Talent oozes out of every pore of the city of Leicester these days – famous, ground breaking historians, multi-talented Premier League winning footballers, and, perhaps best of all, the most vibrant live music scene that the East Midlands has experienced in a very, very long time. Right at the forefront of this flourishing city, there is the outstanding We Three And The Death Rattle…
You’re just putting the finishing touches to your new album. How has that been going?
Jon: Good. It’s taken…how long has it been since the last one? Two years. It’s funny because we formed, and then we had two years where you would expect that time to have been reserved for writing songs and beginning to progress a little bit, but we were jumped on really, really quickly. After about three weeks we were in The Guardian and on XFM and just lots of things like that – we went out on the road with Josh T Pearson and The Kills and things like that, and it gave us…great experience, but what it DIDN’T do was give us much time to find our feet. We had, like, two years where we were thinking “Oh yeah! this is what it’s always going to be like! We’re always going to get all these great gigs!” but then there comes a point when you realise that’s not the case – and this is kind of what’s reflected in the new album title, Entrances And Exits. Part of that was related to films, where we were thinking about the greatest film entrances and exits, but also when a band forms, they get a massive buzz around them, and then when they break up, or when they get back together, there’s a massive buzz around them then too. But then there’s the ‘in between period’ where you’re kind of cut adrift.
So things were moving a little TOO quickly for you?
Andy: Yeah. We got invited to John Kennedy’s show on XFM, and we weren’t really ready. We weren’t prepared at all, and all of a sudden we’re in a room that’s no bigger than what you can see in the corner here (we were in a local pub) and we’d got a full drum kit and guitar and everything, but if we’d known it would be like that, we would have done something stripped down. And I was playing drums right next to John Kennedy on the show! It didn’t really work.
And even Nick Cave came to see you at a show, right? I read an interview somewhere online where you said he was “like an irritable Sid James“. Say what?
Jon: He was standing at the bar, and he was with his wife, and everybody was kind of like…standing away from him…
Amy: When anyone went near him, you could see he would kind of grimace and go (sighs)…
Jon: Yeah, and eventually I just thought “Oh fuck it, I’m going to go and say hello to him” because we’ve got mutual friends who know him a little bit and work with his band. Whenever you meet someone you really respect, you always hope they’re gonna be cool and he was obviously wanting to be like “Oh fuck off!“, but he didn’t say fuck off, so I asked if I could have a photo. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that, but I thought I can’t pass that opportunity up, and as I got close to him, his face really reminded me of Sid James, and I couldn’t shake it! But we took this photo and he sort of tolerated me, but then as I was walking off, he kind of (makes hand gesture) shook me away, and I just smirked and thought “That’ll fucking teach me!”
Your last album was mixed by The Sylvia Dream. I’m guessing that’s Sylvia Plath related?
Amy: I think that probably is where he’s dreamt it up from, yeah. He basically just knows what we want to sound like. He ‘gets us’.
Jon: It sounds a lot more glamorous than it is. It’s basically just a home studio. He’s just a mate of ours called Dave who goes by that name.
We did about eight songs at first in a studio in Liverpool, and they sounded good, but it was before Amy was in the band and it kind of all imploded. I think we only actually kept one track from that time, ‘Double Or Quits’, and the rest of them got binned. And then we did one track with Jamie from Maybeshewill at a studio here, and me and Andy weren’t getting on very well at the time. Everything was messed up…
Sibling rivalry?
Jon: No, not rivalry really. We just weren’t in the right headspace to do it, for various reasons. It was about six months after our dad had died and I was taking a lot of drugs; I’d just got divorced and I’d just had a son with someone I’d only just met. So personal situations were just horrendous. But then Amy joined after that, and we got offered the Josh tour and the dates with The Kills and things really started coming together. What was good about that was that at least we found our feet playing live, and when we came to record, we thought “Ok, we don’t want to go to a studio, we want to be with someone who understands us, that we can be honest with“. So we went to Dave and the first thing he recorded was ‘Split Lips‘, and we just thought “THAT’S how we want everything to sound“.
Andy: Things like that make you realise why bands like Pixies stick with one producer. And we took back a lot of control too, because we were being asked to do things we didn’t really want to do for a lot of the time before that, like turning up to shows with people we weren’t really suited to. We did that show with Slaves at the Bull & Gate which was just the most miserable thing we’ve ever done. Not because of them though! Just because the promoters were arseholes and we were tired and had done too many gigs. So we took a break and did another band (Ex Comets) for about a year and a half, which is why the new album has taken so long. But it gave us the enthusiasm back for this.
An awful lot of your song titles and lyrics seem to focus on illness and afflictions…
Jon: I guess that’s just kind of where your mind goes. I’ve suffered from mental illness but I’m not a massive fan of talking about it. I’ve always suffered from it though, from about the age of seven. But then I think “what would I be without it?“. Stephen Fry summed it up perfectly when he said it’s painful but he wouldn’t give it up.
So he’s an inspiration to you?
Jon: Yeah. It’s not always music that we take inspiration from. Books, art, life in general, all these things can inspire you. Look at Breaking Bad – something with such amazing creativity can be used as a massive weapon against mental illness. It really helped me through it, you know, because it’s so intense and draws you in so much, you almost like you feel like you’re actually IN the show. Me and Amy watched it together in a very short space of time. It really helped me a lot.
And so, as I left We Three And The Death Rattle to pose for photographs with God Is In the Tv photographer Paul Reno, I picked up a pint of Heisenberg and a packet of meth on the way out, before being attacked by a smartly dressed, politely spoken but menacing looking bloke with a box cutter. No hang on, that’s not right….hmmm…I see what Jon meant.
