Clean Cut Kid interview: Beards, bromance and a deep netflix hole

Clean Cut Kid talk spontaneous festival marriage, a Liverpool 'bromance, debut album details and Mike's all-conquering beard.

Ben Smith

Last updated: 12th Dec 2016

Image: Clean Cut Kid

It's happened all quite fast for Liverpool's Clean Cut Kid who made a meteoric leap into music. They were signed by major label Polydor Records after only their second gig and from that point their fuzzy pop allure has rocketed much further than Merseyside.

When speaking to them it's clear that their spirit is very much rooted in the city's ever-evolving music scene: a close-knit musical eco-system that's channeling all matter of sounds right now.

Key to bubbling this sonic melting pot is Clean Cut Kid's sprite and soulful indie-pop concoction; so much so that they've been shortlisted for this year's GIT Award - "Merseyside's mercury Awards" as Evelyn explains - and are sketched onto the line up posters for Sound City and Liverpool International Music Festival.

They also recently released 'Pick Me Up', a 7" Record Store Day release (listen to its b-side below), played an extremely intimate home-city gig and will engage on a festival run that boasts the likes of Secret Garden Party, Reading & Leeds and Festival No6.

With so much to come and the stars very much aligned for Clean Cut Kid, Ben Smith interrupted Evelyn Halls (Vocals and synth) coffee break to talk about the opportunity for spontaneous festival marriage, the 'bromance' of Liverpool's music scene and her partner (and fellow band guitarist) Mike's beard - watch out for a riveting analogy.

Hey, how's things?

We’re just in the middle of doing some demos at the minute actually. We’ve had two weeks of down time. Obviously we had the first two days getting a hole in Netflix, like a deep netflix hole.

How deep a Netflix hole are we talking about?

Like really deep, I found myself watching a documentary about cheese or something. Pretty deep, we pretty much exhausted everything that Netflix has to offer. After a few days Mike was like I need to do some music; he started writing and we just started demoing really in the flat - getting ready for festival season as well. I’m dead excited for that.

You’ve got quite a nice run. I guess Sound City is a big one for you then...

Yeah it’ll be the first time that Clean Cut Kid have done Sound City. LIMF as well, I didn’t realise how massive it actually is. I think it's the biggest free festival in Europe or something. That’s going to be boss, I think we’re doing main stage for that so it’s going to be cool.

There’s Barn On The Farm, that’s one of my favourites. Beat-Herder, Lost Village... don't they take over an abandoned village in the woods or something mental like that? [Laughs]

I see you're playing Festival no6, thats quite a nice one isn't it?

I think you can get married there, like legally. I think there’s a chapel, because people get there and there’s so much love in this little village. They must be like let’s cash in on people’s spontaneous marriages.

I hear you’ve been playing some pretty intimate gigs in Liverpool too?

Yeah I think it was around a year ago that we played our first gig and it was on our second that we signed a record deal. Very quickly we were pushed straight into touring and it was just before festival season. We didn’t get to do those small hometown gigs that all bands do before they grow.

By the time we played our first Liverpool gig we’d had all of this exposure so it was kind of intimidating: it wasn't just not a small town gig in-front of a couple of friends and family. We wanted to get back to that and kind of do it in reverse. And our schedule was that busy it was hard to find a promoter and fit it in, it was hard.

So we just thought we’d put it on ourselves, in a bar, a tiny venue and do the sound ourselves and just do it that way. We thought it’d be a nice intimate gig for the fans to go to instead of just coming back and doing massive shows and being disconnected from the crowd.

It's worked really because we met loads of people we might not have been able to meet at a bigger show and we just had these boss gigs when you’re kind of at someones house. Which is what we all remember fondly from when we were growing up someone would have a party and they’d be like "oh can your band play”. It was rough and ready and that’s what we wanted to create with these small little gigs. That’s what this Fuzzy Presents thing is.

So although you were signed to a major label early, do you feel like your roots are very much ingrained in were Liverpool seems to be at the moment with this whole wealth of DIY/indie bands cropping up?

Very much, definitely. It’s a very nice place to be at the moment, because they’re [bands] all so different. You’ve got Stealing Sheep, Hooton Tennis Club, The Vryll Society, I know Blossoms are from further a-field, but all of these kind of bands like Lumen, it feels like everyone's got a space to do their own thing.

There’s not this one sound going through everything and it's really exciting. Another thing about Liverpool as well is the bands all support each other and that’s a really hard thing to find. It really does help in you feeling that you’ve got a place in the city kind of thing. It's cool to come back and do those little shows and feel like you’re part of a scene when you’re just away all the time.

There certainly feels like there's a togetherness about Liverpool at the moment. Do you connect with anyone in particular?

I feel like we’re away so much that we don’t see anyone physically, but if they’ve got a show on and we can make it we’ll go down. There’s loads of like bromances blossoming everywhere between all of the bands and I think even a small thing like supporting each other on social media goes a long way.

You know public support to make everyone see that noones in competition? I think that’s so important and we want that to be the scene in Liverpool and be happy.

[The GIT Awards]

They are are also coming up in Liverpool. I just know on the night it’s going to be like such a cool boss supportive thing instead of everyone being in competition and whoever wins great. That may sound a bit cheesy, but that’s how it feels in Liverpool lately.

Everyone is behind each other. There’s Bill Ryder-Jones, he’s produced lots of stuff and I know James Skelly from The Coral has just produced Blossoms and helped out on The Vryll Society so there’s a lot of collaboration going on in and out of the city which is cool.

Outside of Liverpool, people might not recognise how prestigious it is. It's more of a celebration of Liverpool music than about winning it outright isn't it?

Definitely, I think someone said it was like the Mercury awards of Merseyside. It's so cool and that again is one of those awards were it totally doesn’t matter who wins really. For every person who gets nominated it's like such an honour.

How far are things along the line concerning an album?

We’ve got a load of tracks together, definitely an albums worth. We are just piecing it together really. Testing out the track-listing, production, getting some different mixes. We’re definitely past the half way point of getting it out.

We hope to deliver by the end of the year or the start of next year. We don’t want to wait around and keep people guessing. We’ve just got to time it right and you know you've only got one chance to put out your first album so we just want to get it right. We’re so excited and bursting to get it out there.

When you say you’ve only got one chance, I feel you’ve got a big chance because of how accessible your music is. You’ve got the pop melodies, the hamornies, fuzzy guitars, and it’s kind of folky…

Yeah definitely. It came from folk, it started in folk, his roots are all in folk. That’s where his songwriting comes from and stuff so that’s cool.

Is their a paticular sound you’re aiming for?

I think in terms of our sound: we [Evelyn & Mike] met and we started singing together so it had that kind of tight male, female vocal. We very quickly started experimenting with different fuzz pedals and different synth sounds. Mike always had this idea of really, big almost Phil Collins style drums and it was almost like we got into the studio and it all came together very quickly.

So I think the main things that will always stay with the Clean Cut kid sound is really fuzzy layered up guitar, layered up drums. Where you can't tell if it was played in B or if it's broken down and played separately. So they’ll definitely always stay and I think with the synths sounds aswell, we take alot of inspiration from the eighties, the hey day, and they always will be.

On that gear and the original analogue synths, you just can’t beat them. We want to celebrate that. We love those big walls. There’s keys for me, my job in the band is to just act as that rhythm guitar and in those little gaps it's almost like when you have a glass full of stones and i’m like the water filling all of those little gaps.

Now that's a great analogy...

It came straight off the top of my head. Actually I just read it off my hand, I wrote it last night. [Laughs]

What has the label been like, have they just left you to it - creatively?

We have been so lucky with that, we signed to a major label as an indie band and we’re just four rough arses from Liverpool. And we signed a major pop deal and they’ve invested so much into us and they’ve been so good to just let us do what we want.

Obviously we’ve got to deliver our part, we listen to them and we take advice from them. They obviously know how to put records out and know how to place bands in the market. They’ve been so good with trusting us with the styling, and the artwork even down to who we wanted to produce the album. All that kind of thing, they’ve been so good to let us do it.

It's all us, we either sign it off or we do it ourselves. We'll always keep that level of involvement in it, that's how Clean Cut Kid is always going to stay true. As soon as we give it to someone else or put it in someone else's hand's [pauses] like even when we started we had a couple of stylists come in and try and do a photoshoot. We just looked at them like fucking hell.

Just let Saul put his trakkies back on and let Mike's beard grow to crazy lengths. That's the beauty of it I guess, it's all just a mish mash.

Are you against or in favour of Mike's beard?

God I love it you know, even though he's got a great face behind it.

I seen a comparison tweet earlier...

What's this beard sayin'? "Keep me, or shave me!" #beard #orcleancut https://t.co/vmwYWDIzTj pic.twitter.com/Q8fNr2rkeC
— Clean Cut Kid (@CleanCutKid) April 22, 2016

I think he just wanted an opinion really, whether people love it or absolutely hated it. held got such a good face behind it but he looks so good with the beard so he's got quite a difficult decision to make there. He'll have to keep it for atleast this album campaign or the pictures are going to look weird.

Who is that imposter on stage!

Maybe after the second album, he could do some sort of side project where no one else will know it's him.