1: What is the name of the new single? For anyone who has not heard it, describe it in 5 words

The A side is called ‘Slow Start’ and the B side is called ‘Fevered Foals’.
It. Is. Best. On. Vinyl.

2: What are your influences? Which bands from Leeds would you recommend at present?

We dip into a lot of stuff I think. There are the giants such as Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, The Smiths but I think loads of others have influenced us more recently such as Foals, Manchester Orchestra, Elliot Smith, Mew- amongst others. We’re still finding out what makes us tick.
Leeds is a great city and there are so many brilliant artists here at the moment doing well and rightly so. It is great to have such variety as well. You can go out most nights and see live music that will completely contrast with what you watched the night before.
The Old Romantics, Grammatics, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Fran Rodgers, Ellen and the Escapades, Yonderboy and finally Wild Beasts (whose second album I literally can’t wait much longer for.) are well worth looking into. We played a show with a band called Bear Driver last week too who were incredible.

3: There are a few indie labels in Leeds, some more successful than others, what made you choose Louder Than Bombs?

The single is our first release, and we were intending to just put it out ourselves. We played Escobar (Louder Than Bombs HQ) a few times previous to the final decision and the guys offered to put something out for us. It just seemed to make sense at the time.

4: What do you think of new venues like Academy in Leeds? Are bigger venues taking away the intamacy of seeing a band in Leeds?

I think the academy is a great addition to Leeds, however, I feel that it has made no impact on the Leeds music scene in a local sense. It has allowed music fans the opportunity to see bands that they would usually have to travel to Manchester to see (Foals, Fleet Foxes etc. to name but a few F’s) The music scene still lives strongly within smaller venues like The Brudenell (our favourite). Larger venues will never drive grass roots music away from the music lovers who go to the aforementioned venues night after night. It is a different ball park.

5: Have any of you being in other bands before?

We’ve all had our fair share of “I’m 15 and going to be Thom Yorke/Ian Curtis/Kate Bush” bands. Names include ‘Ready Steady Clothes’, ‘Fat Maggi’ and ‘Alice Band 6’. As you can tell, purely based on band names, critical success was just moments away…

6: Where would you like to play most? Any festivals lined up this year?

Glastonbury is our obvious answer. I know one of John’s ultimate goals is to play on Jools Holland. We would be content in just playing frequently to new people right now. We’ve just finished a UK tour with The Thermals, the chance to play to new crowd in a new city night after night was really rewarding. We miss it already!

We have a couple of festivals lined up. Moor Music- too many good bands to name, Greenbelt Festival (a Christian run but not a Christian festival I’m told) with Athlete, Sway, Schlomo etc. A small festival called Farenheit Festival in Cambridge which will be fun. We just got a slot at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August too, very excited about going back to Edinburgh, a beautiful city.

7: If you had to do a cover version of any song what would it be and why?

We’ve always toyed with the idea of covering Joanna Newsom’s ‘Book Of Right On’, but it’s never materialised. (there are parts in place).
When it comes to bands doing covers, we’re big believers in using a song that contrasts with your own style and taking it somewhere else- whilst still paying homage to a great song. ‘Hallelujah’, ‘Heartbeats’ for examples.

8: Are there any album plans? Who would you like to work with?

2010 will be an album year we hope. If it takes longer then that’s cool, as long as we’re happy with it, then we can hope others will like it too.
We have been working/drinking with a chap called Fraser Smith (formerly of Shed 7) who produced the single. We also got our good buddy Joe to do the b-side that worked out great too. I don’t think we’d like to change anything right now as we’re all happy with what we came up with for the first release. We might do a few things a bit differently but the people involved were great. We explicitly wanted the single to be released on a 7” instead of solely as a download or CD. We wanted something physical to hold and to showcase the artwork a little more as it was beautiful. My friend from home ‘Pat Bradbury’ has been lending his ability to us for releases and t-shirts. He is a very talented chap.
To get around the whole issue of few people owning vinyl players, we gave the mp3s free to everyone who bought the vinyl. I think next time round we’ll do a similar thing.
We are recording our next single now that will be out mid September, we’re very excited.
…But for the question’s sake though we wouldn’t turn down working with Andy Wallace.

9: What is the best drawing tool? Etch a sketch or Spirograph?

Although Spirograph gave me the best years of my life, it has to be etch a sketch. It is a pure art form!
Spirograph is for squares.

reported by Tom Newton

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Indie, Tom Newton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.