The first record from the indie-punk trendsetters in the best part of an entire decade, Uncertain Joys doesn’t just come following a lengthy hiatus for the band, but a life changing and transformational journey for frontman Billy Lunn. After the band entered a state of dormancy following their 2011 record Money and Celebrity, Lunn found himself studying English at Cambridge and embracing his subdued sexuality. Fantastic endeavours yes, yet the years between then and now also saw him battling borderline personality disorder, addiction and an attempt to end his life. The road has been one of both triumph and tragedy for the frontman, but one that has concluded with Lunn being both the best version of himself and the most passionate, substantial and charismatic record from The Subways thus far.
With Uncertain Joys out now via Alcopop! Records, We sat down with Billy Lunn to deep dive into creative classism (looking at you, nepo babies), the death of grassroots venues and the new record.
How does it feel to be back after such a long break?
“It’s still quite odd for us being on stage because it was such an elongated period over the pandemic of not playing and getting used to the fact that we’re not going to be in social spaces, even just as music appreciators. I think I went a little bit crazy, to be honest. It’s not just the fact that I love playing music, it’s that I think my soul really needs to be on stage. That space where there’s this contract where everyone walks through the door, and they all understand that they’re gonna go nuts; that they’re going to kind of shrug off the daily problems and issues, and they’re just going to enjoy the music. So ever since those periods, I think getting on stage has been a really special thing for me, but particularly so having released this album, which has been in our locker for such a long time now.”
Do you feel like going to uni and getting an English degree has influenced your work and your writing?
“I thought only really in a subliminal sense where having read these books, read this poetry and acquired some techniques may have affected my lyric writing, but my mum listened to the album for the first time properly last night and sent me a WhatsApp message just like “I can’t believe your lyrics on this new album. They’re fabulous!” I was just like “aw, thanks, mum!”, but I don’t know how much stock I can put in that, because it’s still my mum and she’s probably gonna think everything I do is fabulous.”
“I look at some of the subject matter and I think I probably would never have broached those sorts of subjects were it not for stepping back from the whirlwind of music and live touring for three years and actually just being a music appreciator again. Getting lost in these huge tomes of reading the poems of Ben Johnson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Gothic romances of Ann Radcliffe… Some of this stuff really turned up all the imagery that I’m drawn to, and gave me the confidence to frame my songs. I think, more than anything, it just gave me a big boost in confidence.”
‘To Strephon’ by Sarah Dixon influenced ‘Uncertain Joys’ didn’t it?
“Yeah! When I read ‘To Strephon’, it dealt with the eternal and the temporary. I was going through a quite tumultuous period, breaking up with my ex wife, and I guess what I was trying to do was work out whether things were falling apart materially or whether things were falling apart spiritually. I came to terms with the breakup, and the song Uncertain Joys is about figuring out what I loved so much about her, the origins of that love, but also the origins of the discord that was going on between us. There was this one line in [To Strephon] that is basically just about be looking forward to the eternity in the abstract or the afterlife where everything is arranged that is just full of love, and we’re free from the tumult of uncertain joys, and it just felt like every time I tried to address a subject on the record, it had something to do with the uncertain joys of this.”
“It just felt like that poem got to the very core of what I was trying to throw weight at with a lot of the material in the songs, particularly when it came to songs like an ‘Incantation’, where for the first time, I’m dealing with these feelings for guys that I’ve had my whole life that I’ve never really consciously, even just sat down and thought through because of the environment in which I grew up. In my head I’m going through this process of falling in love with a guy, not knowing that I was falling in love with him and at the same time, it being taboo growing up in a hyper masculine family and going to an all boys school, where it was all very rough and tumble, and you couldn’t show any real affection to your fellow classmates or anything. There was this disconnect that was happening inside me that I still, having written the song and having come out as bisexual, haven’t really come to terms with. That’s really why we ended the record on Antonin Artaud asking himself “who am I? What am I? Why are we here?” in French. ‘To Strephon’ really cut to the heart, and I had to use that phrase “uncertain joys” in the record.”
Speaking of French, what’s the reason for the recurrent use of French throughout the album? Are you French at all?
“My brother, Josh, our ex drummer, his last performances were on this record. He dated a French lady, and they had a baby together. ‘Joli Coeur’ really came about because of feeling displaced. I, since I was very young, have yearned to be back in the family home in which I grew up. I’ve never really settled down. As soon as I started the band when we were young, we were popping off all over the place. I’ve not even learned to drive and I’m 38 years old, because I’ve never really been stuck in one place. I’m so bad. I’m just like, “Can I get a lift please?” Busing, training… I’m always the dude asking for a lift. So terrible, I really should take my driving lessons.”
“When I was at uni, I was making these periodic trips to the places where I grew up, indulging this nostalgia that was building inside me. I went back to one of the streets on which I lived, and it was a really shocking, kind of riveting, wrenching experience. I didn’t quite feel like myself and I felt like I was having this out of body experience and I saw, for the first time, this house as a person. So, I wrote ‘Joli Coeur’ about this house in the guise of a person, and even though it felt like I’d lost a sense of direction to this person, or this person has abandoned me, actually, it was me who left the house. Compounded by being on tour and never quite feeling like I had a homestead, a place where I could feel secure, I think using ‘Joli Coeur’ to kind of create a distance and effect by placing it in France, or having the protagonist of the song as coming from France, really fit this idea of of distance, of a lack of proximity, of a sense of loss and the absence of a place that’s not quite here. For me anyway. But I also saw it as a really sweet way to involve Josh’s daughter in the recording of the album. So that’s actually her talking at the end of ‘Joli Coeur’.”
What exactly does that say? Joli Coeur means sweetheart, doesn’t it?
“I think it’s “my sweet, Joli Coeur, my sweet sweetheart. Where have you gone? I need you here with me,” or something to that effect.”
I read that you borrowed a guitar from the venue and the first venue that you played up. Love the meaning behind the song. I think it’s a great dedication to the importance of grassroots venues, but it’s also a really sad reminder they’re dying out. Are you playing the guitar live? Or is it just for the recordings?
“It was just for the recordings, it’s not actually my guitar, as much as I wanted to take it on tour with me. The guy who lent it to me, Adam Smith, goes by the name Black Wax on social media. That’s where the title of the song came from. When I heard that the guitar existed and its incarnation, being made from a piece of wood that was taken from the bar top at The Square after it had been reduced to rubble, I was like, “I have to use that guitar for a song.” This song is about the importance of music to me. I had to include something about The Square, a venue that completely changed my life, without which there would never have been a band.”
“It wasn’t just a venue, it was also a youth centre. You could swing by any time of the day. They encouraged people who came through the doors to book their own gigs there. It was so intrinsic to the spirit of what Harlow was and now that The Square is gone, I have not been back to Harlow simply because I can’t go to that place where one of the most important monuments in my entire life is now no longer existing. They’ve said that they were going to build these luxury flats on top and they have still not been dealt with seven years later, the rubble is still there. We could have had The Square still going. We could have had music still playing in that venue, you could have had kids learning to play music, learning to DJ, learning to produce, learning to live engineer, learning to promote gigs. It’s kind of a natural corollary of what the Tories have set up in this country since 2010, which is systematically dismantling the creative arts so that those who typically would speak truth to power won’t have that access anymore. The arts are being reserved for those who can afford to indulge themselves in that hobby of making music and hope to make it big, rather than it being a legitimate prospect for anyone having any socio economic status. So, ‘Black Wax’ is a difficult song to play not just on the guitar, but for me to perform, because inherently, within the very fabric of the song, is my love for The Square, and it pains me every time I think about it.”
So many communities fall apart because of the loss of these creative hubs. 35% of grassroots venues have shut down over the past 20 years.
“It’s remarkable, you can see the effects had on the music industry. It’s no coincidence that the phrase “nepo baby” is emerging. Those who can get their parents to build recording studios in their houses for them, or who can afford to fund entire tours for them, their access to the means to expressing themselves, whether it being in rehearsal spaces, studio spaces, or live music environments, that’s not been cut off to them, they can do it anytime they want. But if you cut an entire class out of those arenas where free expression can happen, the cultural effect is widespread and the implications of that are only really starting to emerge in these last few years.”
“I remember a few tours that we were playing 2011-2012 and then later 2014-2015, some venues would say, after we packed out, “that’s it, that’s the last gig that’s ever going to be here”. It was no coincidence that these venues were closing down, because the support networks for these places, the subsidies that they relied on from councils, and the programmes that would keep them afloat were being cut off. It’s not just the artists that suffer, it’s the audiences. I dread to think how representation is going to e affected if it continues in this strain. How are the working classes going to be able to relate to artists if the working classes don’t have a voice in the music industry? The same with marginalised communities, such as the trans community, South Asian communities, African communities. They’re going to feel underrepresented and also misrepresented. It’s a very, very tough time, but it’s something that unfortunately, we have to confront, and we have to speak out about. Even if I deal with it implicitly in something like ‘Black Wax’, it gives me an opportunity to talk about it with you here in this interview.”
“"My soul really needs to be on stage"”
You touch on other political ideologies in ‘Fight’, as well. There’s references to BLM movement there too. Would you consider yourself an activist?
“I wouldn’t, no, though, activism is something that I would absolutely love to engage in more. ‘Fight‘ was something I felt could only be dealt with in purely prosaic terms. I didn’t want to beat around the bush with this song, I didn’t want to be poetic, I didn’t want it to be metaphorical or figurative. I didn’t want the music to be subtle. I wanted that song to be a punch in the face, nonstop from start to finish, because this subject matter is so important.”
“I attended the Black Lives Matter marches with a good friend of mine. When the BLM marches started getting arranged after the murder of George Floyd, she, being mixed race, really wanted to attend the marches and protests, but none of the people in her friendship group were willing to go. They were actually in fierce opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement. They were saying things to her that were unexcusable, inexcusable, that no friend, no human being should say to another. It was her first ever protest, she was really nervous about it, and I saw that she brought some placards with her. She was still a little shy, but after a while, I could see the confidence building in her and she held up her placards, people started singing her slogans back at her, and I could just see the agency and the autonomy filling her being.”
“Though the event that necessitated the protest, George Floyd’s murder, was a terrible thing, there was a sense of real bonding and community, not least on the part of my friend who I don’t think had ever felt so connected to a group of human beings before. She expressed that very notion to me, saying, “for the first time in my life, I feel like today I expressed the words in the language that that got to the root of how I felt all my life,” and that made me so sad that after I left the march, I went straight home, and I came up with ‘Fight’. It really was just a burst of anger that exploded from me. It was also informed by all the great resources that were being provided by the Black Lives Matter movement. ‘Fight‘ sounds like a really simple, punky heavy rock song, but actually at the core, it’s just me, trying to address the privileged members of society, about the things that we really probably should be thinking about on a day to day basis.”
What are five words you’d use to describe the album?
“Longing, chunky, exuberant, colourful, soulful.”
What do you hope people take from this album?
“My deepest hopes for this record have always been just to bring a little bit of light to people’s lives. To make them smile, to make them want to jump up and down, even during the sad moments of the album, and that they connect with the songs. All my life, all I’ve ever wanted to be is understood, so if people feel that, on some level, this album speaks for them, touches them, reaches them, or makes them feel seen and as part of that, makes them want to express themselves, to inspire them to pick up a guitar, or some drumsticks or get a microphone and to make music themselves.”
“One of the most lovely things about being in this industry for so long is that some of the bands that you end up falling in love with turn around and say, “I remember crowd surfing at your gig in reading 2005 and that’s the reason why I picked up a guitar”, and that never stops being fantastic. I think the threshold for success for me with this record has always just been about making sure that I’ve expressed myself sufficiently and interestingly, and made people happy as part of that.”