Interview with Band of Skulls

Check out the Coachella line-up for this year, and you’d be forgiven for selling your granny’s dentures to an ivory merchant to raise the cash to get to the US. On closer inspection though, you see the line-up is littered with UK-grown talent, Band of Skulls being one such band. UK rock music continues to eclipse the whiskey addled, country-tinged American efforts by being pure, visceral witchcraft, a label easily afforded to Band of Skulls on their second album, ‘Sweet Sour’. We caught up with BoS’ Russell before the album release, and their trip Norwich-bound…

I’ve been absolutely privileged to have been listening to ‘Sweet Sour’ for the last couple of weeks really! With it all done and dusted, is it a frustrating wait for its release?
Well it’s little by little really; we’ve had songs being put out and played on the radio, so it’s been breaking us in easily, really. I think it would have been more of a pressurised shock had it all come out at once, and we would have been a bit more apprehensive, but it’s really great to get some responses from the first songs, so I think we’re just excited now to get the rest out. 

‘Bruises’, the lead single from the album is Fearne Cotton’s song of the week on Radio 1 – being on Radio 1’s playlist, and being singled out by them, is this a coveted thing? Do you like to be part of that?
It’s kinda strange, because there’s not many guitar bands on the radio anyway, and there’s less on Radio 1 and there’s even less on that middle of the day time, so it’s kinda great for us because our music gets to be played to a bigger audience, but what it didn’t do is make us make a different record. In the future, we’ll just still do our thing and anyone that’s heard us, or seen us before sort of knows what that’s about. So it’s kinda strange to be played against all that other music; we sound quite loud and rowdy compared to a lot of the other stuff that’s played on the radio these days.

Good, that’s what I want. When you’re in the car and your radio choices are down to about 5 options, that’s what you need.
Yeah, we’re sort of representing guitar music on the radio, which is a good thing to do.

You’ve had Ian Davenport on production duties for both albums now, but what has that done for your way of working?
Well Ian obviously worked on the first record and the first time round, it was quite a big rush and we didn’t have all the time in the world to explore everything we wanted to, so it felt kinda natural to give him a call and say, ‘do you want to make another record?’ It was great; it was a bit like a school reunion and we hadn’t seen him for a year or so, so we got back in the studio and he recognised some of the tunes that were kicking around the year before, that we’d finished into songs, so yeah, it was quite natural in the end.

They must have had a good amount of time to marinade in Ian’s brain as well…
Yeah, fortunately, and we all liked the first record, but we had so many ideas that we wanted to do afterwards, so it was like we all upgraded and had more time, a bit of a bigger studio – we were up at Rockfield in Wales – and it was sort of like part two of making a record, but with a bit more help.

I did read that you might have recorded, or just spent a bit of time up in a recording studio in Norfolk, but that it wasn’t the most prolific time for you?
Yeah, we spent some cold months up in Norfolk and looking back, we did do all the songs on the record up there, but we just felt like we came out of it empty-handed, when in fact we hadn’t. We’d started all the songs, but hadn’t finished anything, so we were all a bit glum! Looking back, all the songs were started there, but they were all in some crazy order, and like, ten minutes long!

What you started to realise on the first album with tracks like ‘Impossible’, you seemed to add to your armoury for the second with a more expansive sound…
Yeah, definitely; that song in particular really started to evolve when we were playing it live and our whole live show has evolved into a much bigger thing than when we first started, so when it came to writing the songs, you do sort of write things that you’re going to take on the road with you – they are your weapons of choice really. So with a mixture of what happened last time, and how we’d changed as a band, it all influenced what we wanted it to sound like.  I’m sure it’ll change again, but right now, that’s where we’re at.

I can’t stop playing ‘Lay My Head Down’ and I wondered whether songs like that, and ‘Navigate’ have different demands, from a performance point of view, just ‘cause they’re brought down a notch tempo wise?
Yeah, in the end, when you get to a bigger venue, even a quiet song sounds quite loud, so it’s a matter of making it still sound exciting. I think those are the kind of songs that will evolve as we start to play them live. They’ve got their loud moments in them as well; they’ve got signposts in them already where we can kind of get heavy, so I’m sure they’ll change and live their own lives.

Yeah, I really like the progression in ‘Navigate’ and you can see how that could fall into a crazy time live!
Yeah, there’s lots of chords in that song. That’s one for the guitar geeks! Actually, probably not, haha!

I read an interview where you said you start to see what really works for audiences, then you put that into the music you’re writing; I guess you can only do that to a certain extent, but do you really feed off a crowd reaction, and does it really inform what you do?
I think so yeah. I think it’s quite natural for us; when we started making proper records and doing proper tours, I think our confidence was building and when we were younger, every song was 100 miles an hour, really fast and loud but as you get older, you can afford not to not be scared to play less and give your music a bit more space – all that kind of stuff starts to happen. And also, yeah, audiences from different countries and stuff help too, ‘cause if a song works outside of England, you think, ‘well, we’re doing something right!’

Talking about getting out of ol’ England, you’ve been added to the Coachella line-up; have you played that before?
Yeah, we did, we played it the summer before and It was probably one of the biggest festivals we did. It was really great and very surreal really, you know, do a gig, have a beer and then go and watch Jay-Z or something in the evening, or Beyoncé – we saw Beyoncé in real life while we were there! It was one of those star-spotting occasions!

She’s real?! I thought she was but a mirage, or a hologram or something.
No, I saw her. She’s real.

I’m really proud of the amount of British bands on the Coachella line-up; there’s a lot of artists making good noises, who seem to come out of our tiny island…
I think that you know, there’s a great history of music in England and you feel it when you take your music abroad, like you know, America has been having a steady flow of great British bands and they’re always hungry for more, so if you can fit into that position then it’s a great place to be. I think that’s one of our aims as a band, to do that job.

You guys come from that great art school background; I know you and Matt knew each other from a young ago, but you met Emma at art school…
Yeah, she’s a painter and we were all sort of in that world at the time and it was good; it was a very creative atmosphere. I guess we kept a few of those sorts of ideals, making music – this is just like an art school where we show up and create stuff. In that way, art school is very similar to being in a band really. You can draw parallels and it was definitely a good place to start out. Places like that have always had a good history, and we’d just be creating stuff, like there’s lots of visual elements to being in a band, and what have you, so it’s always good to be educated in those artforms.

Emma’s responsible for the artwork, isn’t she…
Yeah, well it felt right with our first album that Emma’s paintings were featured, but it was a collaboration that time with some people over in Montreal, in Canada and then we sort of repeated the process again, but added some glass sculptures… It was quite mad; they did Emma’s paintings in three dimensions, in glass and then we photographed that, and that’s how this record cover was made.  

It looks a bit like a deconstructed knickerbocker glory or something…
Oh, that’s a new one. I’m putting that one on the list! Something from your nightmares.

There seems to be a bit of a dichotomy on the new album between songs like ‘Wanderlustre’ and then ‘Close to Nowhere’, in titles essentially, but do they indicate that travelling musician thing that you’re nowhere near home, but you want to keep going…?
Yeah, it is a strange thing. We sort of set out not to do that and we were writing about our lives at the time and we were away from home, we were out and were probably subconsciously homesick and that comes out in the music without you really trying. It’s more of an atmosphere of the record really, of you being pulled from all angles, and not sure which way you’re facing; that’s probably the atmosphere of the record, but looking back now, it’s very much how we were feeling at the time. We can’t fool ourselves, however we feel just seems to come out! It’s one of those things that you don’t realise at the time, but give it six months and look at what you’ve been writing or recording, and it’s all self-explanatory.

You must feel like you’ve been touring for a long time now, because the first record had such good momentum, especially after events like being featured on the ‘New Moon’ soundtrack. I don’t understand myself, but I imagine moments like those must hold their own momentum…
Yeah, we were doing our own thing, and our tour and then these little things can happen, which are like storms within a storm and for a couple of weeks, you have a strange distraction where you have to go and do something like that, or strange people come to your shows and you’re like, ‘what’s all this about then?!’ Yeah, but in the end it all sort of glues together into one big lump and if people like the band, they’ll stick with you. Everything goes away in the end, stuff like that and just adds to the melting pot, as it were.

It must be strange you not being entirely in control of your own momentum…
Yeah, I mean we’re very fortunate that we’re completely left to our own devices when it comes to the music and the creative decisions, so we have that pressure on ourselves, but we control our destiny in that we write the music that we want to play, rather than being forced into a direction and style. So we handle that part of things… and then just hope for the best!

You’re doing a few dates with Black Keys before you come to Norwich, which must be an exciting prospect…
Yeah, it’s gonna be really good. We played a festival with them last year in Atlanta, Georgia called Midtown, so we got to see the show, the up-to-date show for the new record and stuff, and it was great. We had a really good night and look forward to – as always, watching a band over five nights, you really get to see their stagecraft and all that kind of stuff.

My overriding impression when I first saw Black Keys live was how much noise two people could make. I know you guys don’t really take influences from other contemporary bands, but that’s got to be an inspiring point hasn’t it, just the volume!
Oh yeah, and I think they’re representing a similar thing, it’s just keeping real music alive and that’s fine by us. They’re a band who are going their own way and doing their own thing, you can just tell they enjoy it and the music that they make is real – there’s nothing fake about it. It sounds good to us.

You’re coming to Norwich, where I don’t think you’ve played before – or did you come with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club?
No, but we did go to the venue a few times when we were up in Norfolk and we saw some other bands while we were there. We saw Midlake while we were there and we also saw Skunk Anansie on one of our social nights! It was our one night off and it was really, really good. We met Skin in LA and she was a very nice lady, so we went to see them again there. She’s an amazing frontwoman…

I was going to say actually, that without you guys having a frontman or woman, and ego doesn’t seem to play a part in your songwriting, it seems to signal longevity to me, when you’re able to cut all that other stuff away.
I think so, I think it’s a collaboration this band. It takes a long time that way, and I think that’s probably why it took us a little longer than we’d hoped, to get everybody’s ideas together and we wrote pretty much every song all together, so it took a long time to shape it really, but the finished result means that everybody has something of theirs on every song and everyone feels an ownership on every song. It feels good when you’re not just playing along to someone else’s tune, ‘cause that can’t be as fun.

And what can we, as an audience, bring to the table for you?
Oh, just show up. I think every show is different, but it’ll be like a bit of a home show really, because all the songs were started up there and it’ll bring a lot of memories. Bringing the songs back, all ready and finished off and playing in that venue, I think it’s gonna be a special night.

Emma Garwood

Band of Skulls come to The Waterfront, Norwich on February 29^th. For tickets, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk.