Universally slagged off and dumped by their label well before their 25th birthdays, Embrace have had the last laugh by rocking arenas with their rousing indie anthems ever since. Incredibly, it is almost three decades since The Good Will Out became one of the fastest-selling debut albums by a British artist, selling over half a million copies, and they have only just come up for air.
"I think I have realised it is the ride and not the destination that is important," frontman Danny McNamara says. "That first album went to number one, but we were sort of expecting it to, so we did not really celebrate it at the time, which is a real shame. Now we enjoy every minute of it."
Avalanche: The New Album
Embrace have marked their 30th anniversary as a band with a new LP, Avalanche — a collection of songs that sums up their resilience while also acknowledging how far they have progressed as people.
Danny added: "Back on the first album I was just about the work, I did not really care about anything else, and I did not really see other people as human beings. Not myself either. I was horrible to myself. We would not have weekends off, and basically any day off on the tour we would book a studio and go in and do a bit. I did not want to waste a minute not trying to make it perfect, so we just worked really, really hard."
Mental Health Struggles
It is amazing Embrace ever got off the ground in the first place considering Danny's battle with mental health. "Between the ages of 19 and 22, I had a mental breakdown," he added. "What they said I had at the time was post-traumatic stress disorder, because I had a weird, oddly near-death experience in a car. I have sort of come to learn a bit more about that by talking about it, and actually what I have is a form of OCD called Pure O, which was brought on by that accident. It was like three years of absolute horror, it was really, really bad."
Music remained his lifeline and he channelled everything into the band: "If I have one thing that sort of sets me apart it is that I am a really determined person, and songwriting is just something I wanted to do. I would sit there with a guitar and try and come up with something that was as good as Pet Sounds or I Am The Resurrection."
Solo Tour and Book
In between Embrace gigs, Danny is heading out solo on a 35-date spoken word tour in September to coincide with the release of his book, Good Good People. He talks about tales from the road, the changing musical landscape, and his friendship with Coldplay's Chris Martin, who supported Embrace at Blackpool Tower Ballroom years ago.
"I went out to watch them and I remember hearing Trouble and just thinking, 'oh my God, I wish I had written that', they were amazing," says Danny. "He had massive curly hair back then, and he was dancing around like Sting or something. He looked really uncool and out of place on stage and I just thought, wow. I felt like I was witnessing the beginning of something."
Life could not be better for Danny, and it is not just thanks to the enduring power of his band: "My wife and kids have really helped me. I think I gradually joined the human race."
Catch Embrace live this summer and on a full UK tour in November.
