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Tue 05 May 2007Ghostly echo of AmericanaTHE ARTS:Jeffery Foucault's latest album touches on the hollowness of modern American life, but he's got no time for protest songs, he tells Siobhán Long'I don't really have much use for protest songs," Jeffrey Foucault declares with uncompromising conviction. "I don't think they change much of anything. I guess they're useful in certain, and very limited ways. When Bob Dylan wrote Hurricane and Hurricane Carter was still in prison, there's a song with a very specific message. Too often, though, you get a bunch of people in a room together who agree with one another, and the people who don't agree with you aren't going to come anyway. I think there's nothing more frightening than being in a room full of people who all agree with each other. So I try to write as obliquely as possible, to get at the feeling, rather than at a particular 'message'."