Embrace are still aiming to be bigger than Oasis - and Coldplay's Chris Martin has written a song for them, writes Brian Boyd.
Once upon a Britpop time, Embrace were serious contenders for Oasis's crown. Just six years ago, the band's début album, The Good Will Out, went straight to number one on its first week of release, outselling anything by the Gallagher brothers or Blur. The "new Oasis" comparisons came easy: both bands came from the north of England, both had Irish backgrounds and both featured warring siblings. When Britpop was washed out by the tide, Embrace were carried away. Two more desultory albums followed before they were dropped by their label. And that should have been that.
This week, though, finds the Huddersfield band back in the top 10 of the singles chart and ready to release the best album they've recorded.
Back when the band were at their late 1990s peak, they brought a new band on tour with them and that band never forgot the favour. "We became friends with Coldplay when they toured with us," says Embrace singer and mainman, Danny McNamara. "Chris Martin has remained a really good friend to this day and we're always playing each other stuff down the phone. About a year ago, he played me a new song he had called Gravity, which I loved, and which Chris thought was one of the best songs he had ever written."
Although Coldplay had played the song a few times live, Martin felt the song sounded too much like Embrace and was reluctant to put it on a Coldplay album. "We had just finished our own album and Chris rang and said: 'do you remember that song I played you? Do you want it, it's a real Embrace song'. So we recorded it" says McNamara. "It was just going to be an album track but then we decided to put it out as the first single from the album.
"Initially, I was reluctant to use someone else's song as the first single but I talked it through with the band and the record label and we decided that it would work as a good way of getting people to hear the whole album and because we're so confident of the other songs, we went ahead."
The album, Out Of Nothing - the band's first for four years - was a difficult and fraught process. "Very, very hard," he says. "We've practically produced everything ourselves before but this time we had the producer, Youth, working with us. And I was having so many arguments with him - shouting, throwing things, jumping on tables and crying and stuff.
"We're now good friends and I think all the pain and suffering from the album was worth it in the end because it's easily our best and if it hadn't been for Youth, it wouldn't have been half as good."
Back on their début album, The Good Will Out (1998), Embrace distinguished themselves by using a big, indie power ballad sound - always owing more to The Verve than Oasis. Songs such as All You Good Good People and Come Back To What You Know were mini-anthems and Spectoresque in scope.
"The big songs are back!" he says, "and also we're a lot more confident now and with that confidence you feel you can reveal yourself more lyrically. So this is an honest, 'Big Songs' album."
The timing couldn't be better. The big, wide-screen indie anthem, which has taken a back seat over the last few years, is now all over the radio and all over the charts thanks to bands such as Snow Patrol and Keane.
"We've always been about songs that stick out, the bigger the sound the better," he says. "And we've done nothing but write that sort of song for this album. It's been two years of really working on this material. The bar's been raised to a level so high now you can't see it from the ground.
Now we have all the songs together that clear the bar. And everybody seems to be saying that we've got something back that maybe we lost along the way on the second and third albums.
"I think this is the reason I had so many rows with the producer, Youth. I really didn't like relinquishing control of these songs to him at the time. There were times I hated him. I'd ring our manager and have meetings with the record company and I'd be saying: 'Look, can you tell him who's boss, because he's not listening to me', and stuff like that.
"But you know, I've grown up as a person. And now the idea of having a bit of belief and faith in someone else is something I understand."
Looking back on the last few years, McNamara says he never had any doubts that Embrace would stay together making music, even though many believed they had broken up. "I think if you've got a strong sense of purpose and reason about what you do, your band will always be all right."
Back when he hit the charts first time around, McNamara always talked a good game. He once said The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony wouldn't have made it on to an Embrace album and that his band were going to be far bigger and better than Oasis.
"Back when I said those things I was a different, younger person. But I really do think that on this album we're delivering on all of those naive but intense claims about being the best band around and all of that. And yes, I still think Embrace are going to be bigger than Oasis . . "
Out Of Nothing is on the Independiente/ Sony label