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17.01.14 MusicWeek 21
producer like Jim Abbiss who we really looked up to - his word was usually the last word because we just respected it. This is the first time that we’re 100% happy. Jamie MacColl: In my mind it’s the most Bombay Bicycle Club-sounding album and that’s purely because of the fact that we have full control of it. Whenever you work with a producer to some extent they put their own stamp on it.
Do you feel with this one you’ve ‘found your sound’ - that it’s your defining record? JS: In terms of production maybe, but in terms of the sound of the songs and the samples that’s always going to be ever-changing. If you look at our past it’s been very schizophrenic with lots of different sounds and I think it’s almost expected of us to come up with something new every time.
You’ve done very well, with an Ivor Novello nomination and support from lots of influential people, but haven’t had masses of chart success. Do you feel underrated as band? JS: I don’t think that chart success has anything to do with that; I’d be kidding myself if I said that [ours was] incredible poppy music that should go to the top of the charts. But I do feel that there are a lot of people that have decided on their impression of us and stuck with it for a long time.
What is that impression? JS: The first time they probably heard us was when we were very young and the music was indie guitar rock and sometimes it was very twee. There were these four middle class guys from London making this very twee indie music and there was a lot of that [stereotype] in the press. With bands like Mumford And Sons, who have chosen a style of music that comes from a very rural and maybe poor background, when they sing it you can’t really believe them and that’s probably where people’s frustrations come from. Whereas with us I don’t see how it has anything to do with the style of music that we’re making. I feel like we’ve matured so much and made a really interesting sounding album with many layers. There’s going to be a lot of people that just see that Bombay have a new album out and say ‘oh well I’m not really a fan of them’. What we want to do now is convince people that we should be taken seriously.
Do you feel that chart success is important? JS: For personal reasons it opens doors, so if I wanted to produce something [for someone else] and had this very successful album I could and that would be interesting artistically. But as long as I can keep going to places across the world and play to people and have an audience that’s the main thing for me.
“There are a lot of bands that get awards but can’t pay their bills or have chart success but are probably quite creatively unfulfilled. We’re able to make a good living from the music we want to make” JAMIE MACCOLL
JM: We’re never going to be a band that sells loads of singles, the goal is to sell albums and our live performance has always outstripped music sales. There are a lot of bands that get awards that aren’t able to pay their bills and there’s a lot of bands that have chart success that are probably quite creatively unfulfilled. I think we’re in the middle. We’re able to make a very good living from the band and we get to make the music we want to make.
You’re one of the few young guitar bands that have been given space and time from a major label, how have you built that trust? JS: We have always tried something new on each record. We’ve never just recycled the same ideas, which a lot of bands do. We had a first album that did pretty well and then immediately went and made a completely acoustic album and from then on the pressure was just off because no one was expecting anything. There wasn’t that second album syndrome for us where a band enjoys a bit of success with one particular sound and then feels pressure to repeat it and the label wants more. We’ve enjoyed the freedom to experiment a bit but that wouldn’t work if at the core there weren’t tuneful songs with melody.
In general, do you feel a lack of patience in the wider music industry? JS: It depends what kind of band you are or what type of deal you sign. When we signed our first record deal we were quite young and were wanting to compare it to deals that other bands had got, like ‘oh they got this, so why is ours quite small?’ – it was about £80K or something. Our very wise manager Jason Marcus just said ‘the smaller deal you get, the better it is going to be for you in the long run’ because the label aren’t so pushy on instant results and they can afford, quite literally, to be a bit more patient with you. That’s exactly what’s happened and it was such a smart idea. I’d always advise bands starting out to go as small as possible and not get too excited about the big event and signing a deal for loads of money. You’re going to regret it when you realise that the label want an album next week and you can’t argue with them because they’ve poured loads of money into you and you owe them.
ABOVE So Long, See You Tomorrow: Bombay Bicycle Club’s fourth album is out on February 3
Is streaming and the likes of Spotify the future of the music industry? JM: At the moment it looks like it, but artists - particularly artists on major labels - get a pretty shitty deal out of it. I know on the Beggars Group they share 50/50 with their artists from streaming but I think the [major] labels get six or eight times more than what artists get. [We get] the general Universal deal where [Universal gets] about eight times more than what we earn because it’s split the same way as a record deal. It’s treated as a third party licensing thing as they would with it being radio or an advert but it needs to be separated from the recording contract. I’ve read stuff that says in Sweden 10% of the population subscribe to [streaming services] and around 70% of the music revenue comes from streaming but it seems that artists there aren’t any happier than they are in the UK or the US. I thought the Spotify model was that the more people we get streaming, the better it will be for the artists but it doesn’t really seem to be the case there. JS: £10 a month to stream lots of music [is a fair price] but it can’t be fair to pay artists the current royalty rate [$0.007 per stream]. But if Spotify hadn’t been invented people would just be downloading illegally or ripping music off YouTube and for me I’d rather they get a good quality version of your song with artwork and presented as an album on Spotify.
In terms of other revenue sources, commercial opportunities like branding and syncs, is that something you get involved with? JM: We’ve had quite a few [sync] opportunities but none that we’ve taken [because of ] disagreements within the band as to whether we should. Because we’re very young we don’t feel there’s a great drive for us to get a paycheque, we’d rather do things our own way if we can.
What would you change about the music industry and why? JS: Stop hiring people out of nepotism. I’ve only recently experienced this first hand - people that know someone in Island Records gets a job as an intern or an assistant and they don’t know anything about what they are doing and they make their way up, it’s really surprising how far they can go. Also, people rant on about how [major labels]
should be supporting smaller artists but if I wanted to change the music industry I’d try and get more independent labels - all the independent labels that were famous have now become pretty much major labels. It’s difficult to experiment when you’ve got a label that is looking at how much money it’s spending and I feel like there’s not really that room for experimentation anymore.
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