The Jacques are an indie-rock rebirth built on resilience

Central to this is gravelly vocalist Finn O'Brien, whose journey into music – and eventually the band – began when he and his brother Elliot were just seven and eight. Elliot got a toy guitar but quickly lost interest. Finn, though, found an old chord book that belonged to his nan and began teaching himself.

This early musical start in their small, Somerset village life – which including being chucked into the church choir ("I think there was a decent amount of childcare”) – led to a blur of songs and fledgling bands to try to escape the monotony throughout his formative years. Finn has always been self-reliant and driven when it comes to his craft. "I definitely use my ears much more than I use my understanding of how it works,” he tells me. “It’s just whatever sounds good. Obviously there's a skill behind it, which we've picked up over the years. But ultimately it doesn't necessarily adhere to all the theoretical laws."

The Libertines, and the ramshackle indie resurgence of the early 2000s became Finn and Elliot’s creative blueprint. Though, as all keen songwriters are aware, people love pop music: “We used to listen to a lot of Blondie, which is punk, but it's also poppy, and random bands that because [mum] used to work at Polydor, we’d hear these random bands, like Voice of the Beehive is one that I remember listening to a lot, and no one fucking knows who they are.. and then fast forward, it’s the Sugarbabes and all this stuff. We listen to a lot of pop music which definitely informed how we sound because I love a catchy melody, it's priceless.”

In 2014 the O'Briens met the Edwards brothers – Jake and Oliver – at school and The Jacques came into being. Gigging relentlessly in their mid-teens, the lineup wasn't to last and it wasn't until Finn began his studies at Goldsmiths in South London that he met bassist Will Hicks, and his multi-instrumentalist housemate Harry Thomas that The Jacques found its next form.

Knuckling down and writing a stack of songs, the band settled into a steady rhythm until Hicks passed away in March of 2019. With their debut album in a state of part-completion, the O'Briens and Thomas decided to carry on and The Four Five Three was released just over a year later. "I look back on it very, very fondly," Finn tells me, "because we made it with Will and as juvenile and as badly mixed or whatever that it might be, it's always going to be really special to me."

In the years since, they’ve been reconciling their losses and rediscovering what made The Jacques exciting in the first place with their second album, Make Repetition!, marking the band's new era.

And it's a period of maturing, according to Finn, allowing them to process the past and start afresh, but even this realisation was hard won: "We're not the first band that this has happened to, and it doesn't mean that we can't still do what we love to do," Finn reasons. Piecing Make Repetition! together wasn't the hard task: "We'd made most of it, and then we kind of just lost the plot a bit," he elaborates. "We were wanting to do different things, to be honest, and wanting to forget about the whole thing and feeling a bit put out by everything."

The sonics were an evolution away from their Libertines and Strokes influences. He nods, knowing that they weren't exactly carving out their own space: “I remember worrying at the time that these songs are good, but we haven't crafted our own thing.” This time around, they were seeking to develop and push into a new territory.

A confident evolution that honours their inspirations while carving out their own space, Make Repetition! finds the band leaning into jangly guitars and early-2000s indie quirks. They’re channelling a swaggering energy while letting songs like “Clung” sprawl and shimmer with shoegaze textures over its five-minute run-time while gestating in its, and the rest of the album’s, themes of love and adoration. "We knew how they were supposed to be, it was a bit painful having to go into it without that person," Finn says. "It wasn't just that. It was a whole bunch of other stuff. But we had the vision of it.” This period included different iterations of the band including the name, and in turn leaving The Jacques in the past. “Iit took a little while, but it came to the point we were like, well, we can't just let it all go. I don't think that's gonna make any of us any happier."

Powering on has worked and more than ever, Finn is keen to keep writing and to keep The Jacques alive. "For a little bit I was really worried, because I thought that I'd written everything good I was ever going to write, and it was all gone," he tells me. "And that I was never going to write anything good again. It was all this silly narrative, but I can remember what it felt like. And then we finished this record, and then it felt like this whole new lease of creative life. We've written loads of songs since, which is great, because that is what I feel best doing...it feels like a bit of a new beginning."

Finn acknowledges the baggage they had to deal with to up to this point: “We put out the first record after Will had already died, so it was like: it needs to be a tribute to him. It needs to be all this…we need to get it right for his parents and all this stuff.” He now feels they can cherish the past – and the band they were – while looking to the future. “I think we can start figuring out who we actually want to be, and also maybe start making albums a lot quicker," he concludes. The story of The Jacques may not have been as straightforward as they envisioned, but the future is finally theirs.