Bombay Bicycle Club’s new album ‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’ is due to be released next week, and we caught up with the band before their show at The Academy last November to talk about said album. As well as discussing the influences and the production behind the record, bassist Ed Nash and frontman Jack Steadman also talked about their relationships with their fans, the reasoning behind the Irish tour, and the overall state of the music industry.
Bombay Bicycle Club have changed styles quite dramatically on each of their first three albums. We asked the guys if the new album will continue on this trend, and what new ground they will be breaking. “Well it has gone in a kind of new direction. It wasn’t really planned in the beginning, just like the previous albums, with regards to that change in direction. Personally I feel it follows on where songs like Shuffle and Lights Out Words Gone have left off on the last album. The new songs are much more sample based and dancey,” says Ed. “Lots of sampling. Stealing other people’s music and plugging it as your own. I guess that’s a very basic way of putting it.”
A new sound naturally comes with new influences. Jack discussed some of the things he’s been listening to, and some may come as something of a surprise… “Lots of influences from the old Bollywood soundtracks from the 40’s and 50’s, just the sound of those records, the recording techniques they used and the overall sound. They do it in their own special way. It was more than just being influenced – we took snippets from them, and put them in a more modern context.” There also seems to be a desire to change the way in which fans react to band’s music at live shows; “We’d like to have more people dancing at our concerts rather than punching each other. We hope the new songs are something you can move your feet to, not just your arms and head. Not your fists”
Evidently the band care a lot about how these songs are going to sound in a live setting, so what extra measures are they going to use to ensure that the fans get the best live performance possible? “Well we have an added keyboardist and we’re all slowly becoming keyboardists as well, there’s lots of keyboards onstage. It’s what you have to do to play these new songs. I think it’s turning out quite well. We tried to limit a bit as well,” adds Jack, “We don’t want to look like a prog rock band with eight keyboardists onstage. We still want to look like there’s a small amount of people on stage. It’s the same amount of people onstage just doing more things. We all do a lot more singing now. Everyone’s singing.”
For ‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’, the band had a much bigger role in the production of the record, with Jack producing a lot of it in his own studio. “We recorded the drums and bass and guitars in the studio where we recorded our first album, a place called Konk in North London – just because we thought we should do that, professionally. After that, once we had all the bits and pieces, Jack took it into his studio and did the rest there. Lots of vocals were done there, and the electronics, more guitars – all the finishing touches.” Jack continues, “It was nice having to work whenever you want, ’cause at professional studios you have to leave at midnight. And your best ideas might occur to you after that. So I was pretty much living in the studio and sleeping there.” With the band members themselves doing more of the work with regards to the production of the record, we asked Jack if there was more of himself in the record. “Naturally it is more personal, especially with recording vocals when you do it just on your own. I never did that before, there’s normally an engineer or a producer in the room, and that might affect your singing. When it’s just you in the middle of the night, I think it’s really honest.”
Lucy Rose featured on the band’s last album, and it seems female backing vocals play quite a big part on this album as well. “There’s a lot more female vocals on this. We got a girl called Rae Morris to come in. She’s an up and coming singer-singwriter from Blackpool. She sang on a couple of tracks.” Ed adds “She’s got a really powerful voice, she sings on the opening track, and it’s absolutely amazing. It’s a nice contrast to Lucy’s voice which is a beautiful soft voice, and Rae’s is more belting, very powerful. So you’ve got these two sides and I think it’s great. I also got some friends in to sing on some of the songs. I thought if we’re doing this ourselves, we might as well get our friends and family involved. We got people doing handclaps; we thought it’d be quite nice, because that’s going on record, and is going to last forever.”
With this new album hinting at a change in style once again, perhaps the band members feel that they could have done another album like ‘I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose’. Ed informs us that this isn’t the case; “I think that’s as fleshed out as you can get. That was what we were doing at the time, what we wanted to make and I think that’s as good as it’s going to get. I don’t think trying to repeat that would have made it any better. You see bands repeat something and trying to recreate something, I think bands naturally progress. If you don’t it’s very boring.“Jack adds rather grimly, “I don’t think we’d still be around if we were still making music like that. Even just for ourselves, the reason we’re still enjoying touring is because we’ve altered ourselves to whatever we like at the time.”
Another issue that often stems from a change in sound is the risk of alienating fans. “I think initially when we released ‘Flaws’ it was a slight concern, but that did very well. We made new fans, and the old fans seemed to like it. Since then people have kinda expected the unexpected with us, so there’s no real fear of alienating people anymore. I’d like to have a small core group of fans who love everything you’ve done more than having a load of people coming along and waiting for shuffle.”
The band seemed to have developed a fondness for Ireland, playing the new album to Irish crowds before anyone else. Ed explains this decision: “I’ve just never been around Ireland before, it’s standard to just play Dublin and Belfast. We needed somewhere to go and play these songs for the first time, and it’s been a great success. More bands should do it. When you go to places like that, you get really appreciative crowds. There’s a sense of ‘thank you for coming.’ It’s a really nice atmosphere.”
The band also spent some time in India during the writing of the album, a fact that ties in with band’s name. “I think we were slightly apprehensive to go to India because of the name actually” Jack explains. “I went there a long time ago and immediately fell in love with it, so it was completely separate from the band. It was only recently that we started listening to the music and then we got asked to play a festival there. We spent a month writing and recording and eating. It was mainly an eating tour”
Mentioning that they were nervous about an Indian trip because of their unusual name, we quizzed the band further about their title, and asked if they ever regret the choice; “All the time. Every second of every day. But then again there are a lot of stupid names. If at the age of fifteen you know that this is going to have a huge impact on your life when choosing a band name, you might be more careful with picking a name. We didn’t think anything would come of it.”
With a few minutes left at the end of the interview, our conversation turned to some of the topical matters concerning music these days, such as the Spotify debate. Jack answers “I use Spotify all the time so I’d be a massive hypocrite not to let people listen to my music. I’m of the opinion as long as they discover it, and come to our shows, I’m happy with that. I think everyone will have a different perspective. Right now we’re living pretty comfortably and so we’re just happy people are coming to the shows. If people want to listen on Spotify I’m alright with that.” As for the matter of downloads? “Well it’s killing CD sales, but vinyl sales are going up. All I buy is vinyl and download things. It’s obviously reduced the amount of music that people buy physically, you just have to evolve with it. For us it means we get to play in places like India, or Japan or Indonesia. I feel that without all this stuff changing that wouldn’t happen. So we’re grateful for it in a way. We’d rather go and do that then make a bit more money.”
‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’ is released on 3rd February, and if that show at The Academy was anything to go on, then it promises to be a cracker.