ireallylovemusic vs the boy least likely too.
having a self released album out in jan'05, to ending up touring with james blunt in october, ireallylovemusic decided to find out just what on earth has been going on with the band known as 'the boy least likely to'
well turns out 2005 is quite a year for you guys, how do you feel about it all so far ?
um, it’s been a bit weird. and funny. when we started the year we just had the album recorded and we were really happy with it and everything. but we hadn’t really thought about how it would be received or what people would think about it. and then the rough trade shop started selling it a couple of weeks before it came out and we’d sold all the copies we got pressed up before the official release date so we had to get some more done. and then after that weird things just kept happening. like major record labels ringing us up and asking if they could come round for tea. and then all these good reviews started appearing on websites. i think ireallylovemusic must have been one of the first. and wogan played a track off the album. and then the pitchfork review came out and people from america started sending us emails all the time. it’s just been a bit odd. we genuinely didn’t think about anything apart from putting the record out, and i haven’t really got used to thinking differently to the way that we felt before we put it out. i’m still really amazed when someone says they’ve even heard the album.
the album originally came out at the start of the year, but its being reissued. what are the details behind the reissue and will it be easier for people to purchase ?
we put it out at the beginning of the year on tour own label, too young to die. so we were kind of limited as to where people could get it from and things like that. hopefully it hasn’t been too difficult for people to get hold of it up until now. we were going to rerelease it in september on too young to die because it was kind of a quiet release first time around and we hoped that we could maybe get some more people hearing about it if we reissued it. but we’ve signed a record deal with someone else now, so the album will be coming out again through them and it should be much more widely available. the album won’t be any different from the one that we put out. there’ll just be more copies of it.
will there be any differences for the hardcore collectors ?
no. no differences for the moment. but there will probably be a limited version available next year with some of the b sides from the seven inches on aswell. because those songs aren’t available on cd at the moment. hardcore collectors should note however that the first 1000 copies that were released at the beginning of the year had slightly different sleeves. yes, the credits are slightly different, and we corrected a spelling mistake in the lyrics on the repress.
did you expect the response to be as good as it has been ?
no. never. i think i’ve only seen a couple of bad reviews so far, and all the others have been amazing. and everyone that’s reviewed it seems to have really taken the time to listen to it and understand it. we honestly didn’t expect anything like the response we’ve had. it’s been fantastic and a bit strange.
it’s almost like the album has reached a certain set of scene setters who have fallen under the bands innocent spell, with you getting attention from radio 2, and even pitchfork, with minimal of promotion, how does it feel ? has it all come as a surprise, or was this all part of some clever gameplan?
i’d love to say that it was all part of some clever new form of marketing called ‘non-marketing’, but the minimal approach to marketing was more a case of not having enough money to put adverts into magazines or pay for radio pluggers or people to do our press. everyone that came to us just found us by themselves one way or another, by word of mouth or through reviews. we didn’t send any copies out to record labels and we only sent copies out to journalists or djs that we liked. unless someone asked for a copy. and now we’re in a position where we know that everyone that works with us to put the records out really believes in what we’re doing because they’ve been doing it for nothing up until now. which is reassuring in a funny way. and i guess at the same time we didn’t think it was the sort of record we could force on to people. i don’t think it would have fitted with the music. we wanted the record to be secret and magical and so we took the same approach to promotion to some extent.
have you had to give up your day jobs yet, or, did you never have day jobs and music was everything ?
i lost my job in january. i just came back after christmas and it wasn’t there anymore. and we’ve both just being doing little bits of jobs since then and putting all the rest of our time into the band. and now we’re at a point where we can get by without doing other jobs, which is nice.
in fact, what were your previous/current dayjobs prior to this surge in fame and fortune !?
we both just had boring office jobs. and i was a van driver too, and i was a chef once, and then i worked in a rubbish record shop for a few months. and then my last job i worked as a buyer at a small record export company. selling records and cds to independent record shops in america. it was quite fun sometimes and i got records cheap so i didn’t really mind going in to work. pete has done loads of jobs but the funniest one was when he worked in a prison, he only lasted ten days, he left because he didn't like the prisoners growling at him.
why do you think that such a quiet nice set of songs are beginning to get picked up by the media, did you have anything behind the use of your music behind channel 5 idents ?
it’s another odd thing. i’m not sure why the songs are being used. maybe because they sound quite simple and happy and not too intrusive. perfect if you want to sell something in a quiet understated way i guess, without forcing it down people’s throats. with the channel 5 idents it was just a case of them ringing us and asking if they could use them. i think the person who chose to use our song just bought a copy of the album from rough trade and liked it. i thought the idents fitted the song really well in the end. a train of little ants weighed down under leaves. it could’ve been a boy least likely to video.
and now word reaches me that you will be supporting james blunt. that’s mad, how did this come about ?
yep. another weird thing. pete just rang me and said we’d been offered it and i thought he was joking. we weren’t sure about doing it at first, but after a couple of days we decided we might aswell. the whole idea of us supporting on a tour like that seemed kind of funny. and we didn’t have much else on in october. i think it fits in with the whole idea of us being a pop group too. doing a big tour with quite a mainstream pop artist like him. i’ve always liked it when groups coming from quite an underground indie perspective moved over into the mainstream aswell. it doesn’t seem to happen so much at the moment, but all the bands from the early eighties that i like did it all the time. like all the bands on Postcard, and all the New Merseybeat groups, and even The Smiths to some extent. it was brilliant seeing those bands on top of the pops alongside mainstream pop bands. i know some people will accuse us of ‘selling out’, but i don’t think we should be too precious about it. the record is still exactly the same as it was. and we haven’t changed the way we are as a band on stage or off stage, so if we do appeal to a different audience while doing exactly what we’ve always done then i don’t see how we can be accused of ‘selling out’.
are you going to be the next elton john exercise in mass marketing power ?
i hope not. i don’t really like that side to the music industry and marketing. just spending so much money on something that it doesn’t matter how good or bad it is artistically anymore, because a certain level of ‘spend’ guarantees a certain number of ‘units shipped’. i’d like to just carry on quietly creeping up on people. but not in a creepy way.
do you suffer stage fright ? and if yes, how do you deal with it ?
not yet, but i think i probably will on this tour. i think it’s going to be pretty scary stepping out onto the stage at the glasgow barrowlands on the first night. i think i’ll just have to get drunk.
as the album was mainly made by you and pete, how are you going to recreate the songs live – lots of backing tapes, or a bunch of mates hammering the nightly rider ?
yeah, on the record pete plays all the instruments so obviously live we have to get some other musicians in to help out. so there are seven of us when we play live. we’ve got a banjo/guitar player, a keyboard/recorder player, a drummer, a bassist, and a fiddle/keyboard player. they’re all friends of ours, and most of them have been in other bands with us at some point. so it’s always nice playing live. bit annoying that we have to share the rider with five other people though. i hadn’t thought about that. maybe we’ll have to get rid of a couple of them after this tour.
have you been busy this year pushing and shoving the album, or do you already have another album on the way ?
this album has taken up most of our time so far, but we started writing for the next album a couple of months ago and we’ve got five or six songs written and a few other ideas for songs. so it’s coming along. hopefully we’ll be able to start recording it in november when we finish all the live stuff.
your own songs are very catchy and lovely, does the Boy have a darker side, are there industrial styled spinoff projects where you vent your spleen ?
funny you should ask. i was thinking about a secret remix project called The Boy Least Likely To Is A Machine. and it would just be a collection of remixes by people i like. i want it to be something like the Mogwai album Kicking A Dead PIg. there are loads of people i’d like to remix our stuff. i’d like Felix Da Housecat to do one, and DJ Hell, and i think Dntel would do a nice one of one of the slower ones, and an Aphex Twin remix would be nice, or maybe a remix by Adult. and i think Golden Boy would be perfect for it. but it probably won’t come to anything for a couple of years if ever. hopefully we’ll see some industrial techno on there for you.
are you by nature a happy go lucky type as the music seems to imply that you are !
i guess i am. i try and make my way through the world in the nicest possible way i can. i’m not very good at getting angry. i just go red and start to stammer, so i try not to do it too often. pete’s much better at being grumpy than i am. he loves it. i don’t know how he writes such happy music.
who, or what. gives The Boy pop thrills in 2005 then ?
for pop thrills i would look to the Go! Team or The Pipettes. or We Show Up On Radar, who’re supporting us at the Water Rats in October hopefully. i really like them. and i like that song by The Research, i think it’s called ‘i love you but i’m scared of fucking up’. they’re my favourite pop thrills at the moment.
and finally ..do the cartoon animals on the cover of the album have names ?
um, no not the ones on the cover. but i can tell you that the party is being held in honour of the character on the right with the long nose and the green hat on. and that the cover is one in a set of three with these characters. the other two depict a scene where our heroes are drunk at a disco and another one where the animals bring the one with the long nose a ‘simple surprise’ while he lies ill in bed. very special.
and just who does the artwork ?
my brother, tim.
the end
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