poppedmusic

Talk Show

Quarantine Questions

Additional words by Amy Butcher

It is the turn of south London quartet Talk Show to be the latest to pass some Lockdown time with Popped Music.  They should have been on a nationwide tour at the moment to showcase their debut EP, These People, which has been thankfully rescheduled for September, but like everybody they’re making the most of a bad deal.

1. How did you come together as Talk Show?

Whilst all living in South East London, we met at uni. The classic cliche of bumping into likeminded people at a house party, sharing a mutual love of The Stranglers hating what the mediocre DJ was playing on the crappy speakers in the corner.

2. When listening to your songs I find new elements to listen to every time.  What is your songwriting process like?

For us it really varies, sometimes I (Harrison) will come in with a set of lyrics, or a guitar hook, which we then work the rest of the instruments around. Other times we’ll start with ideas all together by simply just playing in a rehearsal room, and then I’ll go home and try to write lyrics to that. It helps to constantly be mixing it up, to be create different forms and sounds.

3.  Something that I love about listening to your music is how you can tell that it comes from a wide variety of influences.  What are your biggest influences musically?

Again, we constantly try to take and use influences from a variety of places, we’re not scared to wear our influences on our sleeve. It makes more interesting for a listener, but also for us as well. Personally I always like it when you hear and see artists openly discuss their influences and how it presents itself in their own material.

4. What were the key influences behind your recent EP (These People)?

For the EP, I wrote a lot of lyrics whilst on public transport, going to and from work, so that naturally made an imprint on the lyrical content of the EP. Nicking stuff from road signs and adverts, why not. We tend to reference a lot of 80s New-Wave, but also a fair bit of 90s electronica was/is played in the car whilst driving to gigs. Musically we wanted the EP to show a range of what we can and want to do, none of the tracks were written with the idea that they would be on the EP. We just wrote what we wanted, and what felt natural. We then selected the ones that we felt worked best together, showing different views of what ‘These People’ could be/mean.

5. The current music space has seen streaming services take over for listening to music.  What do you think it means for new bands these days?

It’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand it’s incredible that bands can make their own mark without being reliant on labels, and essentially getting done over by people who don’t care. On the other, it’s kind of flipped the industry on its head and it’s affected small bands the most, meaning that it’s never been harder for small bands and artists. Streaming services, and the internet in general, is saturated with a load of crap, you then earn less when you do eventually put records out. Who knows, I’m definitely not qualified enough to be making any big dramatic statements about streaming hahaha. I think music-fans are showing an unbelievable amount of support to the under-dogs, like never before, which is fantastic to witness, and really is making all the difference for independent artists, shops, and venues.

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Twitter: @talkshowband

Listen to These People from Talk Show here