Fright club

Faris Badwan purses his lips and stares glumly into the middle distance. We’ve finally broached The Horrors frontman’s high profile relationship with top tabloid totty Peaches Geldof and he’s gone momentarily schtum.

“I honestly never took any notice of it,” he says, when asked how it felt to be pursued by paparazzi, as he was on a daily basis over the course of his six month hook-up with Geldof (she ditched him in 2008 for a quickie marriage to Max Drummey, an American musician). “It’s a world I don’t understand. I’m at a loss for words. I don’t know what to say about it.”
Did he recognise the red-top portrayal of Peaches as a Lil’ Miss Impetuous ?
“It’s so weird, when you know somebody pretty well, when you know them as a person rather than as a celebrity. You don’t see them in the way they are perceived by a lot of other people. Mostly I never thought about it – if I found myself in that situation again, I still wouldn’t think about it.”
Badwan is far more comfortable discussing the creative rebirth of The Horrors, a band previously written off as all shocking gestures and art-school hair, with little in the way of tunes. Having created a media splash with their borderline unlistenable debut the London fivesome surprised a great many people – including, one senses, themselves – by cooking up a fantastic self-titled second record, a psychedelic orgy that, at various points recalls Joy Division, Velvet Underground and the inside of Vincent Price’s head. How far they’ve come since the time they rolled into Dublin as part of the NME Tour and Faris spent a fair chunk of the set snapping his mic lead at photographers.
"I wouldn’t say we’ve mellowed – that’s such a disgusting thought. I hate the idea of that. I think we’ve found different ways of expressing ourselves. The intensity is still there – now it’s different, more subtle."
Some of the credit for the band’s artistic progression must go, Badwan acknowledges, to the superstar producers recruited by The Horrors: Portishead’s Geoff Barrow and, making his mixing desk debut, creepshow music video auteur Chris Cunningham.
“We wanted to make an album that sounded like the last Portishead record [2008’s Third], which I regard as one of the finest British LPs of the past ten years. With Chris, we were keen that the aesthetic he brings to his video work would come across [Cunningham has shot ve-ry scary promos for Aphex Twin and Autechre among others].”
If his video work is any clue, Cunningham is surely a rather strange individual. What was he like to collaborate with?
“As you might expect, he has a really cinematic approach to making music. He has a lot of unconventional ideas – a bit like us. He’s not technically schooled and neither are we. As a band, we learned how to play by going and doing it. He’s got a real sense of humour as well. Let’s say it centres around smoke bombs and leave it at that.”
Having been so loudly derided by the media, are The Horrors cynical when they hear the very same journalists now proclaiming them the year’s most thrilling newcomers?
“Music can only really be judged when you’re looking back on it,” says Badwan. “I think it’s too soon to assess our records. It’s going to take ten years before we know whether they’re going to stand the test of time.”
First time around, The Horrors looked as if they’d ransacked the Hammer Horror props room. Badwan had vast spiky hair; the rest of the group might have been on their way to a Marilyn Manson-themed fancy dress party. Nowadays, they’re a picture of buttoned down sobriety by comparison. Were they fed up with being dismissed as cider-chugging goths ?
“In any walk of life, how you look maps out your future. The way we dressed was completely a natural thing. It was never done as a cynical ploy. The label didn’t say, ‘Put these leather trousers on, you’ll look fantastic.’ Those thoughts never entered our heads. We dress in whatever way makes us feel comfortable.”
Badwan recently ditched his stage name ‘Faris Rotter’, feeling his real-life moniker was just as striking
“It’s a Palestinian name," he explains. “My dad is from the West Bank. He had to leave 25 years ago. They were all forced to emigrate.”
Though he wouldn’t go so far as to write a song about it – fearing he might come off as preachy or exploitative – the plight of Palestinians is a subject close to the singer’s heart.
"The whole family got kicked out of their home. They escaped to Jordan. I have uncles in Germany, America, Australia, all over. I’ve been to Palestine loads of times. There was one summer when I lived there for three months. I remember it vividly – it was during the 1998 World Cup. I had a book of football statistics and, by the end of the summer, I’d memorised every single player.”
Did he witness any trouble during his time there? “Yeah, it was really rough actually. A bunch of us went to Jerusalem. Some of us were okay as we had British passports. However, a few family members had Palestinian passports and were given all sorts of shit. It’s fucking unbelievable what people think they can get away with. It’s incredible. And that nobody does anything about it... is weird. It’s brutal.
“I wouldn’t write a song directly about it. That said, stuff does come out in obtuse ways. It’s dangerous ground – if you have views about stuff like that and you share them people almost think you are sharing them for some gain for yourself. It’s a weird one. I don’t mind talking about stuff like that. When it comes to putting it into music I’d prefer to be a bit more abstract.”

The Horrors play Stage 2 at Oxegen on Sunday July 12