Gimme Hindi Rocks

You’re taking a lot on when you name your band after the father of Indian independence. But not content with risking the ire of an entire sub-continent, The Gandhis have flirted with full blown absurdity by populating their debut album with everything from the kazoo to the ukelele.

“Yeah, there was a lot of experimenting,” laughs guitarist Conor Deasy [no relation to the Thrills frontman, we should point out]. “We had all of those instruments lying around. You thought the yazoo was funny? The weirdest one I thought was our drummer Baz playing the bottles. The bottles were in fact two empty wine bottles filled with water and blown into like a brass instrument. That was an odd recording day.”
You’ve got to wonder how they went about recreating this dense fusion of instruments on stage?
Deasy sighs “It is something we discussed in studio – whether or not the inclusion of these instruments would hurt our live performances.”
In the end, they decided to go full steam ahead – yazoos and all. “The fans don’t seem to mind. We bring a different dynamic to the live stage. As well as that, we have a brass section and female vocalists that all add to the live experience.”
Which is all well and good – but why name themselves after an international figure like Gandhi?
“One of the lads happened to be reading a biography on Gandhi. At the time we were tearing lumps out of each other over a name. Basically we added Gandhis to the very long list.”
Speaking of matters historical, the band seem to be obsessed with the First World War. There are references to the conflict throughout the record. Even the sleeve features an image of tin-hatted squaddies going ‘over the top’.
Says Deasy: “The album artwork was important to us. We didn’t want just a cover of us four looking cool staring off into nothing. We wanted a cover that would flow to the inlay. We went through loads of ideas before we landed on the military idea. We wanted to have a serious setting with an element of humour. The concept is three soldiers in the trenches helping a wounded comrade up as he makes a secret handshake gesture. All very Blackadder, come to think of it.”
One of the album’s key tracks is dysfunctional lament ‘Mr. Data’.
“Aidan [the band's singer] has a strange method of song writing,” Deasy muses. “He likes to watch TV with the sound off. That is how he wrote ‘Mr. Data’. Being a science fiction nut, he happened to be sitting down in front of Star Trek at a time when he was going through some personal issues. Data died in the film – so he wrote the song as an emotional lament whilst having a crack at television shows as well.”