Interview: Circa Waves
New guys on the scene - Circa Waves, recently went on the NME Awards Tour, which I reviewed here, around the UK and luckily had the time to chat with me during the tour about what they had coming up. Here's what their drummer, Sian and guitarist, Joe, had to say...
“There’s a pretty
diverse line up for this tour in terms of genre. If you had to put together a
side project that could be any genre, besides Indie Rock, which would you go
for?”
Joe: We’ve
talked about this before haven’t we?
Sian: Yeah - well,
yours is definitely shoegaze.
Joe: Yeah! I’d
form a shoegaze band. I have a few songs on the back burner ready to go. Like
me and Sian have decided that when we get bored, that’s where we’ll go.
Sian: Yeah
definitely.
Joe: [to Sian] But you’d be in a punk band as
well?
Sian: Yeah I
wanna start like a hardcore punk band as well.
“Things have been
moving pretty quickly for you guys over the past 10 or so months – putting out
3 tracks, and booking quite a few big festivals – when do you think that things
will start to slow down for you, if ever?”
Sian: I hope
they don’t! [he laughs] Um, I don’t
know. I guess maybe once we put an album out we might see what happens.
Joe: I think
like at the moment, because we’ve just started out, we just wanna play to as
many people as possible…
Sian: Yeah.
Joe: And kind
of get our name out there and catch up with everything that’s going on.
Sian: If
anything we just need to be getting faster really!
Joe: Yeah, I
just think that once we get the album out we’ll sort of know where we are.
“NME named you ‘the
hottest band on the planet’ after releasing just one single! What has been the
most unexpected thing to happen to you since then?”
Sian: [he laughs] I don’t know, just everything! I don’t know, getting signed! We
always obviously thought that it was going to happen when we started getting
interest, but that actually happening – for me it was that.
Joe: Yeah it’s
kind of nice because it means that now that that’s kind of over as well, we can
focus on the band. I think for a lot of people it sort of seems like a starting
point where things start getting a bit serious.
“You have a few tour
dates lined up in Europe soon. Are there any countries in particular that you
have your eye on playing in the future?”
Sian: I just
wanna go all over the world and play. Every country that I could possibly play
in, I want to play it.
Joe: Um, we’re
going to Sweden in August and I’ve always wanted to go to Sweden, mainly
because I like Swedish music and to be close to the home of ABBA as well. It
seems like really sort of a beautiful place and everyone there’s supposed to be
dead nice – I’ve got kind of a soft spot for Swedish people.
“Isn’t Swedish music
more hardcore/metalcore?”
Joe: No there’s a really sort of down-tempo kind of melancholic indie thing going on…
Sian: “Yeah boring,
what?”
Joe: Like The Radio Department – one of my favourite artists.
Sian: I heard
that everyone in Sweden is really tall and beautiful, like universally…
Joe: Well I’ll
fit in then. [both laugh]
“The music scene in
Liverpool seems really strong. Are there any bands that you think that we
should be listening out for from Liverpool?”
Joe: Well, we’re good friends with Dan Croll, who’s just released an album! You live with several of his bandmates don’t you?
Sian: Yeah!
Jacob and Jack, we’re pretty tight with them.
Joe: All We Are – they’ve just signed to Domino. Who else?
Sian: Outfit
aren’t too bad…
Joe: Outfit
are great. But yeah, because it’s such a small city, everyone sort of knows
each other a little bit.
“Each of you had jobs
or went to university before music became your career path – if the band hadn’t
worked out, what do you reckon you would’ve ended up doing?”
Sian: Well I’d just be lacking a job like when I joined the band, so I’d probably still be in the midst of that to be honest [he laughs]. I’d be crying and yeah I’d be very upset on a day-to-day basis.
Joe: I’d just
take off and find myself somewhere. That seems like something you can do in
your twenties isn’t it?
Sian: Yeah! [In an American accent] Let’s just move
to New York, let’s go do it! [he laughs]
Joe: Go study
some sitar in Delhi.
Sian: Yeah, I
really wanted to do a Masters in Paris, yeah that was my back up plan…
Joe: That
sounds better than this! [laughter] We’ll
get someone else, like if you wanna go and do that, it’s fine.
Sian: I’d probably
end up ten times cooler as well, just from living in Paris.
Joe: Just come
back and then like re-join…
Sian: Take us
to new heights.
