Pop Quiz: Embrace

Pop Quiz: Embrace

Aidin Vaziri | Forget about the Pixies and Morrissey. The biggest comeback story this year is Embrace, a British band that was tipped to crush Oasis six years ago but got sidetracked by an incredible string of bad luck that left it dropped by its label and forgotten by the public. Then Chris Martin, whose band Coldplay once opened for Embrace, intervened. Handing over the single "Gravity," he gave the group its first Top 10 hit in six years, just in time for the release of its fourth album and U.S. premiere, "Out of Nothing."



Danny McNamara of Embrace
Q: The British magazines made it out like you were standing in the social welfare line every other day after the band got dropped. How bad did things get?
A: At one point, three of us had day jobs. One of us was welding. One of us was delivering bottles of water. Another one was selling advertising space. On top of that, our guitar player was selling guitars and amps out for his house on eBay just to make ends meet. So we were pretty skint.
Q: It's a good thing you didn't do anything embarrassing, like star in a Burger King commercial.
A: Yeah, just about. It was tough. If you had said at that point that the new album would sell more than our three other albums put together and that we would be selling out gigs in front of 12,000 people, I wouldn't have believed it.
Q: Why didn't you just hit the casino and livestock circuit?
A: I never wanted to do that. I always wanted it to be about our last record and for it to be relevant. I never wanted to get into doing a greatest- hits tour over and over. The only thing getting dropped by our label did was give us our ambition back. It's an ugly word when applied to most things, but it just made us write better songs.