The Antagonist: Nobody can seem to pin you down genre-wise: I can see Joe Meek, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Syd Barrett, but how would you describe your music? Do you think you sound like anybody?

Jesse Budd: I would describe our music as cartoonish, shamelessly wordy & slightly spooky pop leaning in the direction of English psychedelia with a magpie tendency to grab the twinkly bits from any music we like & throw them into our own. Does that sound about right?

TA: Your latest album is more varied than the conceptual psychadelia-opera that was Biscuits for Cerberus: What would you say was the idea driving Gravity Calling?

JB: To me Gravity Calling feels like a much more focused record. We wanted to take the sound & style we'd developed on the first two albums & concentrate it a little. We were looking for a quality of immediacy with this record, a more direct solicitation to the ear. I have an ecologically unhealthy liking for 50s & 60s American hot rods & custom cars & I wanted to apply some of the thinking behind that to our music. I wanted to take the basic model of our songs, our sound, strip off everything that was slowing it down so to speak, strip away the indulgences & make sure that every single feature of the album was carrying some weight & then glamming up the presentation, the arrangements & sound. Giving the whole thing some sparkle & polish. I've taken to describing this album as 'Pimp my Flipron', as this seems a neat way to explain it!

TA: What was it like working with Rat Scabies?

JB: Well he's a real gent. We've known him for a while, as he's a longtime fan of the band. After playing at his birthday party in France 18 months ago & talking about what we were up to next it seemed like a good idea to get him to produce. He's actually a very well-rounded musician -- a long way from your typical punk rock drummer. As well as being the great drummer we know him to be, he's also a pretty good guitar player with a real ear for melody & a keen understanding of what makes a hook. He also has very high standards when it comes to a take. He will keep pushing & pushing until he feels the performance & the sound are to his liking. I spent a long time when I was writing the record talking to him on the phone, sending demos over to get the most of his experience. So he was involved at a very early stage on this record. I trust him as a musician. He really got the whole hot rod brief for the recording. He's also fun to hang around with. He's got lots of very fine rock & roll stories to tell, obviously, but he's someone who can talk knowledgably about medieval history & weird stuff you don't expect over that first cup of coffee in the morning. Not to mention all his stories about looking for the Holy Grail in dusty crypts & cleaners' cupboards.

TA: Given that what you can say about a 'multi-headed hellhound with a reputation for rage' is pretty much limitless, do you think you'll revisit the theme in the future?

JB: The unavoidability of death, mortality, impermanence... this is a general theme that seems to hang over all our songs like a grubby little cloud & a monster dog who greets the dead on their arrival in Hades like Cerberus is a pretty good symbol for all of that, so he's waist-deep in it all in spirit. I think it's unlikely he'll have a lead role in another song, but a cameo isn't out of the question!

TA: Your lyrics are very distinctive: How did your writing develop and who are your influences?

JB: I began as a teenager writing not songs but poems and my major lyrical influences are still poets. I'm one of that odd group of misfits that actually reads & buys poetry for pleasure. But the poems I wrote were rubbish. So after struggling to write decent poems I started supplement what the words lacked with music. Luckily I write much better songs than I do poems. I burnt all my poems years ago.

It didn't take long to develop my own lyric style, not through any great talent of my own, but because the general quality level of the lyric in pop music is just so weak that with a little work by an average talent such as myself, it's possible to write something that comes across as half original. I am embarrassed by the ineptitude, naivety & crudeness of what's regarded as reasonable even for a Mercury prize nominee to offer. It's dreadful, you don't have to be a very good lyricist -just a hint of style & originality will get your words noticed! Most songs are written by musicians who will work incredibly hard to put some kind of 'wow factor' into their music, but who lack anything like that kind of ambition for their words. The words become purely utilitarian. The words are second class citizens in the average song.

But words to me are music in themselves. Words have rhythm, shape, character & colour. There are only twelve notes in western musical notation, but a vocabulary is a constantly growing resource, almost without limit. To assemble words into a sentence is a game that I just I love to play. It's fun & with a little effort you find pretty quickly that it wields the power to breathe life back into dead communication.

But if you want influences & you want me to name names, then I should start with Kenneth Patchen, THE great ignored literary genius of the 20th Century. He sits as the chief icon on my little pantheon of poet gods. I cannot begin to tell of his immortal powers! Lee Harwood, another ludicrously ignored & underrated figure, from whose work I learned something about the importance of the visual in what you conjure & who's extraordinary pace & control are techniques way beyond anything I could get to grips with. There are many others: Arthur Rimbaud, Anslem Hollo, Federico Garcia Lorca, Basil Bunting, Brian Patten, Anne Sexton, James Joyce, Amos Tutuola, Georg Trakl, I could go on & on. Leonard Cohen, too. I had a copy of his book Flowers For Hitler before I ever had any of his records. He is a real inspiration. A genuinely literary figure who also understands what makes a pop song tick, yet never compromises his communication or complexity. I've learned in my own clunky way something from the work of each of these people, not all of them poets, but writers anyway. I'm aware that many people reading this probably just think I'm a wanker for going on about poets & writers. Well, so be it. If having a passion for poetry & sweating over every syllable I write for my cranky little songs meant that I had to wear a fuchsia-pink leotard & walk around with the word 'nob' written across my face, then I would. It doesn't worry me what people think of me in that way.

There are of course songwriters whose lyrics I admire in different ways; Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Howe Gelb, Tom Waits, Scott Walker, Ian Dury, Robin Williams of the Incredible String Band, Nick Cave, Jeffrey Lewis. Jaques Brel of course. The French have long had a comfortable crossover between their writers & their pop. Raymond Queneau, Jacques Prevert, even Sartre, they all had their words turned into songs. When you look at someone like Brel, you can see the huge influence that poets had on him. Those lines from If You Go Away, 'I'd have been the shadow of your shadow' come straight out of Robert Desnos' famous Last Poem, which is a beautiful poem, written just before his dying of typhoid in 1945 after having been in a Nazi concentration camp. Anyway, as they say, I digress, as I usually do.

TA: Your videos are genius. I like the idea that the dinosaurs were wiped out with a celestial watermelon seed. Where do these ideas come from and how did the artwork evolve into what it is today?

JB: I can't take any credit for the videos! The videos for Raindrops Keep Falling On The Dead, Dogboy Vs. Monsters & Book of Lies are all the work of a woman called Alex de Campi & her various collaborators. The stories in the videos are all her invention, running a strange parallel to the stories told by the songs themselves. She directs & produces the videos too. Alex has extraordinary creative energy & is working constantly on many different projects, not just music videos & film. She's been a writer for some years in various disciplines. You should interview her! She's an interesting person.

TA: The setting & sartorial image of the Dogboy vs. Monsters video really reminds me of The Chap. Have you ever read The Chap, and if so, are you a 'chap'?

JB: I've not read The Chap, but I'm aware of it. I believe very much in politeness & good manners, in fact I really enjoy politeness, almost as one would enjoy a hobby. I like dressing smartly whenever the opportunity arises. I like conversing with old age pensioners & walks in the country, & I know a little about wine & spirits in a chappish sort of way, but I suspect I fall some way short of being a 'chap' as they see it. I have a mop of curly hair to begin with, a passion for American hot rods, I'm a non-smoker who wears denim more often than perhaps I should & spend most of my days, when not with the band, at home as a house husband, wearing a metaphorical pinny, bringing up my two small sons while Mrs Flipron earns the lion's share of our income with her academic qualifications, hard work & her very demanding, responsible job. I'm afraid to say that I have no academic qualifications & I'm a complete career disaster. Playing in a band is no job for a father & husband. Mrs Flipron holds it all together. In fact the whole band only exists because we have generous, capable, intelligent partners who make our calamitous musicians' lives feasible!

TA: Seriously, where can I get a can of Crab-B-Gone?

JB: You'd have to ask Alex. She might have a can hidden somewhere! All I have at home from that video is the prosthetic dog tail...

TA: Your MySpace page says you're 'hurtling towards mainstream stardom': judging by your very impressive list of influences (many of which haven't achieved what I'd call mainstream stardom -- Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen, although they form what I like to call 'The Holy Trinity of the Deep Voiced Gentlemen,' are a lot closer to being cult icons than mainstream pop superstars), is mainstream stardom what you really want?

JB: I'm not sure that's on our MySpace page. I hope not. I have a feeling I'm quoted as having said something like that on the Wikipedia entry for Flipron, but it's not true. I never said that or anything like it! Our plain objective is for our songs to reach as many people as would enjoy hearing them, whilst we earn an honest living making those songs. Mainstream stardom as a concept is one I find utterly grotesque & pointless. I'd rather be at home with my family & my books & my instruments, baking cakes & gardening & launching into silly dances to amuse the kids...

TA: That's that! I'll stop myself there before I get carried away...

JB: You've shown far more restraint than I have! Thank you for your stimulating questions!

Gravity Calling is out 10 November from Tiny Dog Records