensive to take a 6/7 piece out on the road and the fanbase is so spread around. I hope the band will be Callum (he's also working with Helicopter Girl just now), Hazel, Ken on bass, Robert Henderson on trumpet and Barry Overstreet on sax . It looks likely that we won't be able to play live until the Spring.

Are you planning to re-release on Wrasse Records Lagoon Blues and Sunpowder or could there be a reconciliation with the two "punch-drunk crazies" from Marina?

It seems extremely unlikely that there will be any reconciliation with Marina. They are not the most forgiving gentlemen

on the planet and have always had a real problem accepting that there may be more than one valid perspective on events than their own. From very early on I had the feeling that the relationship would end in tears. Sunpowder will be available again within the next few months and later next year Lagoon Blues.

Apart from one reference to your grandfather, you have never mentioned your family in interviews. Would you tell us more about it and your childhood.

I had a pretty happy childhood. From age 5 til I was 14 we stayed in a really lovely street [in Uddingston] with big gardens and an orchard nearby in the "big" house (Holmwood which I harked back to on Lagoon Blues)...we could even get quite a decent game of five a sides in our back garden and there was a disused bowling green nearby which was a godsend for football. I met a lot of neighbours from that time at a wedding very recently and it brought home to me just how lucky I had been to grow up in that enviroment. They were all very nice people....quite a few of my younger sisters friends had turned into lovely young women which was a bit of a bonus. My mother's parents and brother and sister emigrated to Bermuda when she was just starting University here in Glasgow, circa 1959 and later my older sister married a custom's officer there and still lives there with 4 kids. I spent last Christmas there as it's only an couple of hours flying time from New York and I was visiting friends there in early December.

Many of your songs are a celebration of youth and beauty, an attempt at preserving them through art. In real life, have you come to terms with time and the process of ageing?

It's not great is it? I don't get too down about that though. I suppose one regrets not making the most of opportunities that came early on. I think I was too full of fear and insecurity to really exploit things. If I could go back and live it again I think Friends Again could have done more commercially. The up side of growing older is that I feel more comfortable about myself, more confident. I guess I was too self-absorbed, like many young people, and imagined "failure" meant more than it really does. Proust of course created a masterpiece out of a "squandered" youth and I suppose my hope would have to be that I can, in some small way, redeem myself through music.

How do you think you have changed from the Chris Thomson who 14 years ago recorded Unusual Places?

Again I am much more at ease with the world. I was incredibly uptight when I made that record. I really felt that I was going to die at any minute....hence the title which was only partially tongue in cheek. I vividly remember doing the "perpetual adoration" vocals with James and really feeling the game was up. Thankfully I have also re-discovered the "fan within" and enjoy the things I liked as a teenager again, particularly other people's music, I follow football again (although haven't been to a match since I became a punk in '77!), I love reading and movies as well. My mid-twenties were a rather strange place to be at times.

The Bathers records are often self-referential - there are reprises of chord sequences, and lines will surface again after years. That gives a strong cohesive quality to your body of work, as if your discography were a diary, a big work in progress. Have you ever seen your records as sort of parallel biography, a second life as important as your real one?

Yes there is an element of that. Perhaps even that the records are made by another person entirely. It's often difficult to talk to people who know your day to day self who discover the music and ask you about it. That can be very odd.

Apart from being a great love song, was "Twelve" also a farewell song?

Yes...over the course of making an album real life carries on, in the case of Kelvingrove Baby 6 months, and therefore things are added. "twelve" and "thrive" came about very late in the process when things looked very bleak for me and there was definitely a valedictory quality to "twelve"...particularly the voices and backward strings....

I read you took part in special shows dedicated to Serge Gainsbourg andEnnio Morricone. Are you a fan, and what songs did you play on those occasions?

Yes, I am a huge fan especially of Morricone. Before the shows I only really new a little of his work but "once upon a time in america" had long been a real favourite for me. After doing the shows I grew to love things like "Duck You Sucker" and "once upon a time in the West". Serge too. I did a song called "sex Shop" also "elaeudanla teiteia" and "song of the slurs" as a duet.
With Morricone I sang lead on "Telefonada" and various bits of backing vocal and percussion. Reminded me how much fun playing live can be.

Did you sing those songs in French?

I did indeed sing "elaeudanla" in French....probably impossible to translate into English.
I sang "sex shop" in English (based on Mick Harvey's version). I heard the original at rehearsals but have had trouble tracking it down subsequently. Any ideas?
"song of the slurs" we did English and French verses.

Is there a particular reason for the use of the French language in some of the spoken bits on Pandemonia?

I seem to go back to the Proust obssesion every few years. On Pandemonia more so than any album since Unusual Places. The Serge shows partly put the idea in my mind as well and I've always loved the sound of French. Catherine who did the parts was a really beautiful young woman and had a lovely voice so the initial idea grew from just a small part in "something precious".

Some curious fellow wants to know about your favourite food and favourite sport.

I've been a bit of an pasta fan lately....I do tend to be quite unadventurous when cooking at home. I seem to have Penne, Tuna, Broccoli, tomatoes, salad with a home made dressing about 4 or five times a week. Sometimes it's hard to get really decent fruit and veg around here. The diet in the west of Scotland is notoriously bad so I conciously make an effort to eat lots of Kiwi, berries, dates etc and it can be done if you are prepared to pay and go further than your corner shop.
Football is definitely my favourite sport. I used to play a lot when I was younger. Until the music bug bit when I was about 15
I even went to see Glasgow Celtic with my older cousin....after a swift conversion from Rangers fandom.

Are you interested in success? How much would you compromise if by doing so you were sure to become, say, the new Van Morrison?

It appeals less and less. Any form of celebrity or public recognition has various very unpleasnt side-effects but at the same time some kind of recognition is appealing and the money would of course be wonderful. I guess like many a pretender to commercial success I kid myself that I could somehow have all the good bits and skip the bad, but it often doesn't work that way. Perhaps there is still a good position where you are selling or getting enough film/tv/advertising tie-ins to make a good living but are completely unknown (at least as a personality) to the "mainstream" audience..
I can think of loads of acts that are in this position but could walk down most high streets unrecognised.

What's the best definition that was ever given of the Bathers? How would you define yourself?

I wouldn't dare to try and answer this one...too difficult.

What's your favourite Bathers album?

I feel really close to Sweet Deceit just now. I don't listen to my own stuff too much but its generally easier the further back in the past it is. It's that old problem of having listened too much when you are working on it, you kind of want to forget about it and move on. I saw an interesting Woody Allen interview where he point blank refused to look at the clips of his films they had lined up for him to look at. He said he hadn't seen them since the final editing sessions.

Do you follow any mailing list on the internet? Are you a web "surfer"? What's your angle on the mp3 issue?

I just do some basic stuff on-line, flights etc. I find it slow and cumbersome compared to a book, newspaper or TV. Useful though and bound to improve tremendously over the next few years....but then again become saturated with even more "choice". I don't know enough about the mp3 issue but obviously I am concerned about the implications for copyright protection etc.

Has the success of new bands like Belle Sebastian changed in any way the Glasgow music scene? Do you ever feel nostagic for the early 80's atmosphere?

I think the city has grown up a bit since those days in terms of becoming more of an "international" city. There are more foreign and indeed English students here which makes it a more vibrant place. There was a peculiar charm about the city in the early 80s with the whole Postcard scene really putting us on the map as far as musical credibility goes. Of course we suffered from some truly crappy stuff emerging in the excessive climate of the mid-eighties...then again music generally was in a bad way then. There is a thriving band scene, which I think is partly down to the climate! We don't have the option to live outdoors as much as Southern Europeans. I don't really feel too nostalgic for those times although as I said before I think I would have had a lot more fun if I knew then what I know now.

Any recent good record, book or movie to recommend to the Rainsound readers?

I love Amsterdam Stranded by a Norwegian band called Midnight Choir. It's available on S2 records and is a real treat. There most recent record is Unsung Heroine which I have just received which also sounds very good.
I loved "High Fidelity" and "Being John Malkovitch" this last year. Also just finished a fascinating book called "New York:an illustrated history" by Ric Burns and James Sanders which reveals so much about how that city came to be what it is.