Interview with Wild Beasts at The Brudenell Social Club March 11th 2009

SS: How important is geography?

HT: It's very important. You're judged on it straight away, When you're in a band it's "What's your name, where are you from?"

CT: It's travelling around all the time as well.

HT: Yeh I suppose it's the old thing. The assumption that If you are from a certain place you should sound a certain way or you should have had a certain set of experiences, that you should talk a certain way. You can tell you own story. I suppose you're asking about the geography in relation to music. Well not necessarily ... but that's how we're doing it.

SS: The music speaks for itself but there's another conversation you can have alongside it.

HT: We were talking about travelling around … the footloose thing

TF: We confuse people by being from two different places

BL: The place totally rubs off on you though doesn't it? We're from Kendall which is just a small town, there's not much to do. So we just make music.

HT: We like that myth about us coming straight form the woods. Straight from the woods, singing around camp fires. It's nice.

SS: Is that a myth? Kendall is a bit urban …

HT: It's urban for Cumbria, but urban for Cumbria is like 20 miles outside Leeds in the Dales. Otley is more urban than Kendall.

TF: There is no Greater Kendall. There is nowhere to go apart from Kendall. It's just the town centre. Which is kind of good There is nothing worse than being in places like Bedford and Aylesbury which are London satellites. Because they're dead in the water. Because of their proximity to other bigger places they are no competition. Kendall doesn't have any competitors - it's self contained.

HT: There is no fresh blood going through it. That's the difference, it's very contained. It's very isolated in a way. Culturally. When we growing up and going to gigs and stuff. Going to Manchester was just "like, wow! what …?". That's the world out there, you know, a very big difference. And especially musically, when you gig growing up and you want to investigate music and the only way can is through magazines and stuff and just your own endeavour. No one is really there passing things on, saying go to his gig, or ... because there isn't a gig.

TF: And remember we were just about pre-internet as well. Certainly our formative years were done pre-Internet. So it is by hearsay and buying albums if you like the cover. That sort of thing, and you kind of pick it up like that.

SS: If you were going to Manchester, what sort of bands would it be to see?

TF: My first gig was AC/DC in Manchester.

CT: First gig I went to was Oasis at the Apollo. And I just carried on going to The Apollo because I loved the Apollo

HT: The Apollo was a great venue

CT: There was a coach company in Lancaster or Preston who organised coach travel down from Kendall and Lancaster down to Manchester for gigs. We booked The Strokes through them. Some people down in Manchester were paying £150 to see The Strokes in Manchester when they were selling gigs like that. Over here we got the tickets two weeks before the concert, about £50 for the coach and tickets

SS: Benny, what sort of things were you going to see?.

BL: Probably awful ones to be honest. I remember seeing The Vines actually, you know that band from Australia, in Manchester.

TF: You came to the Strokes as well, didn't you?.

BL: Yeh!

SS: This connects with school doesn't it?

TF: Yes, we all went to school

SS: There's a lot of school in the album

HT: Yes I suppose ... I think the reason we are so defensive about the fact that we are from Kendall is, in a sense, that's because when you investigate music and you're getting into music we had to apply ourselves to New York bands or Australian bands or if there was a London band you had to apply ourselves to that. There was nothing that spoke of Kendall or that sort of existence or that sort of youth

TF: You're always on the left hand of experience. You feel like its; not talking to you or about you. It's it's talking to someone else,. And you feel like have to latch on to that. I think we probably had a chip on our shoulder about that And I think that's fair enough.

SS: IT does seem that your music has wider influence because you have had to look further

CT: If you're brought up in somewhere like Manchester it's like you get it drummed into you that you're either Oasis or The Smiths, you can't even look for your own band.

TF: Thank God we don't come from Manchester

CT: I didn't hear about The Smiths till I was about 16. I had to go and look for it.

BL: You can make your own judgment on it as well, people don't tell you if it's cool or not cool.

SS: What sort of gigs could you play in those days.? What are we talking about, 2004, 2005?

HT: Just one venue called Dickie Doodles where you could basically turn up with your guitar, or borrow someone's guitar and play

BL: All sorts of god awful boogie bands, 12 bar bands

TF: I was there the other night

BL: It's the sort of place that's open late and we often end there and we get up and you occasionally get up and think "Yeh, this is still a good idea"

CT: There was a 35 year old white guy, who got on with a tea cosy on his head and he said "Are you rrrready for some rrregae?!"

CT: and he just started jammin' out reggae

TF: In a Rasta accent., and did the have the Rastafari colours. .. It's a bit like rural middle aged men and blues. It's their music. It's like the British Blues Boom never stopped. But to be fair that's the live music you see and that's where you learn on those sorts of grounds and you pick up a few of those "fuck it, let's just do it attitudes."

BL: I remember I was so scared when we first played in Dickie's. Me and Haydn went down for jam night I've never been so scared of performing in front of people.

TF: I remember Derek Erhard s(?) saying, when you came off stage: "You're going to be pop stars!"

CT: I was there in the audience. I remember you doing it.

HT: It almost provides, instantly, a model for what you don't want to be And once you know what you don't want to be you know what you want to be..

TF: There's always a risk of doing things like that.

SS: I'll go back to the school thing. There must have been some music in your life at a fairly early age. I mean, you're not "picked up a guitar at 17 people", are you?

BL: Well, picked up a guitar at 14 ...

HT: Yes, 14.

BL: Chris's Mum and Dad taught us music at school. Both his teachers were teachers.

SS: Were they any good?

TF: They've got cult figure status now.

CT: Yes, the music blocks named after them now. The Talbot Block.

BL: It's true.

CT: They had four or five choirs in the school. A junior, intermediate and senior choir and a chamber choir and there's an orchestra. All that's gone now. They had the Leavers Day recently and it was just soloists. They did really well. I think they did a lot.

SS: Its hard work

CT: Oh yeh it was . You're teaching kids who can't play a keyboard with just an orchestra hit on the keyboard. It must be an absolute nightmare. You've got you're a Level students are going to be your freedom for the week when you come t he A Levels and GCSE students who have learned an instrument up to about Grade 5 or 6 standard I think that's where it must have been more rewarding for them but it must me an absolute nightmare teaching kids in Year 7 8 and 9

SS: What difference did Domino make? Let's just leap.

HS: I think the important thing is that it didn't make any impact on our music. Our music already existed and we are going on that path anyway. That's part of the beauty of Domino Records and why it is that institution that people feel that it is. You never feel put out or as if you should be making music for anyone but yourselves.

SS: They didn't ask you to "record a hit"?

TF: I think they saw us as a pop band. And they saw us having songs, and writing albums that were concise. Maybe a hit was a bit …

HT: We thought we were that already anyway, that we sold ourselves on being ..

TF: Exactly. It was never "We're writing songs now boys". That was what we already did. We knew that that's what we wanted to do, reduce things down and make things quite concise and snappy just to melody and structure rather than "this is the way to do it and this is how we are going to make a living out of it"

HT: I think it was fascination with pop, and then there is also that other side of the coin: "what can you put into it?" That's part of the beauty of pop. It's a completely open canvas and you can throw anything at it and no one will judge you on it. It doesn't have any standards really.

SS: Don't a lot of people get it wrong?

TF: Oh yes.

HT: Oh yeh, horribly. But that's part of the beauty of it. Part of the fascination

SS: What would you like people to know about your music that they don't already know? What are the common misconceptions?

TF: I don't think so anymore. It was only when we first started releasing stuff there were these guys saying "these guys are just weird". I think "weird for sake of weird" was the phrase. That's just a killer phrase. It just destroys creativity surely. It was as if we were those zany far out wacky guys

SS: Really?

TF: Oh yes. But I think all that nonsense has all been put to bed now.

HT: I think "retro" is a but punishing though. It doesn't really work out. Retro

CT: ... That's damaging. Not retro!

HT: Also its up to people. People can make they own minds up if they want ... well there isn't just one face that we want to put across or one dynamic We want to be 3D, we can't help but be 3D. There's no point trying to address the same thing or make all the songs the same. In that sense IT'S outside our control And that probably makes us not a pop but we like to think we are in some sense

SS: I can hear some of the exuberance in your music that bright kids in the early 80s were listening to back then. These were intelligent people who wanted to play pop music. And that has been there since the early 50s, it's never been away. It's not retro, it's just a linking thread. So Domino haven't asked you to play different music, but what other changes have come about in your musical lives?

HT: Well, huge differences. It became our jobs We became our own bosses at 19, 20 and we sort of start to discipline yourself and discipline each other. But that was what we wanted to do. It was what we had been working towards for years.

TF: I Suppose we felt like, for the first time. we wanted make a proper album and be a proper band with proper singles and doing it the traditional way and learn to do it that way and cut our teeth properly and we've played so many gigs and done so many miles and played together so many times. We are a very different animal and now we've done that now we're on a good footing to start experimenting.

SS: What is it about a single that makes it special?

HT: I think it's just, it's just that magic word when you don't have a label and you're desperate to have people hear your music and singles, especially for people of our generation - where you bought singles when you were 12, 13,14 and that was all you listened to for weeks and weeks and weeks and you had spent three or four pounds on a single it meant a lot more than I does now. It has died away now, the single doesn't exist as it used to. We were still romantic about and I think we're not anymore. We've done the singles I think For one thing our music probably doesn't translate itself to singles how we probably wanted it to. Just because for people to hear and make sense of our singles people probably need to hear three or four of the songs on the album to know how they fit amongst them.

SS: What is the Devils Crayon?

BAND: *chuckles*

TF: I've had someone suggest to me that it's a phallic thing, which I quite like. I must be like a stuck record with this. It's a phrase that I read somewhere that God draws in fine pencil but the Devil daubs in crayon. Which I took to mean that all these base animal temptations were much easier to understand. Much more available to you and attractive. Much more colourful.

HT: It's the simplicity of it, the condensed form.

SS: The phallic thing is the easy obvious option. But if you want to say "cock and balls" you just say it. That's the thing about your stuff is that you say what you want to say? And then the listener has to deal with it.

CT: Isn't that much more rewarding than the reviewer dissecting it and putting on a plate for you?

SS: And that leaves the reviewer with nothing to say except "I like it" So we waffle on anyway.

HT: The crudeness that isn't always allowed into songs ... we like playing with that, we like to play with it, with the fringes of it. I think that's what we're most comfortable, on the fringes of things. It comes down to pop, what's tasteful and not tasteful It's on the fringes that we exist best and where a lot of the music we like

SS: IT seems more fun to be erotic that just naming all the parts. YOU stuff sounds kind of hopeful and fun. And there are serious bits, regret and guilt and …

HT: That's where we try this 3D … you can laugh hysterically or cry at exactly the same thing, Nothing is ever that simple. I suppose, unintentionally, that's what we strive towards

TF: It's nice that you picked up the erotic thing as well. That's nice, That's kind of big for us, that humanness ... I fell that is quite important for what we do. It's nice that you picked it up.

SS: How did the next album come out? How is it different to Limbo, Panto?

CT: I think we approached it as an album., more like a whole piece. Not as a concept album but that kind of whole assembly thing that really works.

SS: Did you write is all in the same period of time ?

CT: Yes, a short period

TF: We had to write it quickly. It was like "We need an album from you"

CT: Whereas Limbo Panto was essentially the best of the four years before it was released

SS: Wild Beasts Greatest Hits?

BAND: *chuckles*

CT: It was journey sort of thing, whereas this was written in about nine months or so

SS: Was that difficult?

CT: Naturally

TF: There was no discussion about it "we've just got to do it so let's do it" and as a result of it a lot of the normal detritus that we may have thrown away, we had no time, we actually used what we had. So we realised that a lot of things came from the same root. We were struggling with the track listing because there are several different ways you can take through it and each one tells the same kind of story. Its surprising how well it came together really. But it had no right to.

BL: It was finishing off the skeletons of songs the week before we went into record.

SS: Are they songs that you had played the songs to other people much?

HT: We hadn't. We had nothing really to be scared of. We had done exactly what we wanted to with the first album.

CT: we are doing a lot of new material we've just been on tour and playing quite a lot of new stuff, and we will be playing new stuff tonight. Because we are selfish. And because if anything, you like a band you should like what they're doing at the moment as well So we hope that people will come along with us.

SS: We haven't mentioned America yet [the gig itself is helping raise funds for an imminent trip to South By Southwest 2009 in Austin, Texas]

CT: We've never been before. It will be the first time next week

SS: As individuals as well as a band?

HT: Pretty much .

BL: Pretty terrifying, the flights we are doing …

CT: Three flights in 12 hours!

BL: Yeh, something stupid

TF: The thing is its American music, for me personally, it's huge, All my favourite bands are American all my favourite music is American ... I wouldn't like to say it's like the Mersey beat scene but it does feel a little bit like we are going into unknown territory it's a bit more like starting at the bottom again. Because most places when we have been abroad people have been "Oh great! A British band!" and the American will be more like "Yeh OK, Come, on then impress us". IT'S nice to have that chance.

SS: And you're going to be doing dates all over the world in the next year and a half I guess?

TF: We'll see. Hopefully this trip will engender more stuff in America. But obviously we've been all over Europe as well

BL: Apparently our album seems to have sold well in Japan. But that's very expensive. We'll see about that

SS: Where in Europe seems to like it best?

BL: France

BAND: Yeh, France is great!

CT: Germany's OK

HT: Germany's all right.

SS: BUT France is tough, isn't it?

BL: Well, we didn't find it so …

CT: We were first on a four band bill in France over there and when we'd go on there it could be as low as 30 people in the room, but by the time we had finished it would be basically a full house, with kids loving it down at the front

HT: And the reactions were that people afterwards were wanting to talk to us and ask us what we were doing. It was good. Its hard to say. I find it very hard to say anything very sensible about gigs because you're very much involved in yourselves. You do the show, you usually enjoy it - not always, you either enjoy it or it's cack, its really bad - there's never really anything in between. And afterwards if people want to talk to you it's just "Yes, thanks for coming" Because, you're drunk and sweaty and there's nothing you can say that will really add to anyone's experience except "Oh, he's a dickhead!"

BL: You can only disappoint people after gigs, you can only let them know you're human ...