This is the second segment of a two-part interview with Los Campesinos!. Read Part One here.
So you play a special matinee show today, which is always a strange but wonderful experience that means beer in the afternoon and being able to stroll home and have dinner afterwards – are you excited for the gig?
Gareth: Oh yeah, what else is there to do on a Sunday afternoon? This is basically the first time we’re playing the new album tracks live. This is day one of the Hello Sadness Era. We played ‘The Black Bird, The Dark Slope’ a few times last February and at Bestival. We’ve also played ‘By Your Hand’ [first single from Hello Sadness] about twice and, to be honest, we weren’t ready to do so. Everyone seemed into it nonetheless but I think those must have just been two gigs where the crowd were really wasted.
It’s been really fun arranging the set list. We’re trying to get to the point that even if we don’t intend on playing a track live, still being able to if you ever wanted to. But we’re not taking requests just yet! The good thing about having new material is that it keeps things fresh. I can’t imagine now how we managed to play gigs in the early days, just the same songs over and over, without getting bored.
Kim: And we can’t wait for people to hear it and we’re eager to see how they react to it.
Gareth: I think we have a reputation for not really practising. Supposedly most bands practice very frequently, like once or twice a week, well nobody told us! I guess we could use the size of the band as an excuse.
Describing your new record is a tricky one; it’s at once more intense than before but somehow more relaxed at the same thing – how would you say this album is different from those before it?
Gareth: Lyrically, I would consider this to be a lot more raw and honest because the lyrics were written very shortly after the break-up of a long-term relationship. But the songs as a whole, and the music, I would say that our intention was to create something a lot more focussed, more composed and a lot clearer in its aim. I think Romance Is Boring was us trying to do too many things – it definitely feels too long, there are a few tracks that definitely don’t need to be there. But it was good to make a record like that, something that was hard work and bloated, just to get it out of our system.
On this we wanted to do the opposite and make something that feels more whole. We wanted to create a 10-track album that’s direct and welcomes listening to it in one sitting. There are some songs that we purposely left off the tracklist that are nevertheless strong tracks. One song that we left off in particular, called ‘Tip Toe Through The True Bits’, is probably one of my favourite songs that we did for this session but it was intelligent to acknowledge that it didn’t fit within the album. On its own it’s a great song but wherever we placed it in the ordering, it seemed to stand out – slowing things down too much and creating a road block. This was the same with Romance Is Boring too actually; my favourite song actually didn’t make it on the album – ‘Too Many Flesh Suppers’ – which again didn’t fit so we bit the bullet then as well and released that one later on.
Will ‘Tip Toe Through The True Bits’ see the light of day via Heat Rash then?
Gareth: Some of the spare tracks may come out through Heat Rash, but I think this one probably won’t be one of those. I think we might give it a wider release, maybe digital-only or free download, just before we go on tour to draw attention to our gig dates. Hopefully we’ll be able to play that one live by then too!
I recall that when you got to Girona to record, you posted a picture on Twitter of an empty notebook with a caption stating that you had to fill it with lyrics for the entire album in just five days. I remember thinking “Jeez, I am known to procrastinate and leave things late but that’s really pushing it!” How did you find having to rewrite a couple LP worth of material in such a short period?
Gareth: Well, it’s how I’ve always worked really. I wrote the whole of We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed [the band's second full-length release] in about three days. We were in the studio and I just couldn’t bring myself to write.
Kim: I think you need the pressure and actually work better because of it.
Gareth: Yeah, I don’t like forcing things. I’m not the type of person in my mindset to write some prose for the sake of it in my spare time – I’d just do something else. It’s when there’s already songs and structures laid out that I can actually do it and be my most focussed and brutal.
I think it’s really frustrating for Tom and I frequently have to apologise because he just works so hard and has put all this together. So it’d probably be good for him to have some help from me, I’m sure he’d like to take some leads from the lyrics and vocal melodies but I don’t even like to show anyone my words until I’m 100% certain that’s what I’m happy with and how they’ll appear on the record. Definitely on We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed nobody had heard the lyrics until I was stood there in the studio singing them, which is of course rude and frustrating but that’s the only way I can operate. It must be annoying for Kim as well, because she has to sing the words too and I’ll just hand them to her two minutes before heading into the vocal booth.
Have you had any moments where the others have had to bring this up, like a “So… written any lyrics yet by any chance? Are we going to actually have a song to record or…?” kind of thing?
Gareth: I think that by now they just trust me. I think on Romance Is Boring there were some instances of Tom saying “Any chance we can record that demo now?” and I’d be like “Yeah, I’ll do it this afternoon” while silently thinking “Shit, I’ve not written anything”.
You have a few instrumentals scattered across your back catalogue, can you honestly say that these are not just tracks that you never got round to writing the words to?
Gareth: (Laughs) Oh no! Generally the instrumentals come about because Tom is just so prolific in his output. He’ll just get up early one morning, go and wake John [Goodmanson, Hello Sadness producer] up and drag him into the studio, saying “Okay, we’re recording this and this”. Like with ‘Between an Erupting Earth and an Exploding Sky’ [from 2008’s We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed] I had finally awoken at midday, just strolled into the studio and he had recorded the entire thing over the space of the morning while I had been asleep. I thought “Wow, this is really good” and then just walked away again. On Romance Is Boring, at the least, these instrumentals just acts as rest bites – and they’re very much needed!
I think it all stems from ‘You Throw Parties, We Throw Knives’ [early EP track], which I think is a pretty terrible song anyway, originally had a completely different set of lyrics which were even worse. We performed them live a few times and every now and then a member of the band will take great pleasure in reminding me exactly how terrible those lyrics in fact were. So I think that’s part of the reason, now I’m like “Right, from now on I’m not saying a single word until I definitely happy with all of it”.
You should do a special show where you just play the alternate lyrics, that’ll mess with people’s heads a bit.
Gareth: Oh I’d like to think that I can’t even remember them.
Kim: I don’t think I’ve even heard them actually.
Gareth: Good, so that’s some relief then.
Your lyrics have quite a confessional quality to their subject matter, do you ever find yourself in trouble or do you have some pretty good self-censorship restraint?
Gareth: I have regretted – and still do – certain lyrics in our back catalogue, but more because they are bad lyrics rather than the aspect of who or what they’re about. Believe it or not, I’ve only ever experience about two occasions where people have reacted badly or even mentioned me referring to them in a song – one of those was quite civil and the person just had a quiet word, saying “I don’t mind you talking about me, but please just ask me first”.
The other instance was a bit funnier, where the person in question totally misinterpreted what I had written. We performed an in-store at Rough Trade and afterwards a girl who I was friends with came up to me and said “That song ‘We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed’, it’s amazing and just resounds with me so much!”. And it was about her best mate… She never did pick up on that at all.
The only thing I regret about how personal some of my lines can be is that there’s an inevitability when I’m getting in a relationship that there’ll be songs written about them. This can either be off-putting or for another sort of person that can be quite encouraging. It’s when it’s seen as an attractive proposition that it can get particularly bad. But then again when they don’t like it, then that can be quite frustrating for myself.
So are people always tiptoeing around you, not wanting to say too much just in case you go and recite it and encapsulate it in song forever?
Gareth: I should think not! At this point, people are generally understanding that this kind of thing is basically my job now. At least that’s what I hope.
Kim departs the room to get back to soundcheck and as soon as she leaves an air of masculinity seems to have been piped in the room, causing us to venture off-topic and straight into footy talk. It seems to be fated that the amount of abuse that Gareth sends Joey Barton over Twitter that the footballer now respawned as ‘Joseph’ will soon find a band other than The Smiths and will come across ‘The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future’ or ‘Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #2’ and everything, . “I think I’ve taken that a bit too far, I do slag him off quite a bit”, Gareth laughs. “I don’t think we have that many football player fans – it’s a total one-way thing. We’ve stalked Pat Nevin [ex-Chelsea legend] in the past because he’s a man of impeccable taste and even DJ-ed at ATP once [where he allegedly played Belle and Sebastian and wore a The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart t-shirt] and Luke Moore who does the Football Ramble is a fan and was supposed to be coming to the show, but has to interview Bobby Zamora [Fulham FC striker] and then go on BBC’s Football Focus instead. So I guess that’s a good enough excuse,” he says.
“Funny thing though: Joey Barton’s lawyer wanted to be our lawyer at one point, to take care of all our contracts and lives and everything. So that’s a fun fact for you.” “I’m definitely dropping that one in to the article”, I respond. And there, I did.
Hello Sadness is out now on Wichita.
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