BirdWatching: Bird watching for this Rock Star

Birds of play take flightGuillemots frontman Fyfe Dangerfield dreamed of a pan-generational, multinational pop group. Then he had to make it a reality, finds Johnny Dee.

'We know too much about music' ... Guillemots We're not cool. But maybe being uncool is the new cool." The 25-year-old man pondering this is sat in a cafe spilling onto the pavement of Camden Lock, London's tacky epicentre of Euro alt-lifestyle, scratching his bouncy non-hairstyle and looking at his feet. Caught amid the milieu of hash pipe dealers, Swedish punks and noodle sellers, the pierced lips and tattooed navels, he cuts a very square figure indeed. His name is Fyfe Dangerfield - the first name is real, the second intended to give him the air of a 1920s spy - and he is the lead singer and master beard behind Britain's brightest and most exciting new proponents of off-kilter wonder pop, Guillemots. They are about to release an album, Through The Window Pane, the reviews of which seem to be worrying Dangerfield unnecessarily. "If people listen to it just once they won't get it, you need to live with it, go to sleep listening to it." In brief, Fyfe is a genius and musical maverick. But to the kids that surround us he must look like a librarian or junior employee of Birmingham Midshires.Article continuesRock'n'roll's a state of mind, isn't that right? "I'm actually quite boring," says Fyfe. "I'm always the first to bed."

Guillemots make an intoxicating mix of folky mood music, 1960s MOR, experimental jazz, orchestral movie scores and timeless piano pop that will at first grab you with its Coldplay-shaped melodies before tugging you into a dreamlike world of multi-layered strangeness. Their target is to make music that "captures the feeling of lying on a beach at midnight looking up at the stars". Lately, as their popularity has grown, Fyfe has found himself indulging in the odd bout of wild behaviour, imbibing a small bottle of brandy throughout their live set in order to perk himself up. He has also taken to wearing a red suit together with red shoes and successfully pulled off a gentlemanly pimp look. However, such abandon is offset by the fact that he has also taken to timing a wee break with a particularly long drum solo. Rock stars don't wee in the middle of songs surely, unless it's over an American flag or a Westlife album obviously. Further cool points are deducted for the band's name.

"I went bird-watching with my mum and dad a lot as a kid and I have these really good memories of colonies of sea birds along the cliff edges," he says. "There's a band called Kittiwakes already, razorbills sounds like a heavy metal band and puffins are shit. So Guillemots it is."

So much for sex and drugs. Yes, if uncool is the new cool, Fyfe Dangerfield is the coolest popstar on Earth.

...even rock stars are doing it...