Pleasure Beach Interview: The Pleasure is Ours

Fade in. Five young people sit at separate tables, each nursing a winter spice mochacinno latte, or whatever it is the kids drink these days. One begins to hum a tune; he’s soon joined in harmony by another. Slowly, they pick up instruments and play along. Soon, the five are standing, playing and singing, looking at each other agog as anthemic guitars and soaring synths tangle with five-part harmonies and surf- pop vibes.
Look, if Pleasure Beach keep saying they formed in a coffee shop, that’s the mental image we’re going to have. Are we even close?
“I wish!” laughs Alan Haslam, the frontman of the Belfast quintet. “But can’t we just roll with it anyway? Some of us worked in a cafe called 5A, and the others knew people working there and would often stop by. When looking for people to play with, it was like, ‘Oh, that guy was in a band, we know that girl can sing’. It was pretty handy really – it doesn’t normally work out quite like that.”
Alan’s own musical pedigree had previously been proven in Yes Cadets, where he played alongside drummer Lisa Mageean. Cheylene Murphy, meanwhile, had honed her synth craft as part of Derry-based Wonder Villains. Richard Crawford and Kat Hepworth, on bass and guitar respectively, complete the line-up of a band which, quite incredibly, didn’t even exist at this point last year – though experience gained during those previous ventures didn’t hurt their meteoric rise.
“It’s a totally new beast,” Alan says of Pleasure Beach. “But of course there’s things you learn; connections, good and bad; who to say yes to; when to say no. If nothing else, we worked with a lot of douchebags when in Yes Cadets, which was instructive. This time, if we were going to do it, it was with people I actually liked – which isn’t all that easy when dealing with music management!”
It’s just as well they had an inkling, because there wasn’t much time to shop around. The band, rather innocently, popped an early version of their first single ‘Go’ online, at which point things took an unexpected turn. “It ended up on a few blogs,” Alan grins. “And then my inbox started to melt. It was such an intense period that I just couldn’t keep up – I couldn’t even check who’d emailed me before the next one landed. It was kind of fun, but a bit crazy. I was definitely pleased when someone else stepped in – someone who could deal with it in a more professional manner!”
At which point the parties charged with professionalism armed themselves with cattle prods, and pushed the group into their first live show together. “Our management and lawyer stepped in, and said we had to do a showcase for all the industry people who’d been in touch. We were ready to go anyway – just! – but a couple of planes full of people from London came over. For our first show. Talk about no pressure...”
Not that there hadn’t been a bit of calculation done. “The release of the single was timed, on our part. We thought about it carefully; it was a quiet week for us, not a big week for other releases, and SXSW had finished, so there were going to be A&R guys kicking their heels waiting for the next thing. If we’d put it out the weekend of Glastonbury, it mightn’t have been heard by a soul!”
Instead, around the time the Worthy Farm faithful were busy getting clattered in muck, the quintet were holed up recording their first EP, Dreamer To The Dawn. Headed up by the aforementioned ‘Go’, which last month bagged the group a Choice Music Prize Song Of The Year nomination, the three-track collection had people falling over to draw parallels with everyone from Arcade Fire to Bruce Springsteen.
While neither could be called complete flights of fantasy, there’s a nuance to their material that broad comparisons can’t quite do justice – dreamy electro-pop and surf-pop harmonies with a meaty, stadium rock core. Not, mind, that it’s advisable to stick a pin in their sound right now. Unsurprisingly, given that a mere three songs have been unveiled so far, the blueprint continues to evolve.
“There’s a vague manifesto,” Alan states (unconspiratorially, for the record). “But the more we play, together, the more we experiment with different sounds. It’s definitely moving on, but at the same time we’re never going to stray too far. That said, I’m really into long instrumentals, and our next single is a minute’s vocals, followed by a four-minute guitar wig-out. It probably wouldn’t suit radio, is what I’m saying.”
If their burgeoning reputation as a live band is anything to go by, those concerns are unfounded. While they still haven’t even headlined a show in their hometown – although that situation is about to be rectified – they’ve already played support to everyone from Jape to The Vaccines, and won hearts and minds at every turn.
“We didn’t feel out of place at any of those. You think to yourself, ‘Are fans of The Vaccines going to dig this?’, but in the event we just seemed to fit right in.”
One thing that’s not as comfortable a fit right now is writing sessions. A downside of being in such extraordinary demand is that Alan’s battered laptop is gathering dust as the band dash from one commitment to the next – but, as befitting a band who wasted no time in making strides in their first year, thoughts will soon turn to new material.
“There’s a few windows in the next few months where we can really sit down and come up with more stuff. There’s a masterplan in place, but I haven’t really been let in on it! But along with a lot of touring, we’ll have the chance to do plenty of writing and recording too. Whether that will be for singles, another EP or an album, I’m not sure, but I’d like to think that by the end of 2016 we’ll have an album ready to go. It’s the natural trajectory.”
If the path for the coming year is anything like the road they’ve followed thus far, then some very special things await.