Tell me a bit about the process of writing and recording the new album, were your plans affected by the pandemic and the lockdowns?
“Yeah, so we pretty much started writing the album as soon as the first one came out in 2019. We managed to get in with John Mitchell to record ‘Nothing on You’ in the about the first week of January in 2020. We’d never worked with John before, we didn’t know what the dynamic would be like, whether we’d get on, etc.”
“We smashed that out over two or three days and it went really well, we went back home and booked in to do the rest of the album then, obviously, all hell broke loose.”
“It made things really difficult. Originally we were going to have John come up to Nottingham to do pre-production but then obviously it was lockdown, we weren’t allowed to see each other and a lot of work all of a sudden went virtual. It was really weird for us as we’re all used to being in the same room at the same time, working together as a team. We had the studio time booked, the deposits paid, all that jazz so it wasn’t really a situation where we could postpone things. But Lukas‘ (James, Drums) partner works with quite elderly and vulnerable people so what happened was a bit weird. Luke stayed at home for the first session whilst me, Timmy (Francis, Guitar) and Beth (Hunter, Vocals) went down and we basically isolated at the studio and lived there for about three weeks without venturing out at all. We recorded the whole album back to front without any drums, which was very weird, but it gave us more space to manoeuvre in terms of arrangements and it let us play around with stuff a bit more. We might do the next album that way!
What are the influences in the band, are you all into the same sort of stuff or are there a lot of different things coming into the mix?
“Oh we’re literally all over the place! If you ask Luke it’s either complete death metal or hip-hop and rap, that’s all Luke really listens to. Me, Timmy and Beth are a bit more united in terms of our music taste but still pretty different. I’m from more of a classic rock background, but then again one of my favourite bands is Panic! At The Disco so I’m still into the pop-punk and emo kind of stuff. Timmy is a bit weird at the moment, he’s going through a bit more obscure, singer songwriter kind of stuff. Beth is all over the place, her favourite bands are My Chemical Romance and Paramore, she’s probably the most pop-punk out of all of us.”
A lot of bands that fall under the broad pop-punk banner are softening their sound at the moment, that doesn’t seem to be the case with you guys though, what are your thoughts on the scene right now?
“Bands change their sounds over time, no one wants to be doing the same stuff for 30 years. One of my favourite records recently was amo (Bring Me The Horizon) and obviously that sounds nothing like Bring Me’s early stuff and they got quite a bit of hate from their original fanbase. For us it was never about wanting to do a certain style just to fit in. People kept coming to us saying if you wanted to get played on the radio, if you want to get good shows you’ll have to change your style, that’s very different to saying I want to make a pop album because I want to make a pop album.”
“So when we say we stuck to our guns it’s not disparaging anyone else.”
It’s about maintaining creative control instead?
Yeah absolutely, so if on the third album we make a dubstep album it’s because we wanted to!
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“Every song we've ever written has been born in a different way, there's never a set template.”
The lead guitar is particularly brilliant on this album, the solo on ‘I Don’t Feel Like Feeling Great’ is a real highlight, how do you go about incorporating lead guitar in a way that serves the songs rather than being self indulgent?
“So I very much have Timmy and Beth to hold me back when things go too far! That solo was actually a bit of a fight, we tracked the demo and that middle eight I actually wrote for a different band when I was about 17. I wanted to incorporate it into this song, the band loved it when we demoed it and then when we got into the studio it was like, ‘is the solo too long?’”
“I love being in this band because we’re the best of friends but we’re all really honest when we don’t like something, it’s great to have Timmy and Beth around to restrain me when I need it.”
By the sounds of it the songwriting is very collaborative, is there a core songwriter or does everyone have a lot of input?
“Oh God, I swear every song we’ve ever written has been born in a different way, there’s never a set template. Usually either me or Timmy will start with a guitar riff, Beth is a bit odd and I’ve not seen many singers do this, she’ll write her vocal melodies without any music, I don’t know how she does it. She’ll usually try to sing that melody over different riffs we’ve already got so we’re very often usually trying to gel songs that have been written separately together.”
“We’ll usually get the three of us together, hammer out a demo, then write some really bad drums and send it to Luke then he’ll will write his stuff once we’ve got the main song down, it’s very collaborative.”
You got John Mitchell in for this one, he’s been involved with some of the most iconic British bands around over the last decade, how did this come about?
“It was literally just an e-mail! We did the first album with Arthur (Welwyn) in London but that was literally recorded in his mum’s garage on a 2009 iMac or something, we couldn’t have got any more DIY. Considering all that it still sounds pretty good, it holds its own.”
“When it came to the second album, fortunately thanks to sales and touring we had a bit more money behind us, we had more possibilities to hopefully produce a more polished record. We were looking out for producers around the UK and every single album we thought about, it was John Mitchell. He’s done You Me at Six, he’s done Enter Shikari, he’s done Architects, Lower Than Atlantis, the list is endless. We booked him to do ‘Nothing on You’, that went great so we went ahead straight away with the rest of the album.”
“At the end of the day when you make a record you want people to say that sounds as good as any other band. John was such an absolute joy, he loves music, every night we were locked away in the studio with him basically getting drunk and watching videos of our favourite bands, talking about records talking about music. It was a great time, we absolutely loved it. The mix is amazing, production wise he brought a lot of ideas to the table we never would have thought of.”
The second record was still self-funded though wasn’t it?
“Yeah, we got approached by a couple of labels after the first album came out, nothing felt right. When we looked into it, and I’m not slating all labels, but a contract is basically a bank loan except once you’ve paid it off they still own the music. It’s like getting a mortgage but once you’ve paid it off you don’t own your home!”
“So we just got a bank loan and got enough pre-orders and backing from our supporters that we actually paid off the loan before the album came out, which was amazing.”
“We lost 60% of our band revenue overnight. It definitely had an impact on the album as a whole in terms of how we felt recording it.”
You’ve been able to promote yourselves, fund yourselves, do you think a band would be able to make a name for themselves like this before the advent of social media and streaming?
“No. Absolutely not. We wouldn’t have been able to afford the studio time. I feel like there has definitely been a rise in independent bands compared to twenty, thirty years ago and that’s because the internet makes it so easy to cut out the middle man and go directly to, potentially, millions of fans online. We made our first album on a shoestring budget in a garage and it sounded good enough to get played on Kerrang! and get us to the point where we were selling out shows. It might not be the most polished record but it’s good enough to pass scrutiny. The barrier for entry is lower now but there is so much competition, there are millions of songs getting uploaded to Spotify and a lot of them very high quality so its about how you stand out above the noise. I think we’ve been very, very lucky so far with the support we’ve got from our fans. You’ve got to have good music at the end of the day.”
Going back to the musical side of things, do the lyrics come from Beth or are they a collaborative effort?
“Yeah so 99.5% of lyrics come from Beth, the only time she will ever ask for help is if she’s stuck on one line. She’s the brain behind the lyrics.”
It seems as if a lot of the lyrical content is dealing with mental health, with isolation, is that something that came about due to lockdown or was that already the case?
“About half the album was finished before the pandemic hit. ‘Nothing on You’ for example, Beth really wrote about the industry and the way people have treated her in the past. But I think everything that happened with COVID shaped the album and shaped the sound. We went from playing shows at the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, everything seemed like it was the best the band had ever achieved and then we just went straight into lockdown. We lost 60% of our band revenue overnight. It definitely had an impact on the album as a whole in terms of how we felt recording it.”
Speaking of touring – even on record this is a very energetic album, I take it you’re looking forward to being able to play this material on stage?
“Yeah, we can’t wait. This band has always been about ‘how do we write songs to promote our tours’ essentially. We always think of how we can change things and make it work live, we can’t wait to get out on the road later this year.”
You can have your dream show, touring with any band you want, who would you like?
“We would all massively say different bands, I think for Beth if we could play a show with MCR she’d finish music there – nothing could top that! I know Panic! Would be up there for me. Timmy would probably say Blink-182, Luke would probably give some crazy metal band that we would not fit the bill with! You know, Chelsea Grin or something, not appropriate!”