Prior to playing a sold out Academy for St. Patrick’s Day, we sat down with Jamie and Suren to find out what the band have been up to and what we can expect out of 2013.
After releasing three albums in as many years, it’s been quite quiet on the Bombay Bicycle Club front for the last while.
“We’re writing our next album but it’s in a bit of a weird place at the moment, because we’ve written most of it, but we’re just waiting for a few more songs to, kind of, magically appear. Admittedly, we all much prefer playing live over the whole creative process.”
The band have been sitting on some of their newest material for over a year, waiting to get it out, and with a couple of months off before their St. Patrick’s Day show, they felt like everything was beginning to get a bit stale.
“Some of the songs have been around eight years now, and most people don’t realise it’s been that long, a lot of the songs we’ve been doing since we were 15.”
Returning for their first show in a while, they weren’t sure what to expect from everyone. A manic driver trying to get through all the St. Patrick’s Festival blockades was probably the last thing on their minds as they made their way to The Academy. Having played here a few times they’ve familiarised themselves with a few of the local haunts for nights out.
“I know it sounds like I’m just saying it, but Ireland is probably my favourite place to play, the crowds are always fantastic. I think this is the only place outside of the UK that we’ve charted… the last time we were in Dublin we went to a place called Copper Face Jacks, it seemed like there were a load of policemen and a load nurses and it seemed like they were all copping off with one another. That was eh, fun.”
Moving on to the new album and what we could expect, you could be excused for thinking the band were taking a completely new direction, particularly after learning that Jack and Ed went to India for a while to take in some new sounds.
“There’s quite a few Bollywood samples which sounds worse than it is. It sounds really pretentious and I’m just trying work some guitars in and it’s a bit of running battle at the moment… one of the songs just rips a thirty second sample from a Bollywood song, probably one of most famous Bollywood songs of all time, so we’re probably going to get sued over that.”
What they expect of themselves though, sounds like the Bombay Bicycle Club we know. With their first two albums, the band believe they created an intense personal connection with their fans, whereas the third record was definitely a step up in terms of development and sound. With this in mind, they seem to be striving to find the gap between the first two and the third album, which leaves us anticipating exciting new things from them.
Even with 3 charting albums under their belt and sold out shows all over the world, the band still don’t seem to grasp the idea of fame, and being in the limelight. They consider themselves to be quite shy, with the majority of the band unwilling to talk about themselves, the polar opposite of their on stage personas where they bask in the limelight, and feed off the energy of the crowd.
“We used to be so bad at interviews and then we just kind of got used to them… I think it takes such a weird person to want to be famous and to talk about themselves all the time, it seems kind of counter-intuitive to the kind of people we are.”
