Modest Mouse's Johnny Marr Featured On The Cribs' New Album

Posted by Michael Melchor on 11.18.2009

This man's busy!

Among his other musical duties in the last couple years, Johnny Marr is featured on the Cribs just-released fourth album, Ignore the Ignorant.

"I love the band, anyway," the Modest Mouse and former Smiths guitarist tells Billboard.com. "I was living in Portland, OR - which I still do some of the time - and Gary [Jarman] from the band lives there, too. We met and we just struck up a friendship and hung out together. We just got together to play as friends, really, to kind of see what would happen. We didn't have any 'Johnny Marr and the Cribs' kind of big agenda or anything. We got together and immediately we wrote the first song on the album, 'We Were Aborted.' The ideas came thick and fast. It was very organic."

"The first rehearsal we thought about it very briefly; we didn't want to be bad or f--k it up," Jarman recalls. "But as soon as we started working and making the songs, that all kind of went out the window. Johnny's quite a modest guy, and so easy to work with. In no time at all, this was the band."

Marr plans to tour with the Cribs in support of Ignore the Ignorant. However, he still plans to maintain his position with Modest Mouse, which he joined for 2007's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank.

Marr is also entertaining the idea of a solo album that he's still gathering ideas for. "I'd like to do something that's sort of experimental guitar pop, really. It doesn't even have to sell; it's just something I'm interested in doing. So that's always there in the background. I've got plenty of other work to do at the moment."