Having charmed the world with their debut album, Liam Fray of The Courteeners has always toed a fine line between poetic Manchunian swagger and cocky arrogance. As the band return with second album ‘Falcon’ Liam tells ANDREW TRENDELL that the band are always upping their game and still have a lot to prove…
AT: We’ve met before actually, I interviewed you last time you played Rescue Rooms in Nottingham a couple of years ago.
LF: Ah yeah. Face to face at the bar yeah, I remember. How are you?
AT: Not bad cheers, yourself?
LF: Pretty good man, things are going well.
AT: How have the past two years been for you?
LF: The past few years have been mental – how they should be I suppose. We wrote the first album, recorded it, released it, toured it. We nailed it, the fans nailed it. We were on the main stage at Reading and Leeds Festival this year. It was absolutely mega man. We nailed that. Everything has just been going really well. The second album is done and dusted, we’re just waiting for it to come out now. We did a tour of America with Morrissey for two months. That was amazing.
AT: I read him saying that he’s a pretty big fan of yours. Was that overwhelming at first?
LF: At first we were all a bit amazed, then after a while you think “why shouldn’t he like us?” We’re a good band and he’s got good taste! I hold him in very, very high regard and so to have someone that you think so much of to come and say very positive things about your band and personally invite you on tour in a place that is notoriously hard to break was just incredible. Hard to break in inverted commas – people can be right iffy fellas, y’know what I mean? America was really f*cking good. We played a few of our own shows there – a couple of them sold out. They were only about 300 capacity but we were effectively unsigned out there at the time so that was quite a feat. Then we played Coachella with McCartney. All in all, I think that makes a pretty good year.
AT: The last time we spoke, you talked about people’s misconceptions of Manchester, and how it’s actually quite a vibrant place that’s full of life and how the spirit of Manchester and the legacy that comes with it affects your music quite a lot. Has Manchester influenced your music much on this album or would you say that going around the world a few times has altered your outlook in any way?
LF: Going around the world changes your outlook on everything, I suppose. It makes you appreciate the smaller things in life. It’s difficult to explain. I’m not the same person I was four years, but then I doubt anyone is the same person they were four years ago. Everyone changes and grows. I’ll always call Manchester home and I’ll always go back to see family and friends but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do and you have to move with the times. ‘The Opener’ is the first track on the album, and that’s still very much a love song to Manchester – I think it runs through the veins. I love the creativity that comes out of Manchester. I don’t know whether that comes out of being second cousin to London – I think we have something to prove as Manchunians, we don’t take any nonsense. It always produces the goods – we’ve got a lot of good bands; new bands like Delphic and Hertz.
The Courteeners Live @ Rock City, 2010 by Sarah Louise Bennett
AT: What else would you say has influenced your songwriting for ‘Falcon’?
LF: Life in general mate – me being a nosey bugger, looking through people’s keyholes to see what’s going on. It’s quite a personal album because I’m quite a personal and private person. I find it quite easy to write down what I’m feeling but I find it quite difficult to talk about it. It’s weird. I don’t dare spoil people’s perceptions of what the lyrics mean by harping on about them. The lyrics are there for people to see but there’s definitely a positivity running through this record that wasn’t on St Jude. When the first record came out we’d only been together a relatively short amount of time so it sounded very raw. Stephen Street did a very good job on making it sound exactly how we were, which was very raw and live. Whereas Falcon is more rounded and I feel like we’re fulfilling our potential. Onwards and upwards, as the old saying goes.
AT: The album sounds much larger and ambitious than your last. Would you say that was a conscious thing or did that just happen naturally?
LF: Honestly, I’m not just saying this because I know everyone may think it was a conscious decision, which makes me sound like a right tw*t. We didn’t sit down and think, ‘alright how can we make this album much better than the first one?’ We just went for it. It changed when we did a lot of demos in Manchester with a guy that we know well, called Tom Nott, he’s a f*cking geezer. We know him quite well, but we only know him through doing demos with him. He’s not a mate or anything because I don’t think that would work. We work quite well together. When we’ve worked with other people I think I’ve stood back a bit through fear of them knocking back an idea, or worrying about not going too mental on the first record. The first record is exactly what it should have been – which is a raw and visceral record which gave us the chance to have a rant about things. When went into the demos for Falcon I was very aware that we could try different things and in a good position to do so. I’ve always written songs for myself anyway, I don’t give a f*ck if people are going to like it or not because I don’t think people are daft, I think good songs will always come through. I think that trying new things like the piano loop on ‘Cross My Heart’ and trying different things, things that probably sound quite boring in an interview and will probably be quite boring to read, for us it was really exciting to be trying those new things. It might take people a few listens to ‘get’ the record. I think a lot of people may be expecting St Jude part 2 but people don’t really want to hear that. I think that people would get pretty bored pretty quickly if you made a second record that sounded exactly like the first. A lot of people do that though, don’t they? It gets boring because it is boring. If we can be one of those few bands that want to try something new then that can only be a good thing.
AT: Yeah, because when I was listening to ‘Cross My Heart’, it seemed as if it had quite a strong sense of space and atmosphere…
LF: Yeah, a load of space. I was talking to someone about that the other day. They were like ‘f*cking hell Liam, shut up for a minute.’ That was weird because it was the quickest song that I have ever written. I wrote the bass riff in New York on an acoustic guitar, just lying there in a rented apartment. I thought it was a great little riff and I just left it. Then we came to do some demos and I was on a piano and it’s just 3 chords. It’s one of the simplest things but we just layered it but that’s very difficult to get right. Layering little tiny things in the right amount is tricky. It’s like The XX record – it’s quite unusual for a band so young to make a record sound so sophisticated and smart. ‘Cross My Heart’ is like that – when it does things it pulls you in instantly. It’s very hooky but there’s not too much going on – it’s one of my favourite tracks I think.
The Courteeners Live @ Rock City, 2010 by Sarah Louise Bennett
AT: Would you say that a lot of space and atmosphere runs through the whole record?
LF: Probably not as much as on ‘Cross My Heart’, but there’s definitely more than there was on St Jude. I think we’ve just been experimenting with different ways of writing songs – that’s my job. You need to try new things or you’ll go insane. You can’t so the same thing for 40 years can you?
AT: Then you’d be Snow Patrol wouldn’t you?
LF: Mate, that is definitely what you would be (laughs). I write songs, that’s my job, for want of a better phrase. It makes life better just to mix things up a bit. There a lot of different things going on and I think it makes for a much more enjoyable listen.
AT: How do you feel about the world’s response to the album so far?
LF: Pretty good so far. Q gave us 4/5 and so did Mojo. I was buzzing. I don’t really read the reviews but I got told last week that we got 2 4/5s from them and I thought that was f*cking good news. I don’t really know to expect as a musician. We hope for good reviews but then you think whether you really give a sh*t? You should so I suppose because it’s your living. I know we’ve made a f*cking great album. I’m so pleased with it and it’s turned out better than I thought it would. It’s going to be great to play it live as well because you’re going to get the rawer versions of the songs live. St Jude was great because it was more or less the same live as it was on record but because this one is quite full on the record and sonically more intricate I think it’s going to be good to see it rocking a bit more live.
AT: I remember reading in the summer that Elbow were having quite a strong influence on the new songs?
LF: I think they just have a lot of influence on the way that I look at other bands. Elbow enable me to appreciate what is good and what is sh*te. I just think his lyrics are ace. I went for a drink with them in America. I had a big session with them that night and they’re just really nice guys. They’ve set the bar quite high in terms of standards and I wouldn’t say that musically it sounds like Elbow but all four of their albums are of a very high standard. You get the feeling that they were up very late a lot of nights asking themselves if everything was right. That’s what we had on Falcon – a lot of late nights. There were some 4am sessions checking whether the cymbals sounded right – that’s when you know you’re going insane.
AT: I suppose that you have to be a perfectionist?
LF: I think so mate, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I couldn’t go to bed thinking about what might not be right. I’m pretty pleased about it at the minute.
The Courteeners Live @ Rock City, 2010 by Sarah Louise Bennett
AT: How did the Manchester Central gig go?
LF: It was absolutely amazing, it couldn’t have gone better. The whole thing was sold out, and full of very, very good people. What more can you ask for as a 24 year old in a band? They’ve obviously got very, very good taste. It was a hometown show but a lot of people came over from London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Ireland so there were people there from all over. I think people just like to think that we are this Manchester band but we do pretty well all over the country. People say that now we’ve made it, but I thought I’d made it back in 2005 when I blew 24 people away in a tiny room. That’s all we aim to do – play our songs to people and get a response. In my mind I made in 2005, since then I’ve just been coasting.
AT: Yeah, because Doves played there the week after, I fancied going down for a short holiday in Manchester.
LF: Yeah, I like Doves. They’re a very good band. They’re another one of those impeccable bands.
AT: Do you approach the smaller gigs the same way you approach a massive gig, or is a gig just a gig?
LF: Big gigs are a pain in the a*se because the guest list is massive – that’s the only difference. As long as the sound is right and the guitars are in tune we just rock n’ roll and play it. If the guitars are plugged in then we can go.
AT: To look at the bigger picture, mainstream indie has had a very clear direction for the past 10 years. Where do you think it’s going to go in the next 10 years?
LF: I don’t really think it’s got a direction mate, do you? So much sh*t seems to get pushed on people these days. Just to look at stuff like the Brit Awards and sh*t like that, it’s a f*cking joke. I remember watching them when I was 12 and you had all the bands there like Oasis and Blur and those were great days. That’s what we need. We need the top 10 to be full of bands like Kasabian and whoever else because there’s only about 4 of us. There aren’t many guitar bands out there making a dent on the charts and there should be. Not even necessarily guitar bands – whether it be indie or rock n’ roll or whatever. The girl scene made a bit of a dent last year with Florence but that’s about it for me. All that we can do is do our own thing, and we’re doing that pretty well. I don’t really worry about anyone else – you just do what you can.
Interview by Andrew Trendell
All photos by Sarah Louise Bennett
Tags: courteeners, doves, elbow, falcon, liam fray, manchester, morissey, nottingham, overdid it doll, st jude
