any boundaries for what you can write songs about then it becomes very easy to find inspiration almost anywhere. I think people are always quite shocked by what we write songs about, not outraged, but just kind of baffled that we write songs about stuff other than, like, girls! [laughs] To us it’s just normal, anything that affects you, or makes a lasting impression on you, that could be a piece of art; write a song about it if it moves you, and often it ends up being quite successful. But that said, we do write songs about girls as well [laughs].
You’ve got some cool tones on the record, are they all analogue? I’m thinking in particular about the hook in ‘Taro’, do you play that on keys? It’s not actually keys no, that particular sound is guitar and violin; it’s a plucked violin and Gwil is doing a kind of hammer- on on his guitar. It makes it sound really weird, and nobody can tell what it is, and then when they see us live they’re like “Oooooh”.
On your Soundcloud you give a little synopsis about each song at the start, and some people have said that they’d rather be left to give the song their own interpretation. Did you write those because you wanted to keep the songs very specific? Basically that thing came out of being asked to do a track-by-track for a magazine, and it ended up getting put on the Soundcloud; I’m not quite sure why. I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t explain what a song is about and should leave it to other people’s interpretations. Tat’s probably because of my background; I studied English Literature and I read Roland Barthes’s essay ‘Te Death Of Te Author’ in my first year, which made me think that the author’s intentions in a piece of writing don’t matter in the slightest and that once a piece has been written down it exists independent of the author, the time, or anything.
Your music videos are incredibly creative, both ‘Tessellate’ and ‘Breezeblocks’ look like incredibly professionally shot videos, where did you get the funds/ideas? Tey do don’t they! Obviously they are both done by professionals, but they weren’t expensive videos by any means. It’s all about finding people who are really passionate about making good music videos and who are willing to make it work. We’re only on a small label, so we were lucky to find people with great vision who were pretty much happy to work to the minimum cost; barely paying themselves and just using the money for hiring cameras and things. I mean, we’re not exploitative! [laughs] But it’s just nice to work with people who have a passion for it who will
have a good time with us and charge us five grand for a video, not people who would charge us fifty grand and make themselves a nice twenty grand profit from that.
Every year there’s always a band that plays a little way down the bill, but manages to draw a huge crowd around the festival circuit, and I think you’ve been that band this year. How has that felt, was it unexpected success, a meteoric rise to use the hackneyed phrase? Yeah, I suppose we only really “turned pro”, to use another odd expression, last autumn when we got signed. Before that we’d just finished studying, so it has been quite quick and the response at the festivals was amazing. It felt kind of cool that we were playing these quite small places and then loads of people would come, it was pretty funny in a way. It’s kind of crazy that we’ve sold out two nights at Shepherd’s Bush in
January; that’s mental. But then the man on the street still hasn’t heard of Alt-J, so it’s kind of weird. And our album is nominated for the Mercury, but almost every daily newspaper has declined to even review it. Te Guardian, the Times, none of them have even reviewed the album. Not that I’m bitter [laughs] I’m really not, because things are going so well for us, how could I be bitter?
So that’s in the UK, how is it over in the States? I fear the word “hipster” probably gets thrown around a lot? [laughs] It hasn’t too much, but it does now and then. Some people are excited because they know we’re bigger in the UK than we are in the US, so they’re glad to see us in small venues. People are really confident that we’ll do well in America, but we’re not thinking about that too much. I don’t even know if success in American even really exists for British bands apart from, like, Te Beatles.
Have you got any expectations for Norwich/this UK tour? I think it’s going to really open our eyes to the fact that we have a genuine fan base in the UK. So far, when we play a gig we’re generally able to go outside and smoke afterwards and there’ll be people who come up to us and say “Good show”, or “I love your band”, but it’s never too crazy. I think at some point you do have to act like a, quote- unquote, “rock star”, because it’s what people kind of want from you. If you watch your favourite band play a great gig, then go outside afterwards and they’re just there having a fag, it’s almost a bit disappointing [laughs] do you know what I mean? Growing up I used to be a complete adoring fan, and I actually went to quite a few gigs in Norwich. I remember queuing up outside the UEA, and we could see Kings of Leon in their dressing room, and everyone looked up and pointed; they just drew the curtains, and it was great [laughs].
Alex Trossell
Alt-J play at Te Waterfront on October 30th. Teir Mercury-nominated debut album ‘An Awesome Wave’ is available from all good record shops, apart from Soundclash because I bought the last copy. Read the full transcript of this interview at
www.outlineonline.co.uk.
outlineonline.co.uk / October 2012 / 19
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