The name game: The Soft Pack interview

The name game: The Soft Pack interview


"WE'RE not good looking. We don't dress cool. We don't have Rod Stewart hair. We're just four normal guys whose fucking songs are catchy."

Well, let's see about that. The Soft Pack, formerly The Muslims, are one of 2009's most in demand bands, tipped by the great and good for success. The Velvet Underground, Iggy & The Stooges, The Strokes - if they are American and amazing, this band have been compared to them.

But this doesn't seem to have gone to their head. Watching them soundcheck upstairs at an East End pub, an amp blows up, so we take the chance to grab guitarist Matty McLoughlin for a chat on the fire escape stairs. He is open, honest, but pretty disinterested to begin with. Having just jumped off a plane and headed straight here, he doesn't even know what day it is.

"Why do people like us? I don't know, it's definitely to do with luck, but we like the songs we write," he says, droll and understated. "We sound a lot better if everyone's drunk, ten times better if you've been drinking."

So if there is nothing special here, where do the comparisons come from? "I don't mind it," he admits. "Velvet Underground? I love them. Then, people say The Strokes, which I don't really get. If I was to describe our band to, say, my dentist, I would say 'Oh, we sound like The Strokes, rock music, clean guitars'. But if you actually listen to music, you can definitely hear deeper things than The Strokes."

The way those particular New Yorkers suavely wandered to the heights of cool at the start of the millennium was based on hype and haircuts as much as music, but they did produce the songs to back it up. The Soft Pack have picked up a similar buzz, so can they do the same? "Each song we write becomes like my favourite song, I feel like we're progressing as a band," he nods, animated.

"We've had a rotating cast, four drummers and four or five bassists. Now, with these guys everything just clicked. They are really good musicians and me and (singer Matt Lamkin) are not that good, so they hold it down and we can screw around a little bit."

This lax attitude to their talent is repeated when the subject of their name change from - shock, horror - The Muslims comes up. "We expect to get asked about it. Every interview we've ever done, it's been the first question. We don't really care about it, I don't understand why it's controversial."

Changing the name has got more press than keeping it, so was it all a PR stunt? "Oh, sure, we're going to start changing it, every three months," he smirks. "We've got a new stunt, we've got things up our sleeve, we're gonna hit it hard. The name and image aren't that important. If you have good songs, you'll be ok."

Onstage tonight, this is confirmed. They don't even air breakthrough single Nightlife, but Parasites' clashing riffs sound suitably filthy and Extinction is filled with bite and verve. Without being unaccomplished, they play with refreshingly unfussy roughness, cajoling the crowd with their charge and craft rather than charisma.

Matty is right though, they don't have that undistinguishable, but succinct, quality of simple coolness. "There is a bit of a backlash against trying too hard," he dismisses. "Pretending to be some fucking dude you read about in a book, leather jacket cool, cocaine, it's fucking false anyway."

"The only thing we expect of ourselves is to make good records and tour. You can't kid anybody, we aren't good enough to, we just have to play with sincerity.

So, with the time ripe for an assault on the wider consciousness of what's next for the band? "Touring, more touring, festivals, then we're aiming to have the album out in September. It will be all new songs, except we've re-recorded Parasites.

It could, of course, all go wrong before then. Hype bands are as rare as drizzle and what if internal implosions occur? "No, We're all friends, we've set rules out, and learnt how to do it. Our first tour was a fucking mess. Everyone knows how it works now. We're gonna keep doing it regardless of how well we do." That attitude could be the key to doing well – even if they do think Rod Stewart's cool.

The Futureheads - Interview

Hello, You Divvies, We’re Back - The Futureheads

Band make great first album. Band get complacent. Band release adventurous second album that sells terribly. Band get dropped. Band split up. It’s a well-worn path, but The Futureheads are refusing to be the next band to walk along it. Having been dropped, they’ve since regrouped, wrote a new album and, apparently, “rediscovered their mojo.” When Gigwise finds an affable, casually dressed Barry Hyde in a London pub, he is brimming with a giddy excitement that has more to do with a reborn zest for life than the lunchtime pin he is sipping. The other band members are milling around, but we can see Hyde has things to get off his chest, and zone in on the chief songwriter. Read on to find out about that Austin Powers reference, how Radiohead are hypocrites and why the record industry is about to change forever.

Let’s start with the single. When did you write it?

It had been kicking around for a while. I generally write them by myself, in front of the telly, and take them to the band when I’m confident. I’m so neurotic about it, I chew on them for months. ‘Beginning of the Twist’ is a song about self-doubt and mental illness, but also it’s a slightly menacing song of hope. It’s about change. Things are dark but I can feel the sunshine is starting to appear.

Talking of change, do you feel this is a whole new period for the band, a departure?

Departure? I don’t really know what that means. A radical departure sounds like something’s gone really bad. We worked with a producer called Youth, and he identified the key elements of what we do, and cut out all the other things. He put the magnifying glass on every song. It’s a good song for us to release first because we’re kind of breaking the door down with it, like: ‘Hello, you divvies, we’re back.”

What have you been listening to?

I don’t know if listening to music influences us anymore. I think we’ve already listened to all of the music that’s gonna influence us, now we just influence ourselves. Though I have been listening to lots of Bollywood funk and African funk. I think the most influential factor into this album is the business side of it - getting dropped.

What happened then?

If anything’s gonna pull a band together or make them split up, it’s that. Like, ‘Right, that’s it. I don’t like you anymore, I don’t like you anymore.’ Or it will be like, ‘Right, we need to pull together.’ Getting dropped made us a lot stronger, and actually reformed us as a band. We’d became disillusioned being on a major label. We lost our creative drive; we lost our mojo. The day that we got dropped was the beginning of the new era.

Did you see getting dropped as a positive straight away?

I was like, ‘Please, drop us, I don’t want to be involved with this anymore. I don’t want to be tied to the mast of a sinking ship. I want out. Go it alone, at least we stand a chance.’ If we’d have stayed on Warners we’d have split up. It was a very dark period, but that was when we were signed to them, not after.

Why were you so glad to get dropped?

We owed them £1 million. We owed them. They spent it, we didn’t. They spent it on adverts and various things, paying people, bribing people probably. We had to pay that money back, until they dropped us. Imagine your in a million pounds worth of debt on Saturday night, on Sunday morning you’re not. All you’ve done is go to sleep and someone else has made the decision to let you off. Who would be angry with that? I thoroughly recommend getting dropped, unless you split up in which case it’s terrible. It’s made us a better band, 100%.

A lot of anger must have come out of it all, will that be apparent in the album?

I think it’s gave us the optimism and the bravado that every band needs. It’s an audacious thing to stand onstage and say ‘Hey, you bunch of people, we’re gonna play for you now and you’re gonna listen to us, ‘cus we’re quite good at this.’ That’s audacious, and that’s essentially what every band feels.

Tell me about recording the album.

We did it in Andalusia, South of Spain. We recorded the album on top of a mountain, in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It was tropical, fantastic madness. We recorded 20 songs, and wrote nine of them while we were there. We got it all wrapped up in 16 days, which is very good going.

How did it contrast to your previous efforts?

The second album took thirty days, so we cut it in half nearly, but did twice as many songs. That was all down to Youth producing. He doesn’t fiddle around with your music, he wasn’t fannying around. He’d play with your mind a lot more than he’d play with your songs. He really cracked the whip, it was like being in a trance a lot of the time, very intense. He works with Paul McCartney a lot, who told him The Beatles recorded their early albums in three hours! That was the era of the hard-working musician. But pressure will always sort the weak from the chaff.

Do you think now you’re on your own label you are under more pressure?

No, it’s always been there, from ourselves. Warners never pressurised us, maybe they should have. Now, we’ve got a lot more to gain. If we do well we could be running a successful business. In reality, we can make more money selling 100,000 albums than a band on a major would selling a million. But it shouldn’t affect our music. We’re not part of the machine anymore, we’re kind of vigilantes.

So why do bands still want to sign with majors?

Every time a band signs a deal with a major label they’re putting themselves in a really bad position. They don’t realise it because of the smoke screen, the false smile and the bottle of champagne.

Why did you sign then?

That’s what you had to do then, man. A lot has changed. There wasn’t the infrastructure for indie labels in place when we started. People like Domino have proved that it can be done in a more sympathetic way than ramming it down people’s throats, with a bit more grace. If we can pull this off we’ll be the most audacious band of all time.

Do you think Radiohead brought the while record label situation to a head?

Yeah, obviously they’re in a league of their own. I had years and years of wanting to be Jonny Greenwood: ‘I’m gonna buy a Telecaster, grow my hair like him, dress like him, beat the living shit out of my guitar like he does.’ You do that when you’re a young ‘un - I idolised him for sure. What they did with ‘In Rainbows’ was an outrageous idea, but only they could pull it off. The thing that disappointed us with what they did is that it did really well online, but then they went and licensed it with XL. If they were gonna do that they should have set up their own physical record company. It seemed to me to be a bit hypocritical.

So you have set up your own physical label?

Yes, Nul Records, its for real. We’re embracing the revolution that’s happening within the business. We’re fed up with the way major labels do it. We decide when we wanna do something, there’s no worries, it’s a lot more efficient. What we’re hoping is that this will show a lot of bands that they can do it themselves. They can have full creative control; it’s a fantastic feeling.

You seem to have a renewed enthusiasm for everything. Was that missing on the last album?

It’s all changed, man. We were really heartbroken by the second album, ‘cus we still love it, it just wasn’t the right time. In some respects it backfired, but we were just following our artistic instincts. But if we hadn’t done it, we’d still be signed to them and I guarantee I wouldn’t be doing this interview. It’s a fate thing, absolutely. If we can pull this off we could go down in history.

Do you feel like underdogs this time around?

Yeah, we’ve got that hunger back. Through the success of the first album, we became this top band, and that isn‘t necessarily a good thing. We were dead young, and became a bit complacent. You need hunger, it’s very competitive; you’ve gotta be better than everyone else.

You recently did a tour of small venues, and now you’re off on a bigger tour. Which do you prefer?

I don’t mind. We’re all so happy to have something to play for and someone to play to. All the gigs are our choice. We’re going to go to every country we possibly can and tour like a domestic band would. That’s something Warners would never let us do. How else can we convince people to like us? Going to these obscure places, people will remember you for that. Everyone band goes to Berlin, how many play go to Wiesbaden?

Lots of your songs talk about time, racing against it or running out of it. Is that a conscious theme?

The age we’re at, mid-twenties, is when you discover our own mortality, the invincible child mind disappears - you are actually gonna die. Writing songs about time is therapy. It’s a difficult time to be, you might even be halfway through your life. Our songs get to the point, don’t meander. We wanna get as much done as we can.

So you’re looking to the future?

Yeah, I’ve started to recently. I’m getting married this year. As well as keeping everything going with the band, I want to become a producer. I’ve been asked to produce Dananananakroyd’s album - sorry, that’s a bit sneaky, it’s my fiancé’s band! I don’t think it’s feasible that we’re gonna tour for the next ten years. I’d like to have a family, and raise kids properly, instead of giving them a backpack.

What to the rest of the band think to that?

They’re all chuffed. Nothing much will change. I wrote this album while engaged and think it’s had a really positive affect, like: ‘Get your shit together Barry, what are you doing?’ I don’t think songwriters have much control over what they create; the more control they have, the more contrived it is.

Do you feel like elder statesmen of indie music?

I know, we’re like Pulp! It’s awesome, but we’re still young boys. Whose gonna be better, the band that has played 3 gigs or the ones that has played 300? As long as you keep that drive… The carpenter that has made the most tables is likely to be the best carpenter.

You’ve said your new album is full of defiance, optimism and joy. Defiant at what?

This whole, filthy world that we live in. The obsession with celebrity that is destroying our country. ‘This Is Not The World’ is the title, and we mean it. Everything we see is covering up what is actually the world. We forget that, we think we’re the centre of the universe, let alone the world. The human ego is out of control ,we’re starting to eat ourselves, crawling over every country and shitting everywhere. The fact that we’re making an album, that we’re still together, is sheer defiance. It’s not that easy to get rid of us.