We Need To Talk: Joy-Rides Discuss Their Debut Album 'There Are No Mistakes' [Interview]

Words: Saam Das

Where we do we begin with Joy-Rides? The London experimental jazz-punk noiseniks released their debut album this week, 'There Are No Mistakes', and we've been lucky enough to have a chat about it with frontperson and all-round-good-person Kieran Toms.

We Need To Talk: Sharkmuffin [Interview]

Words: Simon Opie

A few weeks back, all girl Brooklyn three-piece Sharkmuffin were my FG Sunday Selection. OK, so I admit that I was drawn in by three hot looking ladies playing self-styled slutcore (sic) with song titles such as the excellent 'Mermaid Sex Slave', 'Shit Talk' and 'Femebot' – all off an EP called 'She-Gods Of Champagne Valley'. Well, I’m only human after all. But we also wanted to delve deeper, and have a Q&A with Tarra Thiesen from the band.

We Need To Talk: Leisure [Interview]

Words: Saam Das

A good few years ago now, I did very early interviews with Los Campesinsos! and White Lies. They've done an alright job since so we figured it might be time to get back onto the bandwagon and talk to some new bands on the rise. First up are exciting London quartet Leisure, who recently put out their debut track as a free download through the tastemaking label, Young & Lost. We even got all of them to have a word.

White Lies Interview

If you were lucky enough to read my blog during the early days in 2006, you would have witnessed a fantastic interview with a little known band called Los Campesinos! - Gareth, Neil and Harriet are officially denoted the best members of the band, of course. That interview went so well [Read here] and the band have gone onto reasonably big things (like appearing on Soccer AM), I haven't felt the need to do another interview since. Until now.

Like LC!, London three-piece White Lies are building up hype and have big things ahead of them. Having dissolved their previous post-punky meets art-rock style outfit Fear Of Flying (who I saw many times, even in their first incarnation as The Flow back in 2004!), they've undergone an intriguing metamorphosis into bleakness, reliving some of the best melancholic bands of the Eighties. So I thought I'd better sneak an interview early before they tire of such frivolous ventures. Here's what Jack LB, White Lies drummer and London clubnight promoter had to say.

White Lies - Unfinished Business

Who are White Lies?
White Lies is Harry McVeigh on vocals and guitar, Charles Cave on bass and myself Jack Brown on drums. Collectively we write and record everything as a 3 piece. Tommy [formerly of the now defunct Mumm-ra] is an essential live addition which allows us to push our live performance.

Why 'White Lies' as a band name? Presumably not after the Paul Van Dyk song?
White Lies was something that came to us without ever listening to Paul Van Dyk. There is no one reason for the name. It's something we all agreed on, and it has a dark tone to it, so it sits well with our music.

How did you get involved with James Sandom (Kaiser Chiefs manager) and Supervision Management?
James got in touch with us after hearing 'Unfinished Business'. He is vastly experienced and shared our vision of what White Lies should be about and where we want to go.

Considering the recent FOALS backlash, are you concerned about being a buzz band?
Although our name has been going around a fair bit, I think we are still a fairly unknown quantity. We're starting to pick up press and radio coverage but we have no internet following compared to some buzz bands. Most people have heard 2 or 3 of our tracks at most, so we still offer a lot more to come. We are developing completely naturally as a result. The buzz won't matter if we succeed in doing what we want to do as a band.

'Unfinished Business' is the debut single out on April 28th. Why was that chosen as the first offering?
'Unfinished Business' is song which includes all the important factors relating to our music. It's a track which covers what we want to do sonically as well as musically. We all feel its a strong first statement to make.

The single's being released on Chess Club Recordings [link], an extension of your clubnight, will we be seeing more singles out on that label?
Chess Club is my label and night that I run with people outside White Lies, so it's not really attached to White Lies in any other way. Chess Club has lots more exciting releases planned for summer, but I can't really tell you who yet as some of it is TBC. All exciting new music from many different genres though.

After a bit of an A&R battle, White Lies recently signed to Fiction Records. Why Fiction?
Jim Chancellor who runs Fiction is the most passionate man in the music industry - that's a fact - and to have him A & R our records is a huge compliment. The whole Fiction team has a very inventive and focused approach to each artist. It's a small team and they will help us build a career that's tailored to our needs. And as a band you can't ask for more than that.

Will you be working with Stephen Street (producer of the two Fear Of Flying singles) on any future releases, such as the album?
There are no plans at the moment for us to work with Stephen. We will be recording the album with Ed Bueller [Suede and Pulp producer] and Max Dingel [mixed the final Fear Of Flying single and has engineered on albums by Muse, Weezer etc] co-producing.

Which band/s are you most looking forward to meeting or simply seeing play on the NME New Noise tour that you'll be heading off on soon?
The NME tour line up is a strange billing for us to be on. We stick out a bit on that bill, but we like a challenge. I'm looking forward to watching Crystal Castles, I hear they're deranged live.

You're playing a few festivals, which one are you most excited about playing and are there any others you'd like to perform at?
VISA permitting we will be doing some great shows this summer. But as the line ups aren't announced I probably shouldn't say too much. We are opening the main stage of Lollapalooza in chicago which is awesome. We will also be playing on a Japanese mountain, but you didn't hear that from me [their appearance at Fuji Rock Festival has since been confirmed]. We aren't doing Glasto this year so that's an aim for sure.

And that's your lot. White Lies are clearly an ambitious, revitalised band that have their own vision of success. I wouldn't bet against them surpassing those goals but it's still early days yet. Many thanks to Jack for taking the time to answer my questions, he's obviously a busy man!

'Unfinished Business' is out very soon on limited 7", stockists are listed [here].

Los Campesinos! Interview!

You must have heard about Welsh-yet-not-so-Welsh uni student collective Los Campesinos! by now. If not, you've either been living under a rock or you actually have a life that doesn't involve the internet. Taking the best bits of American indie pop and adding their own secret ingredients, simply put they're grrrrreat. Better than Frosties in fact. But with no press release or biog in sight, Keep Hope Inside seeks to unpeel the layers of the Los Campesinos! onion....

Let's start with the basics, in a Cilla-Black-Blind-Date format. What's yer name and where d'ya come from?
Gareth: We are three sevenths Somerset, two sevenths London-way, one seventh Northern and a last seventh Russian. None of us are actually Welsh, but Cardiff is where we are home and happy. It’s our favourite city I think.
Neil: I’m Neil, the Northern part of Los Campesinos!. Neil, the token Northerner.
Harriet: I’m from Surrey but my gran is from the Rhonda Valley and her dad was a miner so he wouldn’t mind us being called a Welsh band. Also, my grandad on the non-Welsh side was in the navy and once spent a night in Cardiff prison when his ship left without him.
Gareth: I think that qualifies us as Welsh!

How did Los Campesinos! form?
G: I’m afraid the formation isn’t a very exciting story. It’s just a tale of friendship and indie snobbery. Basically we stopped recruiting when we were able to afford to hire practice rooms.
N: It's quite a romantic story. It started initially with the four of us when I was out and chatting about The Decemberists and Tom stuck his head into the conversation. He’d been in my lectures for a year and I didn’t even notice him. Or his hat. I live with Gareth and I knew Harriet and Ellen knew Alex. The band came together really naturally some time in March.

Where did the band name come from?
G: Once upon a time Neil was fluent in Spanish, and so I guess that’s where the idea for the name came. It doesn’t mean anything though.
N: Well, it literally means the peasants but the meaning has changed due to Spain’s social changes. It doesn’t actually mean anything to us though.
G: I just like the fact that it sounds nice and looks nice written down. The exclamation mark was added in an attempt to make us cool and hip. Actually, thinking about it, I think the initial idea for the exclamation mark may have been a joke. A good joke though.

There seems to be a Peruvian folk outfit who share your name, will you be Ctrl+Alt+Deleting their faces anytime soon?
G: Haha, quite crucially those folksters don’t have an exclamation mark in their name, so we’re hoping that that saves us. Also, there’s the comfort that I’d imagine nobody in Peru will ever hear of us.

Fellow Cardiff centric band The Victorian English Gentlemen's Club are also beginning to make it into the media spotlight - is there a burgeoning new music scene in Cardiff that we should know about?
G: Cardiff has an awesome music scene. If you manage to avoid the angry teenagers forming shouty bands in the valleys then bands such as Gindrinker, Little My And Friends, Yossarian, Stray Borders, Silence At Sea and Sweet Baboo are all really exciting and worth listening to.
N: Gareth’s got this one covered. Cardiff has an excellent music scene.
H: Yes, it’s fantastic to be in such good company.

How does it feel to be a quoteunquote blogging sensation?
G: I think it’s quite nice, as it is easy to avoid. It’s lovely when people have nice things to say about us, but I also find it quite scary, as, well, things were never meant to happen like this. Though it’s easy to hide from the internet, so I don’t know how big a deal it is.
N: It’s quite exciting, although weird. We were on The Hype Machine thing in the top 10 for 1 week. What’s that all about? The Peruvian Los Campesinos must have had a chart hit that week.

'It Started With A Mixx' seems to be inspired by Hot Chocolate's 'It Started With A Kiss' - why did you decide to "rework" that track?
G: It was just in case people ever got confused, I wanted to highlight the fundamental difference between myself and Errol brown. Whereas he gets to do kissing, I make mixx tapes for girls to try to make them love me. Somebody wrote about this song and said it was satire. It is completely not. Each word is from the bottom of my pathetic, simpering heart. If a single person puts this on a mixx tape for somebody they are trying to impress then my life will be whole. It mightn’t be very subtle though. That must be where I’m going wrong.

Following the fantastic news Los Campesinos! are about to support Broken Social Scene (huzzah!), are there any other bands about at the moment that you'd love to play with?
G: After the inevitable embarrassment I cause myself at this gig, I am going to hope and pray that we never get offered to play with a band I like, ever again.
N: I don’t think there’s another band around right now that I’d like to play with more. I’m shitting my pants already.
H: I know its going to be mega!

With major label interest around the corner (perhaps already here?), are there any plans to release a single/EP or a full scale tour in the near future?
G: We would love to do all those things. We just need to find people that will let us, and help us organise it because we’re rubbish at organising stuff.
N: We’ve still got one year of uni left, which means we’re going to be taking things quite slowly. A full scale tour is something that we all want to do. Touring sounds like the best thing ever.

Los Campesinos! - It Started With A Mixx
For other tracks and to read more about them, check out The Hype Machine [link]

And there you have it, my first ever band "interview" and apparently only the second one Los Campesinos! have done. I think their first one was with a porn mag. Awesome. Let me know what you thought of my interview and many thanks go to Gareth, Neil and Harriet Los Campesinos! for being ace.