Post War Years: Interview: Old Blue Last

Photo by Tim Cochrane

Other than that one hit wonder Nizlopi with their mind numbing ‘JCB Song’, Leamington Spa is not really a town synonymous with musical history, although I have been assured the town has a thriving music scene today and if the recent graduates of the scene are anything to go by that could well be true.

One band in particular to catch the attentions of the music press and blogospere alike are 4-piece Post War Years who for the last 3 years have been touting their beat focused ambient music with inclusions of careful flecks of dance contrasting against the indie themes laden across most tracks. 

According to the bands short biographical account, they live together in an old Russian Social Club in London, where they can usually be found creating big beats in the kitchen, professing the story of how they got together is less interesting than trying to work out how many cats it would take to attack and overwhelm a fully grown man. They have also been known to dabble into the realms of djing on occasion and are prolific bloggers whose accounts of the day to day existence of the band is a worthwhile read for anyone who wants entertaining. 

Last year they put out their debut EP ‘Black Morning’ and since a 14 date tour supporting White Lies have been holed up in their home studio producing and putting the finishing touches on their soon to be released album, working title ‘The Beef’ (if you believe the musings in their blog).

For any fans of intelligent music in the same ilk as Foals, Joy Division and in some respects fellow new comers Plugs, then Post War Years are essential listening with their fluid displays of dark atmospherics, electronic influences, and harmonized bass; in essence music you can dance to and music you could chill to and most importantly music far outweighing anything else other bands their age are producing.

At a show supporting We Have Band in London, we caught up with Tom (bass and vox) and Fred (drums) before they played to a packed Old Blue Last.

4orTheRecord – So Post War Years, great name by the way does it have a significant meaning to you?
Tom – [laughs] Er well no actually the secret is the name doesn’t actually mean anything.
Fred – Yeah but it’s a positive name you know, post war years, the war is over, hopefully a time of replenishment and that sort of thing.  To be honest we just went with it because we had a gig and needed a name.

4TR – Do you really live in an old Russian Social Club?
Fred – Yeah we do, well it’s half and half because the other half was a hairdressers. 
Tom – It’s a really cool space, which has got like a warehouse at the back where my sister has got an art gallery/space and then we live together and have a rehearsal room round the back.

4TR – So I read you write in you kitchen, which conjures up quite interesting imagery of you 4 sat in your Russian Social Club/ hairdressers writing and recording your material!
Fred – [laughing] Well that’s kind of true, I mean we have 3 song writers in the band so writing can happen anywhere you know, there can be 3 songs being written in 3 separate rooms at any particular time.  And then I’m just there redundant, playing drums alone…

4TR – Having 3 songwriters must obviously have it’s pros and cons, but do you find you all think similarly when creating new material?
Tom – It was a problem to start with, but the longer we’ve spent together the better it’s got.  You end up listening to the same stuff, seeing the same things and hearing the same bands, so now we are all writing stuff that is pretty coherent, which hopefully is coming across well.  We used to worry that like every song would be really different, but then alot of people seem to tell us now that they don’t know who is singing on different tracks, which for us is just completely removed from before.
Fred – Yeah I think our sound is getting more cohesive from sharing influences, [laughing] I mean there used to be a kind of North/South divide between kind of Oasis fans and Blur fans in the group but that’s no longer true thank God!

4TR – Do you find that because everyone is very involved in the song-writing process, you get protective or into arguments over how the finished product is going to sound?
Tom – It definitely happens, I mean you’ve got to argue about certain bits really. I guess if someone brings a song or an idea out, then they kinda have a bit of possession over it; we kind of worked out that you have final say on the thing you started.
Fred – We have little clashes as well about pointless details because everyone obviously has an opinion.
Tom – [laughing] Yeah, generally it’s stuff like over the sound of a snare or something like that. Because we are producing all of the album ourselves, we can sit around for like 3 hours just listening to the sound of a snare on it’s own, someone will be going ‘no there is just a little bit too much ring’ and someone else will say ‘oh no I like the ring’ or ‘I reckon if you just put a little bit more eq on the top end it will sound better’.

4TR – Why have you chosen to do the production yourselves?
Fred – Money basically and the fact we are control freaks! With 3 songwriters you have such a clear idea of how you want it to sound anyway, so getting another body in is quite difficult.  We want someone to help us with some post production because they’ve got more experience and can bring a fresh light to things, but overall I think the 4 of us have quite a clear idea of how we want things to be so there’s no point in getting someone else involved.

4TR – You put your debut EP ‘Black Morning’ out on Chess Club, will that relationship be continuing?
Tom – Yeah we want to put another single out on Chess Club around February, because we will have the album in the bag by then so will want to get a single out first.  Also we did a tour with White Lies and recorded our set in Leamington Spa, so we want to hopefully release the live recordings kind of under the radar as well.
Fred – They are on our MySpace at the moment, that’s in the pipeline at the moment and we might be putting them out on Zarcorp, which is Late of the Piers’ imprint label.  It’s more about us having something to sell ‘cos we are bored of not having anything.
Tom – Yeah last time we went out on tour we didn’t have any vinyl or music to sell because we sold out of our first single.  You can try and sell t-shirts but if you are a band you really want your music to give to people.
Fred – Well that’s what is hopefully going to bring them back to see you again and buy more music and put food on our table.

4TR – I heard a rumour you might be playing at SxSW this year, can you confirm that?
Tom – Yeah we will hopefully be going providing we get the visa and everything else sorted.
Fred – Fingers crossed, I have never been to America so I’m like well excited about the prospect of going and playing the festival.

4TR – Will you play some extra dates in the States whilst you are out there?
Tom – I think we’re hoping to do a few dates in New York maybe around the same time as SxSW.
Fred – Hopefully we’re gonna to do some dates with We Have Band actually, but nothing is concrete.  Ideally we will try and pull in some American labels and agents to see what we can kind of get out of playing something like SxSW over there.  But for us the album coming out over here is the most important thing for the time being.

4TR – Now that you’re making your LP have you found a continuation of your sound from ‘Black Morning’ or is it taking a different direction?
Tom - It will be more in line with the stuff we have been doing, actually I reckon since ‘Black Morning’ I there is a bit of a sound emerging and I hope that when the album comes out it’ll sound cohesive.  It’s like with the synths, we have kind of settled on a particular sound which will probably end up defining us a little but hopefully on our next album who knows, we will probably get rid of all of that and redefine ourselves again. 

4TR – So you mentioned you went on tour with White Lies, was that a good experience?
Fred – Absolutely wicked, those guys are fantastic and we just had a laugh.  To be honest it wasn’t like some crazy tour though ‘cos we were having to travel so often, so there weren’t mad parties every night or anything.
Tom – For us it was just nice to do a proper consecutive date tour and be on the road, ‘cos we hadn’t really done that before and it gives you a kind of different experience.  There’s something really fun about going around in the van with 3 other guys; you go slightly insane and kind of just weird.
Fred – Weird from not sleeping properly and sleeping at random friends or friends of friends places around the place, it was definitely an experience.
Tom – [laughing] As ever we tried to do it on the cheap!

4TR – You keep people up to date with the band through regular blog updates, which are very entertaining and sometimes downright weird, but throughout you spend time bigging up other bands.  Do you think that’s an important aspect of being in the industry today?
Fred – I think it’s a really important thing to do, showing support for other people doing the same thing as you.  I always think if i'm not sort of talking about bands that I rate then why should anyone talk about us, it’s almost a karma kind of thing. [laughing] I'm not sure that it really works but it’s important anyway.

4TR – So any Post War Years tips?
Tom – Obviously We Have Band, who I think are going to do really well.
Fred – Some friends of mine Goldheart Assembly just got a ones to watch thing in NME recently, they are kind of bit more standard rock but they have got a really good thing going on; then White Lies and obvious people like Micachu.  Peoples Person Club are a band from Leamington who are great guys doing something a bit different and cool.
Tom – God there are just hundreds though, what about Plugs they are great and Wave Machines, check them out too.
Fred – Yeah Wave Machines have just done their 2nd Chess Club release and did a fantastic set in one of the little rooms at the Royal Albert hall with Micachu supporting them, which was amazing.

4TR – Did you get much radio airplay from your first single and EP?
Fred – Huw Stevens played us, in fact it was the Zane Lowe show actually, but Huw was filling in for Zane and then he got us in for a live session, which was amazing.  Going to Maida Vale was a bit of a dream come true, one to tick off the list!
Tom – And importantly it was received really well.  We don’t really write singles you know, which is bad because we probably really need to write like that tune that people buy into and will then buy the album off the back of it.

4TR – So we have talked about the 3-songwriter element of Post War Years but another unique factor is how you swap instruments about on different tracks; could you not each decide on a particular instrument each?
Fred – We started off with 2 guitars, bass and drums and then we started messing around with looping things and then just started buying more and more gear and experimenting in the group.
Tom – I personally think it’s because we can get really bored really quickly with things, for example guitars are good when you pick it up at first, and you learn all the chords and then you get it to do different stuff; but then I find I fall out of love with it a bit and think I can’t really get any more inspiration because I know what I am going to do when I pick it up.  The great thing about synths and samples is that you can make a sound that’s really exciting and then it plays itself.  That sounds a bit wanky but I think it gives you inspiration to do something different.
Fred – I grew up with a lot of dance music and then a lot of indie, so completely guitars on one hand and then completely programming on the other.  Now a lot more bands are starting to put the 2 elements together, you know you have got bands like Metronomy and Plugs also working with backing tracks and live stuff in really interesting ways.  You have got all these different elements coming together which I think is probably the future and at some point probably people will be using weird new instruments that haven’t been invented yet.
4TR – People like Micachu are already doing that to some extent!
Tom – Yep exactly, and as well as that people are using a lot more loops and laptops on stage, and now even music software is quite cheap, so you can make your own album quite cheaply and then you can play that album quite cheaply, which has had quite an impact on modern music.

[At this point Fred had to go and sound check]

4TR – So because of all the new elements to live music that you have mentioned, do you think you can categorise your sound at all for someone that has never heard of PWY?
Tom – I guess it has got dance elements in it, it’s got disco beats, and it’s got a strong indie theme in the way we sing and with the core song writing. But saying that I think we are very hard to classify but then every band says that don’t they! What would you say we are?
4TR - I wouldn’t put you in the dance category because I think there are so many different sounds coming out of every song you play that are not dance related.  It’s like a genuine mash up of different elements, different genres and different sounds.  I think it’s more acceptable to classify certain songs more than Post War Years as a particular genre or sound.
Tom - That is definitely a good thing for us because I think once we have done this first album and what we are doing now, I reckon we will get bored again and try to do something different.  Again alot of bands say that but I would like to think that the next album might be radically different, [laughing] like a folk inspired album or a chilled out acoustic album or I might pick up a guitar and go oh yeah the guitar I love this instrument again.  Ultimately I don’t think we want to be pigeonholed in the long term, I mean even we don’t know ultimately what we are.

4TR – And what then makes you different from other bands?
Tom – I think an important thing is our live show.  Most importantly we trigger all of the samples and stuff live, which is quite a big thing ‘cos a lot of bands don’t do that and I think that’s wrong, for me that isn’t live music.  Ok sometimes when it’s live it can sound a bit shit and you can’t hear the vocals for example, or you might drop a beat or you might just fall over or miss a note, there’s loads of things that can go wrong, but that’s a good thing, that’s what live music is all about. 

4TR – Loads of arguably flattering comparisons have been made between PWY and British bands like Foals and Joy Division, so how do you feel about that considering the phenomenal success they have had at different times? 
Tom - I think it’s really good for us, I mean occasionally someone will make a comparison which we can’t see or which we kind of think well we definitely weren’t going for that, but generally it’s amazing.  At the same time it’s probably a good thing that no-one has completely hit it on the head in my opinion.


Interview by Francesca Strange
Images by Gareth Jackson – www.myspace.com/jacksonfoto

Caiden
Posts: 1

EqaSojHoahFRXgyAI
Reply #1 on : Wed July 13, 2011, 15:22:38

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There’s ntoihng like the relief of finding what you’re looking for.

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