You’re just about to release your second album, Automatic. What can you tell me about it?

Well, it’s the album that we’ve been working towards for a year and a bit now and it’s the longest time that we’ve ever actually spent away from touring and being a band. I think for us, life in the studio was quite a change of pace.  We wrote our first album in about 2 months, recorded it like boom bosh and out. After that, we went on tour and then suddenly it was the right time to start writing the second album, so we just pulled ourselves out of the game for a year and wrote it. It was definitely an interesting period of self-discovery for us. Working out exactly who we wanted to be as a band and experimenting with different sounds to create the album. But now we’ve got it and it’s all done and it feels really good.

How did the writing process go this time?

It was the first time we ever wrote with our new bass player, Tom, so that was quite exciting, like finding out each others taste and boundaries and pushing each other and seeing how far we’d go. But once we got into a flow, we found it was a very collaborative process. We’re very much a band, we’re not one person calling the shots -with us, all four of us are very deeply involved in every process of the song. It’s all about the teamwork.

What effect do you think it’s gonna have on people? Do you expect a different reaction as opposed to your first album? 

Yeah, I think it’s definitely going to take a few people by surprise.  But at the same time, if you’re a fan of the band already, you’re gonna really enjoy it.  It might open you up to new music and hopefully question what you’re listening to and make you think like “okay, this isn’t a band that sound like anyone else.” We’re hoping to make our mark on the world of music and stand out as a band, stand out as a group. You know, bring in all our interests and joys, make up a musical landscape and refine that into one sound. We’re hoping it’s gonna get people talking.

For you, in what way is your second album different to your first? What have you done differently now, if anything at all?

We’ve written better songs that really work together and take you on a bit of a journey, rather than just a random collection of ideas. There are ideas that are developed and messed about with in our heads. From a listener’s perspective, I think you’re gonna leave feeling like you’ve actually listened to a more well rounded bunch of songs and a better album. Musically, we experimented with a lot more instruments on this album. We got to play in a pop studio to begin with, as opposed to the usual recording on a computer that we did on our first album. On this one, we went to a proper studio where we really embraced the live band sound and made sure that everything sounded as real as possible. If we had to play things a couple of times to get them right, we did that, without being perfectly accurate in everything.  The perks of being in a studio is that we’ve got all these instruments, we got to play around with a lot of keyboard sounds, old school organs. We managed to do a couple of songs with string arrangements, so for us it was fun, like discovering instruments that take you out of that basic guitar, bass, drums. So I think that’s probably the main difference, from a songwriting perspective, the use of electronics and instrumentation.

Tell me a bit about the video for Automatic. Did you have any input on the visuals?  

Yeah we did. The basic idea was born out of our artwork. We wanted to create something strong, visually striking for our album and we spoke to various designers and photographers about trying to achieve what we wanted. The easiest idea to get it done and make it look good was to fly out to the location in Malibu. We were talking about either Miami or Malibu, somewhere where you have sea and the weather and the palm trees and create something that wasn’t pastiche but still gain reference to that sort of bygone era where exciting music was coming out in the 80s where a band still sounded like a band. You know, once we had the collection of songs that really reflected the sound of the album, we wanted the visuals to represent that. So yeah, we went out to Malibu and then to LA and came across this incredible villa in Malibu where we shot the album artwork. The video for Automatic was kind of born from the idea of that. Our director really wanted to play on this visual reference of static motion and things kind of reflecting. I guess that’s cause the song is called Automatic. His idea was to show people having a good time and show this kind of high society that you associate with that Miami aesthetic. A lot of the references were guided towards our artwork.

Will you be doing a headlining tour after the album release? 

Yeah, we’ve got an album release launch show on the 7^th, then we’ve got a week tour and we’re going back to some of the venues where we first started playing a couple of years ago. That’s gonna be the first time we get to play a lot of the new songs on the album. We’re really excited about that, it’s gonna be the first time in 3 years that we’re actually gonna get to play those venues that made us into the band that we are today. We’re extra excited.

It sounds like you really miss touring.

We do! Touring is our favourite part about being in a band and we did enjoy the studio, but at the same time, touring is what it’s all about for us. When you’re on the road, it feels like you’re actually achieving what you’re set out to do. It gives you that sense of “okay, we’re making the right call being a band.”

A lot of bands aim to break America. Is that something that’s been on your mind or something that you’d potentially like to achieve at some point in the future? 

Yeah, I think definitely. I think for us it’s not specifically America, it’s everywhere really. I mean, the more we get to tour and the more we get to explore the world and see new and exciting places, the more driven we are about being in a band. We’re hoping to get out to America next year; it will be the first time we go out there and play, which should be fun. But there’s so many other countries we haven’t been to, we only scratched the surface. So yeah, I think this album, if things go well, will give us the opportunity to travel and explore the world.

What’s your FAULT? 

I think it’s probably being too caught up and not looking at the bigger picture. I mean for us that’s what Automatic was all about actually. Staying into the moment and not worrying.