The Futureheads - London, UK - Winter 2004
By: Yousif Nur
Few things are certain. But some are. No course of action can take place in and around the Soho area without the odd peculiarity here and there. As we peer out of the tinted windows of The Futureheads' tourbus, which we were thankful for at the time, our attentions are diverted from discussions at hand to what seems to be a small, distinctly frail, elderly woman riding a motorcycle with a rather large man on the side.
'She's an awfully little woman to ride such a big bike,' exclaims a bespectacled Ross Millard, bearing true concern.
A suggestive, conflicting voice booms in the opposite direction, belonging to Barry Hyde. 'He's an awfully big man to be riding such a small motorcycle.'
So, the scene is set. Literate, astute, witty. And what's taken quite so long? The wait for a unique, suitably eccentric (if only to today's environment, at least), Brit-bred (it's always easier to digest when it's near your doorstep, isn't it?) and life-affirming band of such relevance. Along with Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand, they're the following: risk-taking. Spontaneous. Quirky. Singing in their own accents. The Futureheads are very much what you would call by all accounts - out there.
Joined by two of the barbershop quartet/angular post-punk revivalists - guitarist Millard and frontman Hyde - in their cramped, but comfortable tourbus - Sunderland's ex-youth workers look in rare, relaxed mode. It's a marked contrast to how emotions balanced during the recording (and subsequent re-recording) of their debut, eponymous, gold-selling full-length. Now perceived as one of 2004's most important creations.
'A sense of relief, I think,' summarises Ross upon assessing just what the completion of their beyond-cult work entailed. 'And the fact that we're on tour is a good exorcism of taking so long to make our first record; the absolute stress that we'd gone through in terms of recording, and re-recording... picking up on the finer points of the album are all slowly being let out in the live arena. And it's kind of a nice outlet, because it's the best place to let out all your aggression and relief, really.'
Barry agrees, 'Yeah, it's good because the two most important elements of being in a band is recording and performing and they're both totally different, so it's good to go from one to the other to get a real release from the stress and terrible times trying to make the album.'
Hyde cackles before continuing,
'That was over the period of two months, though, which didn't really work with our ethic at all. But we were thrown into the situation whereby we produced something that we weren't happy with and it was a bit of a knock on the chin really, wasn't it?'
Millard explains - 'It was brilliant in the sense that we all used the industry aspects of what we're involved with the label and especially the management, who were prepared to release what we'd already done, but they were also quite happy for us to go and re-record until we were happy with the album, and that was a really good position for us to be in, as I know there's not a lot of bands who would've had that liberty.'
'It's an absolute blessing actually to sign to 679 (also revered home to an onslaught of the 21st Century's most proficient, first set of up-and-comers - The Earlies, Death From Above 1979, Secret Machines and newer signings, Mystery Jets), because they seem to stand out above other labels,' Hyde proudly beams, 'being a group of people who are mainly into the bands being as creative as possible, giving us challenges. They have ideas and we sometimes have to build on them. It's all our own initiative - like (doing) The Streets remix; they asked, 'Do you wanna possibly have a go at a remix? Not saying it would get used, but it'd be a bit of a challenge and it might be fun.' And we did it, and it's been used and it's been getting good press as they've played it on radio. It's a bit special and we're happy with it.'
'Yeah, totally. And the label have a lot of indie ethics without any of the drawbacks or limitations that an indie label would normally have. So it's the best of both worlds really.' Ross says.
'It's like they want to make credible music, but they won't be so po-faced about it, that they'll refuse to send promos out, like, say, Southern Records do; they (Southern) will not send out free CD's to promoters, even though the promoters are doing them a favour; and that's the indie ethic gone wrong,' Barry despondently adds.
Ross acknowledges, 'It's gone a bit trite for its own good really.'
A minor tangent. So that debut album again. A diverse melange of post-punk and pop, not to mention it being one collective unit. But it's not without it being problematic along the way, what with those two re-takes of the final draft.
Ross levels in with his opinion, 'It's just about getting over that hurdle in re-considering what we were all about. Like seeing the album as kind of a body of work and not just a separate collection of songs. Something that's representative of us from start to finish.'
Cohesion must have been an issue; the project was split between sessions with Gang Of Four's Andy Gill and producer du jour, Paul Epworth. From the 'heads perspectives, how were the recording processes with the pair? What with Andy being in a band that's influenced much of the 'it' bands at the moment and the latter with a fair amount of - then - inexperience...
'Andy's a good guy and I wouldn't say anything bad about him, to be perfectly honest with you. But what I will say is that (bluntly) - he isn't the right producer for us. He's made good records; he produced the Jesus Lizard album.'
Ross: 'He did their first one on Capitol, I can't remember what it's called... but his methods of working are different to what we wanted to get out of the studio, really. I think working with Paul Epworth, who's done the majority of the tracks on the record, his sort of vitality and enthusiasm about working towards what we're doing rubbed off on us and at the time we'd become very cynical of recording because we thought of it as a process of going into a studio and documenting your live sound in a very stripped-down basic way, like a lot of the hardcore records that we were talking about. But our music needs to be more sophisticated than that and more colourful and it's not like there's short, aggressive shocks. It's like there's very subtle elements in there and the dynamics are really important. With Paul and his production techniques, it just brought those elements out of the band more.'
'It just felt that our input into the recording sessions were dwarfed by our input into arranging songs in the rehearsal room, or our tunes in rehearsal weren't really carried through to what we were doing in the studio... Paul is going to be integral for a lot of British bands because he's got the ideas. He's got a really unique attitude that people will find terrifying and, after a while, kind of inspirational.' Barry details.
And, to an earlier point, speaking of something representative of them (because Ross was), do the foursome see themselves as being, essentially, a pop band?
'Yep, I do.' Barry immediately replies.
'I do totally.' Ross says in unison. 'We try and make pop music as intelligent as we can, but we love bands that you wouldn't consider to be pop. And we try our best to take elements from those bands and try to bring them into a sort of melodic sphere and try to keep the pop sensibility, but also keep the interesting harmonies and arrangements that non-pop bands would have.'
'We have that energy and self-consciousness that doesn't exist in pop.' Barry laughs.
Ross gives his piece, 'There's also image consciousness as well, which is quite important.'
Barry - 'Obviously, any human-being that exists has a physical presence and an image. Perfect example being the Pixies, who look they shouldn't even have met each other and they happen to be one of the greatest bands ever.'
Ross takes the proverbial baton, 'And we are four completely different people, but there's such a broad spectrum of personality in the band that to try and style a band to all look so similar, it defeats the point of forming a band. We've happened in an almost organic way that people either like it or they don't.'
This would mean that they'd be undertaking the aesthetic seldom seen since the American underground punk/hardcore in the early-eighties era with the likes of Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, et al. But Ross enlightens us with quite the contrary.
'Barry can play the most amazing guitar solos ever, but we don't use them in the band because that's not what it's all about.'
'Usually, the most technically proficient musicians are the ones that make the worst music.' Barry rants. 'Classic example being all the shred guitar stuff, or Steve Vai. Yeah, excellent musician, but why don't you make some good music? Some good, honest music that isn't just about technique, and that would explain the hardcore thing. To be in a good hardcore band you need to be shit-hot. It might not sound like it's technically Steve Reich or anything, but you've got to be amazing to do anything well. Anything. It might be skiffle or whatever.'
Ross gives us a revelation, 'I just think that the next twelve months is going to be a really important time for British guitar bands because I think that people either seem to be getting sick, or the attention is turning away from American guitar bands.'
'There's a handful of really good bands that are representing the country - and doing well and people are excited about it. That's just purely a good thing. (Though) that can just basically mean that we've got a Britpop in disguise! Every opportunity that we ever get we'll always make the most of it. If we get opportunities to go on the television to play our songs, we will put something down which will be exceptional. We're ready to do it because... we don't care!' Barry campaigns before a laugh, 'It doesn't matter!'
'We've had all the years in training, anyway,' Ross says matter-of-factly. 'We've been a band for three years now and it's a good time. I think the media are always looking for the next big thing, it's always been like that and it just so happens that this time it's the British bands now like Keane and Franz Ferdinand. You can see how they fit in different sort of niches. We fall under the likes of Franz Ferdinand. But I think that the media works in such a superficial level which takes into consideration a lot of the image before songs are written and I just hope that the people take notice of the songs on the album rather than the live show; whatever happens, it doesn't really matter after that.'
'It's almost like a spastic Britpop, as it's all over the place!' Barry exclaims.
'It's just got more eccentric.' Ditto Ross.
'It's all about the quirky British sense of humour that exists in Kate Bush or The Fall. I just think it's the definite sound of people who aren't ashamed to be where they're from.'
Indeed, what Barry mentions is the boldest and most unequivocal statement that could reverb around the British music scene. Not since those aforementioned artists or perhaps the likes of mid-nineties Blur or Oasis has there been any kind of cultural music identity, a real evocative sense of tasteful patriotism. Spastic Britpop Mk II, for the media hounds. Just don't ask them what the band's collective response would be to anyone that was accusatory of the unit themselves riding off the present crest of scene-formers (a la Franz) and presently crucial, angular influences of two decades past (a la Gill's Gang Of Four)...
'I would say that, people who think that, haven't heard the bands that we have properly, because if they did, like we have, then they'd know that they're wrong,' Barry defensively retaliates. 'People who've heard a couple of Jam albums and haven't heard XTC will come along and say we sound like The Jam because that's the closest thing that we sound to what they've heard, and I'm not particularly interested in what those people say so I prefer to ignore it.'
Ross counteracts, 'It was a great thing when we toured with a band called Mower for three weeks, and after the first week, Matt the singer came up to us and said that he'd got this really good Shellac/Fugazi sort of vibe off our attitude onstage. I thought that was a really good compliment because that realm of music, that American contemporary indie-rock goes quite unnoticed by a lot of people.'
Barry: 'Yeah, but that's the attitude that we have - not to say that we're straight-edge, or anything like that, but our attitudes towards performing are very influenced by modern American bands. And, yeah, fair enough our guitar sound is similar to this and that. But I would just love for these people to find me a post-punk band from Sunderland that sing in four-part harmonies that sounds like Phillip Glass mixed with Steve Reich. It doesn't work! No-one can find us a band because we've searched for those bands and that's what we've been trying to do.'
Ross: 'And a lot of that post-punk stuff is really cold and aesthetically kind of sharp and it's almost kind of drab, industrial and academic. A lot of those things don't really come into play because it's not Thatcher-ite Britain anymore and there's no conservative government. We're not fighting against the same kind of things. We can't really adopt that sort of post-punk mentality - it's only in the sounds that people can hear. It's just a journalistic cop-out really.'
Barry: 'Yeah, it's laziness. If there's one thing that we're not, we're not boring and lazy. And that's what these people are. (Laughs)
'We came down and created some kind of buzz because we prepared for it. I feel sorry for bands that are from London because their first gig is all important. Basically because if a band aren't hot from their first gig in London, then they're nothing. Really. We've heard all these stories too and it must really affect the attitudes of people in London who move from, say, Newcastle to London hoping to get a record deal and they don't realise that it might take a year before they've got any friends in labels.'
Barry pauses for a couple of seconds before a slight sigh.
'It's really odd being in a band that gets to the point where they're going to release records, because there's so many things that you need to take into consideration, isn't there?'
Turning to his bandmate on his right, Ross agrees.
'Yeah, totally. The main hurdle that we got over was writing extra tracks in the studio for the album - songs like 'Decent Days And Nights' and 'Meantime' and the a capella track, 'Danger Of The Water'. I think those three tracks mark on building on what we've already done, but not maturing because that sounds really, really stale. But just to...'
Barry carries on telepathically.
'... Refine it. Basically, every band, when they come to make a first album, is usually in the same position and it's that they've been together for quite a while, been doing loads of gigs, they've had songs for a long time and that they haven't really been in a studio before. So a good live band must've played for around a year and a half at least before they're really good, whereas they might have to wait around another six months to get into the studio for the first time. So then you've got to wait on a certain amount of time depending on the band, or again you can do what you do live in the studio and I don't mean that you record exactly what you play; you're just learning how to use the studio the same way that you use a PA system. It's just by learning the rules basically and that's what we needed to do. It's what every band needs to do. Otherwise, they make rubbish albums.'
Laughter.
Without taking anything away from the quartet, would they want their fans to be potentially surprised by what's produced on their debut outing?
Barry puts it simply, 'I would hope so.'
'I just think that anyone who's seen us more than once, or a few times at least, or anyone who's heard any of the songs off the records, will know what to expect in terms of the actual songs that appear on the album. They're mostly songs that we've been playing live from six months to three years,' Ross adds.
Barry: 'Paul's really added a lot of ideas to it and we're really pleased with the amount of sounds that are basically masked on the album. The thing that we've learned is that you can have loads of things going on, but as long as it's subtle it doesn't become over-complicated. It's all about subtlety. We went in with the attitude with Andy of becoming really abrasive and robust, but we know now that's not the way to make abrasive music. The best way to make abrasive music is to be subtle because it's a contrast between the abrasiveness and the subtlety. It has to have that dynamic and those secret tricks, you know?'
Ross: 'It's a really good way of writing in the band now because we all now have a lot of input. Traditionally, it would be either me or Barry that works on beyond that, but now it's the four of us (that) are all totally involved in the shaping of the songs.'
Barry: 'We've been growing a lot in respects to writing. For example, we had to write a couple of B-sides and basically what we did is we were all in the rehearsal room the day before and we had to record it and we were all quite scared about it. And then we had this rehearsal of about two and a half hours and came out with nothing! At all!'
Again, laughter.
'And we were all, not pissed off with each other, but slightly worried. Then Dave came and started playing the drums and then, this thing appeared - and that hasn't really ever happened before.'
Then, an epiphany, as Ross goes on.
'It was a brilliant thing, actually. And it came to the point where we got all the music down and we need some lyrics now and we were just bouncing ideas off each other.'
Barry: 'We threw around a few ideas and Ross was talking about calling the song 'Manmade Ingest'. It's a stupid name for a song, really. Ross took the idea of doing an instrumental; personally, I thought it was a bit daft. He was basically lying in bed imagining while I was asleep thinking of ideas and the next day what he came up with was great and then I was like 'OK, that was good,' then I contributed a line to it, and that's a song! It's like, a daft idea creates a good idea if the person who's creating the ideas believes in it!' (Laughs)
Ross: 'It's a weird thing with b-sides, because for the band, you don't wanna spend writing as much time writing a b-side as you would writing a track that you would contribute to the album or a single. You don't explicitly think that 'I'm going to write a single', but if you come to record a b-side and you're dry in terms of ideas then you don't really wanna rip people off by producing a load of shite. So you have to have some little tricks to get around it. Our trick for these ones was trying to do some improvisations between them, and it's worked.'
Barry: 'And it's not like a wah-wah psychedelic jam; it's basically improvised punk music. Simple as that.'
Becoming philosophical, a very humble Barry begins to conclude. 'For me, our objectives have been met and I feel completely satisfied with what we've been trying to do in the respect that we're putting records out, we're playing really good shows and we're getting really good opportunities and we've made a really good album. So I'm happy.'
Ross's manifesto, meanwhile: 'My objectives are to hope that people see what kind of effort has been put into the record and can see how good it is and that people can get more involved with the live-show, because I think that's the most important part of the band and there's nothing more exciting than playing a sold-out show in a big place and I hope that we get to do that more in the next couple of years.'
Barry: 'And the prospect of releasing records in different countries as well. The good thing about doing the band is the objectives are within our reach due to the basic pattern that exists within the music industry. Not a lot of people may want more than they can possibly achieve, but we know that we will release records in all these countries and it just so happens that is what we want to do. So that's very lucky.'
Ross: 'There's just no point having such big long-term goals as making a lot of money, or being successful for so many years, because it's so fickle and it's so much on the cusp of collapse at all times that you can't bank on any of those things. It's the least important objective to us, as we started out as a basement band in Sunderland and Newcastle. I can't even remember that, at one point, our objectives changed from saying, 'Right, we're in a band playing locally, so let's tour elsewhere.'
Barry: 'It didn't happen because we don't have those objectives. We just take opportunities. Our main objective is to write songs and to play them well.'
Ross: 'I've got absolutely no doubt that if it all fell apart tomorrow, that we would go home and perhaps we'd have a few months off, but eventually get back together and just release our own records and do it as best we could our own way, because I think we just believe in ourselves that much. I think that we have so much of a good time doing it anyway that it would be possible to do so with or without the support of the industry.'
It could be argued that any band whose prerogative in music is success over refinement of the art itself, is doomed.
'Yeah,' concedes Hyde. 'But that (sentiment is usually saved) for bands that never play outside of their hometown.'
Ross: 'It's normally industry pressure as well. That's why we've been really lucky in finding a label that seems to dispel all of those cynical industry beliefs that we had in our heads. People will not take a second chance at bands - look at The Crimea (Davey's, of formerly signed rockers The Crocketts, surprisingly fine current incarnation), for instance.'
Barry: 'That's because they say that, 'It's a failure because you only made four million pounds instead of five million; we wanted to make five million - therefore, you're dropped, goodbye.' That's the attitude that destroys every band. It's like a dream (being on 679) because there's none of that harshness that exists within the mainstream record industry, it's not there. It's probably a cliché about bands and what they say about their label, but I'm being honest when I say that they are really nice guys and if they weren't I would say so because we wouldn't sign to them basically. We would be just constantly arguing with them and that doesn't happen at all.'
And we come to the end of what's been an atypically distracted conversation, not helped by outside's elderly motorcyclists, a mysterious tuxedoed passer-by randomly staring in, and a further crowd of chauvs rolling around Soho Square in their Harley Davidsons. A normal London day, maybe. But unlike Sunderland.
'It couldn't be further removed from what it's like back home, it really couldn't,' finalises a puzzled Millard, a man of a band - who despite having been heralded a national and slowly spreading international concern - still remain wilfully, thankfully in touch with their distinctly modest roots. You suspect it's the secret to their enterprise.
Artists in this article: The Futureheads