LIFE at the 2018 Live4ever Lounge, South By Southwest Festival (Photo: Paul Bachmann)
It’s not news anymore; the modern world is a scary yet fascinating place.
Specifically, the music industry is an ever-evolving beast, and so both our favourite acts and those that are trying to make a name for themselves are having to think, act and react differently. The beauty of the accessibility of instant gratification music is also a curse; competition is rife, everyone has a platform on which they can be heard, but that actually makes being heard more of a challenge.
Hull collective LIFE have managed to put themselves in a good position leading a wave of exciting new bands that have both creative and logistical control, and are therefore doing it their own way. Live4ever has been following them for a good while now, from making Rare Boots one of our tracks of 2016 to heralding the subsequent debut album Popular Music as one of our favourites of 2017.
We touched base with the band at this year’s South By Southwest Festival in Texas to pick their bones about the next stage of this increasingly exciting career.
It’s good to have you back. We saw you here last year, so how have the last 12 months been?
Last year was great: we brought the album out in May and we were lucky enough to be playlisted on 6Music three times. Then, at the end of the year, we were put in Radio One’s albums of the year next to Jay-Z and all that. We’re just pitching it to America now, that’s what we’re doing this year.
Huw Stephens put us in his Top 20 of the year, two singles from the album were in Steve Lamacq’s tracks of the year – In Your Hands and Popular Music. He’s obviously been a big fan and we owe him quite a lot.
We did more in Europe, did our first headline show in Amsterdam and some really cool festival slots. There’s a good feeling about music right now, the uglier artists that are out on the edges are finally getting recognised so it’s good. We met Idles, and now we’re best friends.
We ran into someone at the British Music Embassy who was calling you their house band. How does that make you feel?
We feel it’s humbling to have that much support, to be called the house band when there’s bands queuing up for a slot on there and we’ve got three.
We see you’re also championing underdogs on your Instagram, so what’s the juxtaposition there about?
We’re proud of being on our own and taking ownership ourselves. It’s where we’re from, the city of Hull. It’s very proud but it seems like an underdog place. It’s hard when you speak about being in a band in Hull, and the industry and the labels and all that stuff, that doesn’t tend to link with Hull.
You don’t go around begging for stuff, we just earn it of our own right and try and do our own thing. If people want to come on board later then we’ll have those conversations, but it’s just about doing it anyway without waiting around for the industry. Hopefully we’re inspiring some of the other bands, and we’ve seen it.
You have to look outwards, take ownership of it and just do it.
It seems like the shows are getting bigger at home.
Yeah, we do our own nightclub pop party and the last one sold out so now we need to look for somewhere bigger. We don’t want to play any old show in Hull, so when we put it on we want to make it all about LIFE. It was a mix of bands, but we hosted it.
Is there something in particular you’re coming out here to achieve?
Because the album did so well in the UK with the resources we had at our disposal, we’d like to see the same again in America. (The record is) fast but it’s instant, so the idea is to get it out across America like we have done in the UK and Europe. That’s one of the aims for being out here for a week. We’re in that networking frame of mind.
But you’re still completely DIY in everything you’ve achieved so far?
We just got a manager two/three weeks ago, which has been great because it’s been a lot of work so far in terms of all the stuff people don’t ever think about being in a band, so it’s kind of a weight off our shoulders. Not that we’d stop working. That drives us on as well. But it’s come at the right time for us.
We got to a point where we could self-manage, but bringing on a manager that will work with us is good. We want them to be on board with what we’re doing long-term, and that’s what’s happening. We’ve never been against working with the industry, we’re just against the pre-historic way of working.
Are you guys warming up to streaming services?
That’s just the way the industry’s going. It’s hard because you don’t want to align yourself with that, but at the same time you still need it. It’s Catch-22, but for a band like us to say no to Spotify would just be ridiculous.
It seems like every day there is something new happening in the world. Are you getting material out of it?
I think we were interested in politics. It’s not like we’re sat with a notepad watching the news, but it all filters into what we see and what we do. With our lives, and who we know in England, and just generally the political climate, that informs it.
We don’t set out to write political songs, but because we’re naturally engaged anyway it just comes into the music that we make. There are bands that do that, but for that comes across as more fake, whereas for us it’s all very natural.
What do you think is the power of young people’s voices?
There’s a lot of young people who are angry at not having a voice at the moment. Recently we went to a conference which was about politicians and young people and how the gap is so vast. There’s a lot of ground movements coming in the UK as there are in the US. We say every night on stage that the young people are the most important resource this world has. They are the ones that are going to keep it spinning.
We see it a lot in Hull, a lot of the young people we work with are really passionate. We’re seeing more bands form in the studio where we work to be more political, more diverse, speaking up about themselves, about their lives. Just being a bit more daring and risky.
There’s definitely been a change, and politicians need to be aware of that and need to be asking working class young people, ‘what’s the future of the country?’. There has to be a change in how we look at things.
Are you writing anything new?
We’re currently working on six or seven demos, we’re getting a chunk of work done for the second album which we’re hoping to get out first thing next year. We’ve got a few things, festivals and stuff, but the main aim is to get the body of work done so we can push on.
We don’t want to lose momentum with music, it’s great to be playing live but we want to be releasing the next album. A lot of the new set has got a lot of new songs, so that’s a great way of testing how they are.
Lastly, have you got any good stories to share with us?
I (Mez) had a bad experience in Hamburg. I ended the night sh***ing everywhere, I sh*t myself in the bed. I didn’t mind it, it kept me on edge on stage. I was using muscles I’d never used before…
(Words: Richard Bowes)
