like gigs to be a bit more of a visceral occasion. Do you think you’d have to kind of deconstruct the live show though, because it's just got a habit for people, hasn’t it? Lingering around the periphery of the venue, beer in hand. Is any of the pressure on you to mix things up a bit? I find that there's very little we can do. If someone has a pint and a phone, then they're kind of tucked away for the next few hours in their own thoughts, but I've always found playing like underage shows to be like the most fun, like 14+ / 16+. Tey're most fun because those kids can't buy alcohol. Tey're not interested in it, and they just want to like - I don't know - they just want to push each other around. So, at those shows, you get the best kind of connection and - I don't know, it's the best kind of shows really.
I Googled ‘Castleton’ in the news. I
have liked to, or do you think you would've even made the same album if you had? We're not kind of -- I think one of the things that makes our band is that we don't feel like we studied to do it. It's always just been something to do in our free time, and we've never really kind of focused on - I don't know - there's never been any intention or we never looked to get signed or anything like that. It's just come through just these ridiculous circumstances, coincidences, and we're here.
Talk to me about the video for ‘Dogmeat’ - it's splendid in its execution. We went out onto Sheffield's main kind of bar strip. So, last June, England would have just beaten Sweden in the European Cup and it was like a really great game of football. Sweden were 2-0
BE LIKE LOADS OF GIRLS AND GUYS THAT'D BE LIKE REALLY PISSED
WE WERE JUST HOPING THERE'D
BEAT IN OUR SONG.
AND WANTING TO DANCE TO THE
So, I read an interesting quote where you said, "the band wouldn't work if we were 25." What does that mean for the evolution of the band? I don't know. I think there's a difference between being 21 and 25, and I think it's a weird kind of still-post-adolescent time and we haven't moved out of our house yet, so we still feel like teenagers. I think my friends that are 25 and 26 are a bit different from me in a lot of ways, but I think it's an age thing. I think in a musical sense as well, that’s what I mean; that my friends that are in bands who are 25 and 26 are much more interesting and articulated, and do less immature stuff than we do!
wondered what's been going on there, and in the last month, it said, ‘Police Investigate High Value Cycle Teft’ and ‘Peak District Trail Riders not Welcome’. Is this the kind of high level of news that happens there?! Er, yeah! It's a pretty small slope out. Tere's an app that the police put up that you could find out all the phone calls that are being made to 999 in your area. And basically if you go on the City Centre it’s always red with the amount of emergency phone calls that are made in the center of cities. And if you branch out to the suburbs, it goes blue, and then, when you go out into countryside, it goes green because no-one is ringing the police, but you can zoom in, and in our area there’d be two antisocial behavior disorder calls to the police, and they're both probably from our neighbour about us, practicing at our house!
You created your own hot zone. Yeah.
I don't think Castleton is a town with a music college - you guys didn't come from music college, did you? Would you
up and then England scored three goals. And like everyone was on like a real high. We were going to film our music video that night anyway, so we went out into the main bar strip. We were just hoping there'd be like loads of girls and guys that'd be like really pissed and wanting to dance to the beat in our song. Not to the song itself. We just asked people to dance in front of the camera, and no one would do it apart from loads of parents that embarrassed each other. And no one knew who we were, so we were just there, filming these people and it was just so awkward, embarrassing, and cringey. And we just got enough footage to make the video. While I was editing it, we had about two seconds surplus of footage to the song, so what you see in the video is everything we captured that night.
You say immature, but there's a maturity, say, to the music. I mean ‘Let's Pretend - Rory's drumming is impeccable and your playing has got sustained attitude throughout. You really assert yourself as very, very competent musicians, but then you end the album with ‘Fuckabout’ and it's almost like you're a bit too scared to take yourselves seriously. Is that fair to say, that you're not ready to let go of the idea of being immature, even though you're not? Yeah, we're nowhere near… I think – ‘Let's Pretend it's just an ambitious piece of music and I don't think the record would be right if it ended with ‘Let's Pretend’. I think we kind of needed to have a jokey song on the record to sign it off, because the thing that really strikes me about it is that it comes out of nowhere. I don't know. It really fits on there, but it only fits if you can look at it with like a really ironic hindsight, with the kind of really disgusting pop song that's always there.
Emma R. Garwood
Drenge play as part of the bill at this year’s Norwich Sound & Vision on Friday 11th October. You can buy a ticket for the band at
www.norwichartscentre.co.uk or buy a £40 wristband for all the bands at
www.norwichsoundandvision.co.uk. Read the uncut version of this interview on
Outlineonline.co.uk
outlineonline.co.uk /October 2013/ 17
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