Interview : Glasvegas

How's The Tour Going So Far?

It's good, its been fun. It seems a lot longer than we've actually been here for, we've only done nine gigs but it feels like we've been here for months.

What's The Atmosphere like?

It's quite relaxed, everybody just wants to have a good time. Everybody has sussed each other out.

You've played Nottingham several times before, from The Social, To Rescue To Rock City, so youve climbed the ladder so to speak, and you've got quite a strong following in the city. What do you make of Nottingham?

Nottingham has always been great to us. There's a couple of citys around that are like that, and Nottingham has always been amazing. One of the first gigs we played there at The Social, before going to America and recording the album, it was all just amazing. I remember staying out for ages and going to Rescue Rooms, we had a lot of people come down and just had a really good night. It's just one of those settings that's always amazing. I remember last time we played here at Nottingham Trent University, I pulled my back whilst playing and had to click it back into place, then I knocked the keyboard over, it was a bit messy.

Did you turn it all into some kind of choreographed move or was it all a bit Spinal Tap?

No, I just locked in this position bending forward so I had to throw myself about to get out of it.

Your music has a touch of the anthemic to it. If you combine this with the support of Alan McGee and the NME, do you see stadiums and arenas in your future?

I see ourselves doing whatever's natural, and if that's what comes next then that's what comes next. I think with the next album we may possibly move in to bigger venues but we won't be doing any more touring of Britain this year. I don't really like big venues, I quite like these sweaty venues.


Bands that tow a similar line to Glasvegas (e.g. Frightened Rabbit, The Twilight Sad) would struggle to match your success. What it is about the essence of Glasvegas that relates to so many people?

Just that we write good songs. The songs that James writes are quite honest and people can relate to them. There are different types of music; there's music people listen to for fun, there's music you go out and dance to and there's music that people want to believe in and relate to and actually get something from. James would probably say something different but thats my opinion. There's a lot of good bands from Glasgow, it's just one of those things. There are just a lot of good times involved.

How does it feel to hear English and international audiences adopting a Scottish accent en masse?

Well they try, Liverpudlians are the funniest actually. We were in Japan and they were all singing back this amazing and hilarious version of Daddy's Gone, “He Gone, he goone, ohhh-ohhh-ohhhh”, and me and Caroling just p*ssed ourselves. Accent is a beautiful thing. James wrote that song in his bedreem when he couldn't afford food, and now there are thousands of Japanese people singing it at us. You just don't expect these things to happen. I never take it for granted, but I wouldn't say its surreal, probably because we've done that many gigs this year.



Headlining the NME tour, as well as being their champions throughout the year, you've found yourselves victims of hyperbole and the hype machine. How have you as a band reacted to hype?

We've just done what we've always done without really listening to what people say, because when you do that it can make you a little crazy. You've got to ignore the good and the bad, because you can't let other people's opinions influence you. We've got to where we are by using our own heads. Saying that, we always appreciate that people like what we're doing, getting nominated for awards and that just lets you know what people think and makes you want to keep going.

I imagine that a new album must be in the pipeline, what kind of progress are you making with that?

We've agreed to do it so that's a lot of progress I suppose. James has written 3 songs, and they're all singles, easily. The plan is we're going to go and do demos in October then go and record it in January and hopefully it will get realeased in April or May next year.

How would say the band have grown in the lead up to the next album?

The sound is a bit bigger if you can imagine that. The songs to me, sound a little bit more American. I don't mean that in a bad way or a cheesy way, it's just something that I heard. We'll maybe experiment with some more beats and stuff like that. There is a definate progression.

What's influenced Glasvegas in the past, and what's influencing them at the moment?

In the past, the biggest influence on each of us has been each other. All the music or films or art or whatever that we all like kind of us influences each other. It's tough to stay influenced and stay upbeat on tour but everyday we surprise each other with some of the things we do and we say, be it in a good way or a bad way. Just now everyone on this tour has a cold, so all of the bands and sounch guys and what not all have the sh*ts. The NME Tour sh*s, it's nasty. So that's there, but yeah, we just always inspire each other. Musically it's always mainly Phil Spector, Oasis and Elvis Presley, and then you got reading Harry Potter and watching Star Wars.

Interview by Andy Trendell
Photos by Lucy Bridger (www.flickr.com/lucybridger)

Interview: Foals

How would you describe your experience of higher education?

Brief but sweet. I dropped out after first year so I did the Fresher’s thing and that was it. I do remember that I didn’t enjoy Fresher’s Week. I found the pressure of trying to integrate myself into a big group of people quite difficult. I did make friends but I found forcing it a little bit weird. I instantly just involved with the people who smoked cigarettes, because it was a common interest. I liked Uni though.

What advice would you give to Freshers?

Arrive at uni with pot because you’ll make friends and instantly get to know everybody.

What are your impressions of Nottingham?

I really like it. I’ve got some friends that live in Sneinton, so I’ve been out in Nottingham a fair bit, plus my brother was at Uni here. It’s one of our favourite UK cities to play in and go out in. I grew up listening to a lot of bands from Nottingham, particularly a record label called Gringo, and I used to be really into that whole scene. I love Rock City and I love Stealth, very sweaty. It’s quite fun.

The label ‘indie’ is often overused. Do you reject this label or do you reject labels in general?

We just play the music we play. I can see why people call it indie, but I can see why people would call it anything. I mean, we’re definitely not psy-trance,


Your singles get heavy rotation on dancefloors. When you wrote these songs was adding that dance element intentional?

In the beginning it was intentional. We came from quite an experimental scene, so when we started Foals we wanted to do something that was totally different and more pop-orientated; something that people could dance to. We saw it as a challenge to make that sort of music, so different to what we were used to. In the beginning it was very calculated, and I still think there’ll definitely be something very rhythmic on the next record.; it’ll be dancey but we don’t want to be this one dimensional electro-dance whatever band. I want to try and turn people on to other stuff as well; stuff that might not seem as ‘cool’.

It’s been said that you cross and bend a number of genres. Would you say you take elements of other genres and translate them onto guitar/rock band format?

You do it by not thinking about it. When I read stuff like that, I don’t quite understand what they mean. There’s no way you can consciously do stuff like that, you’ve just got to be like a musical and cultural sponge. I listen to records constantly, and we all watch films and read books, and the more you immerse yourself in an artistic world that’s separate from the one that you live in, you become this sponge, and when you get wrung out by your record label you just hope that you come out with loads of stuff that’s good. You shouldn’t think too much about these things. It’s the same with playing live; the more you try and think about putting on a good live show, you can ruin it. A lot of these bands that put too much thought into putting on a really good live show just end up seeming quite choreographed and just stand there thinking ‘Oh come on, I just want to see you play!’ I mean, nobody plays like some bands play. You look at these big arena rock bands and they aren’t playing like the people they were when they started their band, they’re playing more like this commodity or product that’s got to have this ‘thing about them’, and the more they do it, the more I think it harms their product.

How would you describe your relationship with Transgressive Records? How does it feel to be a shining jewel on their already glittering crown?

Pretty good. They let us do whatever we want and they put out our records. They’re nice people and they give us money. They’re the reason I don’t still wash dishes or still be at Uni, so I feel pretty good towards them. We tell them what we want to do and they just say ‘yeah’. That was the idea when we signed, we didn’t want to sign to a label that would try to make us into something that we weren’t. All of our videos and artwork are done by our friends from back home so we’ve never entered into working with big music industry people.

You’re a band renowned for the mathematics and technicality behind your music. Would you say this is intrinsic to band’s identity? Will this feature strongly on the next album? What can fans expect from future releases?

I hope not. No matter how much you want to change there will always be certain elements of your band that sound the same, because of the chemistry between the five of us will always have some kind of set point, but in terms of being quite mathematical, that’s not really a conscious decision it’s more of a product of listening to quite technical records. The more we tagged as that, the more it makes me want to create a record that’s the exact opposite, just to undercut people’s expectations. When we started out in Oxford we were known as this experimental and difficult band and that was the background that we came from, so we just thought we should make some pop music that everyone can like, rather than just some bearded men in a cellar in Oxford, with a collection of four million CDs saying things like ‘Oh yeah, this is like latter-kraut-rock’ or whatever. We want to make a surf rock record, we want to go to Hawaii and make this really blissed-out, Um-Bongo type record. Not psychedelic, but proper 1950s style. Kind of like Telstar maybe, I like Joe Meek a lot.

You’ve previously said that you don’t enjoy big rock shows as you feel very exposed, yet this tour is one of quite large venues and you’ve played to some massive crowds on this summers’ festival circuit. Would you say that you’re attitude towards touring has changed at all? Do you arenas in your future?

Yeah, I’ve become a lot more used to it now. I still always feel more comfortable in smaller venues but I’m not frightened anymore of big shows. I got really nervous before Reading festival but then it went really well. It just depends on different things, like different situations. At festivals and bigger shows you need to make this bigger and more encompassing sound and try to play out to everyone, which is weird for us because we never play facing the crowd so it’s a challenge for us not to seem like this small band on a big stage. I don’t really see us playing arenas, unless we dramatically change what we do and I’m not thinking about that. I just want to make a really good record and I don’t think like we’ve totally done that yet. We haven’t made the record that silences the critics in our heads. We’re pretty scathing to ourselves and I want to get to the point where we don’t have to be like that, not to ourselves or to each other. So everything else just seems quite irrelevant to me, things like doing TV programmes. The single goal of this band is to make music and to sit back and make something that we can feel happy with.

Do you think as a band you’ll ever be satisfied or do you think that if you become satisfied you’ll become complacent?

I think if we became satisfied we’d stop making music together and we’d do something else. Take R.E.M, and those bands with twenty year careers. They’ve made their best work and they know it but they carry on because it’s an addiction. If I were them I’d have quit in the early nineties because they’ve put out some amazing records but since then I’d have been thinking ‘Oh I need to make a record which is as good as the one I made way back then’. So I think we’ll make another few records at least but I doubt we’ll ever get that silence in our heads where we can relax.

www.myspace.com/foals

Andy Trendell

Interview: Wild Beasts

For those who haven’t heard Wild Beasts before, how would you describe your sound?

Eccentric Pop. We have far more ins and outs than your average band.

Was becoming another jewel in Domino’s already glittering crown overwhelming at all? How has it affected the ambitions of the band?

We don’t feel pressure but we do feel honoured. It’s a really good label to be on and the people who work there, make it what it is. We’ve always had quite high ambitions but we were never expecting this to be our job. We were never sure if we had something of worth, but we’re honoured to be doing this and we’re honoured to be on Domino; a label of such high integrity. You do taken more seriously due to their catalogue as well. We have absolute freedom. We’re working on our second album now, and it feels like now we’ve broken the ice we can push things a bit more. We’ve a lot more to prove and a lot of minds to change as well, because we think our first album was a sort of statement of intent and there’s a lot more places we can go with our music from here. There will be lineage from the first album but there will definitely be growth, there are so many musical avenues we want to explore. There’s a character to our band, so every record will definitively be a Wild Beasts record.

How is the band reacting to critical and more widespread acclaim?

It’s nice to read a good review and we think we deserve them because we do put some work in, but at the same time we’ve read so many bad reviews. But we aren’t too bothered, because so many bands have come and gone in the time we’ve been around that its just ludicrous. You can’t take it too seriously because you’ll read one thing saying you’re ‘the best new band’ and another slating you and neither really effect record sales.

How do you respond to tags of being ‘theatrical and eccentric’?

That’s a fair claim. We make an effort to do things that are a bit outside of the box and push things a bit. We’re bored of a lot of these standard issue bands, and there are a lot of them. We make an effort to push things a bit and give a bit more of ourselves.

What should fans expect from a typical Wild Beasts Gig?

Expect to be entertained. See a mixture of emotions. Be happy and sad, you can be tragic and funny about the same subject, so therefore it’s quite theatrical. We wanted to bring more of a theatrical element to our show. For years we’ve been playing in bread and butter, sausage and mash, dirty venue gigs. We’ve done tht now and don’t want to be the band to do that again. There are a lot of bands who are really good at bantering with the crowd, and I do respect that, but we really immerse ourselves in the character of the songs so we don’t really have to acknowledge the crowd. I mean if you want to the theatre you wouldn’t expect the characters to starts bantering with the audience.

You’ve been described as a very articulate and literate band. Would you agree with this? Is this intrinsic to the bands identity?

It is intrinsic, all of the music we enjoy does have extra depth but we do also strive for that instant element. We do strive for a certain depth and worth. The words can really inform how to approach the music.

What’s your opinion of indie-by numbers bands dominating the charts with tired and tested quiet-loud-quiet-loud garage rock?

We gave up a while ago. We only pay attention for a laugh. There’s a shameful predictably to most music at the moment. You can always tell what’s going to sell and music shouldn’t be that, music should be a part of yourself, it should be something to fall in love with, you shouldn’t always be force fed a product.

What, if anything have you learned from touring with Foals?

We’ve learnt a lot already. They’re an amazing band. They do everything so properly and wholeheartedly. Stick to your guns and keep going with what feels right.

Andy Trendell
http://www.myspace.com/wildbeasts
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1bW6USsmR70