Sean Lennon not running from comparisons to legendary father John

By Nick Patch, The Canadian Press

TORONTO – In the press materials for his latest project, a bearded Sean Lennon stands glowering behind circular wire-frame glasses, his scraggly long hair — pressed under a wide-brimmed, pointy black hat — falls to below his shoulder blades.

Even if the photos weren’t sepia-filtered and retro-styled, they would call to mind images of Lennon’s late father, John, in the creatively bold final stages of his life.

So too does the music the junior Lennon is conjuring with model girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl under the moniker the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger. Their first proper album, “Midnight Sun,” will be released Tuesday, and it’s also a throwback: a clattering piece of tuneful psychedelia, anchored by Lennon’s tender singing voice.

Again, it’s likely to inspire comparisons to the work of Lennon’s dad but if the 38-year-old minds, he’s not letting on.

“I’m so used to it. I’m more taken aback when I’m asked something that isn’t about my dad — that’s when I get really surprised,” he said, laughing, in a recent interview from New York.

“I mean, my whole life has been responding to questions about him. It doesn’t bother me at all. It’s beyond being bothered. You can’t be bothered by, you know, wind.”

A typically zen comment from the laid-back Lennon, whose serene disposition is a charming trait that might also be to blame for the long wait for this new album, which he considers Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger’s proper debut.

Back in October 2010, the duo released the agreeably dishevelled set “Acoustic Sessions” to generally positive reviews. The collection was intended as a mere “footnote,” Lennon says now, but people liked it. So he and Kemp Muhl surprised themselves by actually touring the material, and really surprised themselves by staying on the road nearly two years.

Then, Lennon says, the pair got “very distracted” by other projects. Lennon produced the latest work of his mother, Yoko Ono, last year’s “Take Me to the Land of Hell” and acted as the music director of her live show. He scored Jordan Gallands’ 2012 film “Alter Egos” and the couple continued to operate their record label, Chimera, out of their kitchen.

That he’s a serial tinkerer didn’t help. Of course, the rollicking weirdo circus of “Midnight Sun” lends itself to instrumental excess and freewheeling doodling.

Lennon is an avid collector, who giddily expounds for minutes on the vintage gear colouring “Midnight Sun”‘s horizons: a Roland SH-1000 he bought in Toronto while touring with Cibo Matto; a rare Chamberlin analog sampler that Lennon notes the Beatles used on “Strawberry Fields Forever”; and a lap steel that was a Christmas gift from acclaimed guitarist Nels Cline and, fed through a wah-wah pedal, fuels “Moth to a Flame.”

“After meeting me, I think Charlotte got the bug for instrument acquisition as well,” Lennon said. “We have a bunch of weird things, like marimbas and vibraphones and we also have a glass harmonica that Charlotte made custom — you have to make them custom because there’s just not a big demand for glass harmonicas in the world.

“It has taken me 20 years to acquire all that stuff,” he added. “It’s not like I just went out and had some crazy weekend of buying keyboards.”

The close-knit partnership between Lennon and Kemp Muhl is crucial to the project.

Lennon says the 26-year-old Atlanta native is one of the few people he trusts creatively. Good thing, since peeling back the instrumental layers of “Midnight Sun” — “We do tend to make things a little overwrought or we tend to go too far,” Lennon acknowledges — could be a somewhat arduous task.

“We have only one rule with this band and it is that we are both boss,” Lennon said, noting both partners have to approve everything. “We tend to say that we see things 99.99 per cent the same way, but that (0.01) is really tough when we disagree. And we do disagree.”

Some songs are imbued with deep lyrical meaning. “Poor Paul Getty,” for instance, is inspired by the 1973 kidnapping of then-16-year-old John Paul Getty III, whose ear was cut off by his captors when his oil baron grandfather initially refused to pay the ransom.

It’s a tale that loomed large for Lennon growing up.

“I actually had a personal empathy for that story,” he said. “When I was a kid, there were a lot of kidnapping threats against me. So when I was young, I remember hearing that Paul Getty had his ear cut off and it really terrified me. I never forgot it.

“Not a lot of people know what it’s like to grow up with that kind of thing, with that kind of possibility looming over your head — literally. I always felt really sorry for him. I always felt like I was one of the people that could understand that kind of fear.”

The legacy of his family name still lingers in strange ways. The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger has toured with like-minded psych-rock outfits the Flaming Lips and Australia’s Tame Impala, whose mastermind Kevin Parker has occasionally chafed against comparisons to John Lennon.

When the association is brought up to Sean Lennon, however, he merely chuckles.

“That’s funny,” Lennon said. “We did some singing together (on tour). And our voices did sound a little similar.”

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