The Horrors Interview: Everything Is Illuminated

No man is an island, but perhaps a band could be. Steadily weaving a cloak of mystery around themselves since they were burned by the media’s post-match analysis of their early gothic incarnation (forgetting they’d raved about their ramshackle but charming debut on its release), The Horrors are also proving to be an autonomous musical unit of the highest quality and potential. As they prepare to go it alone for the second time with glorious fourth record Luminous, they arise one New York morning for some promo.
In days gone by, you would have imagined The Horrors waking from their slumber and shaking off the cobwebs in a crypt. Today, they are in a Holiday Inn and shaking off last night’s show in a skate park. Tomorrow, they go to the den of iniquity that is LA and play a Unitarian Church. You wonder if their rakish, beanpole frontman Faris Badwan has an evangelical preacher lurking within him. “He can be that sort of guy,” says Joe Spurgeon mischievously. “But I don’t think we’ll get too much of that.”
First up, the drummer known as ‘Coffin Joe’ when the band still had monikers like Rotter and Spider prays for patience as he adjusts to the day. But he’s in gregarious, good-natured form almost instantaneously. He will also warn against asking his singer about his lyrics later on, offering a “just have a nice little chat with him” parting titbit.
Badwan, for his part, doesn’t drink, is still on Greenwich Meantime and is in chipper form — though the deep, graveyard timbre of his voice wouldn’t betray it. While not a fan of this interviewing lark, he’s come around to some of its benefits, namely how it allows him to reflect on his work. A bit like free therapy? “Yes,” he will say as our chat comes to a close. “But I prefer to analyse the interviewer…”
The verdict?
“Oh God,” comes the reply, in mock-withering Morrissey fashion. “I couldn’t say…”
Oh.
But back to the matter at hand.
A group formed by school friends in Southend-On-Sea in 2005, The Horrors arrived with a Rasputin-worshipping post-punk aesthetic and songs as short, sharp shocks. Any ‘style over substance’ fears were impressively allayed with 2009’s Primary Colours, which found Badwan dropping the shouty bit and the band going on a Neu!-inspired kaleidoscopic voyage. At the time, critics overplayed the hand producer Geoff Barrows (Portishead) had in the sound but, for their next trick, The Horrors went it alone and came up with Skying. Another evolution, another triumph.
Due to the whirlwind nature of this interviewing game, I get my mitts on Luminous maybe an hour before I speak to the band. It means there is only time for a solitary play. Immediately it gives the impression they have spent a large part of the past two years out clubbing and soaking up techno, whilst managing that balancing act of experimentation and melodic immediacy. Later plays will reveal it to be one of the best things released this year, but for the moment I’m a little in the dark.
That suits Badwan just fine; he’s not particularly fond of journalists forcing their analyses of his records upon him.
“I think yes, this is probably is a good way of approaching it,” he smiles. “Though I do think with some of our music, it does take more than the first listen. I would probably have felt the same when I was a kid. Pretty much every one of my favourite songs, I’ve just thought were ‘okay’ when I first heard them. It’s very rare for me that something comes on and really smacks me around the head and then becomes my favourite. When that happens, those things often come and fade away quickly. I think maybe the slow creeping into people’s heads is cool.”
It’s often the same way with meeting new people.
“Oh god, it’s definitely like that with people! I mean, I’m the worst for things like that. I make the worst kind of first impressions. Sometimes it becomes almost an art form, y’know? That’s how bad it
can be.”
Hints at dance explorations were there in their April cover of late Chicago house pioneer Frankie Knuckles’ ‘Your Love’.
“That track is a very special,” says Spurgeon. “It’s pretty much a ‘house anthem’, if you want to call it that. An incredible song. It’s a shame to see that Frankie passed away, he was so young as well.”
In their more gothic days, The Horrors were placed on the 2007 NME Indie Rock Tour, while their pals Klaxons headlined the Indie Rave Tour. The irony being that both bands were bonding over DJing, spinning classic dance vinyl at after parties.
“I remember getting the acid house record from Soul Jazz records,” says Spurgeon. “That would have been a staple in my record collection when I was young.”
Spurgeon remembers those years fondly: “as much of it as I remember anyway!”
Does he ever go by Coffin Joe?
“I do actually, I still go there! I think I’m the only one that remains with those ridiculous names that we had. There is actually the guy ‘Coffin Joe’ in Brazil [horror filmmaker and actor José Mojica Marins]. He came to me in Brazil, because he heard I was using the name. Which is kind of weird, but the security wouldn’t let him through. He’s also got foot-long finger nails. Quite outrageous.”
As a drummer, Spurgeon couldn’t follow suit for practical reasons.
“No, and I’m a biter! I bite my nails.”
His rhythm work was lauded on Skying, even if that big drum sound was one of the reasons songs like ‘Still Life’ were compared to Simple Minds, much to the band’s chagrin.
“It’s so frustrating where the whole Simple Minds thing is concerned,” he admits. “I have to say in all honestly, none of us even listen to Simple Minds. We don’t actually listen to music when we’re writing, because we don’t want anything to be compromised by what we listen to. [People] need to push a genre onto it and if there isn’t one, create one for it. It’s almost like people need that to understand it. And that’s fine - it’s acceptable. I just think that when people start getting so into it and saying ‘this sounds like that’, to be honest I genuinely can say, we wouldn’t do that. Why would we bother?”
It is safe to say, on Luminous, the ‘Horrors’ sound is now well-defined. On the influence of dance, Badwan says they were looking to take its spirit of adventure more than anything.
“And discovery, I think. That’s essential to the band’s enjoyment of the whole process. We really feel like when we’re making records, we have to take note of that: ‘are we enjoying making it, is it ground we’ve covered before?’ The answers to those questions let us know whether it’s going the
right way.”
He likes the idea of early house producers getting to grips with then-new technology. In the past, the band have built their own instruments and keyboardist Tom Cowan has confessed to stealing restaurant cutlery because he liked the sound it made. When Foals spoke to Hot Press this year, they talked about sending studio interns to the butcher’s shop to collect bones that could be used for voodoo-like percussion. Did The Horrors go to those lengths this time?
“Oh, we did that on the first record,” Badwan deadpans.
What they did do was go it alone for the second time.
“We might work with a producer in the future,” says Spurgeon. “Just because that will bring a different thing, but it was important for us to get to where we are now by working on our own predominantly.”
In an example of their collective confidence, Cowan has also affirmed that they will not use the “cheap tricks” other bands employ to achieve success.
“I think it would be a bit arrogant to sit here and say any time we want, we can just write a massive world wide hit,” Badwan clarifies. “But I feel that we can succeed on our own terms because I think that the melodies are accessible and they really have been from the beginning. If you actually listen to what’s on the radio, it’s pretty different. Any time we actually get on the radio, it’s an achievement really. Also any time we get in the charts. But it definitely doesn’t drive the whole thing, because we’d be making records even if we were all living in a cave. It really is what excites us, and is the driving force behind our lives… Even if the band were to break up, we’d all continue making music, I’m sure of that.”
So Badwan is unlikely to pen a KLF-style manual like How to Have A Number One The Easy Way?
“Them doing that is a cool example. It’s exciting to try that kind of thing. It’s exciting to try different ways of working and then if one of those different ways of working is to write an extremely accessible song, then that’s cool as well. I’m the worst liar in the world. Going back to that ‘first impressions’ thing, I get very strong feelings on people when I meet them and I can’t hide those things. I’m pretty transparent. I wouldn’t be able to tell you I truly loved a song I’d written if I thought it was a load of shit. I guess we could do that and not do any interviews.”
And why plump for that lose-lose situation when you’re on to such a winner? As you were, Horrors, as you were.
Luminous is out now
The Horrors play Electric Picnic in August