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one in Madrid on Saturday, then another Glastonbury on Sunday. I think it’s like anything; after a year of playing clubs and venues, you long for the summer and that’s where I am now. It’s actually one of my dreams to do festivals. It’s great ‘cause you get to hang out with other bands, see people you haven’t seen in ages – it’s just an amazing environment to be in.


Forgive me for going over ground you must have gone over a lot, but you came together with Justin to form the band, but how did you emerge? How did you go from being a notion to it practically happening? Well a friend of ours just did a recording of ‘If You Wanna’ and Norgaard, which is one of the first songs we ever recorded and it went on YouTube – I don’t really know who put it on YouTube, I think it was a friend of ours online, and Zane Lowe took it offline and made it the Hottest Record in the World! It was just like a home recording, but from there, the phone started ringing and we were asked to do Jools Holland. Jools Holland was the big turning point really, you know.


Tere was huge momentum then, for you? Yeah, it’s not – I make it sound really simple but we were all desperately working with music before hand for a long time, before we knew each other even.


You’d flirted with music before, but when you came together to form this band, did you have a new ethos? Yeah, it was almost like we came together with a completely different approach than we’d ever had before. We were just so fed up with what we perceived to be the music industry and people in it and we were just like, ‘fuck this, we don’t wanna be successful, we just want to do something we care about, even if we lose our minds.’ We were just so unhappy, so we did something we really cared about, so for me now, everything else that’s happening is just a bonus.


For you personally Freddie, and for your brother who has found musical success, was it a heavily musical upbringing for you boys? I wouldn’t say we were forced to play


instruments, but there was definitely a lot of music in the house. My dad was a very keen blues and rock fan, but I don’t know, we got into lots of things together; we got into skateboarding and we got into making videos – music just became that last thing we got into that we stuck on. Music had always been about discovering new things, but it wasn’t particularly a musical house, we just became very passionate about it in our early teens. My mum played guitar and my dad played guitar, but that was about it, so there you go.


Tere’s a post on your blog that has the title 1984 – I was asking someone else this, and I guess you must be of the same age, but what strong visuals remind you of growing up? 1984! I wasn’t born then…


Oh, I feel slightly old. Mine were shell suits and Top of the Pops. I was definitely a massive Top of the Pops fans, but I think I was a little past shell suits. I’m a kid of the Ant & Dec generation, you know! Tat was when they were wrapping…


Winging ourselves into the future again, this year is turning out to be a very strong year for guitar music – did you feel that shift as well? Erm, I’m not sure if it’s a good year for guitar music per se, but it’s a good year for quality music. We always get interviewed about the decline of guitar music, or of quality music and I just think it hasn’t ever gone anywhere – I don’t think people ever really wanted anything else. You only have to look at the bands that play Hyde Park, or play the big concerts that people want quality music; the parting example of that is Adele, she’s broken records doing absolutely fantastic music.


So 2011 will be a vintage year when we look back musically –


- I hope it just shows the people in charge, you know, of radio or people who run the record labels that people aren’t as stupid as they think they are and people want good music. I hope this year will pave the way for that to continue; people will hopefully have a bit of a mind shift towards doing quality stuff.


You did a great thing this year – you made your live album available on Record Store Day, which is a fantastic day anyway, but which is a true reflection of Vaccines – the live sound, or recorded? Ooh, that’s a good question; I think probably they’re not different in any way. We recorded that album pretty much live and I think they’re definitely similar, but we’d almost do a better version of the record if we went and did it now. I think it’s very much the same thing, but we hope to develop on that for the next record; we don’t want it to be a live album.


I was wondering when and how you approach new music, you know, when does it become very evident that it’s time to write again? Well I think that if you’re prepared for something, it’s not gonna jump up on you, but equally we’re so busy that just the idea of getting two weeks to write is an impossibility. Our next day off is in July, then we’re working through ‘til March, but we’ll find that time and we’ll make sure we’re on top of it. I think you have to start working and then something will reveal itself. You can’t wait for inspiration; you’ve got to go and look for it.


Luckily we’re all still very much caught up with the first album – - Well so are we, you know, it’s only been out for three months! We still feel there’s a lot of life in this album to tour with and we feel like these songs are still very young for us, even though we’re not looking at them and we’re almost looking forward. Tere’s a lot


NOT REALLY BY ITSELF – OR WITH VODKA, SO I’LL CONTINUE SHOPPING.


GRANOLA IS GOOD, BUT outlineonline.co.uk / July 2011 / 21


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