You’re about to release your debut single. How’s it sounding?
James: It’s called ‘All Sussed Out’ and it’s a very driving guitar-based track. It’s pretty epic, as you would expect, but not in the sense of lots of orchestration. It’s more like the bare bones of the band. It’s a very fast, upbeat track, quite overdriven.
Stuart: In the middle it’s got that festival moment though – a glittery middle-eight. As with everything we do it’s emotive. Lyrically, and the way it’s sung, we can’t really do anything else other than that.
How did the B-side cover of ‘I Drove All Night’ happen?
J: Every year Barbara Orbison does something to commemorate Roy Orbison’s birthday, and this year he would have been 75 so she’s releasing an album of bands who have covered Roy’s music. She asked us to pick a track and record it for the album. Fyfe Dangerfield is on the compilation too.
It’s recorded live in the studio, which is not perhaps what you’d expect from a cinematic band like Munich. Is that difficult to pull off?
J: It feels natural. Live recordings often represent our sound better than when we go into a studio and piece it all together.
S: You capture the energy so much more, the size of it and the emotion. The art of being in a studio is to recreate that.
You’ve been friends for years, does that affect the band?
J: Me and Stuart the guitarist have been best friends since we went to playschool together and we’ve always been in each other’s classes, we were into the same football team, picked up guitars together when we were 13. We wanted it to be a gang of friends, because that’s the way you create that connection.
S: When I write lyrics these are things that have happened to me. This is shit that I’ve been through. For me there’s an element of trust – do I trust these people with my heart? That’s why it’s so important that the people you have in the band are people that you’re close to. It wouldn’t work for me forming a band at BIMM. That’s cool for a lot of people, but for me it just wouldn’t work.
J: It’s a democracy too, if we can’t make a decision on something we decide on paper, scissors, rock.
James, you spent four years working at the Concorde. Did you learn stuff from that that you’ve applied to the band?
J: Seeing lots of high-end artists I definitely watched the different ways that people carried themselves and the way that people reacted to that. The way that bands treat their peers and relate to their fans. We can be quite insular cos we’re a tight knit group but we’re trying to be more open, and that’s one thing we’ve learnt. I remember Bombay Bicycle Club were so humble and appreciative of everyone at the venue – that’s what we aim for.
What’s been you most memorable gig?
J: The Queen Of Hoxton last Saturday, for Matt Horne of Gavin & Stacy, was one of the best gigs we’ve ever played. It was breathtaking. It was sold out but whenever you go to London and stand in front of that club night crowd you never quite know which way it’s going to go. But there were people jumping on stage, there were people jumping around in the crowd.
S: We’ve got one song called ‘Rome’ which is pretty quiet and repetitive before it gets into this hypnotic groove. But people started nodding to it and there was deathly silence in this nightclub. When it ended they wouldn’t stop clapping. To have an experience like that was amazing. And that it’s happened so recently is really exciting.
Is it true that the whole band is moving into a massive house together?
J: Because of the commitments that we’ve had to make in terms of touring and stuff our label has put us in this house, like the Monkees, and in the basement we’re going to build a studio and a rehearsal space.
FYI
WEB: thisismunich.co.uk
NEXT RELEASE: ‘I Drove All Night’ on ‘Under The Covers 2’ out now
WATCH ‘ALL SUSSED OUT’ VIDEO: On YouTube
WORDS BY JAMES KENDALL
