UK four-piece The Futureheads return to Australia for the second time in their career, this time in support of their third album This Is Not the World. Since their last visit to the country in 2005 the band has gone through a lot, including severing ties with their record label after the release of their second album, News and Tributes, and the establishment of their own label, Nul Records.
Futureheads guitarist Ross Millard spoke to yourGigs while sitting beside the River Tyne in his home of Newcastle.
yourGigs (yG): How's 2008 been for you so far?
Ross Millard (RM): We've been back on the road all year and, for us, the festivals this (European) summer have been good to do because we didn't do any last year. I think we've done more this year than we ever have. We've been into parts of Europe that we've never really been into. It's amazing for us, truth be told, because we feel like we've built up a head of steam again. When you're on the road or you've got a full diary, as a musician, it's the most satisfying thing because there's nothing more depressing than a musician at home with time on his hands.
yG: It must be nice to have three albums worth of material to pick from now?
RM: That has been really good for us. I think sometimes, especially in the UK, people get a bit ahead of themselves. Sometimes you get bands, who've only got one record, high up the bill on festivals and being asked to play hour long sets when their album isn't even an hour long. So even if they played every song they had, they still wouldn't be able to quite give people as many minutes as they should. We were in the position ourselves after our first record; we had some unnaturally high spots at festivals. But now, we've got three records. When we rehearse for a tour, we rehearse three times as many songs as we need to play on an average night so that we can pick the set list an hour before so it can be interesting.
yG: What has the highlight of the year been so far?
RM: That's difficult. I think metaphysically and spiritually, starting up this label and having such a positive public reaction to releasing our music independently has been the highlight of the year. There was every chance that this band could have disappeared into obscurity upon the release of this album. For us, it was just nice to see that it was well-received and also that we were playing to full houses again. We were doing a lot of shows and there were people there to see us. That's the best feeling on earth.
yG: With the recording of the album, was it nice to not have record company people breathing down your neck?
RM: Most definitely. We can do a tour now and we don't have to do those god awful meet-and-greets and have music industry people coming into the dressing room and drinking all the rider. The buck stops with us for everything. Whether it's good or bad, we're responsible and that's a great feeling to have.
yG: Do you ever see a time where you'll be releasing other people's music?
RM: I don't think so. We've been saying in our interviews an awful lot that it doesn't take much for a band to do their own thing and find independent distribution and not be at the mercy of a huge record label. For us to say that and then take on other bands would be a little hypocritical, so I think we're going to just keep it for ourselves only.
yG: Can you tell me a bit about the recording of the album.
RM: It was done in Spain. It was done in the Sierra Nevada mountain range with Youth, who was the producer; he has a studio there. It was a great experience for us because it was a lot more casual. We spent 16 days there and we recorded more songs in that period than we ever had in the studio before. We'd been in the one for the second record for six weeks and the first album took a lot longer than that to make. I think that was down to the headspace we were in when we went out there. We'd had a difficult 18 months prior to that because we'd split from our label and we weren't sure how we were going to release the third album, if we were going to release the third album at all. By the time we went in there we'd written 11 songs and we wrote 11 more while we were in the studio. It was almost like a little workshop. We've never had that in the studio before where we would write so many songs and record so many songs spontaneously. It's something we'd like to pursue in the future because it worked very well for us.
yG: Can you see yourself working with Youth again?
RM: Most definitely. I think we've found our sort of unofficial fifth member, in a way. I think we see that more than he does. I know that he really enjoyed working with us but he lives quite a nomadic lifestyle in terms of his work; I think he likes to flip from project to project. It was very flattering working with Youth because I think he truly enjoyed the project and I don't think he often does. I think he starts most albums with good intentions but there a few personality clashes with him along the way for a lot of bands because he's got a very specific personality. I think we hit it off right away. He got a lot of work out of us that a lot of other producers probably wouldn't have got.
yG: Do you see a new record coming in the near future or will there be a break?
RM: I think we're going to come off the road at Christmas time and then, early next year, we'll get together and have some rehearsals for new songs and see where we're at. We've all got a few blueprints about how we see the fourth record turning out. We are a long way from getting in the studio but, that being said, it doesn't take that much time from having relatively little to having too much stuff. I would expect us to have finished the fourth record, fingers crossed, by March time next year.
Michael Hartt
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