Last year, we reviewed Oxford band Barrelhaus‘s excellent second album, Azimuth, which further cemented their growing reputation as one of the most exciting rock bands in the UK. I caught up with Marc and Ian from the band to get the lowdown on what rocks their world…
GOD IS IN THE TV: Of all the bands you’ve been compared to, I personally hear Black Sabbath the most, and a fair bit of QOTSA, though you clearly have your own individual sound. How do you avoid slipping into pastiche? You so easily could have ended up just sounding that way, but somehow come out sounding fresh?
BARRELHAUS: I don’t really have an answer for that because we don’t think about it that much. It’s really just about writing and playing, and if you like the sound of what you write, you write something else to go with it. It’s not a question of wanting to sound like this, or that, or anything else. It’s just “I like the sound of that and I’m gonna do it more”, it is nothing more than that. But within that, trying to come up with something that’s interesting, that has a journey, that has unexpected elements and dynamics. If we come up with something that we think “that sounds a bit like this or that,” then we’d probably avoid it. For both of us, there’s very little thought process involved in writing the music. Lyrics, however, are another matter.
GIITTV: What do you think you can achieve as a band, and what would be the pinnacle of success for you, as in, what’s on your bucket list?
BARRELHAUS: Bigger gigs. I think that’s about it. Having even more people come to see us, and having a good time. To be to others what other bands have been to us. Proof is in the pudding. If you’re getting people to come to your shows, that’s great and having shows where people are moving, and everyone’s having a great time. That’s success for us. We could say having more plays/streams, more sales, but ultimately it’s the feet on the floor that show you where you’re at, especially when streaming numbers can be bought.
GIITTV: What can folk expect from a live
Barrelhaus show. What sets you apart from other bands?
BARRELHAUS: I think the fact that all the percussion comes out the PA, there’s no bass player, is one thing that sets us apart. That’s a very different sound, and I think it makes everything sound really tight, sonically. Live drums can be really problematic, and I say that as a drummer. Often, all you can hear is cymbals and nothing else, so it doesn’t always sound particularly percussive, and we don’t have that problem. So I think people will see something that sounds really good because you don’t have lots of things fighting for space. That’s a very technical answer, but I think that has a lot to do with it. Apart from that, the extremely high quality of between-song audience interaction. The blistering socio-economic insights, the groundbreaking humour; it’s all exceptional.
GIITTV: There seems to be an underlying socio-political commentary to several of your songs (unless I’m mistaken). What’s your view on the state of UK politics right now? How would you change things?
BARRELHAUS: We’re both lefties, we’re both disgusted and angered by the phenomena of right-wing thought leadership and how it’s so transparently and purely an attention grab and not about particularly deeply-held beliefs, apart from the supremacy of the self. The previous government exemplified that starkly; the current government is not necessarily doing a brilliant job, but less awful than the last. Given that he way of operating largely relies on support from people who aren’t necessarily as clued up on the issues at hand as they should be, then the way to change that would be education.
GIITTV: Is there a modern-day artist you’d love to collaborate with, and why?
MARC: For me, it would be Bjork. Love Bjork. PJ Harvey would be great. Dave Grohl playing drums with us. Only drums, nothing else. Something with Deerhoof would be fun, no doubt. No heavy bands, because what’s the point of that?
IAN: I’ve been a huge fan of PJ Harvey, The Smashing Pumpkins and Godflesh for quite some time now, so any/all of those would be great. I’d love to co-write a heavy record for PJ Harvey, as for me, she’s one of the UK’s greatest artists.
GIITTV: What can we expect next from Barrelhaus? I feel like a lot of your songs would work brilliantly in movies. Is that something you’d be interested in?
We have as much of an idea of what to expect next as you do because it’s not planned. Ian’s definitely writing in quite a different way for the next one, so that’s exciting, and we’ll see what comes out of that. I’ll just churn out more of the same old crap. It’s a mystery! We’re planning on taking our time, partly out of necessity, partly because we haven’t done that yet and are curious to see what happens. Knowing us, what will actually happen is that we’ll release another album in four weeks’ time, or something. We struggle with patience.
GIITTV: Do you have a favourite track or one that is very personal to you that really hits home whenever you play it?
Pretty much all of Ian’s tracks are very personal. There’s a great deal of catharsis going on there, of vomiting out the poison. Mine tend to be more narrative-driven. So his are the ones that are more emotionally resonant. I’m far more interested in the music than the lyrics, but you have to sing something, right? We love all of our songs, like they were our own errant, unwashed children. The tracks we like the most are the ones that we find the most fun to play, and there’s no real criteria for that. ‘Done’ from the last EP is great, so is ‘Mayday’, ‘Diet Cheese‘, ‘All Aboard’, ‘Pushback’ has been there from the beginning, as has ‘Mud Pie’. I’m not sure whether it’s about emotional resonance when deciding what to play. We’re incredibly shallow people, really. We just want to get sweaty!
https://barrelhausmusic.bandcamp.com/album/azimuth
PHOTO CREDIT: Jon Matthews.
