First cults are the deepest

At the risk of prompting Diablo Cody to turn it into a screenplay, allow me to summarise for you the story of pop rock duo Cults. Boy Meets Girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl buys boy a keyboard for his birthday. Boy and Girl begin making music together, get snapped up by a record label and start taking that music all around the world.

Today, Cults are in rainy Liverpool, but seeing as it’s guitarist Brian Oblivion’s first time outside of the US, he’s not in the mood to complain. Presumably an overseas tour was first on the to-do list when he and partner Madeline Follin started writing songs together just over a year ago?
“It was far to the opposite”, he laughs. “I mean we had goals but they were absurdly low. We wanted to make music just to one-up our friends and show them that we can be in a band too! We were hoping to play one or two shows at these clubs by our house in the East Village that hold like 50 people. That was all we really expected and then things started happening and it drastically derailed our life plans.”
Cults took their biggest leap from obscurity when they signed with Columbia records for their self-titled debut album.

Oblivion recalls, “Their attitude was, ‘You’re already doing it, we just want to be the third arm that helps you get it out’, and that’s what a label should be. I’m sick of this idea of labels being arbiters for taste, a bunch of failed musicians starting labels and being really choosey about the bands, not thinking what fans want but about what makes them look the coolest!”
For all the pop influences that permeate their sound, Cults are about as far away from the pop stereotype as you can get. Their music videos are murky, hazy affairs and their faces rarely see a camera flash. Why all the mystery?

“Mysterious doesn’t have the same connotations to me as the word private,” Oblivion explains. “It seems like indie culture has recently kind of become like tabloid culture, people in constant connection with their fans and putting out lots of photographs and hammering down these talking points and shit. I’m kind of fed up with it. Especially in the UK, they always try to round up arguments between bands and try to push people to have big personalities. That always bums me out. Bands like Oasis, they’re remembered for two songs and being assholes.

“Indie music is supposed to be the world in which people are genuine and honest and the music comes first. We’re not trying to hide who we are, we’re really open people and we love hanging out with people at shows, but as far as public perception goes, we don’t want to put ourselves out in front.”
On the topic of his obvious knack for a punchy three-minute pop ditty, Oblivion’s answer couldn’t be more straightforward; “We get bored really easily.” It’s interesting that while the chatty 22-year-old is remarkably forthcoming on the topics of label politics and industry quirks, he’s lost for words when I ask about the process of making music.

“It’s hard to talk about,” he admits. “The whole thing for us was so intuitive and quick and natural, it’s just how we wanted to write songs. There’s no real master logic to it. Back in the day the songs were really short because you had to fit them on a 7”, and now they’re becoming short again because people’s attention spans are shit! We always just wanted to get in with the song, leave an impression and have people wanting more.”