Love Of The Game

New Hope Club in conversation

Photos: Niamh Louise

Words: Dale Maplethorpe

“FIFA 17 was really good,” Blake of New Hope Club says. He looks through jet-lagged eyes after only just getting off a 10-hour flight from LA.

“Oh yeah, was that the low driven shots one?” Asks bandmate Reece. The three of them all sit in the fourth floor of the Universal building, overlooking the lacklustre roof of Kings Cross.

“Yeah it was.”

“08 was good as well,” adds George, “the one with Ronaldinho and Rooney on the cover.”

Our interview is taking place as the group stages of the World Cup are coming to an end and as such, football dominates a large portion of the conversation. I eventually ask whether or not they’ve had a song on FIFA. “Not yet no,” says George, “but our song just got played during coverage of the World Cup in America. It was the opening game and they played it on this big highlights montage thing.”

The song in question was ‘Walk It Out,’ a single released in anticipation of their new album which comes out later this year. It’s a great tune, packed with energy, delayed and hard-hitting guitar, plus a catchy chorus. “We wrote the song with football in mind,” they tell me. Alongside that, the band have also released ‘L.U.S.H.’ a track which is equal in its catchiness but a lot more pop driven. Together, they’re a good representation of New Hope Club’s ability to keep the much-loved components of themselves present in each song, whilst also varying the way that they deliver those components.

“Sometimes one of us will come in with a song and then we’ll just focus on that during the day and juice it up,” says George opening a can of water, “but it could also be just jamming,” one sip, “a lot of this album came from us going round different instruments and just jamming together. It’s been really fun.”

“We’ve never wanted to put a restriction on ourselves,” adds Reece, “we like to feel like we can experiment as much as we want and kind of just spend longer on a song, trying different things out. With the first album we didn’t really have as much time, it wasn’t rushed but you know.”

“We were also a lot younger back then,” says Blake, “we had a lot to learn and we had the pleasure of working with some amazing writers. We took that first album as a big learning experience to set ourselves up for this one.”

The debut self-titled album was a huge success, received incredibly well by fans and climbing to top 5 in the charts. In writing this new one, as is clear on the songs both released and not, they have very much put the elements that worked in that first album at the records foundation and built on top of them, taking those lessons and incorporating them into every second.

“We’re more confident in ourselves and put across the things that we want to put across. We’ve had a lot more control over the second record which is great for us because it means we get to tell our stories and we’re less moulded by what is current and big at the time.”

That control and confidence is probably best reflected in the as yet unreleased track, ‘Don’t Go Wasting Time,’ a slow ballad driven tune which under someone else’s control could have been very different. “With this one,” says Blake, his answers and way of speaking much better than most peoples would be after a long flight, “when it was initially produced it was done by an outside producer and it was a lot more upbeat and dancy. We had a studio in L.A. and we thought, let’s just play the song on the instruments in this room and see what it sounds like. When we played it like that I think it just opened our imagination to how it should actually sound.”

The song is a brilliant contradiction of itself. A slow and gradually building tune about wanting to be alone which is ironically the perfect soundtrack for rooms filled with people. “We’ve played it live a couple of times and it’s so fun. It’s one of them where when you get to that bit, like the first time I listened to it post pre-production and it hits that bridge, it kind of feels like an arms in the air moment.”

The songs heard so far off the new album show fans are in for a diverse treat as New Hope Club develop on a formula that was already working and embrace putting more of themselves on tracks. Not to mention, another massive element to their versatility in previous songs has been the features they have, for instance in the Latin-pop song ‘Know Me Too Well’ with Danna Paola, and they promise to have more.

“We love collaborating with artists,” George tells me, “more so just getting in the studio and seeing how they work, what their dynamic is and what they bring to the table. We write with each other all the time so it’s cool to have a different influence in the room and see what they come up with.”

“Yeah, we love it,” adds Reece, “there’s definitely going to be more, we were talking about some collabs on the way over here, we have a lot in the works and it’s really exciting.”

There isn’t a release date yet for New Hope Club’s second album but based on the songs released so far, the bands newfound freedom and their re-enforced confidence in what they can deliver, it promises to be something special.

“To be honest, we’re just so excited about the songs on this album,” they conclude, “everything is there for a reason, and it really describes what we’ve been through in our career, how far we’ve come as people and how far we’ve come as a band. We’re really excited by it, and we hope it’s received well.”