Clan You Dig It?

If you wanted to do a case study on how quickly fortunes change in the music industry, you could do worse than look at the example of London indie act Tribes. Having enjoyed considerable success with their top 20 debut album Baby, 18 months later they’ve endured a critical backlash following their second album, the Americana-tinged Wish To Scream.

“I was massively disappointed with the reception,” admits Tribes singer Johnny Lloyd. “The main hookline was that we’d decamped to Malibu and all that sort of crap, but it just wasn’t like that. We had some amazing people playing on the record, like David Bowie’s pianist, Mike Garson, and some original Motown musicians. All these people did the record for free, ‘cos they dig the music and were in LA, where we recorded.
“I was hoping that would be the hook, as opposed to the fact that we made a record in the US and it sounds a bit more American. The music was never mentioned. It was overlooked, and we just got criticised for the American feel. We’re going to make new record as soon as we can. We’d do that anyway. It doesn’t really refocus you, it just turns you off the whole idea of making music. You’re just like, ‘Is anyone actually fucking listening to it, or are we just talking about trends?’ We had to think, ‘Do we actually want to keep doing this or is it just a load of bollocks?’ We’ve decided to keep going.”
Tribes recorded Wish To Scream in Sound City, the legendary LA studio about which Dave Grohl recently made a documentary. Whilst Lloyd feels there’s been excessive focus on the album’s American influences, he believes ribes’ recent experiences throw up some interesting questions about the overall state of the UK music industry.
“There are very few guitar bands left in Britain,” he proffers. “And if you’re getting no help from the media, you’ve got to start asking questions like, ‘Do they want rock ‘n’ roll to succeed in this country?’ ‘Cos it would help if they gave people a leg up while they’re covering Bruno Mars at 15,000 miles an hour. They need to decide if they want to get behind acts like The Horrors, The Maccabees and Mystery Jets. I mean, Mystery Jets are a classic example of what’s wrong with the British press. Radlands is one of the best albums of the last 20 years. And it received zero radio play or press coverage.”
Still, Tribes are pressing ahead. Lloyd says they’ve started thinking about their third record, which he intends to be a “raw rock ‘n’ roll album”, and for which – perhaps unsurprisingly – he’s considering not doing any interviews with the NME and the rest of the British press. Thankfully, the inkies’ hostility hasn’t diminished the band’s fanbase.
“Live, it’s been one of our most successful years ever,” Lloyd concludes. “It’s strange when you’re playing to three-and-a-half thousand people in London and you’re not on the radio playlists. It makes you wonder. But the gigs have never been better.”
 
Wish To Scream is out now on Universal.