Fibbing In The Name Of

Harry McVeigh is a guarded young man, a habitual brooder under those heavy brows. But there is one nugget of information which he offers freely: when his band White Lies announced their return from an 18 month hiatus, he worried whether anyone would care. A voice in his head suggested they might not.
 
“I was concerned, you always are,” says the singer, in his supremely posh English home counties accent. “It goes through your thoughts: will people be interested anymore? You dwell on it.”
He received his answer when it was announced White Lies were to preview tracks from new LP Big TV at the 300-capacity Hoxton Bar and Grill in South London. The gig was oversubscribed by a ratio of 20:1. There it was. The world still cared.
“We had 6,000 applications for tickets. So people wanted to hear White Lies. It felt good. At that moment, you’re saying to yourself, ‘Hey our audience has stuck around’. That’s a positive feeling.”
It’s the morning after the first of these showcases and McVeigh is still buzzing. The concert was a triumph, a real achievement considering the set was packed with unfamiliar material from the as yet unreleased Big TV. Less self-consciously gloomy than their first two LPs (early on, the UK music press was quick to highlight supposed similarities between McVeigh’s vocals and those of new wave icon Ian Curtis, dubbing White Lies ‘Boy Division’), the new record finds the trio flirting with concept-rock pretentiousness and, oh the horror, wearing their youthful hearts on their sleeves. In other words it’s great, if you attune yourself to its occasional flight of earnest overkill.
“We wrote Big TV in a totally different way from previous White Lies albums,” McVeigh explains. “We stripped it down to nothing in the sessions. So if a song didn’t interest us melodically, we knew it wouldn’t stand up. It was an ambitious way of working and initially very difficult. It took a lot of time. The result, I think, is there are quite a few things you wouldn’t expect from a White Lies LP, as well as a few that you would.”
With his silky accent and excellent diction, McVeigh comes across as sparklingly confident. Still, it’s clear he suffers the odd moment of doubt. Having slogged for years in a previous band, Fear Of Flying, with White Lies he became very successful very quickly. Along the way, a fair amount of adjustment was required, an experience that took its toll.
“We went through a lot. It was educational. We grew up extremely quickly,” he notes. “We had a loads to learn in terms of how to be a rock band. It was a sharp curve. Going on tour that first time – that was difficult. Gigs night after night was weird. Thank God we had our heads screwed on. We came through.”
It’s during the first flush of uber-success that faultlines usually start to appear in a band. Did tensions manifest as White Lies whooshed towards the stratosphere? The singer shakes his head.
“We have a good relationship. First and foremost we’re best mates. Nothing has changed in that respect. To tour with your closest friends is fantastic. You all grow
up together.”
 He still comes down with nerves before gigs, fretting something terrible may happen. One particularly heart-stopping moment was at the end of the touring cycle for their previous record Ritual and a headliner at London’s 11,000 capacity Wembley Arena. If the prospect of stepping in front of the population of an entire midlands town fills you with dread, well McVeigh entirely concurs. Beforehand he sat in his dressing-room, shaking.
“It was a homecoming and definitely a pivotal moment for White Lies,” he says. “It was nerve-wracking. The solution is to use your nerves. You have to channel them into the show. That’s the only way to deal with that situation really.”
Big TV is produced by Ed Bueller, who oversaw their 2009 debut. Do they regard it as a mistake, then, to have worked with Alan Moulder, the Nine Inch Nails/Smashing Pumpkins man responsible for Ritual? That record, after all, is generally regarded as slightly bloated and overwrought?
“Maybe Ritual isn’t as good as the other White Lies records,” Harry concedes. “On the other hand, Alan made the best sounding LP we have ever done. I love him to bits. Ed is a producer in the old school sense. There’s a focus on songwriting. That’s what we wanted.”
A thread of narrative runs through Big TV, though McVeigh is reluctant to declare, straight out, that White Lives have authored a concept record. Lyricist Charles Cave came into the studio with a story about an Eastern Europe migrant wending her way across America and ending up at a glittering metropolis. If you’re paying attention, fragments of her biography surface here and there.
“Charles had a lot of time to think about what he wanted to write. We took six full months off, which was fantastic and definitely needed. He took the opportunity to give a great deal of thought as to how he wanted to do things. You can hear the results in the music.”
It was young bands such as White Lies that Thom Yorke presumably had in mind when he recently railed against the evils of Spotify. McVeigh seems considerably less alarmed about the streaming site than Radiohead’s leader. Best case scenario: Spotify becomes a viable revenue generator for artists. Worse case scenario: it flops and eventually goes out of business. Either way, it’s simply too early to tell how the streaming model will play out.
“It’s not our job to sell our music. It’s the job of our record label. If they don’t have a problem with it, then neither do I. I don’t have an issue with Spotify. I use it all the time. It’s great. It’s a fantastic means of absorbing new music – you can discover these really obscure records that normally you can’t even buy. Also it’s such early days for [music streaming]. It’s only been around a couple of years. Neither side – advocates or defendants – knows where it is going. It could turn out to be a great deal for artists if it starts to earn lots of money. At the moment Spotify doesn’t have nearly the number of users that iTunes has. I think that big record companies have the upper hand in that relationship. They can pull their music. If Spotify becomes massive and starts to earn big money, I’m sure the deal for artists will become better.”