Crashing through the Spain barrier

The boys are back in town. After an agonising four-year layoff, during which their label Red Flag Records hit something of a financial crisis, Future Kings Of Spain are making up for lost time with a vengeance. In 2003, the band stormed the UK top 10 and won a Meteor Music Award. Just when they seemed to be on the verge of a major breakthrough, the Kings then became embroiled in unpleasant legal wranglings with the label, during which process the release of the band’s second album was repeatedly postponed.

As Joey Wilson (vocals, guitar) and Bryan McMahon (drums) testify, it’s been an agonising and frustrating few years. Happily, the episode’s now closed and the new record Nervousystem hits the shelves next week. It’s fair to say, however, that the lads are still somewhat shaken by the whole experience.
“Everything had been working out perfectly according to plan,” Bryan reflects. “The label were happy with us, we were happy with them, we’d won the Meteor award, however ridiculous that might have been. The album sold nicely, we were doing plenty of touring – happy days. Then they let us record the second album, and didn’t tell us they’d ran out of money. Basically, we had no idea how severe the financial problems were, and they didn’t tell us. Perhaps in retrospect we should have been more vigilant about it, there was an element of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. That should have sounded alarm bells, but we didn’t really think about it.”
Listening to the lads give vent to their feelings, it’s clear that the wounds are still pretty raw.
“What really pissed us off,” seethes Bryan, “is that they let us go so far with the second album, and then not to be able to put it out...there was a betrayal of trust as well, 'cause we felt like we were friends of theirs, and we weren’t made aware of the truth. We took too long to cop on to it, and it wasn’t until the album’s release date went back for the third time, we realised there was something seriously wrong. Then we tried to get out of the deal, had to get our solicitor involved. It just took forever – they dragged it out for as long as possible, just wouldn’t let us go. Fuckin’ cocksuckers. I still don’t really know whether they were Machiavellian or if it all just went horribly wrong. You assume that friends aren’t going to screw you, and you forget that it’s business. We were left with two options: break up and call it a day, or tough it out and try to release the album independently. We were desperate to get out of the deal. We’d recorded some of it in London, some of it in Malta – they loved the demos, they loved the whole thing, but it was like, ‘Eh, sorry lads, by the way, we can’t afford to pay the studio’.”
How did they set about extricating themselves from the contract?
“First off, we asked them very nicely – we gave them six months to get their finances together, which they couldn’t. After that, it got nasty. I rang the label one day and we had – what’s the euphemism? – a full and frank exchange of views. I was sick of biting my tongue and basically gave them both barrels, no more Mister Fucking Nice Guy. I then went about it a bit more constructively, fired off this email which went into great detail, and CC’d it to everyone on the label. I felt much better for about five minutes, but it probably didn’t help matters.
“I’m sure you’ve had situations in your life whereby other people are rushing to the wrong judgement, based on one fictitious or heavily-edited version of the story, and you’re very keen for people to know the full story, you deserve your right of reply. But then, people don’t want to hear it, they’ve already made up their minds or they think you’re just being bitter or small-minded. You think, ‘Fuck them anyway, let them think what they like’ – and it gets antagonistic then. We were faced with the realisation that we’d have to break up. And there were so many complications – we wouldn’t have been allowed to play together or use the name.
Joey takes up the story: 'We thought about pointing out that since Karl had joined the band, it was technically a different band – the three of us were signed but he wasn’t, so we could be in his band. The Karl Experience. But that probably wouldn’t have been feasible. I just texted the guy on the label and said, ‘Look, do the decent thing and let us go’, trying to appeal to his conscience, and to my absolute shock he agreed. The e-mail arrived the next day: ‘You’re dropped, effective immediately, and here’s the album back.’ We couldn’t believe it.”
The highlight of your year, I imagine?
“It was like all our Christmases had come at once,” Bryan attests. “We’d already privately decided we were going to break up, but we didn’t announce it, and this came as such a shock, we were literally doing cartwheels up and down the Malahide Road. Our hearts had been fucking broken by the whole thing, so you can imagine how good it felt. Three days later, we’d already planned to release the first single, and we were reworking all the songs with a view to putting them out. After losing three fuckin’ years, we didn’t really have time to sit around and think about it, rigor mortis would have set in. We put it together in a bit of a rush, which is probably for the best. And we were desperate to start gigging again. We’d got so much support on MySpace from our fans, they kept asking, ‘When’s the album coming out?’ and we were tired of letting them down, even though it was beyond our control. So we set a date, and it’s out any day now.
“They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Maybe we should have stayed away for longer – bring out an album every ten years, like the Stone Roses, so people appreciate it more.”

Nervousystem is out on September 28