Good afternoon and welcome to the latest in my interviews of Manchester bands. This week we have the gorgeous post-rock group Spokes. They gained critical acclaim for 2008 debut ‘People Like People Like You’, and it’s not hard to see why; Spokes mix elements of 65 Days of Static and other indie instrumentalists, slowing don rock and layering on top a rich instrumental backdrop to the still raw vocals, which adds up to a heavily textured sound that oozes through your stereo.
It occasionally rasps and rails back into life, striking harder and faster, the staccato chords build towards the crescendo on the fantastic End Credits/Loveletter, then slowing and settling back down into the delicate and poignant piano finale. I asked Liam from the band about their plans for the rest of the year and the local scene:
A N Other Manc: So how would you sum up your sound in a sentence?
Liam: Sometimes loud, sometimes not loud.
ANOM: How did you start out?
L: I met Owain a few years ago when we were studying music at university. We were both really only there to meet people who loved music as much as we did so we kind of latched onto each other.
We’d been playing music together for quite a while before Ruth (our violinist) and the others joined, Johnny is Owain’s girlfriend’s brother, and he brought in Matt who he’d known for years. When it became the five of us it really felt good to just jam and create, we’re a really close band and I think that comes across when we play live.
ANOM: What are you influences?
L: Everything inspires us really, anything around that’s good. We all really like Efterklang, Beach House and Wildbirds & Peacedrums too, but then we’ll listen to stuff like The Doors, Neil Young and Kate Bush as well, you know, the classics. A couple of the guys are actually really into doom, the slower and more horrible the better. We’ll also happily listen to jazz or classical when we’re in the tour bus. And personally I’m into a fair amount of weird U.S. stuff like Ducktails or Emeralds… we’ve probably covered most of the musical spectrum here, sorry!
ANOM: What do you hope to achieve by the end of the year?
L: I’d love to achieve all sorts of things! We’ll be making our first video soon actually, with a guy called Dan Lowe who’s already done a really great video for Field Music, so that’s all really exciting. We’re really just looking forward to the album coming out at the moment though. Putting it together has been a lengthy, stop-start process at times but we’re pretty much there now. I want to just getting out there for people to hear, People Like People Like You was written over 3 years ago and obviously we’ve moved on a lot since then. Whatever happens after the album’s out we’re just going to try and enjoy as much as possible, I don’t want to pre-empt anything.
ANOM: Whats it like being a Manchester band in 2010?
L: I think there’s definitely a lot of new things cropping up at the moment, what with Now Wave and High Voltage at the Deaf Institute and WotGodForgot nights, rather than putting on bands that wouldn’t necessarily get big magazine coverage, but rather more idiosyncratic music and people genuinely seem to be up for going to those nights, which I think should lead to even more stuff going in the coming year.
ANOM: Do you think the scene is pretty good at the moment do you think the environment is good for new bands? How would you categorise it?
L: It’s pretty good, most of the band are actually from Newcastle and are moving back there soon so we’re not really local to anywhere. It seems like we’re viewing things from an outside perspective. Compared to Newcastle I’d say they’ve got better smaller venues which really helps when you’re getting started. There’s an awful lot going on here in Manchester though so it’s definitely healthy.
ANOM: Do you owe anything to ‘Madchester’ or would you rather it wasn’t so glorified by the music press and Hooky’s new wheeze Fac251?
L: To be honest, none of us are really into that stuff, I do like Joy Division but that’s not really the right era. There does seem to be this thing with people trying to find new local bands who sound like the old ones, it’s a similar motivation with Fac251 it seems. What with all the new stuff that’s going on in town it’d be better just to build a museum rather than trying to resurrect the past all the time.
ANOM: Who would your ideal gig consist of?
L: The Roundhouse, a dark candle-lit stage, a string and percussion section, a choir, with great sound and a great crowd. I’ve dreamed it plenty of times but we’ll just have to wait and see if it ever happens.
ANOM: Are you planning on playing any Summer festivals?
L: We were going to be playing SXSW this year but we couldn’t raise the funds, that was pretty heart breaking! We’ve not really done any shows for a while in general, once the album’s out we’ll be on the road a lot though, so we’ll do the festival thing next year.
ANOM: Which other local bands do you admire and would like to play with?
L: Well we’ve played with Everything Everything a few times and they’re a talented bunch, their new song Schoolin’ sounds like the best thing they’ve done so far actually. We’re fans of Gnod as well, in fact our drummer put out a 7″ for them last year.
ANOM: Love and Disaster just released their Manchester sampler which saw Dutch Uncles and Delphic being showcased, do you think being signed to a local label is the best way forward for local bands as obviously you guys have been signed to Counter?
L: Well we released ourselves as Everyone Label and I think that’s often the best thing. If you know roughly how everything works with distribution and things like that then it gives you some good knowledge for further down the line.The good thing with smaller, local labels is that they’re not really out to make a profit, it’s nice to break even, but it’s more just about getting the band’s music heard which can only be a good thing. We were fortunate in that after doing things ourselves for about 2 years we got a call from Ninja Tune as they were looking to expand their group of bands on Counter.
ANOM: Whats your favourite vowel?
L: They’ve all come in handy at some point
Here is a video of Spokes playing in Cardiff back in January, courtesy of the Snapshots & Snippets blog. its pretty good:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
