Interview: Don Broco [November 2014]

This week, the mighty Don Broco have unleashed their (quite literally) explosive new video for ‘Money Power Fame’, and it’s just a sign of what’s to come for them in 2015. We had a chat with frontman Rob Damiani to find out how the album’s coming along, how psyched they are to get back into playing shows, and more importantly, how Rob has become  at one with the animals. A cow whisperer, if you will. Yes Don Broco!

HOW’S RECORDING GOING?

We’ve been on lockdown for the last few months because we’ve been in the studio, but it’s good. We’ve probably only got two weeks left now and it’s really fun. We’re in this place called Banbury, which is a little village near Oxford, and it’s right in the middle of the countryside. We’ve never been in a live in studio before. You’re right there with fields around you and the studio is a converted stable and there are horses here as well. I didn’t realise how much I liked horses before. I’d never really met that many. Walking through from where we sleep to the studio, we have to walk through the stables, so you give the horses a little pat on the nose every morning, say hi, and there are dogs running around as well, so it’s got a proper countryside farmyard feel to the place, which definitely puts me in a good mood. It’s been a very nice experience.

I’M IMAGINING SOME HORSEY GUEST STARS ON THE ALBUM NOW.

Yeah, a really harsh hoarse ‘horse’ vocal. I went for a run the other day through this field of cows and they started running towards me which was so scary, but I jumped over this wall they couldn’t get to, and they all just came up. I wish I’d had my phone to record it. There were about 100 cows and they all came up to the wall. They weren’t angry or anything, but as soon as I came in their field they all started trotting towards me quite quick, not too threatening, but at a slightly scary pace, but then when I jumped over the wall they gathered around and put their noses up and were staring at me for ages. I went back there the other day with my folks to try and see if they’d do it again but this time they all stayed where they were and started mooing. So I recorded it and I took it back to the guys and said, “Surely we can sample this somehow, put it really quietly in the mix or something. Just as the track’s ending, you have to really turn it up to hear a random moo”, but unfortunately, the majority rule said we weren’t allowed cows on the song.

DEVASTATING! YOU’RE NOW AT ONE WITH THE ANIMALS. YOU’RE THE COW WHISPERER.

It’s just that I’ve never seen animals so close before. They’re a real collective. They don’t seem to have their own personalities, cows, they all just stared at me at the same time in the same vacant cow starey way, and I thought they must have some kind of mental connection that said, “Right, we’re gonna stare Rob out”.

ASIDE FROM THE COWS AND HORSES, HOW’S THE ALBUM SOUNDING? WHAT CAN WE EXPECT?

It’s sounding very good. We’ve got all of it down apart from the vocals for me to do now. This week is the first time we can really get an impression of the whole thing. It’s very exciting, we’re massively stoked with it. It’s the first time we’ve been in a proper studio, and Simon has loved trying out all the crazy guitar tones. It’s the kind of fattest sound we’ve ever had as a band. It’s full and loud and massive, which is really cool because before – the last album we did round our mate’s on the cheap, and it was cool and it was fun, but this time we’ve been able to really capture that live band sound, which is so satisfying. It was good to take some time to really nail it. I think it just sounds more live than our previous stuff, so real and heavy-sounding, but not in a “We’ve done it on our computer” way.

THERE WERE SO MANY BANGERS ON ‘PRIORITIES’. DID YOU FEEL MUCH PRESSURE TO FOLLOW IT UP?

Yeah, I guess there was, but any pressure was pressure we put on ourselves. With ‘Priorities’, those were the only songs we wrote for the album and we just recorded it, but this time we wrote a load more. We had ideas for about 100 songs, but there are about 16 finished songs to choose from, and it’s the first time we’ve ever had the option to do that, so that’s gonna be quite hard whittling them down, because every song we’ve written and liked. We love all the songs, it’s just a matter of choosing the best ones for the album as a whole. My favourite albums are the ones that take you on a bit of a journey and speak to you in different ways: a party song, and then the next track is more of a sombre one, and then there’s one you only listen to in your room when you’re going to sleep, and there’s another one you wanna put on before you go out. We wanted to write an album that people can relate to in different ways, so it’s a quite varied-sounding record I think.

WHEN ARE YOU AIMING TO HAVE IT OUT BY?

Originally we wanted to have it out now – that was the original plan – and then that didn’t happen, so I think it’ll definitely be before summer. Aiming for Easter time I think. That’s probably more realistic. Any time between Easter and summer I can live with. I just want it out now because it’s so close to being finished. I think by that point I’m gonna be driving myself crazy. A lot of the songs haven’t changed much and they’ve been finished since summer. Anything later than this summer I think I’ll go mad and start trashing my room or something. When there’s so many people involved it’s so easy for it to be pushed back a week, and then another week, so we’ve learnt that when stuff goes out of your hands, you can’t always have it the way you want, which is horrible but I guess it’s for the best.

AND THEN OBVIOUSLY YOU’RE DOING A BIG HEADLINE TOUR IN FEBRUARY…

Yeah, that’s the thing that’s been keeping us sane over the past few weeks of not having anything out, is knowing that we’ll be playing and we can play some new songs then, so that’s gonna be wicked. We haven’t played shows since the You Me At Six tour which was Easter I think, so we haven’t played properly since April, and that was only a week or two, so getting back on the road is a massive thing for us. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. Playing live is our most enjoyed thing about being in a band, so this coming year we can hopefully make up for not getting to play much in the past year. That tour is gonna be sick: Bury Tomorrow, We Are The In Crowd and Beartooth – it’s such a fun line up, and it’s quite nice that we’ve been trusted as such a young band to headline.

SO, YOUR NEW VIDEO FOR ‘MONEY POWER FAME’…

Yeah, we filmed it a month ago now, which was quite fun because we hadn’t done any videos for a while either. It was nice to do something a bit different: jump around, get your make up done, act like an idiot for a little bit and pretend you’re in a movie for a couple hours, so that was cool. We did it up in Manchester and it rained a lot. We had to wake up at 6am or something ridiculous. We drove up to Manchester the night before and we didn’t get there til 2am and we had to get up at 6am. Then because it was raining we had to wait until 2pm to do any filming, so that was a bit of a ballache, but once it got rolling it was really fun. It’s one of the earliest songs we wrote for the album. We actually recorded it in the summer and it was the one that we were most excited about. We got to play it at Reading and Leeds for the first time, so that was cool. It’s a big fun live song and it really kicked off in the pit which is good because we were all a little nervous playing it for the first time at Reading. It is tough sometimes when you play a new song and you imagine the crowd standing there with blank expressions on their faces. We always expect the worst but luckily it went the other way and everyone got into it straight away which is cool.

AFTER THE ALBUM COMES OUT, WILL YOU BE DOING MORE TOURS ONCE PEOPLE HAVE HEARD IT?

Yeah, definitely. Nothing planned yet. We’re still focusing on this tour in February, but we’ll be pushing to do as many tours as we can because we’re just so keen. Hopefully we can play in the UK and maybe even some places abroad. We love going to Europe. The last time we did it was two years ago so that’s gonna be fun, and maybe try playing some places we’ve never been to. We love our little road trips.

LAIS MW