Interview: Young Knives talk festivals, Twitter, and 'pop sh*t'

With Ramsbottom Festival just around the corner, Young Knives’ Tom speaks to Skiddle about festivals, the ‘pop’ industry and why he’s glad Kurt Cobain never had a Twitter.

In a few weeks time you will be playing Ramsbottom Festival. As a band, do you enjoy festival season?

Yeah definitely! Its gets you in front of a whole bunch that wouldn’t necessarily come to watch your gig if you were playing somewhere if they didn’t know who you were, so they would probably never ordinarily watch your show. At a festival they’re there and cant run away. It's weird as well, as sometimes you get a good reaction and people are loving it and then you occasionally have those people who don’t really like you and are just stood there leaning on the barrier looking bored, waiting for the next band to come on. But yeah, I like festivals.

The last time we spoke to you was just before Kendal Calling. How did that go, and what other festivals have you played since?

Kendal Calling was good actually. We’ve not done that one before; it’s a nice little festival. It’s well laid out and not totally crammed. I went to one in London recently and it was so packed full of people. They must have sold as many tickets as humanly possible. It’s nice to do ones that are punter friendly. T in the Park isn’t very punter friendly. It's as if its set up just to make as much money as possible. You can’t take water or food into the site. The smaller ones that people are doing now are far better as you don’t feel like your getting scammed.

You’ve obviously played lots of festivals. Are there any that you would like to play that you haven’t played yet?

Some of the European ones. We’ve done a bit of stuff in Europe but this year we haven’t – nobody seems to have wanted us! Some of those out there look really good, like Benicassim and Pukkelpop, although that has been a bit of a nightmare recently.

So you’ve been in the music scene for over 13 years. What do you think was a turning point in Young Knives' career? When did people start to take notice?

It was sort of a gradual thing really. It sounds kind of boring but it was mostly about getting people interested enough to want to represent you either record company wise, management wise or even just spreading the word for you. You can’t really do it alone. It was all word of mouth really, weather its fans or local radio, so it was a gradual process. There were certain things that happened that were pivotal moments. When we signed up to a management company first time round and we had someone on our side doing things for us and talking to record companies. Although it doesn’t sound very exciting, it was kind of pivotal in a way.

Well it was only quite recently that the social networking side of things took off, whereas when you started out there wasn’t really any of that. Do you think it was much harder back then?

I don’t think it affected us that much. Now with the Facebook, MySpace and Twitters – everybody’s got one. There’s nothing sort of special about it. When we were first playing, MySpace came out and people were saying to sign up. Then suddenly loads of people were on it because it was somewhere you could listen to bands and not pay any money, but then it eventually ran its course as a new and exciting phenomenon.

Do you think social media promotion has got a bit too much now?

Well there’s just too much to see now isn’t there? I mean it's great when you hear of a band and you want to know what they sound like – there’s a whole myriad of places you can go to hear them and that’s great because that never used to be available. You would have to get a copy of a tape off your friend back in the day.

It obviously affects people who would have gone and bought a single as they are not doing that anymore. I think the main thing that’s a bit depressing about it is that there’s no mystery surrounding anybody in a band. We’ve got a Twitter and a Facebook and people are just constantly messaging you and stuff. I sometimes think I don’t want to be sat on here and be saying ‘yeah, I’m just having a cheese and ham sandwich’ etc… If I would have sat there when I was a kid reading tweets from Kurt Cobain saying ‘just having a wee’ it would have ruined it for me. He wouldn’t have been that magical, unapproachable figure.

In a way I suppose it's good with the kind of celebrity thing. People think celebrities are special and live in another world, and it does blow that out of the water when your reading someone like Lily Allen’s constant tweeting and wittering.

Do you think bands are losing the more personal touch with fans now?

Yeah, but there’s good and bad. Some have really personal things going on, and some bands have a really close fan base. British Sea Power always do a lot for their fans. Then there's the other side of things that are really naff like helping them to fund another album, I’m not down with that. We keep getting asked about it. Some people say you get a copy of the album at the end of it, which is fair enough, that’s fine. But some almost feel as if your being scammed. They do things like ‘we’ll come round to your house and make you dinner’ or ‘we will draw you a picture’ and that kind of stuff, and you think ‘what a scam’.

Have you found that the industry has changed in its attitude towards ‘guitar bands’? There’s been a big influx of more electronic bands in recent years. Has this had an effect?

Yeah definitely. If there are guitar bands around they are not being shown in the media as much or signed to labels. It’s more of a pop industry, even hip hop is becoming part of the pop industry. I find you will get people who were round a few years ago and doing something really cutting edge, like Dizzee Rascal's first album; that was real grime and raw, but he got gradually more commercial.

You have people like Tinie Tempah who is sold to you by a record company as something really cutting edge and underground, like Dizzee Rascal was a few years ago, but it's just a pop track with a hip-hoppy image, which is just rubbish.

Well his record company are the same people who look after Kylie and Ellie Goulding, which is probably a completely separate bracket than what he originally wanted to break through in.

Yeah, and Ellie Goulding is one of those people who is sold to you like that too. You have the PR company selling you this underground artist who’s writing is genius, unique and groundbreaking but she’s just pop shit.

Hmm, the industry doesn’t seem to be as black and white as it once was. Everyone seems to be merging into the mainstream to survive.

I think that’s mainly to do with the record companies who are losing a lot of money in recent years and they’re just trying to keep everything they bring out much more commercial. Labels who helped new bands get off the ground, well you don’t really hear much about them anymore, as they don’t really have any money to help bands with advertising. I mean, there are things out there but you just don’t really seem to hear about them. You used to hear about bands on 6music but even that has become more commercial, almost without really noticing. People who would have got the odd play never seem to really be on there, which is sad. Although Mark Riley is one that still does things…

Have you stumbled across any bands while you have been touring recently that you think we should keep an eye out for?

I watched a band called Toy the other day. They have been supporting The Horrors recently. Do you remember Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong? Well it's them minus the lead singer, I don’t know what’s happened to him, but they’ve all grown their hair and doing kind of doom rock now, which is really weird because it's completely different - but actually works quite well.

Ornamants From The Silver Arcade is your most recent album. As a band, what is your strategy behind writing a new album?

A bit of everything really. Sometimes we sit around and do them together, some songs we do on our own. Things start out sometimes when we’re messing around and making noises and you think it would make a good B-Side, but later think 'actually that’s a pretty good A-side'. I think the last one we sort of had a vision for. We made a decision to go for a specific, more immediate sound. Now the new one we are just starting is a bit darker.

I was just about to ask you what’s next. Are you going to go for a darker sound?

Yeah! Loud. Dark. Heavy maybe…?

Are you going through your ‘gothic stage’? Are you going to grow your hair and dye it black?

(Laughs) We’re not going Emo or anything, just a bit more gutsy really. Our other song was quite pop actually, which was great fun to do, but we’ve done that and wanting to go in the opposite direction really.

Where do you get your inspiration from for making new music? Just everyday things, or are you one of those ‘pained musicians’ that go into a dark room and write page and page about how your feeling?

(Laughs) Not really, it's more everyday stuff really. One of us will have an initial idea and throw it out, and we try this or that. Usually they are just ‘in-jokes’ between the band and we write a track that nobody else will probably get the meaning of. A bit of everything really. It doesn’t come very easy for us so we tend to do it together. Every now and again you get a song that kind of writes itself and you can write it all in an hour, but with most of the stuff we will have a chorus that we will make up and add words around it. Sometimes we struggle a little bit, but we keep going until we get something good. The lyrics are the hardest bit for us sometimes.

Do you find it easy to make the music as opposed to the lyrics then?

Yeah, well the thing is we always come up with the music first. Sometimes the lyrics are good and read like good poetry but when you sing them to the lyrics they come across as quite naff and try hard. You sort of want it to feel effortless, so when people listen to them it doesn’t sound like you’ve been thinking too hard about them. You want it to sound like it all fits together perfectly.

What can we expect from you at Ramsbottom Festival? Will you be playing some new tracks?

We are going to play some stuff of the latest album. From the one we're writing at the minute we’ve got one track… maybe we’ll do it. Maybe we will, maybe we wont.

I think you should…

It might be a bit weird at a festival though. I think at a gig it would be alright because you’ve got more fans there, but at a festival... I suppose there’s more people who will hear it.

Take a risk, play a new one...

Alright then, alright then! (Laughs)

Catch Young Knives at Ramsbottom Festival on Saturday 17th July. Tickets for Ramsbottom Festival are available below. 

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