New music
Nothing But Thieves have achieved more than they could ever have dreamed. Kids from Southend who wanted to make rock music, the band’s self-titled debut album gatecrashed the charts on its 2015 release, powered by exceptional songwriting and those piledriver live shows.
Since then, they’ve scarcely stopped. Two albums have followed, creeping further and further up the charts, but a No. 1 has always eluded them. In a strange irony, their most complex, unexpected statement could be their most successful.
Out now ‘Dead Club City’ fully integrates synths into their rock sound, adding a slight pop appeal to their guitar-rooted directness. Lyrically, it’s a concept piece, informed by science fiction and a yearning to tap into an unexplained ‘otherness’.
Fans have embraced it, and Nothing But Thieves have gone racing back up the charts. With Sir Elton John – Knight of the realm – on their tail, it’s set to be a tight finish.
Clash sat down with Joe Langridge-Brown and Dominic Craik to talk about their new album, and the band’s inherent need to challenge themselves.
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So, the new album is doing well! Does chart placing mean a lot to you?
Joe: It would be cool. I wouldn’t say it’s the sort of thing we have always talked about as a band. We normally talk about like, oh I’d love to play this venue, or I’d love to play with this band or write a song like this… but it would be very cool to have – I think probably to tell the grandkids, more than anything. But I’m not counting my chickens, this always seems to happen to us that someone will tip us at the end. It’s a very on-brand Nothing But Thieves thing to happen.
It would be nice to see a rock band at No. 1 – it doesn’t happen often enough, really.
Dom: In our shoes it’s more of a culmination of ten to twelve years of being a band versus this one album, it’s been a very gradual process. When we first started we were caught in a wave of upcoming rock bands like Catfish and the Bottlemen, Wolf Alice and Royal Blood, and we were in that mix which was a nice space to be at that time. We should probably be quite grateful for that, now that it’s tougher than ever to breakthrough. But I do think it reminds everyone that rock bands are still here when you get a number one and you can shout about it… so it’s probably a great thing for that side of the music industry.
Joe: It’s a synth-based concept record self-produced in our own studio, that’s the cool bit for me. If that got to number one it’d be wicked.
It’s a bold thing to attempt, a synth-based concept record. Did you go into the album with that idea from the outset?
Joe: It was pretty early that I was saying to the boys, maybe time for a concept album? I think more than anything just to help the writing process. I think after finishing an album you go ‘oh I’m not gonna be able to write a good song again’ so anything that can sort you out is helpful. Dom’s been collecting synths for a while. Another effort to keep things fresh I think, a new source of inspiration. I think you can self-inspire in a way, just by taking yourself out of the comfort zone a bit… and I think that’s what we were trying to do.
Each Nothing But Thieves album has its own character. Do you purposefully draw a line and look ahead?
Dom: I think with our band it’s not even a conscious decision it’s more of a natural part of who we are as individuals. We have quite a short shelf-life in terms of what we’re interested in and we move quite quickly in terms of what we discover… and that naturally will push the evolution of whatever we’re doing. I do think that it’s scarier for us. Say ‘Dead Club City’ did get to No. 1, you’ve got a tried and tested example of that kind of thing working. You would get some artists that know that works and would probably do it again… whereas that scares us and we’d probably run in the opposite direction.
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It’s a bold concept, were there any particularly tricky moments during the making of the album?
Joe: Yeah I think we’re all perfectionists about the things we do. I just don’t think we have it in us… that’s not to say we don’t look back at songs or records and think ‘oh, that could have been improved’ – I think we think that about every record. I feel like it’s a constant learning process until you eventually land on the perfect album.
Did you use film or book reference points for this concept?
Joe: I think the whole idea, especially with the visuals, was to make it all seem quite uneasy and alien. There a programme called Sex Education that does this, where it all feels like it’s from a different time period… it felt quite familiar and alien at the same time. I feel like we did that with the music and the visuals.
Dom: I think from my perspective, integrating synths into rock music isn’t something I found easy at the start. It’s one of the more challenging aspects of producing I think. The synth music that we listen to as a band and individually has rubbed off quite clearly. Blade Runner is definitely for me one of the best synth scored films, every movie of that decade was kind of influenced by it. There’s other composers like John Carpenter who do a lot of that darker, moodier almost ambient thing… you can hear some of that in ‘Pop The Balloon’ where it’s more droney and distorted and monophonic. I wouldn’t say it was directly influenced but it’s in the Nothing But Thieves glossary.
Joe: I think the artwork is quite inspired by the old expos, like Osaka ’74. Kind of an old view of what the future would be like, that was kind of what we were trying to get across. There’s a record by ELO called ‘Time’ and that was an influence too. ELO are actually name-checked on the album for that reason.
How did you integrate those complex ideas into what are essentially pop songs? It must be a fine balance…
Dom: I think the song always comes first, we spend a lot of time rewriting things. I think some of the demos have gone through maybe 10, 15 instances before we get into a studio. That constant trial and error, questioning ‘is this the best it can be?’ is a great thing in the writing process because it means you’ve got something quite pure, but it’s solid. You’re not going into the writing studio thinking, hold on, is this the wrong tempo or the wrong key? You can just get down to the important shit versus trying to fix the writing.
Joe: There’s definitely conversations about letting things breathe more, more space to let the big moments have impact. Even lyrically, there’s a song called ‘Overcome’, and trying to put too much information in the verses took away from the song. I ended up writing like 80 verses for that song before I realised all I really needed to do was create an atmosphere in the verses for the chorus to fly. And that was a lesson that was just learnt along the way really.
Was there a moment in the studio where you felt it all came together?
Joe: I think one of the main reasons it made so much sense for Dom to produce the album was that the demos were in such a good space, they were leaning in the right direction… so we just had to finesse and play around in the studio. I think after the first month we realised what was making it tick. We didn’t end up using a lot of amps on this record, a lot of it was DI and as we went on we were just kind of like: this is sounding great maybe this is just the sound of the record!
DI – direct input – has a clinical sound doesn’t it? Did that aid the alien atmosphere?
Dom: DIing became popular with Motown and then Nile Rodgers and the disco movement. It gives you quite an aggressive and immediate sound to the guitar whereas an amp can squash it. I think DIing is less common for rock music but maybe that’s why it’s unique. I also think the DIing thing can marry up guitars with synths more easily.
Taking the songs out on the road must allow them to breathe a little more.
Joe: A lot of these songs haven’t been played together yet. We don’t really think about them on purpose like ‘oh that’s how this will be when we do it live and that’s how we should record it’ because it’s limiting. So we end up just making the song and then figuring out after how to do it live. So as much as we are really enjoying playing the new songs, we’ve got more of that work to do really.
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Given the intricacies, the actual mixing and mastering of this must have been complex.
Dom: You spend so long writing something, rewriting it, recording it, producing it, re-recording it sometimes… to then send it to mix and mastering to go ‘oh, kind of, yeah there you go’ doesn’t make sense. We got Mike Crossey to mix this record, he’s worked with us on previous albums. He’s a real talent – he’s amazing, he’s taught a lot of us about recording.
So, what did making this album teach you? What lessons did you glean that you hadn’t learned before?
Joe: Releasing an album during festival season is fucking difficult! (laughs) There’s a satisfaction with it feeling very much like our product, all the backstory very much feels like ours. I really enjoyed that process.
Dom: It’s been very re-affirming. You can hear on our first album that we’re younger and naive, maybe ignorant… still learning a lot. It feels like a step up with each record, and with this one we had the confidence to do it all. So I guess it validates any doubts you had about your ability, which you’re constantly feeling throughout your early records. It’s a sense of achievement.
I’ve heard you’re actually huge in Russia – and you were going to play Siberia before the war broke out.
Dom: They’re die-hard fans over there. It’s a shame that we can’t play to those people because ultimately they’re not to blame so it’s tough… but you don’t know what the future holds and hopefully we can play to those people again.
Joe: Ultimately they’re like fans anywhere else. I would say it’s very, very unlikely that our fans who listen to our music and come to our shows would be supportive of what’s going on. You know they don’t want it either.
And finally… have you bought some champagne for the countdown? Just in case…?
Dom: Well… Elton’s had eight number ones, let the little boys from Essex have their moment… please Elton! (laughs)
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‘Dead Club City’ is out now.
Words: Robin Murray
