Music > Interviews
Interview with Drenge
09/10/13
Forgive me for going over much recycled news, but although it’s been widely reported on, the fact that Tom Watson MP name-checked Drenge at the end of his resignation letter to Ed Miliband is so superbly absurd and brilliant that it just has to be mentioned in any introduction of the band. Not that they should be measured by being a former MP’s fave new band, but it’s just electrifying to think that Tom Watson might have been so affected by this young, noisy pair of brothers that he cast his manifestos, party rosettes and window sized billboards to the ground and – maybe – did a piss on them. Drenge, with their visceral blues-rock, make you want to do those kinds of things in rebellion against your 9 to 5. And we love them for it. We’re getting treated to them twice this year, and we caught up with Eoin ahead of their first, their Norwich Sound & Vision date…
I've been hearing reports from your recent Beacons Festival gig that the crowd for you guys was much bigger than the footprint would allow. Has that been your experience over summer festivals?Beacons is kind of hilarious, because it was just like the tent that we were playing in was so small. It was just really tiny. And bands like Wire and Savages - all these crazy bands that deserve twice the capacity they were playing. It was just ridiculous.
Wow, Wire have 37 years of music to fit into that small tent.Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, that's hard going.People were struggling to comprehend why this great band were playing in one of the smaller tents in a field. It was interesting, because it was intimate, but it's also a little bit soul destroying ‘casuse they kinda deserve to be playing on a much wider stage.
Absolutely, and so do you. But how has your experience been of festivals this summer? Have you seen more magnetism towards you now than the beginning of the summer?Yeah, it's been fun. I mean the first festival that we did was somewhere in Holland. A festival called Best Kept Secret, and we were the first band on, and we were just part of the main entrance. So, all these people came and saw us and we played to like, four or five thousand people were just blown away by how many people were there. But we'd always be like: "Oh, well, people are only here because of the next band or because of something else," so that's always been really funny. And then, like, I don't know; just as the year’s gone on, it seems to get a little busier and a bit more genuine, and Reading and Leeds were just absolutely crazy shows for us.
Now I read that the pair of you would like gigs to be a bit more of a visceral occasion. Do you think you’d have to kind of deconstruct the live show though, because it's just got a habit for people, hasn’t it? Lingering around the periphery of the venue, beer in hand. Is any of the pressure on you to mix things up a bit?I find that there's very little we can do. If someone has a pint and a phone, then they're kind of tucked away for the next kind of few hours in their own thoughts, but I've always found playing like underage shows to be like the most fun, like fourteen plus, sixteen plus. They're most fun because those kids can't buy alcohol. They're not interested in it, and they just want to like - I don't know - they just want to push each other around. So, at like those shows, you get the best kind of connection and kind of - I don't know, but it's the best kind of shows really.
It's interesting that you mention that age group because I first became aware of your music when I was doing a youth event. These kids had to choose from a group of bands that they’d listened to, the one that they thought they could write about the most; that was most emotive from first listen, and they chose ‘Bloodsports’. They just had this very instant connection with it. Do you think there is something particularly engaging about your music for that age group?Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean that's kind of like a really important age. It's the music that's going to set you for the rest of your life. Like, you never forget what you're listening to when you're a teenager, because I guess you're always trying to kind of go back and stay in some sort of touch with when you thought you were cool. So, I don't know. Like when you're that young and you're not prepossessed by getting a drink at the bar or texting someone or letting them know on Instagram where you are, I don't know. I guess you have a much more real connection with the band.
I Googled ‘Castleton’ in the news. I wondered what's been going on there, and in the last month, it said, ‘Police Investigate High Value Cycle Theft’ and ‘Peak District Trail Riders not Welcome’. Is this the kind of high level of news that happens there?!Er, yeah! It's a pretty small slope out, and yeah there's an app that the police put up that you could find out all the phone calls that are being made to 999 in your area. And basically if you go on the City Centre it’s always red with the amount of emergency phone calls that are made in the center of cities. And if you branch out to the suburbs, it goes blue, and then, when you go out into countryside, it goes green because no-one is ringing the police, but you can zoom in, and in our area there’d be two antisocial behavior disorder calls to the police, and they're both probably from our neighbour about us, practicing at our house!
You created your own hot zone.Yeah.
I don't think Castleton is a town with a music college - you guys didn't come from music college, did you? Would you have liked to, or do you think you would've even made the same album if you had?We're not kind of -- I think one of the things that makes our band is that we don't feel like we studied to do it. It's always just been something to do in our free time, and we've never really kind of focused on - I don't know - there's never been any intention or we never looked to get signed or anything like that. It's just come through just these ridiculous circumstances, coincidences, and we're here.
You guys really remind me of The Cribs in that they seemed to be contradicting the status quo in Wakefield. There wasn't a great sense of culture or an emerging scene, or anything like that, but they did it themselves anyway. There's not a scene in Castleton to climb up the ladder from - did you have to really put your own stamp yourselves?There is no scene in Castleton. Castleton is a small village; there's about four hundred people that live there and it's mainly relied on the tourist trade. And most people that live there - there's probably like a handful of teenagers there and I think there's only probably one other band in Castleton. But like one of the things that I've always really liked about The Cribs is they're from Wakefield and they could say that they're from Leeds, but they're not. They're really proud of that, their background.
Talk to me about the video for ‘Dogmeat’ - it's splendid in its execution.We went out onto Sheffield's main kind of bar strip. So, last June, England would have just beaten Sweden in the European Cup and it was like a really great game of football. Sweden were 2-0 up and then England scored three goals. And like everyone was on like a real high. We were going to film our music video that night anyway, so we went out into the main bar strip. We were just hoping there'd be like loads of girls and guys that'd be like really pissed and wanting to dance to the beat in our song. Not to the song itself. We just asked people to dance in front of the camera, and no one would do it apart from loads of parents that embarrassed each other. And no one knew who we were, so we were just there, filming these people and it was just so awkward, embarrassing, and cringey. And we just got enough footage to make the video. While I was editing it, we had about two seconds surplus of footage to the song, so what you see in the video is everything we captured that night.
That's amazing. Do you have a personal fave?Of the people? I don't watch our videos after but I had to watch them recently because I was writing a piece on them, and kind of went back, and the standout one was of those two girls that just stand there for ages. They're not posing in our shot. They were posing. They wanted their photo taken by someone else, but they just happened to be in the shot. And just those smiles are amazing. They kind of change every half-second, but they just don't move at all. Like something really weird going on behind the eyes!
I think my favorite is the woman who looks like she gets a wedgie at the end, and she looks like she could be someone's stepmum. Yeah, she's awesome. I like her very much. So, I read an interesting quote where you said, "I suppose it does help because the band wouldn't work if we were 25." I think it was talking about the age that you are now. What does that mean for the evolution of the band?I don't know. I think there's a difference between being 21 and 25, and I think it's a weird kind of still post-adolescent time and we haven't moved out of our house yet, so we still feel like teenagers. I think my friends that are 25 and 26 are a bit different from me in a lot of ways, but I think it's an age thing. I think in a musical sense as well, that’s what I mean, that my friends that are in bands who are 25 and 26 are much more interesting and articulated, and do less immature stuff than we do!
You say immature, but there's a maturity, say, to the music. I mean ‘Let's Pretend - Rory's drumming is impeccable and your playing has got sustained attitude throughout. You really assert yourself as very, very competent musicians, but then you end the album with ‘Fuckabout’ and it's almost like you're a bit too scared to take yourselves seriously. Is that fair to say, that you're not ready to let go of the idea of being immature, even though you're not?Yeah, we're nowhere near… I think – ‘Let's Pretend it's just an ambitious piece of music and I don't think the record would be right if it ended with ‘Let's Pretend’. I think we kind of needed to have a jokey song on the record to sign it off, because the thing that really strikes me about it is that it comes out of nowhere. I don't know. It really fits on there, but it only fits if you can look at it with like a really ironic hindsight, with the kind of really disgusting pop song that's always there.
So, lastly, you guys are signed to a label now. You get people supporting your music and coming to your gigs. This must bring you dangerously close to some sort of contentment. How does that bode for album number two do you reckon?I don't know. I mean we try and block it out, and we spend so much time writing and stuff at the moment. We’re in a phase where people are starting to get into the band aren't madly in love with the band. You hear so many bands that have this first album and then their second album just caters to - I don't know - this group of people. Like the thing that weirds me out about the band is that like I'm not sure everyone can see where we're coming from. And it'd be really great to be something that’s more of a true representation of the band than the first record is.
So, you have some material together that you think is actually probably truer to how you see yourselves?Yeah, I mean we're just learning more about each other as musicians and songwriters, and how we stretch the bits of music, but also just in terms of songwriting, something that doesn't begin to fit into some already preconceived rules of songwriting or anything like that. It's like ‘Let's Pretend’ is such a great song because it doesn't do anything like that. It's a bit like the earlier songs with that real chorus, and then it just goes off into something else completely.
Emma R. Garwood
Drenge play as part of the bill at this year’s Norwich Sound & Vision on Friday 11th October. You can buy a ticket for the band at www.norwichartscentre.co.uk or buy a £40 wristband for all the bands at www.norwichsoundandvision.co.uk.