Interview: Twin Atlantic

13-4-12 http://www.stereoboard.com/content/view/171920/9

I caught up with Sam McTrusty and Craig Kneale from Twin Atlantic before their gig in Belfast’s Mandela Hall. Armed with only a packet of wine gums and a dodgy old school dictaphone I quizzed the pair about their recent tour in America, the prospect of a new album and their excellent fan base.

So how are things with Twin Atlantic, how does it feel to be back in Belfast?

Sam: Yeah we’re really excited.

Craig: We played here about a year ago at the venue upstairs, The Speakeasy, and that was great. We played a little place in Derry called Masons the first time we were here. It was one of the craziest gigs I’ve ever played! People were jumping on the stage and stuff. Last night in Derry there were a lot more people there, it was really cool to see so many mental people come to see us.

S: We played Belsonic too, that was great fun!

You guys are just back from a tour of America, how did that go? What were the highlights?

C: There were a lot of ups and downs, but overall it was really good. We loved it, but it was just so long, so part of me is glad to be home.

S: We played some great gigs, some of the best gigs we’ve ever played. But we also played some of our worst ones too! We ended up playing in some Church Hall, it was like something from a bad American horror movie.

What was the strangest thing you saw in America?

S: You actually grow numb to it. Because you’re on tour, you could be anywhere. You’re in a different place everyday so you just get on with it no matter how weird things seem. America is definitely a weird place to tour.

How does playing in America compare with playing in the UK?

C: We had, in some places in America, great little pockets of fans, which was great to have at the gigs. The passion is the same but, they just show it in a different way. They’re a lot more confident, they just talk to you like a normal person rather than as a ‘fan’.

Do you think they’re closer to you and more relaxed because of the use of things like Twitter and Facebook where fans and band members can communicate directly?

S: We make fun of ourselves just as much as we use it to inform and promote. We use it to say what we’re doing, and to tell fans about tickets and stuff, but mostly it’s just for pure comedy value! It just makes us laugh that so many people could be looking at a stupid photograph.

Listening to ‘You’re Turning Into John Wayne’ it’s almost like you’re discussing the prospect of your first tour in America, was that what the song’s about?

C: Well that was written just before we went to America the first time.

S: Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s about though. It’s kind of the whole feeling that a lot of Europeans idolise America, and America have that perception of idolising themselves over the rest of the world. We had just signed to an American label and we were talking to American producers and we were planning to go there. The music came first, it was a guitar part that Barry (McKenna, lead guitar/cello) had and it just took a while for us to work it into a full song.

A lot of the songs are personal stories that people can relate to rather than just lyrics that are catchy but mean nothing.

S: Sometimes I just write whatever’s in my head, but then I come back to it and think ‘well that’s actually quite a good story, I didn’t even mean to write that.’ Or sometimes I’ll be writing so late at night I’m not really thinking about it properly, but it works. They let me get away with quite a lot, I’m sure I’ve ruined a good song here or there by putting in a weird lyric or something.

I read Sam that you don’t particularly like being in the recording studio, if you could would you constantly tour and play gigs all over the world?

S: Well, I guess one needs the other so we couldn’t tour and not ever record any albums. For me it’s just a selfish thing because by the time we get to the studio, I have to force myself to keep it as simple as possible. With the guitar playing, I’m not challenged by it in recording because we’re just sort of going through the motions. Because of the way I record layers of guitar you’re playing the same things over and there’s not much room for creativity. I also hit the guitar really hard so it goes completely out of tune after just one take and I get frustrated with how precise it all has to be. I know that’s really immature. I probably wouldn’t even think about it if I wasn’t asked about it in interviews.

So will you be back in the studio this year?

S: We actually had a conversation about that today. Because we’re touring so much here and in America, we’re talking about recording in sections, but there’s nothing certain yet. We’ve got demos recorded so we’ll get an album done sometime this year, we’re definitely forward thinking! We’re playing a new track on this tour called ‘Lost Ones.’ We don’t know if it’ll even be on the album but there’s a part in it we really like so we just stuck it into the set.

And will you be working with Gil Norton (producer of second album, Free) again?

C: We’d really like to, that’s the plan anyway. He’s really busy this year so we’re not sure but I personally would love to work with him again, he was great.

What was it like working with him after his work with people like the Foo Fighters?

C: It was weird, it was mental for the first twenty minutes, then he just started talking to us like a normal guy and it was all fine.

S: It was kind of like working with a really cool uncle who loves music. It was a great relationship we had with him and by the end of it we were all really good friends. Just with him in the room we started thinking differently. We started to hear things that we thought were wrong without him even mentioning it. In his presence we just sort of thought ‘Fuck we’d better pick it up.’ It was great to have him around. One of the biggest things that came from the experience was developing the song writing side of things and how parts flow together. We were maybe guilty before of having too many ideas in one song or putting sections together because we liked them rather than because they worked well together. That’s what Gil really honed in on, our ability to keep the listener inside the song. We wanted to give people a song and an experience they can take something away from.

So between Vivarium and Free you guys managed to tweak the sound and polish it more but you haven’t deviated too far from what Twin Atlantic is. It’s all still easily identifiable as Twin Atlantic.

S: That’s exactly what we were going for. We were worried about changing too much. At the beginning we were just so excited about being in a band and supporting all these great bands that we kind of wanted to show off. Not in an arrogant way, we just wanted to show people that we had some cool ideas, but we maybe shouldn’t have crammed so many into just one song! It feels like we’ve given ourselves a stronger identity with the development. We’ve developed but we’ve kept the things that make us want to be in the band and kept the reasons why people should want to listen to us in the music.

You guys will be supporting Blink 182 again this summer, how did that come about?

C: Well it’ll be a few more gigs this time. We’ll be supporting them in Scotland and Ireland this time round so that’s really cool.

S: The first time it was crazy. We’d met Tom DeLonge a couple of times before which took the edge off and made us more comfortable, until you see Travis Barker walk round the corner. They were the first band I ever got to see, they were my teenage heroes. It was the same as with Gil, it was like getting the tick of approval from somebody we really respect and like.

I know a lot of people maybe got into you guys through you playing with Blink 182, do many people say that’s how they found out about Twin Atlantic?

C: With Blink gigs, because there’s so many people there and so many people watching you, you’re worried that nobody liked you or really listened to your set. But if there are just 50 people who say they saw us with Blink and listened to us after we love that, it’s great.

S: There’s been more than a couple who haven’t seen us but just saw somebody post about us supporting somebody else, and they’ve checked us out off the back of that.

Do you think that doing that and gradual building up a solid support base is better than, for example, somebody coming off the X-Factor and being thrust into it without the experience of touring and recording that you guys have built up over the years?

C: It’s sort of like we’re doing that old school rock band thing that people say you can’t do anymore. We’re just taking baby steps really.

S: I watch it, but the end result is always so poor. There’s no longevity. They tend to go down quite quickly. That’s a scary thought for us. We love this band, it’s our lives. We put so many things on hold and our lives are so entangled with this thing that, weirdly, has become our jobs! I’d hate to have that taken away from me just because we were forced in everyone’s face right from the start. We’ve got dedicated fans and a great fan base of a few hundred in every place, but they’re always supporting us, which is great.

C: There’s people who’ve been coming to our shows for four years now and people that say they’ve seen us like thirty times! Moments like that just floor you, we’re very lucky.

Have you guys also benefitted from the likes of Radio 1 who now play much more varied music and have more rock bands on like you guys, Black Keys, Foo Fighters?

S: Since we started getting played on radio our crowd has basically doubled! There’s also a wider range of people coming to see us. There is a lot of young people, but you’d still get the odd guy about fifty years of age sitting at the back. It was always a goal of the band not to be too pigeon holed. We want to be a band that most people can relate to if they like rock music. We love that we have a community of people who love music, it’s hard to put into words. We all like different types of music so it’s good that we draw in people who like different types of music. We want to be happy with the music we make because it’s our lives.