poppedmusic

Prides

A band I discovered thanks to BBC Introducing and caught them when they headlined the BBC Introducing stage at Leeds festival this year. They impressed and so when I saw they were visiting Liverpool I put in a request for a little face to face time with Lewis, Callum and Stewart and they very kindly obliged ahead of their stomping live set at The Kazimier.

PM: So you’re signed to Island Records. How did that come about and how did you feel signing that deal?

PRIDES: So it was actually when me (Stewart) and Lewis were working on a different project – we were a different band. That’s when we signed to Island. Which must have been like 4 years ago or something now. It all came about quite quickly. We were in a band as a five piece but just started working as a two piece sort of I guess, to write tunes with a view of selling it to other people. We just demoed a couple of tracks, 8 or 9 songs and accidentally got signed. It was like – “oh we weren’t really doing it to do that… but…. oh go on then! we can be in a band!”

We spent a few years trying to figure out what the hell we were doing. Probably because we came into it in those circumstances it wasn’t like we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do.  We wrote a lot of crap songs and then we met Callum and we started writing together and that’s how Prides came to be.

PM: All but a few dates are sold out on this tour – where do you see things going from here?

PRIDES: We’ve actually booked some more shows in February and a couple more in Scotland. Maybe we should come back to some of these. I guess where we’re at right now is trying to push to new places without over pushing ourselves. It’s been amazing so far with these shows. It’s been far more than we expected. Some of them to sell out well in advance is just…

I think we were a bit apprehensive to go to some new places in case we go and there’s nobody there!

But we have big plans for February.

Copyright: Popped Music

PM: Who would you love to tour with? And who would you really not want to tour with?

“1975, Bastille they’d be really good for us. Ellie Goulding’s not really touring just now but …… we’ll just not tour. We’ll have a sit in until she takes us with her. “Ellie, we’re not going to do anything. I know you don’t care but…” [much laughter]

But no, really. We’d go on tour with anyone. Anyone who will have us.

I think it’s always weird as obviously you want to match musically or at least feel like it’s the right audience for you and sometimes you think “this is never going to go well”.

Who would we not tour with? [genuine cog turning moment]

We had an unexpected one where we went on tour with 21 Pilots. Who are kind of the more … cut from the Emo cloth. There was lots of chat about it before. Is this going to be our audience. Is this a right fit?

It was such a good tour for us because everyone who saw us was so supportive. Now we’d probably just go out [on tour] with anyone. It’s worth a gamble.

PM: Your sound has a very 80s feel – who are your favourite 80s acts?

PRIDES: God there’s loads. The Cure is a big one. Tears For Fears, Roxy Music, Peter Gabriel, Van Halen, Kate Bush. If it was in the 80s then we probably like it!

I don’t think there’s anything we don’t like [Lewis]

PM: Do you draw inspiration from anything out of the ordinary?

PRIDES: I think the other big one is pop-punk. We all grew up in that age where Pop-Punk was the defining moment and we lived it. We were that age when we were getting into music, at which I think is about 10 and Blink came along and I guess we don’t take things to seriously.

We all wanted to be in a band because we thought it looked like it would be a good laugh and I think we’re still trying to keep that dream alive.

PM: When you started the band what were your goals, how are they going and how have they changed?

Well so when we started Prides it was just to come up with as good a tune as we possibly could. One of the first tracks we wrote was Out Of The Blue  it set the bar of accessible pop music that had a little depth and was still big and bombastic but without being too overbearing. I guess that was our mission statement from day one really.

The other thing was about playing live. When we started as the two piece it was all a little more atmospheric and a bit more…. it was quite sort of intelligent music. It was a bit more…  fucking pretentious as shit is what I want to say politely [lots of laughter!]

Lewis – Yeah that’s better.

And when we started playing live we thought… “this is really boring”

So the Prides thing really grew out of wanting to go back to that energy and let’s just have a good time.

PM: Who are your favourite new bands right now? Who shall we post up right here?

PRIDES: Ryn Weaver is fucking amazing. There’s some good Scottish bands; Fatherson are our boys and Pronto Mama.

Oh we found a new band this week actually from Australia. Client Liaison. Really 80s, hilarious. Watch the video for Feeling by Client Liaison and you’ll just fall in love.

(As promised here it is:)

PM: What about musical guilty pleasures? What’s the worst track on your mp3 player right now?

PRIDES: We don’t feel guilty about liking anything. Lewis – I was thinking about this today. Callum Saint Raymond tweeted today saying “So Excited for the new Taylor Swift record not even ashamed.” and I just thought why would you ever be ashamed?! You’re too cool for your own good.

Callum – The only thing you can ever really feel guilty about is if you really like Nickleback.

PM: What’s next for Prides?

PRIDES:  Biggest thing is to finish our album. That’s our top priority right now to get the mixes and masters and all the art work and all that kind of stuff. So yeah it’s just about looking forward to next year. Like I said the tour in February and the album, just getting it released and see where we go.

Loads of festivals next year.