13 minute read
Lapels Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.
Lapels
Shouldering the Future of British Rock
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Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.
Rising from the East Midlands in 2018 with a ready-formed songwriting nous steeped in Britpop, Mod culture and Classic Rock mixed with an uncanny ability to treat even the smallest gig as though they are playing to a sold-out Wembley Stadium, the last few years have seen Lapels swiftly become the Indie band of the moment.
After signing to Marquee Records, a label which, under license from London’s legendary Marquee Club, is dedicated to nurturing British talent, the four-piece, who’s ages range from just 17 to 23, have so far released some of the finest and most memorable singles since those by Arctic Monkeys during their early days in the form of ‘Warning Lights’ (2021); ‘All Things Down to You’ (2021) and ‘The Life and Times’ (2022).
With an EP, another single and a debut album reportedly all ready to go, Lapels’ line-up of songwriting team Nathan (lead vocals, guitar and piano) and Andy (vocals and guitar) along with Will (bass) and Adam (drums) are all primed to mount a full-on attack on the mainstream. And with age on their side, together with an unrelenting passion for songwriting and boundless energy for live performance, this is a band who we are positive will one day be providing the blueprint for future generations of Indie Rockers.
Always liking to be the magazine to bring you the next big thing first, in the following interview, Nathan brings us up to speed with all the goings on in the Lapels camp over the last four years and provides us with a snapshot of a band who will very soon become a household name.
Firstly, hello Lapels and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. Could we start by asking where, when and how Lapels came together and could you introduce us to your members?
We all came together as a band in early 2018, I think, which consisted of Adam on drums; Will on bass; Andy on guitar and vocals and myself, Nathan on guitar and vocals. Prior to us all being
Andy
the band, Andy and I used to play on our own as like a duo sort of thing, just to get ourselves out there and get some experience playing live whilst we were trying to get a bass player and a drummer on board. We managed to get Adam in the band through a mutual contact of mine and Will came in as Andy and I vaguely knew him from college, so we gave him a shout and got him in and we’re all based around the Midlands, so Burton/Derby area.
We believe that the songwriters in the band are yourself and Andy, but is it true to say that your chemistry as people wasn’t instant? How do you feel that your different personalities has influenced you as a songwriting team?
The chemistry between Andy and myself was definitely non-existent in the early days of us knowing each other. We met at college but never really saw eye to eye for a couple of years and it wasn’t until after we’d both left college that we reconvened and started playing together. It was the
Nathan
same situation really with Will, as when we tried him in the band the first time, it didn’t really click, so we just left it and it wasn’t until the second time we drafted him in that things started to work and then it all fell into place. I think it helps our songwriting because naturally Andy and I were coming from slightly different places, so we’d be suggesting stuff during the writing process that the other one wouldn’t have necessarily thought of and we both have different strengths, which obviously we recognise and use to our advantage.
Talking of songwriting, how does the writing of a Lapels song generally come about? Is it a Lennon / McCartney sort of scenario, where one of you will come up with a song pretty much fully formed and the other will suggest edits to bring out its full potential?
It differs every time. It can work like that whole Lennon/McCartney thing where one of us would have the bare bones of a song and the other would
Will
just add on to it and bring the best out of it and I’d say that was the case for a lot of our material, but we have also written songs completely independently where the other person doesn’t really need to add anything to it and we have written some where it has been more collaborative from the start.
In terms of musical influences, what were the pivotal bands who inspired the sound of Lapels?
It’s hard to narrow it down really to any particular band because it’s all subconscious and I suppose different influences come through on different songs we’re working on. I think it just tends to happen on little things, like one of us would go, ‘This song wants that kind of ‘White Album’ [The Beatles, 1968] Macca bass sound’ or something along those lines, or trying to get like a [Graham] Coxon tone on a lead bit or something, but subconsciously there will be loads of little influences here and there that have moulded our sound.
If you had to pick a favourite album
Adam
by any other band, what would it be and why?
That’s a difficult one, it fluctuates for me depending on what mood I’m in. At the moment, I’d say it would be a toss up between The Beatles ‘Revolver’ [1966], Ocean Colour Scene ‘Moseley Shoals’ [1996] and Arctic Monkeys ‘Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino’ [2018]. Revolver doesn’t need any explanation really, it’s The Beatles ... I love albums that I can listen to all the way through and not skip any track and that’s why I’m a big fan of ‘Moseley Shoals’, I just think it’s a great album with great songs and I love the musical dynamics throughout and the production on it. ‘Tranquillity Base...’ took me a little while to kind of get into, but I kept listening to it and now I can’t stop. I’d go as far to say that it’s a modern day masterpiece. It’s just so inventive and outside the box but still somehow retains classic songwriting within, which is what makes it so good in my opinion. A few honourable mentions from the other lads: The Libertines ‘Up The Bracket’ [2002];
The Kinks ‘The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society’ [1968] and Arctic Monkeys ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ [2006].
You are obviously a very young band, with your ages ranging from 17 to 23, which is very refreshing when we have noticed that the age that bands start out at these days seems to be getting older for some reason. What would you consider to be the advantages of having youth on your side to be and are Lapels are a band who are in the long haul?
I guess the advantage of being younger is that you don’t have as many commitments as maybe someone who’s a bit older so you can focus on the band a bit more, but it does depend on the scenario. I don’t really think that we have any more of an advantage necessarily than bands that are older, you’ve just gotta want it enough and if you do, you’ll find a way around things. I don’t really want to surmise our future too much, but we’re in it for as long and far as it’ll take us.
You have built up an impressive following over the course of your four years together and we love the way that much of this adulation has come from people experiencing you in a live setting. However, it is inevitable in this day and age that you have to be seen to be promoting yourself on the internet, so how easy or difficult do you find getting your music heard and getting people to come to gigs in this way?
I think it’s becoming increasingly difficult and easier in different ways. The internet is a good tool to use to your advantage when trying to promote yourself and it can really benefit you, but it’s so saturated these days that it’s hard to climb the ladder and because it’s so easy for anyone and his dog to make music and put it on the internet, it means that you have to trawl through a pile of shite to find one thing that’s decent. I don’t think as many people come to gigs either these days, not necessarily for like massive bands and artists, but it seems increasingly difficult to get people to take a punt on
an up and coming band, probably just out of laziness because you can watch anything you want from the comfort of your living room. Don’t get me wrong, there are still people that do and I encourage people to go out and watch stuff live, but I don’t think it’s as popular as maybe it once was.
On the subject of performing live, the live scene is an aspect of music that has obviously taken a bit of a battering over the last few years due to the pandemic. How have you found the experience of gigging since all the restrictions have been lifted and do you feel that people are perhaps more eager for live music now than they were in the few years leading up to the various lockdowns? To us, it seems like the ability to go out and see a gig might have been something that was perhaps being taken a bit for granted previously. Would you agree?
Yeah, I definitely think it has improved since the restrictions ended, because everyone’s had to live a very boring life for the past year or however long it was so to be able to go out again and do normal things was a breath of fresh air. And maybe now, people are more willing to just go to gigs and check bands out whether they’ve heard of them or not. Time will tell on that one.
You are now signed to Marquee Records, with whom you have released three singles, ‘Warning Lights’ (2021); ‘All Things Down to You’ (2021) and ‘The Life and Times’ (2022). Prior to this, you self-released two singles, ‘Come and Have a Go’ (2018) and ‘Get in Lane’ (2019), so how did you come to sign to Marquee Records and in a day and age where so many bands continue to self-release throughout their careers, does being signed to a label still have its advantages?
It was quite a convoluted story to be honest. I received a John Lennon painting for my birthday, I think it was, and the artist that painted it had a connection to the Marquee label, so that’s how we got our foot in the door
with it. Although it did make it harder because I was working in Scotland at the time, so I had to join discussions on video calls, so it was a bit of a slow process getting everything finalised, but most of that is just all of the boring stuff. As for advantages, I wouldn’t really know, it’s a new thing for all of us and we don’t really have anything to compare it against, we’ll just see where it takes us.
Despite all the new technology and ways of getting music out there yourself, there is still very much a certain romanticism about a band signing a record deal, isn’t there? Would you consider it to be one of Lapels’ finest achievements and what else would you cite as being the proudest moments of being a member of the band over the last few years?
Yeah, it was a nice achievement. Like you say, there is that kind of ‘romanticism’ about it. I think one of the main ones for me was recording our album. We went to a residential studio over the course of a two week period and it felt like we’d achieved something at the end once we’d recorded all of the songs and drank copious amounts of alcohol to sit back in the control room and listen to it. Everyone did a great job on it and it sounded mint, so yeah, I’m excited to get that out at some point. It was also a nice personal achievement for me recently to go and record an EP at Paul Weller’s studio, Black Barn. I’m a big fan and I’ve always wanted to go, so yeah, it was good to get to do that.
As we just mentioned, you have so far released three singles with Marquee Records, so do you have any plans to release an album any time soon and what can you tell us about it right now?
As I just mentioned, we’ll be bringing an EP out shortly that we did at Black Barn. It’s a live EP as well, which was a good craic to do, so it’ll probably be a bit more ‘raw’ than the other singles that we’ve released. We’ve also got another single to bring out at some
point and then after that, it should be the album, but I couldn’t tell you any dates for any of it yet. We’re all really pleased with how the album turned out though and I’m looking forward to getting it out there because there’s some proper good tunes on it.
Finally, we have talked a fair bit about songwriting in this interview as we feel that as more people get to know Lapels, your ability as songwriters is a key attribute that will set you apart from many other bands. What would you consider to make a great song and, as we look forward to the release of a debut album from you, how do you feel you have evolved as songwriters over the course of the band’s career so far?
A great song is all in the melody and the lyrics. If you get them two things right you’re not gonna go far wrong. Obviously there are plenty of other factors that embellish songs like the arrangement and dynamics and all that muso bollocks, but yeah, the melody and the lyrical content is the key. Looking back at some of our early attempts at writing songs, I’d say we’ve evolved massively but the more you do it, the more you learn and the better you’ll become. We’ve definitely become more aware of recognising when something is good, and more importantly when something’s shit.
Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been lovely to talk to you. We look forward to hearing more great music from you soon and wish you all the best for the future.
Nice one, cheers!
‘The Life and Times’ is out now on Marquee Records.
