Stephen Tintin Duffy in conversation with Pete Paphides
8th December 2024 – Carnival Records, Malvern
Astronauts – travelling through music with a natural narrator
Duffy and Paphides arrived on the tail end of Storm Darragh to a comfortably intimate and sold out date at ‘Malverns Carnival Records. With an audience including fellow musicians and collaborators Claire Worrall and Micky Harris and a dedicated fan travelling from Tokyo, they were here not only to reminisce about his Malvern era but also to promote the reissue of the Lilac Times 1991 Astronauts.
It’s hard not to name drop when you have a conversation about STTD, he could boast an eclectic string of celebrity royalty connections and is musician, singer, songwriter and entertainer! I first met him back in the mid nineties, I was promoting a club in the outskirts of London and Duffy was on the guest list, however I seem to remember he insisted on paying. He’d come to see a new band doing their first gig headed by a young female singer, the band was the Audience and the singer Sophie Ellis Bexter. By then Tintin Duffy had already been a Jackie mag pin up, had dominated dance floors and radio stations with his Kiss me ( lyrics which wouldn’t have slipped past Mary Whitehouse and was later reciprocated by The Lilac Time’s A taste for Honey).
A shocking amount of decades later he’s in Malvern and opening with a disclaimer that he’d tuned down from e to b and combined with some of his highest notes he warned ’made for unpleasant listening’. In spite this being his first gig in 5 years it will definitely go down in Malvern history as an audible success and better unplugged acoustic than amped.
Opening with his wistful ode to the privatisation of the waterboard, the 1990’s hit Let our Land be the One, is sadly as relevant now as it was before, There is a yearning, a Dylanesque gently melodic and soothing lilt to his voice, most comfortable with deep and resonate notes yet capable of stretching higher, adding an unexpected range to carry his narrative lyrics.
Duffy has a skill to draw you in with a direct and natural poetry which he demonstrates in his writing and delivery and his amicable skills as a raconteur. Between songs his comical delivery included repeated references to ’the devil sculpting shamen in a suit with Gucci shoes’, as he unapologetically mocked Nick Cave to belly laughs from (at least half) the audience.
Scattered with local stories of flotation tanks at Runnings Park, exploits with friend and fellow Malvern Musician Nigel Kennedy, Paphides coaxed out Duffy’s seemingly effortlessly comical raconteurial nature and guided his discursive banta to answer the original questions. With a plethora of stories to draw on and Described by Robbie Williams as a ‘pseudo intellectual Noddy Holder’.Duffy allegedly skipped the opportunity to work with Madonna in America, due to an intense homesickness and urge to return to the UK,
There is a passing kin of country vibe in The Girl who Waves at Trains, a comparable essence of tracks by Roddy Frame and Aztec Camera, embedded with his influence of Joni Mitchell and the Grateful Dead, yet still unmistakably Duffy.
Astronaut is a triple super deluxe album with a book, it’s nostalgic and futureproof and available on Pete’s label Needle Mythology. Buy it from your local record store, put it on repeat and if you have the chance to catch him live you won’t regret it, he’s a natural storyteller with a knack for raising a laugh and warming you with music on even the darkest of winter afternoons.
By: Juliet Mootz