DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL INTERVIEW: DEMOB HAPPY

CHARLOTTE: Welcome to the 20th anniversary of Download! As we were just discussing, this is your first time here, so just give a bit of a brief update as to what your performance was like and what your experience has been like.

MATTHEW: Well, it’s been amazing so far. We’ve never been to Download before. We’ve never been here as punters or as a band. And it’s been amazing. The tent was packed out, it was rammed. We had no idea what to expect, cause like a lot of the music here is a little bit heavier than what we do, so we sort of laughed thinking that we’d be like this sort of light entertainment, you know? But it was great. Everyone was really on board. So it’s been amazing. Been amazing.

C: You’ve just released your new album Divine Machines. Talk me through the creative process, the composition and the final decision on this release; you released it on vinyl as well.

M: Well, I mean we started demoing it just before lockdown. So in like February, 2020 we had all of this music sort of that we were writing, that we had the intention of making an album in that year. But then when lockdown sort of hit and everything it was then because we had so much more time, it allowed us to really spend a lot more time and focus on really fleshing it out. And I think it’s all the better for it really because it’s such a sort of dense album. There are so many ideas on it and things and I’m so happy that we had the time to see all of those ideas through to completion, you know, because otherwise sometimes you can feel a bit rushed and we’d come off a really busy year. So there was a pressure to kind of put a new record up. In a way it was a kind of blessing that we had more time. It’s just been a game of patience really. Cause we just slowly worked on it and haven’t had it ready for quite a long time. And then adding to it and then we signed a new record deal. We wanted to wait for that cause we didn’t want to just release it, it felt like a lot of releases that came out of a lockdown were just sort of into this black hole a bit. It didn’t really feel like, so we didn’t want that to happen cause we loved it so much.
We knew so how good it was and yeah, so it was just worth waiting. It was worth waiting and we’re very happy with it.

C: Well, I first discovered you guys when you released Be Your Man through Flying Vinyl.

M: Oh yeah!

C: The seven-inch single, and I remember when I first listened to it, it just felt like you were taken to a completely different time with music, the influences and the sound. It’s just incredible.

M: Thanks!

C: Tell me some of your influences and how you kind of agreed on the sound that you’ve got.

M: I mean, it kind of came about really naturally. I think me and the lads, we do have separate tastes, but where the Venn diagram meets in the middle is just the love for proper songwriting and rock n roll and kind of classic rock and roll. Just bands like The Beatles. I’m a huge fan of like 10CC and Supertramp and Queen and Pink Floyd and stuff. And, I think just wanting to make the music that we wanted to hear. We didn’t really feel like there were any bands out there doing anything like the kind of fun and, cool but riffy and exciting, but with harmonies and proper melodies and interesting lyrics and things. I think it just kind of came naturally into being, we’d never really talked about it, but Your Man was a real turning point. It was kind of what really set us on it. It was like an identity-firming song. We kind of thought, ah, yes, right. This is uniquely us.

C: And I think its mimicked now I mean, especially your newer stuff as well, obviously not all songs sound the same. But you’ve still got that vibe in every song – I love that, and if you’ve packed out a tent at Download people are obviously absorbing that.

M: Yeah. Yeah. It has been amazing.

C: You’ve been around for a fair bit now. You must have some highlights over your career. So can you tell me a few of those?

M: Well, there are highlights and there are low lights. One of the highlights for us really was when we toured with Jack White in 2018, and that in itself was a massive one cause we grew up listening to the White Stripes and have loved Dead Weather and Raconteurs and things and his other projects. And so to get invited to do that too was amazing. But then really the real highlight was at the end of that tour in Edinburgh, he invited us on stage to play with him. So it was this amazing moment where like we didn’t know what was going on. We, the lads, I was actually backstage eating some risotto, and one of the stagehands came running in going, ‘they need you on stage, they need you on stage’ – and I thought, oh my god, something’s gone wrong. Something’s happened. Like, you know, who knows? My mind was racing. I had no idea. And so they sort of pushed me onto the stage. I was going, what’s going on? But then I spotted there, Adam, the guitarist, already had a guitar and was like, trading licks with Jack, you know, Tom was on the drums and I was like, oh, right, this is happening. Like, wow, okay. And so I sat down at the piano and started playing. And I actually am a piano player far longer than I played bass or guitar but Jack didn’t know that, so he kind of came up to me and he mimed like ‘do you play?’ And I was like, yes, yes I do play. So that was great. So it was a Dead Weather track and so that was cool. So we were just kind of like playing it because we knew the song, so we were playing along and yeah, it was amazing. It was a real moment of affirmation.

C: I can imagine. How did that even come about? How did you even get talking?

M: I think he just, you know, had a short list of bands and he chose us. Really. It was just the luck of the draw.

C: Well, that’s a compliment in itself.

M: Massive compliment. Massive compliment. We were over the moon to get that tour.

C: So you were in Prague yesterday?

M: Yeah. Yeah.

C: And you’ve got a UK tour later on this year as well.

M: Yeah, September the UK tour.

C: We’ve got a new record, we’ve got a tour coming up. Can we expect anything else? Any new videos or any collaborations?

M: Yeah, I think there’s gonna be a new video we’re gonna make another video for and do another single off the record, and we’re not doing any other festivals over the summer, so we’re just going to work on new music and keep it going, you know. We’re really looking forward to the September tour though. It’s gonna be really fun. I think like it’s a long time since we’ve done a proper big tour. We’ve done a lot of support stuff. We’ve done a lot of like bits and bobs, so this is a proper UK, Europe, and we’re about to announce America as well. So it’s like a two-and-a-half-month tour. It’s a big tour. Excited. It’s gonna be great.

C: And we touched earlier on the fact that this new album is released on vinyl and you tend to release your things on vinyl. Is that a personal choice for you guys? Are you collectors yourself?

M: Yeah. Yeah. I mean I love buying stuff on vinyl. I think really it’s just like in this day and age of streaming and stuff, if people are gonna buy something, they’d rather have something proper and physical and nice and vinyl is the epitome of that. Like actually having it, cause it feels a bit more real than a CD or something I suppose. We’ve got a lot of great dedicated fans who buy what we do. And we’ve got in the album charts with this record, we’ve got some number 25 and for a band of our size is massive because we don’t have a huge record deal behind us or anything like that, it’s all very just DIY and driven by us, and to make the top 40 of the album chart is absolutely insane. The vinyl is a big part of that because if people want to buy, they want to give something to the band, but that’s a great way of doing it.

C: So moving forward, that’s probably a platform that you’ll continue to use

M: Oh definitely. Yeah. We’ve released our first couple of albums on vinyl and we’ll continue to do so for sure. Yeah.

C: Thank you so much for your time.

M: Thank you so much.

Interview by Charlotte Hooper at Download Festival 2023