I remember the first time I heard an Eels record; I was in my stepdad’s car, I was 14 and it was also the first night I’d had Chinese chilli beef strips, so it was obviously a momentous night…

Well I hope it all worked out alright for you!

So E, you played Glastonbury last night and responses on Twitter suggested you were among people’s highlights – how does that feel?

It feels good! That’s nice to hear because it was really hard for us to tell what was going on; we were a little out of our minds really. We’d come all the way from Madrid and been on a bus for about 25 hours by the time we reached Glastonbury and you know, everyone mentally prepares you for a monsoon at Glastonbury but it was the hottest day we’d ever set foot in to. Even though we were on at 7 o’clock in the evening, it was just unbelievably hot, you know, the sun just pointed right at us. We didn’t really know what was going on; a couple of us nearly fainted during the show, including myself, so I hope it all seemed good to the audience. It was very exciting seeing everyone there – so many people.

You’re back on the festival circuit and are coming to Latitude festival too – is there more or less pressure for you playing festival slots? You’re preaching to some of the unconverted…

Well, I don’t think there’s pressure but there is an excitement about it, that you’re out of your comfort zone and to some degree, at your own show you’ve got a lot more control over things; you get to soundcheck, you get to play a whole show to people who’ve paid to see you. That’s what’s fun about playing the festivals – you just go out there, cross your fingers and hope for the best.

I wanted to get an artist’s opinion on politics and music – I was thinking about Bono and his apparent tax evasion; if an artist spends a lot of time on the soapbox, are they allowed to choose when to be quiet?

That’s a good question. I suppose if you’re gonna be very vocal about that kind of stuff then you probably should have to answer to it too.

For you E, you don’t cross into the realms of politics, so we wouldn’t ask you…

Yeah, I’m OK with that, ha.

Is there a wider reason for this World Tour? Are you thinking about writing again?

I have been writing and I’m looking forward to some more writing and some recording, hopefully soon.

Is there a time in the future you’re putting a peg in to have something out?

I don’t know when; I know that I’d like to be working on stuff as soon as possible, but I don’t know when the right time will be to put something out.

This isn’t as serious as politics and scheduling, but it fixates me – your beard; is it at optimum length?

It’s pretty optimum, yeah. I think only once in my life has it maybe been a little bit longer than it is now, but it’s approaching world-record length.

Well, congratulations.

Pretty soon I won’t have to wear pants.

From the Glastonbury coverage I saw, I could see that you were all a pretty hirsute bunch. Is that a pre-requisite of being in the band?

Well, I tend to hire the most musicians and I of course know that talent and facial hair go hand in hand.

I’m trying to grow in a beard myself just to reflect my own talent.

OK, well you must be very talented.

You have an ever-changing line-up. You had the beautiful hairy bunch with you last night, but what’s the reason for the flux?

Well from the beginning I set out to do things that would keep myself interested musically, so from the beginning I set out to have a rotating cast of characters to keep things interesting for me.

There are strange stories surrounding your beard though – it’s a terrorism threat, a fire hazard, but is it you and the beard ‘til the end?

No, me and the beard come and go, you know, we tend to part ways every once in a while and I’m sure we’ll part again.

Your story could be quite encouraging for artists who peddle their wares for a while without achieving the success they desire as there was a fair gap between your original recordings and the success of Beautiful Freak…

Well my first solo release was in 1992 and then there was another one in 1993, so there were a couple of years before Beautiful Freak came out.

Was there enough momentum to keep you going, and feeling like you were on the right track?

No, that two-year period was very difficult for me. The record label dropped me and I could hardly pay my rent and I don’t know how I got through it. It’s amazing to me that it turned out OK.

Is it a strong sense of determination that kept you going, or sheer pig-headedness?

It was a strong sense of determination really; I just didn’t give myself any choice, which can be a difficult way to live when things aren’t going the way you want them to go, but then you know, the combination of determination and some luck worked out for me.

It’s interesting that Beautiful Freak achieved more success in the UK than it did initially in the US on its release – what did you attribute that to?

Did it? I wasn’t aware of that…

You had a higher chart position and sustained it for longer in the UK.

Well I think that’s kinda true for everyone’s records, isn’t it? Except for maybe Lady Gaga or something, haha.

Perhaps for the comparative population, but you’ve always been a celebrated artist in the UK…

Yeah, well the thing is, and this is true of everyone that I know who releases records, that music is just a much more important part of people’s lives in Europe than in America. In America, music’s become a really small part of people’s lives and it’s been replaced by all the other distractions; the internet, TV, video games – anything other than music.

Does it just not have its place? It’s hard for me to get my head around it.

Well no, I think there’s always going to be people who are in to music, and who care about it, but it just became a smaller amount of them.

A friend of mine had ‘My Beloved Monster’ as her first dance wedding song, and it seemed like the most honest and sustainable statement of love to choose. The song is a paean to realism – is that indicative of your view on love?

Yeah, I mean sometimes I feel as romantic as the next romantic fool, but to me the most romantic thing is realistic romantic.

Now E, you have a strong relationship with film, from having your tracks licensed for soundtracks, to scoring the entire film, Levity. Does film and music combined create a stronger force than the two separately?

Sometimes when it works well, it’s interesting to see the song in a film context.

Can you think of a moment where one of your songs has been used to great dramatic effect in film?

Well I thought ‘My Beloved Monster’ in the first Shrek film was used really well.

My favourite album of yours is Electro-Shock Blues, probably because I was introduced to it first, but as I grew older and understood its inspiration, I wanted to ask you whether making music is a necessary thing for you to process emotions?

Yeah, I think it definitely has been in the past, like sometimes the only way I’ve dealt with things I probably should have dealt with them in different ways and it still serves that purpose for me, but I’ve gotten better at dealing with things the way a proper person should, you know.

Wearing your heart on your sleeve is not anything to regret, but yours is just in a very public arena. Has there ever been anything you’ve put on song that you’ve thought, ‘mmm, maybe too far’?

Yeah, occasionally that happens where I won’t release a song because I’ll think, ‘yeah, this doesn’t really offer the world anything’.

And is it you that makes that decision or are there people around you that can give you that advice?

Well in the earlier days, for instance, when I made Electro-Shock blues, my manager at the time didn’t think I should put it out. That was the moment I decided that I was the one that was gonna decide whether to put it out, so I had to get rid of the manager and put the album out.

You’ve released on your own album; is that always a good thing? It’s pure freedom, but you have to cope with the management of yourself…

I’m still learning about that, ‘cause I’ve only really done it with the latest album, so it’s too early to tell you how that story ends, but it seems to make sense so far.

It was an amazing feat to put out the trilogy of albums that you did between 2009-2010, but you were mindful not to tell anybody about the entire concept ‘til they were all released – were you worried about not fulfilling your goal?

Yeah, I wasn’t worried about it, but I don’t like to tell people about anything before I’m sure it’s coming out, because I often do change my mind along the way and decide not to put it out and I don’t want to questioned forever more, like ‘whatever happened to that?!’

With people’s reticence to buy whole albums when they can snatch single mp3s, by making the statement of putting 3 new studio albums out, were you putting a flag in the sand for the long player?

Erm, well I could have made it a triple album, and I didn’t do that at least!

With the differing emotions of the three albums it would have been a hell of a rollercoaster all put together, wouldn’t it?!

I suppose it could have worked, but I wanted them each to be something on their own, and also related to each other. I’m sticking with what I know so far because I’m just a big fan of the album as a form; it’s one I grew up with and I like it. I’m old enough to miss the break between Side 1 and Side 2.

It’s less energetic though now…

That’s true, you know when you play old vinyl albums you realise how quick the side is over!

Just to indulge slightly, although you say you don’t listen to much music when you are writing, but being heavily in festival season, if you were to curate your own, who would you have on your line-up?

Well I’d have to have Tom Waits in there.

How about Peaches? I’ve heard you listen to her a lot – she’s even occasionally got the beard…

Yeah, she could be in Eels! Who else would be good… PJ Harvey. You know, as long as Bob Dylan’s still alive, maybe we should get him in here. Shit, let’s get Neil Young – this is my dream festival so why not? Let’s get some dead people; John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles…

And E, what would you like from us, your Latitude Festival crowd when you bring us a stunning performance?

Well now that’s a very good question, because the number one thing some audiences don’t understand is how big a part of the experience they are. It was all so succinctly and wisely put at the end of a Beatles album; they said “and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”. And what that means to you, Latitude audience, is if you want this to be a kick ass show that you’re never gonna forget, then you have to give us as much as we’re gonna give back to you. If you sit there and don’t give us the love, you’re not gonna get the love back.

Emma Garwood

Eels are part of the Latitude Festival line-up and headline the Word arena on Sunday 17th July. For tickets to the festival, go to www.latitudefestival.co.uk.

So we’re speaking on Friday 13th -
- Woah, I forgot about that.

Are you superstitious?
Sort of, sometimes, in certain situations. The only thing I ever do is that if I want something to happen, like if I’m walking along the pavement, I’ll say ‘right, if I get past that lamppost before that car comes past, then something will work.’ I think that’s more OCD than superstition though!

Does that make for some erratic walking patterns then?
It does; if you see me walking down the street looking like a freak, you’ll know that I’m just playing a little game with myself. I quite like bucking superstitions though, like I’ll put a pair of shoes on the table in front of someone who’s susperstitious, just to buck the idea. 

You’re a bit of a renegade then.
Yes, I’m a superstition renegade. I’ll be pushing you under ladders when I see you.

So it’s Friday night here, but I’ll resort to my very British line of questioning by asking you what time it is there in the US, and what the weather’s like…
It’s half past 11 in the morning and I have actually woken up in Vegas. It’s beautiful – there’s not a cloud in the sky and I’m sure that it’s scorchio outside; it’s great, we’ve got two days in Vegas and two gigs here.

Will you take in some of the Vegas highlights? Some casinos?
Certainly will. I’ve got my little foldy bike with me and so I’m gonna get that out and do a little foldy bike cycling tour of all the hotels in Vegas, gonna go and have a neb at them, go and see the Bellagio fountains and stuff like that.

But of course you might not be a winner tonight with it being Friday 13th.
I wonder if there’s gonna be a whole different gambling vibe, or if it’ll be completely empty, like no-one’s gambling.

You could end up gambling away everything on a night like this – your husband, all your worldy possessions -
- Everything. My foldy bike will be gone. Everything will be gone. I could do a bit of Blackjack though, Blackjack’s my thing.

So obviously your reason for taking in Vegas at the moment is that you’re touring the US at the moment – how are you received in the States?
It’s always been a total thrill for me, coming over here. The Jools Holland show catapulted me in the UK and a similar thing happened on the today show here where I got asked to go and perform. I went into the guy’s office and usually they programme three weeks in advance or something, so I wasn’t really expecting anything. I just played ‘Black Horse’ on my guitar in his office and he said “What are you doing on Friday?!” I was like, “Nothing”. “Well come and play on the show!” So the same kind of thing happened where it just sort of blew up for a bit, then after that ‘Suddenly I See’ got used in The Devil Wears Prada and ‘Black Horse’ got sung by one of the contestants on American Idol, so it just all went a bit mental. I’ve been very grateful about how it’s happened over here and I’ve always had a very successful touring life over here, although this is the first time I’ve done a tour here that’s completely solo; I’m just on stage on my own and I’ve got a bunch of loop pedals, a piano, a tonne of guitars and it’s just been fantastic. This is our fifth week out here and it’s just been great.

Is there anywhere you go KT, that you’re not so well known and do you enjoy playing those places?
The only places I’ve really taken off in Europe has been France and northern Europe, so Switzerland and Belgium – and Holland’s been great as well, but really your Spain and Italy and Germany never really took off with my stuff, so it’s quite weird going from France where it’s great, to just a few miles over the border where I can’t get arrested! What I’d love to do -  ’cause there are fans in those places but it’s not the same as elsewhere – what’d be great is to go back to those places and do this solo show where it’s very easy for me to go and do it.

With you being so well established and having fans everywhere, do you miss the struggle? I know some artists miss the journey of trying to make it…
…Nope. Hahaha, no I don’t ’cause I feel that even when I was on the dole and trying to get somewhere, I enjoyed the gigs; it was a struggle, but I loved the gigs, I loved playing to whoever was in to listen, so for me I feel the same now as I did then, that when I’ve got a room full of people, I’ve got a job to do, to give them a good night out. I don’t really feel differently about that now. I don’t feel a complacency, if anything I feel like I’ve got more responsibility to be kick-arse at what I’m doing because they’ve paid. It used to be that they’d just come to a pub to see me play and now I’ve got between 300 and 2000 people who’ve paid to see me and for me, that’s as exciting as any struggle I used to have, to make sure I’m delivering. In terms of the journey, I just love living on a bus, you know, and sitting in a splitter van and driving to each gig and setting all your stuff up and not having a crew and doing it on your own is hard work and quite lonely, so I absolutely love the lifestyle now I’ve definitely upped my standards! But you know, if it all went to shit and I had to do it again, I’d absolutely do it again and I wouldn’t have a problem with it at all. This tour out in America though has been absolutely brilliant though; there’s just been five of us on a tour bus, the support acts have been jumping on and jumping off            and it’s just been such a great experience. Having some time to see where I am during the day, getting the bike out and going out and about around cities is total heaven, I love it.

The time you took away between writing your second and third albums shows that getting out and seeing the world obviously has an amazing effect on your creativity -
- Yeah, the touring and the playing of gigs is not work, it’s what I want to do with my days and with my nights, but it’s the promoting something is when it feels like work; when you’re repeating yourself in twenty interviews a day and answer questions that you’ve not even thought of yourself, you can turn into a bit of a babbling wreck. It’s almost like it turns into forced therapy because what I’ve noticed about interviews when you bring an album out is often that you get asked more negative questions than you do positive ones, like ‘what was the hardest thing you had to do?’ or ‘did you have any moment where you lost your confidence?’, all these things like that, so you end up feeling like ‘oh my god, I had such a hard time, it was so painful!!’ when it wasn’t you know, haha. For this tour, because I’ve not really done a solo tour before, I said that I’m gonna back off on that stuff and just keep my fingers crossed that people show up; do a few phoners, do a few radio visits, but just keep it as minimal as possible and really enjoy myself and it’s been absolutely brilliant. In the future though I’ll probably have to do a bit more work, haha! I should probably stop being such a lazy cow and get out and do some work, but you know, it’s been fantastic; getting up on stage every night and having people show up has been brilliant.

I think that Tiger Suit is your most interesting and feverish work to date -
- That’s such a good word; no-one’s used that word for the album yet and that’s a great word…

It just kinda creeps under your skin and makes your blood pump a little more, but I wondered when the moment was that you were ready to write again?
Well I didn’t write for nearly the whole time that I was away, the only song I wrote was ‘Ummannaq Song’, which I wrote on the boat in the Arctic and it was unusual for me because it took me quite a few months to finish it and usually I can finish a song in half an hour, so that was weird. It was a really long process, that song; it was really important for me that that was deliberate and the opening track of the record ’cause that song felt like it mapped the progress of me going from having a massive confidence crash and really not knowing if I was capable of impressing myself to the point that I needed to, and finishing the album – it kinda spanned the whole time. Then I started writing really properly when I got to India and we stopped because Luke and I were on a proper absorbtion trip where we just wanted to do everything and take in everything, so it wasn’t about producing and putting out, because that’s what I’d been doing for so long. When we got to India, we sort of slowed down at the end of that trip; we had a week of just doing nothing and being somewhere beautiful and I’d bought a little guitar in New Zealand when we’d been staying in a camper van, so I started tinkering on that. By the time we reached that stop in India, the songs started coming and they were very folky actually; they started off quite gentle and it wasn’t really ’til I got back to Britain and really got my hands dirty and threw myself into it and focused on writing every day that the fiercer and more up tempo stuff started coming out.

You mentioned the folky stuff just then, and obviously you’ve just brought out your ‘Scarlet Tulip’ EP, which explores the gentler side. You’ve described that as a really important body of work for yourself – is that because you now have the confidence to strip it back again?
I think it’s the fact that’s it’s nearly come full circle; that’s the sort of material that I first started writing when I was young. I started off as a finger picker – I had to teach myself how to strum when I was busking because people couldn’t hear me, haha. Now though, rhythm is such an important part of what I do, but it wasn’t always that way and so to go back to just finger picking folk songs, but with 20 years of experience of writing and 20 years of experience of life since I first started playing guitar, it just feels very intimate and personal. It also feels like a bit of a bookmark in a way. The other really nice thing about this record is that it’s completely independent; the label were really great and supportive and said ‘do your thing, release it, we won’t take anything – just do your own thing, we don’t need to be involved’. That’s an absolute gift from a record label to let you do that, so it essentially feels like an independent release. The record has no barcode, it’s got no logos on it, there’s nothing – it’s just a CD in some artwork and it’s for fans. I mean, I’d love for it to do really well, I’d love for as many people to hear it as possible, but I think that it feels really special that it’s this sort of little floating entity that isn’t owned, really. In the usual way, it’s not owned by a commercial process, so in that way it feels very pure. It’s very self sufficient, I mean, I wrote all of these songs during the writing of Tiger Suit, I recorded them all and we just did it in our own solar powered studio at home in the countryside and my friend in New York did the artwork in a day, and that’s it done. It just feels so simple and I love that.

That’s an amazing amount of freedom…
Absolutely, to the point where it’s almost no holds barred. There was no interference at all, or ‘your track listing should be this’, it was pure, unadulterated bliss, which was just such a pleasure.

We were able to hear a few of those songs at your gig in March, and they worked so well within the context of the rest of the gig – we were able to share your journey and it made the experience really multi-dimensional.
Thankyou… I think what it’s made me realise is that there are a lot of very strong female artists at the moment who are toting all bells and whistles, all guns blazing, a proper visual noise beast! It’s all about how it looks and big productions and there’s a lot of very elaborate set-ups at the moment with the successful female artists around. A lot of the time it’s more about fashion and style than it is about music, which is great, but it’s not me. I think it’s made me realise that what’s making me different at the moment is that one woman on stage intimacy, and so I think it’s important to nurture that side of what I do. I’m not gonna do a show where I put on a massive stage set and do three costume changes… well, never say never, haha, I just can’t see it happening at the moment! I think it’s just about taking care of something that I do that people really like.

You have a Norwich connection now KT with your husband coming from Norwich, and with you coming back to Latitude, can you give us a memory of Norwich you have?
Well it was so brilliant when Luke’s sister Charlotte got married in Norwich. We’d been on tour and come back and Radio Norfolk do a Bride of the Week slot where they’ll congratulate a bride and so as a surprise, Luke set up that the morning of the wedding we’d secretly go to Radio Norfolk and play a song and they’d make Charlotte Bride of the Week! It was wicked; it was a beautiful morning and we just got up, went to the radio station and Luke’s mum and dad had to make sure that Charlotte was listening to the radio, which she was anyway – I think she was secretly hoping that something would happen! It was so funny coming home to her whooping and cheering. She was over the moon, it was great.

Emma Garwood

KT Tunstall plays the Obelisk Arena on the Friday of Latitude Festival, which runs from 14^th – 17^th July. For tickets, go to www.latitudefestival.co.uk. Read the full version of this interview on Outlineonline.co.uk

Are you very tired? I saw on twitter you were having trouble sleeping.
Haha, yeah I’m feeling kind of irritated today ‘cause they lost my luggage and I’m still waiting and I’ve got a whole lot of stuff to do. But there you go y’know, I think it’s the only time they have lost my luggage over the whole summer doing forty festivals… I can’t complain that much really. It’s the only time we went through Charles de Gaulle airport – we usually avoid it like the plague and that’s the one they lose the luggage in, ‘cause Charles de Gaulle is just ridiculous.

That’s a real shitter, so have you got to borrow the boy’s clothes or something?
No, my bag is in the airport, so I’ve just gotta go and get it.

I read a brilliant quote yesterday from someone talking about Skunk Anansie – it said “They made a very strong mark on my young and impressionable mind”. You did that a lot, say, 16 years ago, what’s it like forming ideas and opinions of a generation of new music lovers?
D’you know, it’s one of those things that doesn’t really occur to you, to be quite honest, I mean the thing about being in a band is that you get to a country, you do a whole bunch of press, you do a big gig and then you move on and all of the exciting stuff and influential stuff and inspiring stuff happens in your wake and you don’t really actually experience it and see it for yourself until years later. I do recognise that having had the gap, I can see that Skunk Anansie is and was a very influential band and that pleases me greatly. I think if I inspire somebody to pick up a guitar that’s fantastic, I’m not really into role models; I think when you put people on a pedestal invariably they disappoint you. I like to be an inspiration and stuff like that but I think athletes make good role models ‘cause they really do have to behave themselves or they can’t perform, but then they go off the rails and do a bunch of crazy shit like Tiger Woods or something. I don’t take it too seriously; I don’t take it in too much ‘cause I think probably I’d turn into the biggest wanker on earth if I did.

For me there has always been a duality with your music, flitting from social commentary to personal divulgences – do you think that reflects a duality in yourself maybe?
I think so, I think there’s more than two sides to me, I think there’s quite a few sides to me and to everybody. I think the reality is that people are very complex and a lot of the interesting stuff happens in the grey area between right and wrong, or good and bad, or should I shag her or not, y’know, I think the complexities of the human character are a lot more interesting, but I think that the duality there is that that kind of impression is linked because I think I talk about politics or social awareness from a very personal stand point. I think that what I’ve gone through or what you’ve gone through is not special, but I think that it’s special to us and I think it’s how it happens to us and that’s what makes it interesting. I think it’s all about translation, y’know, I may have gone through similar things, things that millions of people have gone through, but I suppose I’m better at expressing it or the way that I express it touches people a little bit more, so, as I say I think there’s lots of different sides to Skunk Anansie and to my character and I think sometimes, depending on the situation, I’m slightly more political or slightly less political or slightly more fun or slightly more silly depending on the environment .

I read a really interesting interview recently – it was actually done by us five years ago when you were on your solo tour and so there was a little insight into where part of the Skunk Anansie sound came from. Just to talk about your background a bit, your dad owned a nightclub, did he?
Yes he did, yeah, my Grandad actually I should say, my dad was an air force man, my granddad had a night club in Brixton. This was when I was growing up, so he wasn’t that old, he was in his 50s; he had a nightclub the whole time he was in Jamaica and the whole time he was in London because in those days, the 50s and the 40s when they came to England black people weren’t let into normal nightclubs and black people didn’t particularly want to go to those nightclubs because they wanted to hear their music which was reggae and ska at the time. What they used to have was a place called Shabines and basically it was just where black people would congregate in a basement of somebody’s house and that’s what my granddad had, ‘cause he had a big house. He had a bar in there and charged people to go in and just have a Shabine and y’know, it was just lots of Jamaicans enjoying themselves so that was my earliest memories really, musical memories just sitting in the steps watching everybody groove along to ska music ‘til I got told to go to bed.

Back in the day your music was often characterised by mad, messed up intros, outros, interludes that explored different genres and then sort of annihilated them in the same breath – is it important for you to show your breadth of musical influences?
I think those early albums were really us testing our teeth and finding out what we wanted to do. I think Skunk Anansie have always had a ‘no rules’ kinda mentality to what we do, I mean, there are no rules to music, there are no rules to song writing and I think you get into a band because you want to live outside the law in some ways. You just see yourself like a band of youths, roaming around the world doing what the hell you want. That changes obviously – I call it the early years now, hehe, early Skunk was definitely us testing and trying out lots and lots of things. I think in the 90s there were lots of bands doing that, not so much the English bands – they were all kind of consumed with Britpop, doing the same boring kind of song over and over again, but I think the bands that were a bit more worldly and had a bit more world view like us just trying new ideas, meandering solos and meandering pieces of music that were quite emotional.

What’s tickling your fandangle at the moment, music wise, or genre wise?
Haha, fandangle… I like that. Gosh, I DJ a lot and I’m listening to lots of electronic music at the moment. I have just got this Magnetic Man album so I’ve been listening to that. I’m a big Dubstep person so I like them all, I like Chase & Status and all of those Skream type guys. They’ve done mixes for us in audio, so I’m listening to lots of that. I’m listening to Corrine Bailey Rae’s album, I really like that and I’m listening to a few albums that I bought that I really don’t like actually. You know when you go online and you buy a bunch of albums, listen to a few songs and go ‘oh that’s interesting’ and then buy the album, I’m like that; I don’t get songs, I get albums and I’m bitterly regretting a couple of them.

Can you name any of them?
Erm… I was listening to the Villagers and the guy started howling like a wolf and I’m not quite into that, but I am gonna listen to the whole album again and listen to it in context, ‘cause I kind of had it on in the background and I was a bit like ‘what the hell is going on her?’ I just didn’t think it worked, y’know. I don’t know if it was something to do with Villagers and watching too much American werewolf in London, anyway I am gonna give it another listen, but it’s one where I was a bit like ‘wow, that’s weird, I’m not sure if I like that.’

Albums are big commitments for people, especially nowadays when they are used to just picking up songs here and there. Obviously ‘Wonderlustre’ has come out now and it’s incredible. I’ve waited just forever for a new studio album to come out in the hope that it would and now it’s here, some of the songs I feel like I’ve known for years.
I think we are just bigger, better, shinier. I think we are just a lot better at everything we do at the moment it seems. It’s testament to the boys in the band; everybody got better at what they do and learnt a lot more skills, y’know, we’ve got a lot more qualifications under our belt and as a consequence I think that we are just better songwriters now. We understand music a lot more; all of us worked in studios and wrote albums and recorded albums and I think that that is really evident in the way that this album was put together, especially because for the first time we basically sat in a room for six weeks writing it. We’ve never done that before, we’ve done a week here, two weeks there, but we’ve never just done a whole album just all four of us equally putting all of our ideas into a pot and making great songs out of it. I think that the songs do sound familiar, because I did try to get melodies that would be very sing-able for everybody. I think we’ve all managed to hone in on what’s good about Skunk Anansie and write songs in that way and what we really wanted to do was to just write a huge amount of high quality songs that had great choruses where the lyrics summed up everything everybody was feeling and thinking. When Paul McCartney wrote ‘Yesterday’ – I’m not comparing ourselves to that in any shape or form by the way, but he ran around saying to everybody ‘Have you heard this before? I feel like I’ve ripped it off from somewhere’, and everyone was like ‘Nope, never heard it before’ and it was because it was just such a simple, beautiful melody that it just fitted into your psyche like it has always been there. I have always liked Paul McCartney for that and his sense of simplicity in some of those great songs. Our influences are quite traditional in terms of the actual songwriting – in terms of the music it’s bang up to date modern.

You did say just then that they’re melodies that everyone can sing to – now, I do sing along in the car but let’s talk about that voice of yours, you hit the notes that none of us can – nobody – and we try but it sounds awful. Where did that voice come from?
Erm, I don’t agree with you…

Really? You haven’t been in my kitchen.
Haha, I’m much more into my songwriting than my voice; I think my voice is quite limiting most of the time. I’m actually singing an octave lower deliberately. One of the things I learnt is that when you sing songs with very high notes in them, you have to sing them every night of your life on tour and I think that’s just a lesson learnt. I think your voice, as you get older, sits better in its lower ranges. I think it’s more to do with getting the right empathy out; singing is a spiritual thing, it’s a very soulful thing. It’s about connecting your spirit with tone and voice and melody. It’s really all about the lyrics and the melodies that I’m singing. I think that really makes my voice sound better than it really is.

I think that may be some of the connection, but there’s also a mixture between power and grace that seems to bring the best out in your voice. However, I’ve been doing it in the car, power grabs… it makes me feel so good, even though it sounds bad.
Power grabs, I like it. And the seagull. Everybody should sing; it’s not about whether it sounds good or not, it’s just good for your soul and it’s good for your inner happiness. I think also because we’re a very European band – we’re not a very British-centred band, so there’s a lot of people in different countries who’re singing our melodies, so we like them to be soaring and sing-able and fun because it means that everywhere we go, people can sing them back to us.

You mentioned Europe – I know you’re hugely popular in Europe and I also know from our previous Outline interview that you lived abroad for a while in the South of France… do you ever think you’d give up Britain for good?
Erm… No, I don’t think I could give up Britain for good, ‘cause I have too much connection and history in Britain, so no, I don’t think I’d give it up for good. Culturally, I need Britain like I need air and water. Culturally, I think we’re the best. We have the best bands – the best and most ingenious bands. So I think that it’s always going to be a part of me, and I’d be crazy to lose that culture. Erm, it’s just too fucking cold. I just like to be warm; I’ve got Jamaican blood and I know it’s an actual proven chemical thing that the warmer your skin, the better you feel, and I’m a testament to that.

I’d like to talk about your head. You have the sexiest head in showbiz – do you have insurance for it?
Hahaha! No I don’t… I think I should. Who was I reading about the other day? Somebody insured something of theirs somewhere, but I can’t remember, so it’s a bit of a crap story. But would I… No, no, gosh, I think the point is that if something happened to my head, I’d have a lot more to worry about that that. I think if I lost my head, I don’t think the insurance would make up for that.

I read in our previous interview, that when you shaved your head something clicked, like a superhero. Do you think we often use our appearance to externalise our personality?
Yeah, I do. I do think that fashion and clothes and make-up and hair and all that kind of stuff makes you feel better and it can seriously affect your mood. I do think that when I shaved my head I felt like myself for the first time, it was a stange thing, a strange feeling. There was a bit of a super-girl that jumped out at me when I did it.

I want to talk about your previous collaborations, which were simply inspired; you sang with Bjork on Top of the Pops, you did a duet with Pavarotti, I mean, they’re heavyweights. What was it like to work with them, and who catches your eye now?
It was really good fun. I think when it comes to collaborations, they really have to be things that just come up out of nowhere. People you meet, people you bump into, people you just kind of identify with. Funnily enough, having done quite a few of them, I’m not a massive fan of collaborations, especially with Skunk Anansie, because people are always telling us that we should be working with this band, or that band, but we don’t want to. There’s lots of bands that we like, but we don’t want to work with them, we just want them to do what they do. Especially bands working with bands; I think when U2 did a song with Green Day it was probably one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard…

Eugh, I think some bile just came up in my mouth there.
Yeah, it was kinda like, ‘oh, well that didn’t work, did it?’ I just think it’s interesting to have weird things – collaborations only work when they’re very natural and easy. If it’s because of any other reason, like you’ve got to write something or blah, blah, blah, then it just turns out not working very well. But yeah, Bjork was just a massive fan of the band and wanted us to remix her and it was really good fun. Pavarotti wanted us for his charity event, Pavarotti and Friends when he was alive; we did it for the Dalai Lama’s children’s charity so we met him too, which was very cool. I really like the song I did with Maxim from the Prodigy – that was a good fun one. I did a heavy metal one with this American band called Seven Dust, that was fun. I’m doing three very interesting things next week and they’re all kind of to do with electronic music, which I’m really excited about. That’s a slightly different thing. I think they have to be things that come up. I say no to 90% of the things I get asked to do.

I guess it becomes too contrived if you do it too often –
-  Well you’re just out there too much, and it kinda gets a little bit Nelly Furtado-esque.

Let’s talk about the five minutes before you went on stage as SCAM (the psedonym for Skunk Anansie’s first reformation gig) at Monto Water Rats – what did that feel like?
Gosh, it just felt like fun. It was completely sold out and I think it was a bit of a rush because there wasn’t much time between sound check and going on, but yeah, I think it was quite exciting and a bit like ‘Ooh, this is exciting. What’s gonna happen? It’s gonna be fun!’ It was great fun. There’s not much stage space in Water Rats, which is a good thing, but I think it was a ‘yeah, it’s good to be back’ feeling.

You’re coming to Norwich this month and we hear you’ve got a couple of little tricks up your sleeve – a mixture of new stuff and old stuff, which is really exciting – are you excited about this tour?
Yeah, we haven’t actually rehearsed for it yet, but we’re gonna start at the beginning of November! I think the last couple of years we’ve warmed ourselves up and got back to the same level of when we left, and I think now it’s gonna be like a new level of Skunk Anansie that we haven’t done before, so it’s gonna be a better tour than when we left off. We’re going into unchartered territory. Yeah, we’ve got a couple of tricks up our sleeve and a couple of things that we’re gonna try out, which hopefully we will ‘cause I’ve said it now, so we’ve got to make sure it works!

Five years ago, when we interviewed you, we asked you what you thought you’d be doing in five years time – you said you’d like to be producing younger bands, but did you ever think at that time that there’d be a reformation?
Erm, no, not really. I knew that we had to do a Skunk Anansie Greatest Hits and I thought that’d be it. I never thought we’d fall back into being a band so easily and so quickly, but I think that’s just a testament to Skunk Anansie, y’know.

So in five years, what do you think you’ll be doing? We’ll just keep interviewing you in 5-year intervals and disproving you!
Yeah, exactly. Erm, I think Skunk Anansie will still be together – I should touch wood, let me touch wood – wood is touched. There are a couple of personal things I’d like to do too, but onwards and upwards. Bigger, better, shinier.

Emma Roberts

The triumphant return of Skunk Anansie will be felt as they come to the UEA on November 25^th. For tickets, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk.

Where are you right now, sir?

I am at my house, in Dallas, Texas. Just finished taking care of the morning routine round here, taking the kids to school, went to the gym, making a little breakfast and now I’m talking to you.

So the summer tour’s done –

- Yes, all the summer stuff is done, and I guess we’re just pretty much off until we head over to you in the UK in a couple of weeks actually, so it’s quite a slow September for us. We’ve just come back from Cuba, where we went over there to celebrate Labor Day Weekend and played for the Navy over there in Guantanamo Bay, now we’re back and just gearing up for the tour in a couple of weeks.

Tell me how it works – and forgive me if I’m wrong – but isn’t it very difficult for musicians to play in Cuba if you’re from America?

Yes, it’s very difficult, but we were strictly on the military base there, which actually makes it even more amazing for us, because those troops are over there and are pretty much secluded from the world, I mean they can’t leave base, so they’re entertained by what comes to them. Cell phones are a little bit sketchy, internet’s a little bit sketchy, so they’re definitely very, very thankful when someone comes over, and we try and do a lot like that; we’ve played in military bases all over the world. When you’re old and fat and in a rock band, it’s the thing you can do to give a little back!

That’s wicked – do they always react really well?

They do. They’re honestly so starved of entertainment that it doesn’t really matter what we do! I mean it helps that they know our songs, but we’ve played with bands all the time in those situations where they don’t know any of their songs at all, but the reaction is still really positive because they’re very thankful that we’re there, and we’re very thankful of the job they do.

I guess it allows you to go to Cuba too, but it must be quite bittersweet if you don’t get to see much of it.

Well we did see some of it; the base is so big there to give the soldiers something to do that we did get to go to the ocean, and we did get to go fishing. Ironically we went bowling! It was actually really fun. We got to see a lot of beautiful scenery and a lot of it untouched. That was the thing with being in the ocean down there  – you know, I’ve been down to the Caribbean a lot since I was a kid, I’ve seen those beautiful waters – but there, just ‘cause there’s no boats coming in and out of it, it’s just beautiful untouched water.

Not like the Gulf of Mexico then?! It’s lookin’ a little messy right now…

Haha! It was dirty already, but oh man, it’s an unfortunate event, but hopefully they’ll get it cleaned up as soon as possible.

You mentioned going to the gym… were you being honest with me?

I was being honest with you, yeah! We try to take care of ourselves – we’re in our 30s now and it’s not like whenever it was in our 20s, and even our early 30s – we used to be able to jump around on stage two or three times a week, drink as much beer as we want and everything sorta maintained itself. Now you’ve gotta get in there and try to get in at least decent rock shape for 18 shows in 18 dates in the UK in October.

That’s a heavy schedule, isn’t it?

It is for us, but we don’t really like days off, especially when we’re in other countries, you know – we’re not amazing tourists. Doing tourist-y things – unless it’s organised, like doing things with the military or whatever, when we’re just in, say, the UK or Japan there’s so many of us. By the time you start thinking about moving 14,15 people around there’s just not much point. It’s not really worth it. We end up just sitting around, but we try and make all of our days busy and then we can go back home, into our corner and try to recover for the next time.

I can check 4square later then and it’ll show me you definitely went to the gym… Haha

I did! And you can – I checked in!

I will be checking that later just to make sure.

OK, you can, I’m not fibbing!

So you’re down with 4square, you’re on Twitter, you keep a regular blog – and I did watch the amazing first episode of ‘In My Car’…

Haha, thankyou. The social networking thing is crazy. I have Twitter, I have Say Now, I have Formspring, a Facebook for me, a Facebook for the band, then a fan Facebook thing and it just goes on and on. I do a podcast, we do a regular You Stream thing every once in a while and then – THEN there’s this thing called Ping and I don’t even know what the hell that is but I gotta figure that out evidently!

Oh, that’s the new iTunes thing isn’t it?

Yeah, evidently we already have a Ping site, but I don’t know anything about it, so I sort of wait for my managers to educate me on things like that. I’m a very active social networker and I really enjoy talking to the fans. I feel like I’ve definitely got people out there who like my music, who feel like they know me as a person, which they kinda do, ‘cause I put myself out there a lot.

I was going to say – you’re a very fan-focused band and you have a loyal fan base who’ve grown up with you really…

It’s a pretty amazing thing for us, ‘cause we’ve been together 16 and a half years, and we’ve even been coming to the UK now since the year 2000, so all over the world we now have people who were kids coming to our shows, who are now bringing their kids to see the shows. It’s great because today we play shows and see familiar faces, and then we see new faces, and if you’re still seeing new faces after being together for almost 17 years then you’re obviously doing something right.

You are aging beautifully, but tell me what it’s like aging in a band… do you make certain noises when you’re jumping about on stage?! Do you get a bad back from sleeping in the tour bus?
Man, you know, you do sort of get stiffer in the tour bus, hangovers are a little harder; we’re really bad about staying up all night and sleeping during the day – you can sorta see it on our faces after a couple of weeks. But like Gary’s arms, he’s got carpal tunnel so he has to do these arm exercises and I’ve had two knee surgeries, so no more jumping off of speakers for me! In fact, when I had my second surgery my doctor was like “OK, well this pretty much ends the whole jumping around on stage thing!” Now, we’ll go to prancing like Mick Jagger, and I was like “I don’t know if I can really sell the whole Mick Jagger prance thing.”

Can you do the pout?

Yeah, I can probably do the pout.

You’re half way there then.

You’re right. And there’s this funny thing he does with his arms that I can probably do. But yeah, it’s definitely different; it’s good that the voice, and things like that have held up nicely, so we’re pretty fortunate.

You’re probably victims of your own success, because you’re still going so strong that your fans wouldn’t want to give you a let up…

You’re exactly right. It’s funny because sometimes we’re not even done with one tour, and people are already like “When are you coming back to –“ and we’re like “We were just there a week ago!” You know what’s cool about the world today? That you can find out that stuff. If a kid – and when I say kid I mean fan – if they want to say “Hey, when are you coming here”, they could probably just ask me, and chances are they’ll get an answer, whether it’s on Twitter, or MySpace or whatever. When I was younger you had to rely on magazines, and half of that wasn’t real anyway. You never really knew, like when a new Motley Crue album was coming out, you just had to wait, but now you have access to everything. It’s a pretty cool thing.

I’m a bit interested in what it was like growing up for you – you grew up in Wichita Falls, is that right?

I did. Wichita Falls basically rides two hours north of Dallas and two hours south of Oklahoma City, so it sits there right on its only little thing. It’s a fairly small town – there’s about 100,000 people there, but it’s big enough to have places for people to eat and schools to play sport there. We talk a lot of snack about our hometown, because that’s what you did when you were a kid, but looking back it was quite a good place to stay out of trouble, and you pretty much knew everybody, you know, it wasn’t that crazy. One of the reasons I got into being in bands is that if I didn’t I was just gonna end up getting in to trouble all the time. It was a nice little city, and it was great, so the music population was really small, so it was always really easy to find people to play in bands with. It was nice – a nice little growing up experience.

That’s cool, but did it make it harder for you to get initial gigs and gain reputation if the music population was small?

It was really hard and frustrating at first when I was a kid, and when I was in bands before Bowling for Soup, but then there just weren’t a lot of places to play and it was hard to get people to come out to shows because there was no music scene to speak of. This was before the internet and things like that, so even publicising a show was like pulling teeth; you still had to go printing out flyers and go hand them out yourself. I think that’s kind of a good thing though; our whole rise to being able to do this for a living was very, very slow. We started this whole thing in 1994, and we were in a van ‘til 2003 – we didn’t get a tour bus ‘til 2003. Some of us even had jobs ‘til I think around 2001, 2002. It was a very slow thing, so it taught us ‘don’t take anything for granted.’ We don’t get excited about anything, because look, this is just part of the whole rollercoaster ride of doing this. But everyone’s been great since we left there, and it sort of prompted the move to Dallas.

Did you live in Denton as well?

Well Denton is actually where I’d call home, but when I talk to people outside of the US, I usually just say Dallas just because Denton is a pretty small town and everyone knows where Dallas is.

But Denton has got such a massive reputation for producing great music, hasn’t it?

Yeah, it’s been such a good thing; one of the best colleges for making music is in Denton, so basically you get a lot of people coming into Denton to study music and then there are three fairly large colleges there for music. It’s right outside of Dallas and right outside of Forth Worth, so there’s a lot of stuff to do. Lots of people come to Denton to play music and just end up staying. We were part of that whole movement, or whatever, and we were part of that whole scene, then those bands go away and other bands come in and so it’s a great place to live.

For us, this tour will be the first time we hear the songs off ‘Sorry for Partyin’ in a live environment – there’s a lot of fun on that album…

Oh, thankyou. Yeah, for us it’s one of those things that’s super hard. I think we could probably tour over there in smaller venues for five or six months, you know, before we could hit every city, but we can’t and we get in trouble for that from some of our fans. With us, I think you know that we’re always gonna come back.

But do you know, the UK’s so small that if someone can’t travel to the next town to see their favourite band, then they’re not putting the effort in.

I say that all the time! Your public transport system is amazing, so I’m always like “You’re a 20 minute train ride from the show!” I have to drive like 50 minutes to go see a band in Texas!

We’re very lucky you’re coming to Norwich, but what can we expect from the tour?

First of all we’re very excited about our support; we love the Dollyrots and we’ve actually forced them to come with us and I don’t think they’ve even had a release in the UK yet. Then Forever the Sickest Kids are from right here in North Texas, and they’re a really amazing, energetic band who I think people are gonna love. And then A of course, who were one of the first English bands we were ever turned on to on our second trip over there. We ended up meeting them in about 2001, and then I’m like all the time, “We gotta do a tour, we gotta do a tour!” Adam and I, and Jason have been going back and forth for years about how we gotta do it, and Adam even toured with us for a while as drummer of the Bloodhound Gang, but still no tour with A, so it’s great we’re finally doing that. Then as Bowling for Soup, we’ll just kinda do our thing. We’ll play a bunch of songs that you know, and hopefully you’ll know some or all of them, and there’ll be a few surprises thrown in too. Not necessarily songs you won’t have heard of; I don’t really know if we’ll play a lot of new stuff, because I know for me when I’m a fan, it’s only your really, really hardcore fans that you can get away with playing new stuff to, otherwise if you start to play new songs – like if you say “Hey, here’s four new songs”, that’s when everybody chooses to go to the toilet!

So for a really daft last question, a friend of mine asks “What flavour’s the soup?”

Haha, it depends on who you ask; Chris’ is Wisconsin Cheese, mine is Minestrone, which we still haven’t clarified if it’s a soup or a stew – Gary goes Brocolli Cheese and Eric goes straight up tomato soup! He’s easy to please.

Emma Roberts

So as I wait a month for the release of Skunk Anansie’s fourth studio album, ‘Wonderlustre’, the first single dispels the torment. ‘My Ugly Boy’ is practically a part 2 from ‘We Love Your Apathy’, from ‘Post Orgasmic Chill’ musically, but it’s fecking infectious, so it’s no hardship getting more of what you love.

Here’s the new’un and an old’un by the same band.

My Ugly Boy

Milk is My Sugar

7/10 Emma Roberts

Our guest editor this month, Maxie is currently winging her way to Glastonbury to see you…
Oh, I’m not going! I’m sure she wouldn’t miss me anyway. I was only on the campfire bit, so you know, you never get to see what you set out to at these festivals anyway. Or you’re trekking across a field really fast and you only catch the last number.

Maxie is also responsible for putting on the Ladyfest gig in Norwich that you’re playing.
Oh fantastic, excellent.

She’s doing a lot for the Norwich music scene herself as she’s also in one of Norwich’s most popular homegrown bands…
What’s her band’s name?

The Brownies…
Aw, cute.

So you’re not going to Glastonbury, but have you got a hectic summer ahead of you, Viv?
Not hectic, and do you know what, unlike when I was in The Slits, I don’t mind. It’s not to do with, ‘oh, I’m too tired’, because I’m absolutely driving – my energy is absolutely focused, but it’s more because I trust, I dunno… I just trust a sense of timing a lot more. You get to a stage where you think ‘if I put the work in – it’s like that build it and they will come type of thing – if I put the work in and put the love into the songs and the energy and the belief, then I don’t have to be out there hustling like a maniac’. I actually can say no to some things if they’re not right, or don’t show me in the right light or whatever, whereas I think when you’re younger, you grab at everything and strangely, you think you’ve got no time. I just feel pretty cool about it. I’ve got just the right amount of stuff, like I got this phone call the other day from America and they said “Oh, we’ve got this gig in Dallas we’d like you to come and play; it’s a one off gig and we’ll pay your fares and you can bring your band”, and that’s just great, that you can trust those things to happen. I usually have a gig one or two times a week and then I’m recording a couple of days each week. It’s just so good at the moment; I just can’t believe how good I feel about life nowadays actually.

It’s great to hear someone speak so positively about the process, because you talk to so many younger bands now who very much treat it as an arduous job, when in fact, it’s a gift. You think actually, just soak this up guys…
Yeah, exactly, and it has become just such hard work for people. And it is hard. It was hard in the 70s in a different way, you know; you had to claw your way out of absolute grime and poverty then and find something in yourself that had not been groomed, had not been inspired, there was no girl singers that I wanted to be like – you know, the girls around me and indeed the guys had to start from ground zero really, we trashed everything that went before and said no, let’s clear the decks and start again. What should we be writing about; what sort of chords should we be playing; should there be solos; should we play this instrument or that instrument? Everything was reconsidered. So it was hard then, for those reasons – plus you got spat at all the time. They were very violent, aggressive times if you walked down the street looking a certain way. You know, I literally was in fear of being stabbed every time I was out and many friends were, and I was attacked many times as was Ari stabbed and things, so although it was hard then in a different way, nowadays everyone’s like ‘oh, the internet – everyone downloads and you don’t get any money’ – YEAH, so it should be hard. You go and work in a bank then if you want it nice and cushy.

I think it’s forcing people to be inventive again as well, rather than go with the formula that had previously been laid out for them…
Yeah, and people say there’s this massive wall of dross that you have to get through you know, because everyone owns the internet, and it’s like yeah, come on then, let’s break through the massive wall of dross then. I very much believe that if you make something good enough, eventually people will lead a path to your door and you don’t have to go out there and hustle and I think you have to be very present and in the moment and I think you have to be in to what you do and honest about it, and anything that comes after that, treat with suspicion almost. The main thing is how you’re living your life – that’s the mood I’m in at the moment anyway.

With the internet as well, feedback is usually user-generated, rather than just the industry telling you what you should like. The power of someone blogging in Norwich can be enough to get you being booked for gigs, so it’s almost like you have to prove yourself before people will just accept it –
- The other side of the coin of course is that if there’s someone writing a horrible blog about you, you know, just Joe Blo from down the road, then that gets sent all around the world as well! But you just have to deal with those times.

So you’re not playing too much, but you’ve been playing solo and with The Slits again, is that right?
No, I don’t play with The Slits at all anymore. No. I’m utterly not in The Slits, I don’t want to be in The Slits and I’m not saying that aggressively, but I just feel like that was then and it was of that moment back then, but good luck to the girls if they want to do that, but I totally do not want to do it. I just see myself as a new artist really.

Sorry for getting that wrong Viv…
No, put it in, let people see it so people know, because there’s probably a lot of people that still think I am. But what I do do is like last night I played a gig, just drums, a bass and me as a trio, but then last week I played a gig at Shepherd’s Bush that was cello, me and harp and Theremin, so I quite like to turn it on its head so that each time I go out, it turns out slightly differently and I tailor it with a really interesting pool of musicians that I can work with. Sometimes I just go out completely solo, completely bare, just me and the guitar. It’s exciting; you can make it so interesting for yourself if you don’t tie yourself to formulas really.

Do you know how you’re going to be appearing at Ladyfest in July?
I think it’ll be me, drums and bass.

Have you been to Norwich before Viv, do you know?
Is that in Norfolk?

It is, yes, in that giant boobie that sticks out from the country’s landscape…
I’ve been to Norfolk before and had some very pleasant times on the Broads on drugs, just puntng and floating, completely out of my head. I remember that. I’m sure we must have played as The Slits in the 70s, but not for years.

Do you like playing gigs like Ladyfest with this sort of message behind them?
I did do a Ladyfest last year in Manchester with The Slits, because I did play two gigs with them to see how I felt about it, but I guess in the 70s, I wouldn’t have liked it, because in the 70s we were very much against labels, but I think Ladyfest has built itself up to be quite open minded and chooses really interesting bands, so I think it’s sort of transcended that slightly hardcore excluding type thing. It’s proved itself to be just quite an interesting sort of festival and I think there’s room for that. If they want to make it female biased, or female only, I think that’s cool now, because of how they do it. There are other ones that I won’t do, because they don’t have as much of an interesting vibe about them but I think Ladyfest is fine, yeah. That’s the only criteria I have, that they celebrate and don’t exclude.

It was borne out of the idea that some women were being marginalised in the music industry – do you ever experience that?
Well… yes, I do and I know people say “oh, no”, but it’s almost more on a personal level – the guy you meet at the record label, or the blogger in the audience, who instead of writing an objective review, completely shreds you because they’re completely freaked out. That’s what it’s always been, more on a personal level. And especially because I’m coming back now and… I’m not a cartoon, you know, I’m not a rock chick with red lips and black dyed hair, shouting and swearing, but I am saying really quite near the knuckle things. I think the thing was the same with The Slits; we always had these mixed signals and messages and sort of – not exactly symbols, but we gave off all these mixed messages that really confused men. Not so much women, because women know, and girls know that we are a whole mixture of good and bad and wild and cautious and all these things, but the way that The Slits expressed it, and the way that I’m doing it now – almost like a cartoon – does threaten still. I do still get the same reaction now as I did when I was in The Slits, which is horror, haha! Horror, but then other people will be moved to tears and feel like I’ve told the story of their whole lives. What I do is not for everyone, and I’ve come to terms with that now. It was the same before, but because I was in a gang, a band, we had our mission together. But I’m still very much having that same reaction that I’m not for everyone and I really do polarise the audience quite often, but because I’ve been there before, I can take it, even though I’m on my own. I can deal with it because I can recognise it.

You say on your website that you’re only interested in love and sex as subjects for your art – I love that! Why is this?
Well I just think that’s all there is in life really, and I’m not sure which comes first really, sex or love, because sometimes I think every power trip, every war is based on a desire to procreate and be the best procreator from men’s point of view, or from women’s point of view, to choose the best person to procreate with, so is it down to sex, or is it a much more spiritual thing and actually humans have developed this capacity to love, which is very beautiful and very spiritual and which is often totally without gain for them sometimes. The two take turns and go round and round for me and are very intertwined and that’s the core of life, either the propagation of the species or the growth of the spiritual beings that we are and have become, setting us apart from animals.

Love could be seen as a cunning mask for sex though, couldn’t it?
I’m so glad to hear you say that, because sometimes I seem such a cynical old cow, haha! But yeah, is it just really a construct, which is a line of question in my song, ‘Couples are Creepy’, which is ‘Couples make a big deal out of an evolutionary device’, which is basically that anthropologists think that this feeling that that we call love, that hormonal rush that lasts about 18 months was just long enough to conceive, bear a child and get it to about 9 or 10 months old where it can start to function on its own. That’s your 18-month honeymoon period basically and then the human child is strong enough and robust enough and the woman is recovered enough to be able to gather her nuts and barriers and do it on her own, basically. And we’ve made this huge card industry and music industry and film industry and the books, haha… all for this little 18-month blip of evolutionary strategy!

So this obviously comes through in your art and music, but when you were film-making, did you approach it from another way? Are you an expose on the fallacy of it?
Well I haven’t really made films for about 12 years, and in fact I am going back to that now, but what I’d like to expose – I’d just like to be honest. I’d say I’m more questioning, because I haven’t got a conclusive thought or answer on it and one song may be on the beauty of that feeling, you know, I call my band limerence, which is that heightened chemical feeling you have when you first fall for someone, but I’d say mine was more to question, because I haven’t got the answer on that one. I’m going to go back into filmmaking, but my only goal is to be honest about whatever I tackle. I think if you do that, you know, really bloody painfully honest almost at the risk of everything around you in your life, then that’s enough to get things stirred up. You know, I think there are still very few people who do that. I think the film industry is sometimes really more poignant than music in the way that they tackle the subject of relationships. I think they dig a little deeper and don’t always show their heroes, especially nowadays, as completely perfect. Film comes out of old story telling, which has always had the dichotomy of the lead character ultimately being this very flawed person, so yeah, I think film tackles it better than song. Great songwriters maybe, like Leonard Cohen, maybe they can pull something apart and question it in a song, but not often, so yeah, I think film would tackle the subject better in some ways.

Nowadays though in film, that dichotomy is often characterised by the anti-hero, which is in a way saying it’s something different from the norm.
You mean that bad boy thing? Yeah, someone was saying to me the other day that that bad boy thing that’s so attractive in England and America doesn’t happen in Europe. It’s a cultural thing that happens in England and American and I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s possible that it has come from the film industry because of that picture of the apple pie mum was created by the film industry, as was Santa Claus – well that was Coca Cola – but yeah, it’s a construct that doesn’t have quite as much appeal in Eastern Europe apparently! They do say that you’re more likely to be attracted to that kind of guy biologically, but when it comes to procreation, you wouldn’t choose him…

Well maybe not twice!
HA! Yeah, or maybe again and again and again if you’re a fool! I don’t know what it is about that bloody anti-hero, maybe they have survivalist genes that you want to pass on, I don’t know.

I think it’s just the invention of the leather jacket myself…
Yeah! It’s got a lot to answer for. That’s very primal isn’t it, wrapping yourself in an animal skin!

It has to be said that you’re up there with the most iconic and influential female artists in the music industry, but who inspired you?
No-one inspired me. That was the whole point – that I had to drag it out of nowhere. The only person who ever meant anything to me artistically as I was growing up was Yoko Ono, which I think was amazing when I look back, because I was young, very young, about 10 and in a way she was very sophisticated and was an artist as well and she had a huge effect on me. The rest were just like girlfriends of the band – people like Marianne Faithful or Anita Pallenburg, you know, people who had a bit of something about them, but I certainly didn’t want to be Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell, I mean, who was there? There was no-one I wanted to be, but I found Yoko Ono utterly inspiring and everything that I saw of hers or she wrote completely changed my head. I thought that was fantastic. I loved John Lennon and I loved that he loved her. That relationship had a massive effect on me in so much as a template of what to find in life as a relationship, because John Lennon was so emotional about her and he was one of the first guys, apart from poets, who wrote his feelings in his songs about her and didn’t care and she was this sort of lateral thinker, this artist who turned things upside down and in many ways was more dominant than him. That had a profound effect on me, that relationship. Musician-wise, no, no-one. I more wanted to be Marc Bolan frankly, in fact I liked very feminine – Marc Bolan, David Bowie or whatever – I liked very feminine Arlo Guthrie boys…

You liked Marc Bolan because of his curls – isn’t that a line in one of your songs?
Haha, no, it’s just because it rhymed! But I’ve often wondered why girls like these very feminine, girly boys and I think it’s often because you feel they could be you, you could be them and they’re not threatening sexually, you know, they’re not like, scary with deep voices, cock-rocky types, because no young girl actually likes that. But these feminine boys, it’s like you could actually be them, or be stronger than them and they’re no threat to you; it allows your sexuality to blossom without being threatened. I’d rather have been Marc Bolan than any girl that was around.

You’re signed to Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label, but how did that come about?
How did that happen? Well, of course we’ve always been very aware of each other, you know, Thurston was very aware of The Slits back in the day and had respect for us, then we met at one of his gigs via The Raincoats – Gina from The Raincoats introduced Thurston and we just hit it off immediately and he was so supportive and excited about what I was doing that I let him hear my songs and he said, ‘right, I want to put them out’ and it just happened really quickly and really organically and he was really supportive. We’re in touch now because of it and it’s good.

Emma Roberts

Viv Albertine headlines Norwich’s Ladyfest as put on by our guest editor for this month, Maxie Gedge at Norwich Arts Centre on July 31^st. For tickets, go to www.norwichartscentre.co.uk. Read the uncut version of this interview at Outlineonline.co.uk

He is often wrongfully described as a beatboxer. Beatbox he does, but this man is simply a musician at heart. Born in St Kilda, Australia, he formed an early relationship with music but admits himself that his path into roots music wasn’t a direct one. With Australia not giving him the exposure to the music he later found he loved, he confesses that he explored making music, but as he describes it, the “cheesy” variety. One man, one guitar, one voice were enough to get Ben Stanford, as his mama deemed him, exploring his voice.

Dub FX’s characteristic sound started to develop when the artist discovered two things; firstly, that he could make a lot of sounds with his mouth, and secondly, a loop pedal. These two things combined suddenly gave him a whole orchestra of sounds – the instruments multiplied, the noises progressed, but the solo artist remained the same.

It was on his travels to the UK, where Ben now resides part-time, that he made a very important purchase. Parting with his lolly for an AKAI Headrush loop pedal, man and machine were fused and he immediately took to the streets of Manchester on buying it and stated playing around with the ideas that have now formed his career.

The pairing of Dub and his FX pedal weren’t the only lasting relationship formed on the Manc streets. Whilst there, he met Shoshana Sadia, known simply as Flower Fairy, who he fell for infinitely more than his new piece of technology, and who since his fiancé, collaborator, merchandise seller and right hand woman wherever his travels take him.

By this time, his travels and especially time in the UK had exposed him to a new kind of music for the Australian troubadour. Roots and reggae music had since become his muse, and after some time amassing some collective songs based on all his new loves, he released ‘Live on the Street’, a live album in 2007.

Going quite against the nature of this free spirit, it must have been quite a task when Dub FX embarked upon the confines of the studio two years later to put together his first studio album, ‘Everythinks a Ripple’, which he self released in 2009. Used to feeding off his bedazzled audience on the street, he instead clearly channelled that energy, with support and collaboration from his nearest and dearest, Flower Fairy and saxophonist Mr Woodnote and came out with an album that is stunning enough to be sold at each of his performances and earns him the luxury of not selling himself to a label.

Like the consummate artist, he continues to evolve, and he is absorbent to his surroundings. As Dubstep takes hold as the most visceral music genre to emerge out of the Capital’s depths, Ben has spent some time on Dubstep side project, Kila Mega Giga Tera, with collaborator Glade Kettle (Distro), leaving even more music to soak up in his wake, via the duo’s MySpace.

As we look forward to welcoming him to our city’s biggest live music venue, we know that he’ll bring all the innovation of his craft and all the verve of the street to us, his attentive public.

You started off as a street artist, but as you play bigger venues, do you think you’re in danger of losing any of the spontaneity or crowd relationship that you have with street performance?

Not really; I was playing in all types of different bands in clubs and pubs in Melbourne for 5 years before I started street performing. My strongest asset back then was my spontaneity and crowd relationship; however, my singing, rapping and beat box skills were pretty poor. Once I started busking and workshopping the loops station idea I was able to adapt my performance into what it is now and tighten up my skills. Nowadays I still busk and do stage shows in clubs and festivals. I treat them as different shows; on the street I focus more on selling my CD, because that’s how I make my money, so I play proper songs and structure them in a pop type format. In clubs I focus more on locking down a groove and toasting over it, so in fact my stage show has more spontaneity and crowd interaction. Lately, however, I’ve had to incorporate some of the structured songs from YouTube into my stage act to keep my fans happy.

Performing quite ad-hoc as a street performer must have created some unusual situations owing to differing reactions from the public, but what’s the strangest or most memorable encounter you’ve had?

I remember one time in Camden I was busking when a police lady came up to tell me to stop, so I stopped; when she left I started up again, and an hour later I looked out into the crowd and she was dancing. I always have pretty crazy moments in the street – every city has its quirks. My favourite moments are when someone asks to have a go on the mic and absolutely rips it up. It happens from time to time; sometimes I get people who aren’t very good, but the crowd is usually pretty encouraging.

We have beatbox classes for kids in Norwich, teaching them the techniques, which has created quite a scene. What’s the importance of that sort of grass roots teaching, and how did you learn?

I learned to beat box on my own just by copying hip hop beats with my mouth. I never took it seriously until I figured out I could use it with the loop station. I think it’s great that kids are learning properly in classes but so long as they get taught the basics and then go off and figure out their own style as opposed to every one doing the same things. To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of beatboxing on its own, I find it pretty boring. I’d rather hear it with a duo or a rapper or with a band, that’s why the loop station is a great invention for solo beatboxers as it allows them to expand their sounds and lock down a groove to then improvise over.

You’re always accompanied by your lovely fiance, Flower Fairy, who splits herself between performing and selling your merch – did you first bond over music?

Yeah, we met at a rave in a forest through her sister. We started hanging out in Manchester, walking around the city with 2 pairs of headphones plugged into the same mp3 player. We would take turns with each of our own players showing each other our favourite songs… in fact she pretty much introduced me to jungle and liquid DnB.

What do you do to find time together as a couple away from performing?

We go to the cinema or watch films on our computer in bed, we practice our songs or write and record new ones, we go to the park and walk around, or into the city and go shopping. We kind of just amuse ourselves with whatever is around us… but most of our time is taken up with music.

You beatbox, you use a loop pedal and you sing, which many beatboxers don’t, but which came first?

I started off playing the drums when I was 12 for a few years then switched to guitar because my dad refused to buy me a drum kit! I later realised that I wasn’t very good at guitar in my last year of high school when I had music as a subject, so in order to make my exam easier, I switched to singing at the last minute. I wasn’t a naturally good singer – in fact, I was pretty shit – but I managed to pick it up a lot quicker then guitar. I didn’t do very well in the final exam but I realised that I could get pretty good if I stuck at it. When I was 18 I started beat boxing and rapping but wasn’t very good at any of it. Now I’m 26 and I’ve had a lot of experience and practice over the years, so naturally I’ve gotten better.

Your solo material has strong reggae and dub influences, but your recent work as duo Kila Mega Giga Tera with Glade Kettle, you’ve explored Dubstep a bit more. Has this come from relocating to England?

Yeah, I had never heard of Dubstep until I got to Manchester a few years ago – in fact I hadn’t heard of Grime, I didn’t know the difference between Jungle and DnB; I had no real clue of the UK music scene. Now I’m releasing an album with Glade (Sirius) called ‘Across Worlds’, which isn’t made with my beatboxing or anything like that, we just produced a heap of Dubstep together and tried to expand its possibilities as much as possible using jazz, classical etc… that should be ready in a few weeks.

You’ve said previously that in Australia, they have been limited in the sounds they’re exposed to and don’t have so much roots influence, but recently we’ve seen lots more successful bands come out of Australia – do you perceive that the same, and why do you think that is?

I cant speak for anything other than UK-style music that comes out of Australia. Pendulum are an exception because they come from Perth where there is a big UK influence, but in Melbourne and Sydney, the majority of the people there listen to House and Electro… maybe a bit of of Hip Hop and Rock, but because the population is so small and the land is so big, it’s really hard for anything underground to really take off without commercialising itself. I believe it’s also down to the fact that Australia is a predominantly white country… there are very few Caribbean or African influences, so their music in my opinion is quite stale.

How have you found living over here for creativity, and how does the scene differ from what you’ve experienced around the world?

I find England to be the best possible breeding ground for music. Everyone in England appreciates music differently to anywhere I have been. I look at it from a population perspective as a whole and I believe that music is a number one priority in England, whereas in Australia the number one is sport, Italy would be food etc… I’ve also seen that in England everyone wants to hear something new. The freshest possible thing is the ‘in’ thing. Australia is less open to that.

You have worked intrinsically as a solo artist, even making what you classed as ‘cheesy music’ before you had the change of heart and courage to make music you believed in – at that time, did it seem at all lonely or futile?

Well the reason for that was I hadn’t yet been to England. In Australia you can’t land a record deal unless you sound like something that’s doing well in England or America and if you don’t have a record company booking your shows and tours, then it’s almost impossible to have a career in music without working in a pub pouring beers as well. Again, this is because of the small population and their closed minds towards new music. When I started busking, I was making watered down pop reggae which sounded like Jason Mraz or Jack Johnson; this was because I didn’t see another way of getting popular, but once I got to Manchester and the rest of England, I realised that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with that horrible puke, and what people wanted there was the filthiest bass line and the grimiest possible beat mixed up with some intense lyrics… I could never have conceived such a thing from Australia because it would be too out there for anyone to appreciate.

You have now found yourself collaborating with different artists, so I wondered how you found working with others after being solo for so long?

I love jamming and I do it all the time with DJs. I used to do it in Melbourne with a house DJ but once I got to the UK, I started working with DnB, Dubstep, Breaks and Jungle DJs, which is how I started learning about the different styles and what the crowd was loving. I also jam with bands from time to time and do the odd improv jazz gig. I started there and I will always go back to that type stuff… Dub FX is only a small part of what I like, it just happens to be an expression done by my self. I love collaborating with other people and I’ll do a lot more of it, but for now, I’m focusing on Dub FX because it’s gotten me to this point.

You’re coming to Norwich in June for a gig, but what would you ask of your audience?

Just to be themselves…

Emma Roberts

Dub FX will be performing for Roots ‘n’ Culture at the UEA on June 11^th along with Flower Fairy, Snareophobe and Foreign Beggars.

Hey, is that Aaron?

Erm, I think it is… yes. My head was just up my arse for a second, but it’s definitely me now.

I’ve been in an underground dungeon sort of thing, it’s weird.

What, literally or metaphorically?

It’s where we rehearse; it’s sort of undergroud, so that’s where I just was. But now I’ve come out to the light.

Where is this underground dungeon?

It’s on like an industrial estate in Southampton. It’s quite seedy actually; I can imagine – well I know – that lots of stuff goes on here at night. It’s in an area called Millbrook. It’s an interesting place.

It sounds like it’s immersing you in its own surroundings as well…

Yeah, it is. It’s very oppressive.

I’ve just been reading your Camden Crawl review this morning – how good is that?!

Yeah, I just saw that this morning. That was ridiculous, well, that was just like an accolade and it was like, ‘Wow!’, y’know. You know sometimes when a gig is going to be different while you’re doing it, and that one was like that. I think we were all just chomping at the bit to play, and it just sort of went off, for want of a Shakespearian phrase, haha.

The review said that Greg was almost visibly nervous at playing – was it the same for you Aaron?

Greg’s always nervous. I always feel strangely numb before gig day. Unless we’re in the middle of a tour, if it’s an individual gig day, then I sort of wander round in a daze until we go on. It’s strange; it’s kinda like a numbness – I guess it’s fight or flight kicking in when I’m nervous, but it’s not horrible, I love it. I enjoy every moment when I’m on stage, which is rare, then afterwards I can’t wait to go and do it all again. I wish I could do that always.

Yeah, wouldn’t It be awesome if you could channel that feeling and use it as emotional recall and pretend that every moment was as exciting as being on stage…

Yeah, that’d be amazing, ‘cause I think if you’re having a good time, as soon as you’re aware of it, it’s gone, y’know… we should bottle that.

And start selling it at the gigs. I think us mere mortals never experience the feeling of it going off in front of our faces.

Go off!

Yeah, that’s what you could call it!

Gone off! Wow, that could make tens of pounds!

Haha, it really could. I’m starting to think complete megalomania.

I’m excited by this.

The Camden Crawl review said that you sang ‘Brilliant Sunshine’, but you’ve been doing a bit more singing on the tracks recently, haven’t you?

Yeah, I think it’s me just trying to shoehorn my way in! The thing is, me and Greg write the songs at the moment, and when I’ve written a song – and I don’t always write lyrics to songs – I kinda want to sing them, because they’ve got more meaning to me. Yeah, I did a couple on the last album and the response has been great, so I’m flattered, it’s really nice.

I read an interview with Greg actually that said your songs just don’t fit his diction because you write in the way you talk.

My poor diction, haha.

Is that what he was intimating?

I think it was you know, but I’ll kick his head in, in a minute. No I won’t… I think I sing in a different key to him. I like to think that I’m more manly, haha. No, I don’t mean that.

Well you don’t have the trademark falsetto vocals, but I guess it’s nice for him to give them a rest sometimes…

Yeah, we never actually thought about that, but I guess it is, you know, during the gig he enjoys that break. I’ve noticed actually that the songs that I sing are often back to back, so he must give his voice a rest and completely forget about everything else apart from losing himself in guitars.

What a nice thing for you to do Aaron…

I know, how nice am I?!

I think it was your birthday last week Aaron, but this year there was no mention on your blog. Last year the band posted up some beautiful pictures as a gift to you: something representing the weather as that’s something you’re obsessed with apparently…

Yeah, I know it’s a really British thing, but I’ve gone one further and actually got a weather radar thing on the back of my house, so I can see what we’ve got coming in, what the jet stream’s gonna throw at us. Do you know what, I just like extreme anything, but if I hear the words “sit”, “batten”, “down” and “hatches” in the same sentence of a weather report, I’m excited like a five year old child.

Have you experienced much tumultuous weather while you’ve been travelling with the band?

Yeah, loads. We were actually in New Orleans just before Katrina and we had to leave the city; everyone had to leave the city and we were there for that, it was great! But yeah, you know we had a lot of snow this year and I ended up just staying up and watching it and making footprints in it and getting into snowball fights with the students, which was great. I finally had some friends to do it with, haha! I’m giving you some inside information now though, and we’re actually going to have 14 weeks of summer.

Cor, we need that in Norwich…

We were actually in Norwich on the day the team bus was celebrating its promotion a few years back. Me and Rowly found ourselves topless, painted yellow and green and wandering round the city with everyone else!

Your music has quite an affiliation with football hasn’t it? It’s been featured on various football incarnations like Match of the Day and video games…

Yeah, they’ve sort of gravitated towards us, I mean, me and Greg used to play for Portsmouth when we were younger, which was a bit weird seeing as we were from Southampton, but I don’t know, it’s just sort of come about that they like to use us for all the sporting wonderments! But you know, everything looks good in slow motion, hehe!

Well your music in the past has been filled with a kind of elation – it’s very positive music.

Erm, it is yeah, but the things we write about are often not such wonderful subjects of elation, but we’ve always written in a way that shows that we suffer with our heads just like everybody else, but the way we deal with it is to write about it. We have done a lot of melancholic things, but we kind of put it to music that sounds quite positive, so it’s a bit of a juxtaposition, ha!

I’ve found that juxtaposition a lot on the new album, ‘Star Tiger, Star Ariel’ – it’s a little darker than your previous efforts, isn’t it?

Well you know it’s the fourth album now, so we were able to just indulge ourselves completely in this one, because we didn’t have any arseholes from London coming down to give us their opinion, which was nice to be able to do that. It was a difficult process writing with Greg this time though, because we didn’t get on too well. It actually just got to a point where I thought ‘hang on a sec, should we actually be doing this, because it’s destroying our relationship?’. But you know, we did it and the recording process was brilliant; it’s the most I’ve ever enjoyed doing it because of the frought tension of sitting in a room and hammering the songs out. It was really cathartic. It’s the only album I’ve done where I’ve actually listened to it after we’ve recorded it.

I really liked ‘Lost Tunes’, your EP of ‘lost tracks’ and covers, as I like the acoustic side of the stuff you do, but I think you’ve managed to capture the essence of that with the new album.

We’ve always talked about doing a whole album like that, which I’m sure we probably will at some point, but we’ve got so much new material that I think this one’s just ready to go!

There was quite a gap between you writing the material and then when you thought it’d come out, to when it’s actually coming out now. I read you thought it was coming out last September – was it down to the arseholes in London that it didn’t come out then?

Yeah, it was partly down to that, but we also had a lot of personal things going on with one and another, which kinda stretched things out a little more, but there was never a doubt about it coming out. We weren’t gonna rush it just to stick to a deadline this time – we didn’t have to. But where are we now? June – cor, it’s quite a long time between then and now, but we’re still here!

So what’s been happening personally then? Anyone gone off to get married?

No, no, this was darker than that.

Darker than marriage?!

Haha, darker than marriage, yeah, yeah! No, this is because Greg suffers from OCD quite badly, so we had to get him in a place where he was OK to record, and go away and things like that. Plus we fell out for like a month, we didn’t speak, so there’s a month gone.

I think that’s your prerogative as brothers actually, to fall out.

Yeah, but it’s a cliché as well though isn’t it, for us to fall out. I mean c’mon, we can do better than that. Let’s actually kill each other if we’re going to fall out, y’know, go one better.

You’re coming to Norwich for one of the later dates in the tour, so are you preparing heavily now?

Yeah, we are; we’re rehearsing today and obviously we had our Camden gig and I’ve just finished a couple of remixes that I had to do for us, so yeah, we’re back in the studio again for the first time today, just playing the new songs, because obviously we haven’t had a lot of opportunity to play them in.

How do you plan to recapture the magic of playing them for the first time? How do you make sure you don’t become bored with them by the end of the tour?

Well I think to be able to get up on stage and have people – and we’re lucky – have people sing our songs back to us and things like that, how could you ever get bored of that? I think if you do, you’ve lost your soul. I get goosebumps every single night we play – that doesn’t get boring.

I speak to a lot of musicians who often start to view what they do as purely a job.

Then why the… why are they even doing it? Music’s a form of expression and being creative and if they don’t have that, then why the fuck are they doing it? ‘Scuse my language, but that annoys the hell outta me.

Now Aaron, talk to me about Southampton. In 2007, Southampton was named one of the top ten best places to live by people aged 18-30! Why is that…?

Was it really? Well it’s absolute carnage if you go down there of a weekend!

Is it? Is that what they meant, that it’s just messy?!

Yeah, I think so to be honest. There are some great places to go out, there really is, and there are some awful places to go out! If you’re 18-30 though, you’re gonna have a great time in any city, it just depends on who you’re with. I didn’t know it’d been voted that though…!

Yeah, it was actually voted 2^nd best by women.

Hmmm, corrrr. The ladies feel secure. There’s a lot of gents in Southampton! A lot of gents.

Or maybe they feel insecure and that’s what they like a little bit?

Yeah, the ladies just love that impending sense of doom in their stomachs! “What’s gonna happen next?” – that’s why they come, haha. I’m interested to know where it is now though –

- Yeah, and how they judge it, because you’re in that age group and you weren’t asked to vote, otherwise I’m sure you would have put it first.

Yeah, haha. I was away that particular time, obviously!

Is it a good place to come home to, Southampton? Will you always remain there?

Yeah, definitely; we’ve been asked to move to London on countless occasions and we’ve lived there for like a few months here and there when we’ve been recording and doing promo stuff and I still love going to London, but it’s always nice to get out and leave and just come back here and get called a twat, you know.

That’s quite perverse that that’s something you enjoy…!

When you get surrounded by people by people who say exactly what you want to hear all the time, it can get quite unnerving and it’s fake.

Somewhere that you’ve always had a great reaction though has been America, hasn’t it? Have you found anywhere else that you’d consider to be a fan home?

The biggest for us is Mexico and South America – it’s crazy. The first time we went down there, there were like 50 people waiting for us at the airport. You know, like fans with banners. That was strange, but wonderful. We’d just come off this long haul flight and we looked like shit and felt like it as well, but that certainly picked us up. Then we went to play in this bull fighting arena and that was one of my favourite gigs ever.

Was that an ice cream van I just heard in the background, Aaron?

Yeah, it was. Where were they in the winter eh? Not too keen to come out then, are they? I could have killed for an ice cream when I had a bad throat.

I’m disappointed it’s not outside my window. Will you be chasing after it down the street?

I might do actually. I’ll email you one – it’s 2010, you can do anything.

Finally Aaron, you have a great memory of Norwich from last time you came, getting caught up in the football parade, but do you have any other memories of our city?

I really do like Norwich actually, and that day was the most I’d ever immersed myself in your city and its people! I had a big ‘N’ painted on me, which was lovely… by myself. But hey, you’ve got a good city there. The first time I ever went to Nando’s was in Norwich! For breakfast.

Wow, that is decadent.

Yeah, I wore my paisley slippers and smoking jacket -

- Because that’s how you roll.

That IS how I roll.

Emma Roberts

The Delays will be coming to Norwich Arts Centre on June 7^th.