time away from songwriting, and have a bit of time away from it because it’s weird, although as I said earlier, we’re not a big – or we haven’t ‘til this point been a big touring band, we’ve focused on releasing albums – but we enjoy going on tour a lot more. We don’t really enjoy being in the studio that much and I think it’d be good to have some time to think about what the next album might be like.
You mentioned as well, picking your words carefully, but poor Jack exposes all of his thoughts in his songwriting… Is it ever strange for you to be interpreting his most intimate thoughts, or is it old hat for you guys now? Yeah, I guess we’re just used to it. I mean, some of the lyrics on this album were written quite literally from us interpreting the lyrics from his demos! He was struggling to write some lyrics, and he actually records vocals for all the demos, but they’re just like, mumbly nonsense. Te three of us just sort of wrote down what we were hearing, then we just chose the best lyrics!
So there’s something lost in translation, but it seems to have worked anyway. You’ve got Jim Abbiss back on production duties for this album - what made you call him up again? I think the first session we did for the new album was in Canada, for a guy named Dave Newfeld and none of those songs actually got used. I think working for him made us miss Jim, in a way. Basically Jim just works us hard and gives us focus, ‘cause as I said, we’re quite laid back, so it can sometimes lead to getting nothing done. We needed that drive from him really.
I remember from interviewing you the first time round, that at the time you were at the stage with Jim where you were worried you couldn’t even play your guitar very well – does Jim himself see how much you’ve all grown? Yeah, I think this is the first time
we’ve all been comfortable in the studio with our own instruments and when it comes to expressing ourselves about what we want it to sound like, ‘cause it’s very hard to describe music; it’s hard to describe what you want it to sound like and I think that takes time.
One of the tracks that’s standing out to me from the new album at the moment is ‘Lights Out, Words Gone’ – it’s got a very poppy, warm feeling to it – is this more Ben Allen’s influence, from when you brought him on the record? Well actually you probably would have thought that, but it was Jim who produced that song. Actually two of the most different songs to what we’ve done before, which are ‘How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep’, and ‘Lights Out, Words Gone’ were both done by Jim, so there are no rules really with the album.
Now Jamie, I have to talk to you about your blogging duties; you were the first member to ever post something up, and now… nothing. Well we mainly use Twitter and Facebook ‘cause the blog’s really hard to actually use…! You know, just to post a picture, or something, so yeah, we’re more Facebook and Twitter fans!
OK, I’ll let you off; I thought you started very enthusiastically being the first one, and then just never again! Although you do use a disposable camera, which is very interesting… Well we’ve got all these pictures from the recording sessions on disposable cameras, which I should probably put up on that blog, but I haven’t got round to it!
Tere’s always that magic with a disposable camera where you always get a couple of pictures that you never remembered taking; have you had any of those? Yeah, and there are also some that are just total pitch black because I’ve sat on the camera, or something like that!
Tat’s the magic, isn’t it, of an analogue camera! Well Jamie, we know that you’ve been to Norwich before, but we always ask if anyone has any memories of playing in our fine city…? Obviously the Puppet Teatre is the stand out gig, for where it was and because we were wearing puppets! No, no, every time we’ve played there it’s been lots of fun.
Emma Garwood
Bombay Bicycle Club bring all the songs from their three albums, ‘I
Had the Blues but I Shook Tem Loose’, ‘Flaws’ and ‘A Different Kind of Fix’, the latter of which was released on August 26th, to play the UEA on October 10th. For tickets and info, go to
www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk.
Read the uncut version of this interview at
Outlineonline.co.uk, where you can also check out our archive interviews with the band.
14 / October 2011/
outlineonline.co.uk
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