press
Jockey Slut
# 3 April 2003
p. 19
by Paul Mardles
Metal Guru
Magnet is every animal's friend. Time to make him yours…
Like George W. Bush, pitbulls and semolina, pigeons are deperate for a good press officer. They are, after all, in the eyes of their detractors, winged rats who transport lurgy and blockade Tralfagar Square. Unless, that is, you're Even Johansen, aka Magnet, who lives on what used to be a pigeon farm in Scotland and as a pigeon fancier believe that they're misunderstood.
"I've got about 60 or 70," he says, "and you can train them. You go (he whistles) and they know they have to come down. I've got a friend in Norway, and we send letters and stuff to each other. And if you want to smuggle a bit of hash, pigeons are the ultimate way to do it."
All of which, like Johansen's insistence that he came up with his present epithet "after being cured of anaemia with a tattoo from a magnet while in American", may or not be true. What isn't in dispute is the quality of Magnet's bew EP, the lofty, quitely powerful 'The Day We Left Town". Informed by bucolic rock and electronica, it is, in the shape of the outstanding title track, Thom Yorke frontong Bjork's former group The Sugarcubes, all filmic strings, twitchy beats and meloncholia. "I can be easily persuaded that people with broken hearts and bad livers are good," says Johansen. "I'm fascinated by the fact that there is so much beauty and decay."
Although this is only Magnet's third EP - following last years 'Where Happiness Lives' and 'Chasing Dreams' - the Bergen-raised Johansen is no stranger to the biz. Aged 13 he toured the states with his father's group Kontiki, "who sounded like one of those bands you find when you take the ferry to France". Unimpressed, he grew his hair and, albeit briefly, immersed himself in poodle rock: "I was smitted with their teeth." Now he admires penguins ("They're curious little things and so am I"); John Lennon's alleged pronouncement that the self is all ("I never let myself down. If I make an appointment I am always there"); and a breed of cow particular to his new hom in Dumfries.
"D'you know the Galloway Belties?" he asks. "They're like cows in uniform. They've all got a big white stripe around their bellies. They're the only organised cows in the world. So I thought, 'If these cows can organise themselves, I should move to where they live'."
Magnet - animal magic. Welcome to the iron age.