While in Portsmouth on their In Love tour, brothers Sam and Harry (with Doug making a short appearance) talk to the Edge about Parents, JLS and Angry Birds socks.
Tonight’s show is sold out, you’ve sold out quite a number of dates, that’s pretty awesome.
Sam: Yeah, there’s one show with four tickets left, so it’s pretty good.
Record’s day was on Saturday, did you guys do anything exciting for that?
Sam: Yeah, we did a little print of ‘California Daze’ on a picture disc with a smiley face on it and the back was like a button badge.
Harry: We were trying to decide the artwork for it and we were looking at a building, and on the top of the door there was a little smiley face badge and we were just like, done, Scan it.
Was there a particular venue you’ve really enjoyed playing in?
Harry: They’ve all been really lovely. I liked the one in Preston:52 degrees, that was nice. I’m looking forward to here, it’s quite a nice, the stage has a nice space.
You did the NME tour last year, what was it like performing with acts Django Django and Miles Kane?
Sam: It was really good fun, we’ve been performing an opening spot on the tour since they headlined, it was a short set so, going on early and getting it out of the way, so we could just chill out. It’s always nice the more people you tour with, they become people you see everyday, it’s better, it’s a nice atmosphere.
How do you go about writing your songs? Do you each have a group of songs and then come together?
Sam: There’s no set process, it’s been very different from every song.
Harry: Most of the album is written over a three year period, two years maybe, before we were starting, it was all done really naturally. I don’t know how were going to do it now.
Are you going to write it on the road now?
Sam: Yeah cause there isn’t going to be much time to write a second album, the recording dates are in there but there’s no writing time so…
We love the sound of the drums you have on the recording, you didn’t record it live did you?
Sam: Yeah, the kind of thing Jim wanted to do was to kind of capture the essence of the four of us in a room playing so, the studio we went to, Chapel studios, is a converted chapel so it’s got this great big room which is where we had the drum kit set up and we were all in the same room, our amps were in other rooms. We had headphones on and we all just played the songs.
Harry: We spent fucking ages doing the drum sound as well.
It sounds very atmospheric
Sam: Yeah that was the first thing that Jim asked, one of the first times we met Jim one of the first things he said was what do you want your drums to sound like? Literally just introducing himself.
You’re playing quite a few festivals I’m assuming?
Sam: Yeah, were hitting lots of Festivals.
Harry: We don’t know what to expect, we’ve been to a lot of festivals but never on the other side of the stage, we don’t know what happens backstage at a festival, feels weird.
We’ve read a couple of other reviews for In Love, and many of them have touched on your influences from 60’s and 70’s rock music, did you feel that?
Sam: Umm, I guess we all like a lot of that stuff so yeah, we mainly listen to it because of our parents so I think that it’s fair to say that were influenced by it.
Harry: Were influenced by loads of stuff, just a mass of everything.
Sam: Everything you hear is going to influence you, from crap pop music to…
Harry: JLS!
Do you have a particular favorite song on In love?
Harry: Nah, I guess it changes.
Do you have any on that always comes up on the set list?
Sam: ‘Higher than the Sun’ is a lot of fun, love playing that.
You’re going to be at Glastonbury, do you know what stage yet?
Sam: John Peel stage.
Harry: Good stage yeah.
Your parents are quite supportive as well; I read the article where they were mentioned.
Sam: Yeah they were quoted.
Harry: My mum reckons it was her.
Sam: She was like I said that!
Harry: They’ve always been cool with it, especially now it’s more full on.
Have you get any other gigs you’re looking forward to on this tour?
Sam: The Birmingham one, homecoming gig, and doing the four days in London is going to be a lot of fun actually. We got some really great support bands, and being able to set up your stuff once and leave it for four days will be quite nice.
How did you go about choosing your support?
Sam: Yeah, Superfood are good, before they were a band they were just our friends and we were all part of the same social circle. Dom, the front man, helped record all the demos that we did for the album, so when he finally got a band together we were really excited to see what they were doing. The stuff the guys did was so good, that straight away we were like wow!
To us it seemed like one minute we didn’t really know you and then the next moment you were everywhere, did it the coverage feel like a sudden rush to you?
Sam: Yeah it doesn’t feel sudden to us. I don’t think it really registers, you don’t really realise it.
(Dom walks in with Angry Bird’s socks)
Are you going to wear those tonight?
Dom: Yeah I’m wearing some already!
Sam: one for each day of the week.
What do you do on the road if you’re not writing?
Sam: We like to play a lot of angry birds, Dom plays, what’s it called?, Candy Crush Saga!
Dom: Candy Crush!
Harry: What’s Candy Crush?
Dom: What isn’t Candy Crush?
