Never Be Your Woman

Drums Interview article!

I had to cut so much out which was a bit rubbish...but here's the final.

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This being my first interview and all I was really quite nervous about chatting to Jacob and Jonathon from The Drums after their set on the Nottingham leg of the NME tour, so after possibly a bit too much Dutch courage I sat them down for a chat in their toothpaste coloured tour bus...

Rachel: What a great set guys, how did you find it in there?
Jonathon: Yeah it was a lot of fun! You do sort of forget what’s going on though.
Jacob: Sometimes I look around and see someone looking at me and I’m like “Oh yeah right there are people here...”

Rachel: How are you finding the tour so far? And how do you like Nottingham?
Jacob: Glad I haven’t been shot yet. I hear you have to be tough to live here.
Jonathon: It’s been good. Tour has been really great, a just to be on this tour for us is such an honour very exciting, and yeah it’s been very exciting.

Rachel: Yeah I heard you did 3 gigs in one night in Manchester the other day...
Jonathon: That was crazy; it felt right that we should do that. A few of our favourite bands of all time are from that place so to be there and to play, it was amazing. Our first set was pretty proper, our second set was quite sloppy and by the end we were just throwing drums into the crowd, I was singing into two microphones, Jacob was on the floor crying. It was a downwards spiral. But to us the more sloppy the better.

Rachel: Yeah, that sounds like a wicked night. How do you find the British audiences compare to others crowds?
Jacob: Younger. In the US you have to be 21 to get into any show, there are like drunken 14 year olds in there. But yeah they are great. Here, there is such an openness from the people, much more so than the US. This tour has been just wild.

Rachel: Now this year you’ve been voted #4 on the BBC Sound for 2010 list and you have been tipped for greatness by NME, what do you think of the hype surrounding you? And how do you cope with that?
Jacob: It’s flattering, but it doesn't affect any sort of process with us, we just continue to do things the same as we ever had. So it’s nice and it’s flattering but it doesn't change anything
Jonathon: It was never our goal for this to happen. People are always like “oh wow it’s your dreams coming true” but we never actually dreamed this would happen.
Jacob: The dream came true when we started the band, when we wrote our first song. That’s why people can get into the live shows because we are legitimately excited about the music, we really believe in it so I think it comes across well in the shows. That’s what we consider our greatest achievement rather than being this number or that.

Rachel: Why do you think you have been so widely accepted and acknowledged?
Jonathon: I think one reason is that people have been dealing with a lot of music but no songs recently. I feel we are trying to reintroduce the song. We just strip away the experimental intros and the over clever lyrics and simply show how powerful a simple pop song can be. That’s why all our songs are like 3 minutes or less, we try to be very dynamic within the constraints of that time. We put limits on ourselves. There haven’t been any rules for so long and when limits are set on you, you are forced to be creative within them and I think that’s how you can get such a dynamic result within those limits. There’s nothing more powerful than a strong simple lyric with a simple melody and when they come together your heart breaks and it’s like everything’s perfect and that really gets us excited.
Jacob: Adding to much over that just covers it up. A lot of people have the perfect melody with the perfect lyric and they go and ruin it, almost hiding it. It’s that simplicity which is really important to us. A lot of great songs out there are really muddied up by so much junk on them. We think we have a very strong vision and as soon as you get someone else’s opinion in it, it just waters it down so quickly and we wanted to keep our work so potent, not watered down at all.

Rachel: So you were talking about your influences from Manchester, who would you say are the biggest influences on the band?
Jonathon: We love The Smiths and Joy Division, we love Orange Juice all that type of stuff is very influential to us, we grew up listening to that kind of stuff so it’s such an honour to play these places, as an American band to come over and to be kind of embraced.
Jacob: It’s quite edifying, you know, when you grow up being very inspired by something, you wonder what Peter Hook or Debbi Harry would think about your music and for us to meet them and then for them to say that they really likes us, rather than you suck is really great.

Rachel: Wow having icons such as Peter Hook and Debbi Harry in your fan base is such a massive accolade. What’s next on the cards to further your fan-base? Can you tell me a bit more about the LP and future singles?
Jonathon: Like our first song off the album is called ‘Best Friend’. Basically Jacob and I were best friends and wrote it together. We said “lets write about being best friends” as hokey as that sounds. But then we made the song a bit more grim and it’s about Jacob dying and him still being my best friend through death.
Jacob: I think it’s about the idea that we are all really miserable but we don't take ourselves very seriously or take our misery too seriously. All of us are going to die eventually so we thought we’d make light of it.

Catch The Drums this year touring with Florence + The Machine and doing the rounds on the festival circuit, with their album out in June 2010.

Yay.
Much Love Rx