Punktastic caught up with YOUNG GUNS frontman Gustav Wood ahead of the release their new album ‘Bones’, which is out today.
First things first, are you looking forward to everyone hearing ‘Bones’?
It’s always such a long, drawn out, protracted process to actually complete the record, so at this point it’s always like “fuck! get it out there” – thankfully it’s out in two weeks or so and it’s light at the end of tunnel so yeah I’m really excited.
You went out to Thailand to record this time around. How different was the process compared to the last record?
It was different in every single possible way. It was definitely our goal to write a different record and it was instrumental in allowing us to do that. It was a completely different environment and it inspired us to do something else and to go forward and change as a band. It was never our goal to completely change who we are but to simply move forward and evolve. You always want to try and keep yourself interested, and having written ‘All Our Kings are Dead’, it wasn’t a desire in our group to tread the same ground – going to Thailand was a huge part of being able to do that. Apart from anything else, it was a different studio. Recording out there instead of a little room in Old Street was a culture shock in many different ways, but it was incredible – the space and studio we used [were excellent] and we got taken really good care of. It was like putting our toes in the water of a different world and that was really inspiring..
Before you left for Thailand, how much pre-production did you do, and did the songs change quite a bit once you were there?
We took about two and half months off to write in mid April to June, and when we started sitting down and properly writing the record we had a few ideas. We were quite prolific, but at that point we weren’t writing a lot that felt new and and exciting enough – we were pushing ourselves to be creative in new ways and do something we hadn’t done before. What we ended up doing was moving around quite a bit. We ended up writing in people’s houses, in the van, writing on our own on laptops, three of us borrowed a place for a week and we borrowed Dan Weller’s studio in London for a while, so the writing/pre-production process was kind of a messy affair. Eventually, we went over there with most of the album [complete] but left it open ended because we wanted to use the place to be inspired. On the last song on the record, ‘Broadfields’, we set aside one night to use the studio with an aim to put the whole thing down with a live feel. The writing, pre-production and recording all mushed together in the end and it was quite a free flowing process.
You’ve recently announced a club tour around the release of the album. Was that something you were keen to do to try out the new material now that it’s been a few years since you headlined venues that size?
To go from the last headline run we did to this one is such a shift – our last headline in London was at the Forum and our next one is at the Borderline – but as music fans, we were raised on small, sweaty shows and they were such a large part of our life growing up that there’s always an appeal about them. The record is like starting again in some ways and it just felt appropriate to do it properly. I think the idea as well is that the majority of people who will be at those shows will be people who’ve been with us for a while and have been to the larger shows, so it’s a nice and romantic idea to reconnect with what it is to be doing smaller shows as a band and keep it organic. It wasn’t about booking the biggest rooms that we put on sale half a year in advance and seeing how many tickets we could sell, it was about hitting the road again and doing it the “right” way.
Have you ever played as early in the morning as you’re going to at the earlier Kingston Fighting Cock’s show?
Ha, yeah! Fucking hell – it’s two shows in one day, with the first at midday and the other at 3/4, which is going to be an experience for us which keeps us fresh. Things like that are exciting to us, and it’s even better to start off something like the tour with something new for us. We played our first ever show as a band at the Fighting Cocks – it was terrible – but there’s a really nice cyclical nature of being back there to do two sold out shows. It’s such a great room.
How did you end up picking the support for the tour?
We really like the idea of bringing out friends. We were really lucky to be gifted some great support slots early in our careers, and whilst I’m not saying supporting us is a “great support slot”, we always like the idea of helping out bands that we’re friends with. We’ve known the guys from POLAR for ages, and in fact one or two of them used to be in a band that we played that first ever show at the Fighting Cocks with! Itwas about doing something fun and taking out a band we’re friends with but haven’t toured with before. Tonight Alive we’re mutual friends with too and we just think they’re a really good band so it was great to get them on there too. There wasn’t any real grand strategy behind the support!
‘Bones’ is released today.
More from Gus and YOUNG GUNS at http://www.facebook.com/younggunsuk.
TOM AYLOTT