Hot Press XMas Summit 2013: Pressing Matters part 2

Jenny: Her music’s not bad – Jesus, I’ve heard a lot worse – but because of the bullshit surrounding her you’re not listening to it anymore. I think she’s on the verge of a breakdown, I really do. Miley’s poking fun at Amanda Bynes but that’s going to be her in a few months time if she’s not careful.
Nathan: I didn’t even know the word ‘twerk’ until a week ago. One of pop music’s roles is to piss off previous generations, so in that respect it’s mission accomplished.
Kieran: Everything she does is angled towards the American celebrity bloggers who need shit for their four daily updates. It’s about people getting fat/people getting skinny, people getting pregnant/people not getting pregnant and whatever the fuck else is happening in that world.
Nathan: I’ve been pregnant… nervous breakdown… write about me! It’s publicity at any cost.
Troy: The media buy into it and you’ve got your number one.
Kieran: There’s four times more space than there was 15 years ago, so it’s four times more vacuous…
Lethal: It has new manager/new label executive saying, “Let’s do everything we can to get rid of that Hannah Montana” written all over it. How can we get rid of that Disney image and turn her into Rihanna?
Jenny: I know she’s not a toddler but where are her parents? I’m 31 but my parents would kill me if I did any of that, even at my age. It’s like Justin Bieber – a car crash waiting to happen.
Stuart: He’s pretty much totaled at this stage, isn’t he?
Lethal: Him getting ‘caught’ spraying graffiti in Brazil a while ago smacked of publicity stunt. It was so contrived… Y’know, “How can we push this further?”
Jenny: Sinéad was on the Late Late… purely because of the Miley controversy and then said, “I don’t want to talk about it!” You could feel Ryan’s pain…
SOAK: Miley had every right to go, “Mind your own business” – especially after Sinéad made such a public thing of it – but bringing up old tweets from years ago in which Sinéad asks for help and stuff was wrong. They had no connection really to the argument; it was immature. I’m very interested in the Miley Cyrus thing and how quickly she’s changed and how much publicity and stuff she’s getting out of all this craziness.
Stuart: Do you think there’ll be pressure on you as you get older to become more overtly sexual because, let’s face it, sex sells…
SOAK: The record company or management don’t decide how I look, I do. There’s this brilliant word, “No”, which takes care of all of that. Miley’s got the hair and the clothes and the outrageousness whereas with me it’s about the honesty of the music. My Mum jokes and says my songs are depressing… a lot of them are sad but I think that’s comforting in a, “You’re not alone” kind of way.
Troy: Do we have to talk about Miley Cyrus anymore?
Stuart: Nope, let’s move on! The counterbalance to all that twerking was the reverence afforded Lou Reed, one of the true rock ‘n’ roll originals, when he died in October. Anyone here come into his orbit?
Evan: We were really surprised to hear about his passing because we’d been in the same room as Lou the week before. It was the GQ Men of the Year Awards in London; we’d been booked to do a song and he gave a speech. There were a lot of bullshitters there, but he talked about the power of punk and rock ‘n’ roll to change the world and all that sort of thing. He had a really inspiring way of saying it.
Troy: It’s not really a nice story, but years ago the band I was in played after Lou at a festival in Australia. He came on and the drummer in particular was amazing, but during the whole show he’d just turn around and full-on scream at this guy for playing too loud or whatever. It kind of reminded me of that band The Fall. A genius but, wow, not easy to work with.
Stuart: If Miley was the pop story of the year, the rock ‘n’ roll one was Paul McGuinness stepping down as U2 manager. Was he around much when Snow Patrol did their support stint on the 360 Tour?
Nathan: Yeah, he was around a lot. It’s a tough gig; you hear stories about bands freaking out or not enjoying it because, let’s face it, no one’s there to see you but we had a great time. We all know how big they are, and to be a part of that in so many countries is an amazing experience.
Troy: Technically, it was more effi cient than the military; an incredible feat of engineering and production. The cast of thousands with the crews and the different people leapfrogging from place to place… you can’t get your head round it until you experience it.
Evan: I haven’t met them but we have a connection in that Pete the bass-player’s Uncle worked with U2 on some of their videos.
Lethal: So you’re Kevin Bacon ‘Seven Degrees of Separation’ acquainted!
Stuart: You get the sense of him genuinely being U2’s ‘fi fth member’, something that’s also said of a really good producer.
Kieran: We’ve got that with Rob Kirwan who we’re working with again now on our new album. Making the last record, Little Sparks, I had this idea for a song I’d been kicking around because I’m adopted and never knew my birth parents or anything like that. When we were touring in Spain I saw some graffiti on a wall that said, ‘Petardu’. I went and looked it up and found that it meant either ‘little firework’ or a slang term for ‘loose woman’, which really suited the mood of what I wanted to write. So I went away, poured everything I had into it and didn’t let it go until I had it right. Then the fear crept in – ‘Is this too personal? What’s it going to be like when I have to talk about it? Does it fit in with the rest of the album?’ When I talked to Rob about it, he put his arm around me and said, ‘This is important to you, go for it!’ He gave me the confidence to record ‘Petardu’, which turned out to be biggest hit we’ve ever had.
Stuart: The Strypes have Chris Difford, who’s a hero of mine from his Squeeze days, in their corner. How did that come about?
Evan: When we made our fi rst trip over to London in September 2012, it was literally just the four of us and my Dad who’s encouraged us from day one. We’d done a four-track EP ourselves as a little project, but then things started getting a bit more serious and a contact of ours said, “I’ll hook you up with a friend of mine” who turned out to be Chris. Squeeze would have been playing around our house quite a bit when I was growing up so I told the lads we should give it a go, and we did four tracks with him in a studio in Sussex called Yellow Fish and just clicked. He’s an incredibly lovely man and has become an essential part of the whole thing in a management/friend capacity.
Stuart: Elton John, Blur, Paul Weller, Roger Daltrey, Lulu… the roll call of legends you’ve either played with or met is quite extraordinary.
Evan: If you write down the list of people you’ve encountered you almost don’t believe it yourself. Somebody said after we met Bob Geldof at RTÉ, “He’s 60-odd, what did you talk about?” and I went, “He started out in an R’n’B band, The Boomtown Rats, so common influences.” He told us about all these obscure tracks, which we’ve been trying to hunt down!
Stuart: I also noticed you walking round Electric Picnic with a certain Brian Patrick Fallon.
Evan: What a legend! B.P. came up and introduced himself and we spent the day hanging out. The stories he has are incredible…
Stuart: You weren’t exactly struggling without him, but Snow Patrol’s career has gone into overdrive since you hooked up with Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee.
Nathan: Garret’s part of Snow Patrol for me. He’s very good at instigating stuff and taking you out of your comfort zone. It’s easy without realising it to become complement and stick with the formula that’s worked up till then.
He refuses to let you stay in that rut though.
Garret’s got his own studio in a place called Topanga Canyon in California, which is officially the middle of nowhere. This isolation’s great as long as you don’t have too much of it…
Stuart: … and start behaving like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
Nathan: Precisely!
Lethal Dialect: You’ve got Jacknife Lee and I’ve got JackKnifeJ! There’s been a lot to work out on this new record, which physically and mentally I couldn’t have done without him. You need someone in the studio you trust, but who also knows when to say, “That’s not fucking working, bro!”
SOAK: I’ve been recording with Tommy from Villagers who’ll very tactfully say, “Are you sure about that, Bridge?” He’ll suggest stuff that often I’ll already be thinking to myself. It’s great to find someone who’s on the same musical wavelength as you. His studio’s in Donegal but often it feels like Africa because you’re looking out across these huge mountains and everything’s kind of orangey and yellow. All that’s missing is an elephant or two…
Stuart: I’ve spotted a few lumbering mammals round Letterkenny way…. When are we going to hear the fruits of these sessions?
SOAK: We’ve done an EP, which is maybe coming out in February. A lot of work’s gone into it because we want to get it really right. There are a lot of labels who’d have rushed us into making an album, but Universal are like, “You’ll know yourself when it’s ready.” I know where I want to go on the album, so beyond the fact I want to make a really good record I don’t feel pressured.
Gar: We’ve been done, mastered and sitting on artwork since the summer. It’s a big one for us because, after doing absolutely everything else ourselves, this is the first time we’ve had the budget for a producer, an agent who’s getting us brilliant gigs and – I can’t say too much about this yet – a record company giving it that extra push.
Stuart: Easy one now! Best records you’ve bought and gigs you’ve seen this year starting with the ladies…
Jenny: I’m going to sound like a bandwagonjumper, but James Blake’s Mercury winner, Overgrown, which came out at around the time of my birthday. I’d bought his first album and liked two or three tracks off it, but this one I play from start to finish. Hozier is a serious talent. That song and video are so powerful.
SOAK: Driving round Europe I listened to loads of local radio. I didn’t know what half the weird shit was, but I felt I was getting a taste of the country I was in. And yeah, German pop music sounds like Polish pop music! I saw Bjork at Electric Picnic who was inspirational, and I’m loving my Irish tourmates, Bombay Bicycle Club.
Evan: We listened to Jake Bugg’s new album recently. The reviews have been quite mixed but I thought it was a worthy enough followup.
My favourite though is this old ‘70s punk album, L.A.M.F., by Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers.
Stuart: He may have been part of the US junkie invasion that did for Sid Vicious, but Like A Mother Fucker was indeed a classic.
Kieran: I was really pissed off because Hozier was brilliant at Electric Picnic and I wanted to be able to tell everyone, “There’s this guy I’ve discovered…” but then the video came out and people were telling me about him. My musical one-upmanship was shot down in fl ames!
Lethal: I went to a lot of gigs this year, which is probably why the album isn’t done! It was my first time playing Electric Picnic; I might have over-indulged at that! It was one of those summers. When the weather’s good you just have to go on a mad one. Disclosure blew me away at that. They’re the first commercial dance act in a long while that’s doing it for me. I couldn’t believe it when I found out how young they are…
Jenny: Yeah, as a relative old person it makes me a bit sick that they’re 18 and 21 respectively. I actually thought they were black before I saw a photo of them.
Lethal: Yeah, they did a kind of old skool ghetto Detroit video, so I reckoned they were black, American and in their 30s – and was wrong on all counts!
Troy: Gig of the Year for me is a band back in my hometown, Blitzen Trapper who despite the name aren’t even remotely Christmasy! Years ago the singer, Eric Early, was bartending in the pub where I was the chef. They’ve a new record, VII, that’s just brilliant, man.
Nathan: The Queens Of The Stone Age, Biffy, Lissie, The Wooden Shijps… their albums were all great but the standout for me was Arctic Monkeys.
Gar: Everything he sings about you can relate to and that mid-tempo groove is just brilliant. A lot of bands run out of steam after a couple of records – they’ve said all they have to say – but the Monkeys just get better and better.
Nathan: They were so good at Electric Picnic. I was like, “Okay, that’s the benchmark now!”
Stuart: The Strypes saw them about 20 times this autumn by dint of being the Monkeys’ UK and European tour support.
Evan: It couldn’t have gone better, y’know? Alex is an amazingly talented lyricist and to come up with as many strong albums as they have… They’ve always done what they wanted to rather than conform to whatever was going on at the time. We’d never had our own tour bus before that you lived on, so that was an interesting experience!
Stuart: Did you suddenly want to murder your bandmates on account of their smelly feet or hyper-flatulence?
Evan: I knew that stuff already from being a van in with them! What struck us about the Monkeys is how completely grounded they are. There are no egos or ‘starry’ personas floating about. They were just normal Sheffield lads sitting and eating and chatting with the crew.
If you didn’t know you’d never guess they’re one of the biggest rock bands in the world.
Stuart: The Riptide Movement got close to an even bigger band than the Monkeys, the Stones, at their Hyde Park gig.
Gar: We got fairly close to Charlie Watts. He’s a ham & cheese sandwich man.
Nathan: He’s as no nonsense in his choice of sambo as he is in life…
Gar: He had a ridiculous amount of security with him – those sandwiches can be dangerous! - so we chickened out of saying “hello.” The Stones’ performance was absolutely fantastic though…
Kieran: I’m crap at going up to people too. At Benicassim a few years ago, Maverick Sabre and myself were standing there watching Noel Gallagher, Ian Brown and John Squire hanging around having the craic. There wasn’t any security and I was busting to go over, but I didn’t. We were having lunch beside Vampire Weekend… same thing happened. I did manage to walk over to Wayne Coyne at South By South West, mumble incoherently and give him our CD, which was still sticking out of the pocket he put it in that night when he was on Conan O’Brien!
Lethal Dialect: Great product placement!
Stuart: Talking of Maverick Sabre, a little hip hop dickie bird tells me he’s doing a turn on your new 1988 album, Lethal.
Lethal: Er, no comment…
Nathan: We’ll take that as a “yes” then!
Jenny: I had a bit of a funny one with the Berlin DJ, Paul Kalkbrenner, who I’m a big fan of and had wanted to interview for ages. Well, wanted to meet. I don’t have that inherent nosiness – no offence, Stuart! – you need to be a good interviewer. People say, “Aren’t you curious about such and such?” and I’m like, “Actually, no, I’m not!” Anyway, he came on the show this year live at Longitude and the interview went very well. In fact, a bit too well. He got my number from somebody at MCD, and my phone rang about seven times for the next two hours. And then his manager called, basically saying, “Paul wants to meet you.” I thought that was a bit
inappropriate until I watched the interview back on YouTube and realised how over the top I’d been with him. I’m happily in a relationship with my boyfriend, but it didn’t come across like that. The next time I did an interview, I reined it in a bit!
Lethal: I got an email from a Paddy Casey – of whom there are probably 5,000 of in fucking Blanchardstown alone – saying, “I love your work.” I sent a straightforward “thank you” back as I always do being polite and that, and didn’t think any more of it until a mate of mine went, “Paddy Casey’s raving about you on Facebook.”
“The Paddy Casey? Fuck…” Anyway, we ended up meeting and doing some stuff together.
Stuart: I’m not going to ask you what the Film of the Year was, I’m going to tell you – the Terri Hooley biopic, Good Vibrations which – I should have bought an Oscar with me – Snow Patrol bankrolled and Executive Produced.
Nathan: Jonny worked in the Good Vibrations shop before his Patrol days, so it’s Uncle Terri to us. I just saw him last night; he came down to the show. Everybody involved – writers, directors, actors, us – wanted it to be right because in many ways it’s our story too. It’s an incredible fi lm and we’re very, very proud of it.
Troy: I’d heard all the tall tales but hadn’t seen the film ‘til the guys got it for me in August for my birthday. I loved it but I took it home to my brother and he couldn’t understand a fucking thing! He was like, “Where are the subtitles?”
Being bilingual I was able to translate along the way. Terri has a wonderful madness about him, which the fi lm captures perfectly.
Jenny: Right, I’m putting that on my Santy list!
Nathan: It’s heart-warming and funny and, as Terri would say, mostly true.
SOAK: I’ve met Terri loads… manages to forget me every time! I saw Good Vibrations as soon as it came out and actually played at the after-party. It was cool. I wish I’d been an extra in it. I have friends who are. You know the Wonder Villains? Their drummer plays Mickey from The Undertones in it.
Stuart: I imagine it’s impossible to grow up in Derry without knowing who The Undertones are.
SOAK: Especially when you’re in primary school with Mickey Bradley’s daughter! Don’t get me wrong, I love The Undertones but you don’t want a city’s music to be totally defined by something that happened 35 years ago. Going
back to the film; I liked it but I thought they could have been a bit more honest in parts. The relationship between Terri and his wife… I don’t think they showed that the way it probably was.
Stuart: Best music documentary of the year is Broken Song, which is about GI, Costello, Willa Lee and the rest of the Northside hip hop/street poetry crew.
Lethal: It’s not done in the corny, manipulative way that RTÉ did a few years ago; this is the real culture and communities of working-class Dublin. It’s kind of nullified the other documentary, which made us all out to be thick wannabe gangsters. I imagine there will come a time when I go to London to build my career, but there’s a lot to be done here first.
Stuart: Yeah Yeah Yeahs made a stand during the summer when they banned cameraphones at their gigs. Their prerogative or a heavyhanded display of spoilsport-ry?
Nathan: Life is about being in the moment and enjoying it. I’ve never taken my phone out to film anything. I understand why people do – they want to capture the moment, but actually they’re missing out on it by watching it through a viewfinder.
Kieran: Our manager’s great; we love him and he’s always got suggestions so we went along and met this fella who said, “Okay, you got a thousand people in a room and you want every single one of them to tweet at the same time during one of your songs…” We’re into our Apps, so we thought, “Let’s try it out at Vicar St.” but explaining what you’re doing to people when they’re jumping around and going to the bar… it didn’t work.
Nathan: Technology moves forward but, y’know, a gig’s a gig. If the band on stage is doing it right, you don’t need Twitter or Instagram or whatever to enhance the experience.
Troy: Even on the common sense level, paying twenty or thirty quid to get into a gig and then watching it on your ‘phone doesn’t make sense, y’know?
SOAK: Gigs aren’t something that can be reinvented. They are what they are.
Evan: I like technology but not for technology’s sake. If someone’s playing around with their phone while you’re playing, it probably means you’re boring them.
Lethal: Who actually looks at those videos afterwards? The sound’s shite and the picture’s all wobbly.
Stuart: Anyone read the Morrissey book yet? (Deafening silence ensues…)
Nathan: We’re all Johnny Marr fans!
Kieran: I know two people – both Johnny Marr fans – who’ve read it. One said it was incredible and Morrissey’s a genius, and the other was really disappointed with what he felt was his unfair slagging of the rest of the band.
Stuart: There was a lot of score settling – including page 193’s reprimanding of Hot Press for giving The Queen Is Dead a mixed review.
SOAK: I bought it, but I got another book the week before, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Jumped Out Of The Window, which is really funny so I haven’t started it yet. I do this thing where I don’t read for a year and then I read for a full year.
I don’t like Morrissey’s music or the way he sings, but I’m quite interested in him as a person…
Stuart: Troy, did you meet Johnny Marr while he was living in Portland?
Troy: No, but I walked by where he was living a bunch of times hoping I would! He was above this place called The Crow Bar, which was down the street from the studio, Audible Alchemy, where Modest Mouse record. I eventually ran into him four years ago at a festival Snow Patrol and Modest Mouse were doing in Germany, Hurricane. I knew the guitar tech he was with so didn’t feel like a complete fanboy going over – even though that’s exactly what I was. I asked Johnny if he was still in Portland and he said back and forth all the time. Then he looked at me and went, “We must be the only two guys in Portland without tattoos!” which is kind of the truth. I wouldn’t say there’s a band on every corner – the weather’s too bad for that! – but there are a lot of different scenes. I tend to stick to the alt. country one with these great players that were like staff writers in Nashville back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Everyone plays on each other’s records; it’s really great.
Nathan: I saw him twice this year – at Electric Picnic and in The Limelight – and both times he blew me away. I’ve met him and he’s a lovely bloke too.
Stuart: I’d love to be contentious and say “Johnny Marr’s a complete cunt” but, yeah, I did the public interview a few years back when he was made an honorary member of the Trinity College Philosophical Society and a nicer bloke you couldn’t hope to meet. Jamming with Paul Weller in Abbey Road and kicking off the Monkeys’ Sheffield homecoming party are all very well and fi ne, but they’re small beer compared to The Strypes’ December 27 – 29 run of shows in the Fillmore East of the border counties, Cavan Town Hall.
Evan: There’s no better way to end 2013. We’ve gone there over the years to see a play or a panto but never thought we’d get to play it ourselves. Apart from Adam Faith in the ‘60s I don’t think there have been any gigs in the Town Hall, so it’s a big deal.
Stuart: Anyone else counting down the minutes ‘til Christmas?
SOAK: I’m going home today and God help them if they’ve put the tree up without me. I like sticking the star on top! I’ve spent a lot of time away gigging and my brother started university in Manchester, so the celebration this year’s going to be extra special. That’s what it’s all about at the end of the day; your family and friends.
Stuart: Amen to that. Happy Christmas everyone!
Everyone: Happy Christmas!

See hotpress.com for video interviews with the HP Summiters