Bombay Dreams

"I guess it means you've made it when Liam Gallagher slags you off!" Ed Nash muses, "We're on his radar! He said he wouldn't listen to us because we have a stupid name, but he's a bit of an idiot so I don't really mind!"
Whether or not the potty-mouthed Manc's rants are a barometer of success is still up for debate, Bombay Bicycle Club made a sizeable stab at the big time in Oh Nine. I have it on good authority that the BBC boys are very bad hotel patrons, just not in the telly out the window way you're imagining. What's this about them running around a Bournemouth flophouse naked (pun fully intended)?
"Yeah, that did happen," Nash sighs, "we had to go down to reception to get them to let us in because we were locked out. They even escorted us back – and they charged us extra as well!"
While Bombay Bicycle Club are best known for fuzzy, foot-thumping indie, sneakily wistful tunes like 'Evening/Morning' B-side 'You Already Know' always hinted that there was more to the London foursome than stabbing guitars and sporadic nudity.
"It's something we've always been interested in," Nash says of the new, fully acoustic LP. "We just had so many songs and thought they were all so good that it was worth putting it all on an album to showcase them, I guess. Jack's also a very prolific acoustic songwriter. It's not like Nirvana unplugged or anything. We've done an acoustic version of 'Dust On The Ground' from the first album, but that's a whole new arrangement."
The as-yet-untitled album, which features mostly new material as well as a cover of Joanna Newsom's 'Swansea', will be supported by a mini-tour of churches around the UK.
"Last time we did a tour called Tour For Lulu where fans chose the venues we played. We did a puppet theatre, a mine shaft, one on a boat, we played in like, a castle. We've done some very big music venues so we wanted to do art centres and churches this time because it suits the acoustic songs."
Acoustic debut in the bag, how long until the Londoners are back with a plugged-in follow up to 2009's I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose?
"We've got bits and pieces but it's not a complete thing yet," Nash reveals. "We're trying to whittle down what we have and get something good and then we've got to record it, so we're about half-way through the album-making process. You can hear the changes. I think it sounds very mature compared to our old stuff, especially as our last album was written over a four-year period from when the band was formed. We've had more time than most other bands would have to write a second album, it's been a nice little break."

Bombay Bicycle Club play a Heineken Green Spheres show on May 14 in the Dublin Academy with Foals, and release their acoustic album through Island on July 11.