'I'm glad we decided to write some weird shit': Best Fit meet Dutch Uncles

Dutch Uncles have a new – but not quite first – album to talk about. Cadenza is a wiry-pop record that sounds too sunny to have been inspired by two, very different, funerals. TLOBF met up with singer Duncan Wallis and guitarist Dan Spedding to mull over the assertion that “death, in its simplest terms, is a parting of people.”

Formed in 2008, Dutch Uncles hail from a small mill-town just outside Stockport. Indeed, Marple punches well above its musical weight – having already given the world Delphic and Egyptian Hip Hop, as well as being the place where, legend has it, Johnny Marr wrote the guitar melody for ‘This Charming Man’. After the video for their debut single ‘The Face’ featured Wallis in a wedding dress (“It was Dan’s mum’s – it was very Madonna-esque, it must have been a very 80s wedding”), Dutch Uncles released a little-known self-titled debut album on a German record label. Now signed to the venerable Memphis Industries, the five-piece recorded Cadenza in a musty basement studio in Salford, over a seven-month period. The result is a fine pop album, with traces of Steve Reich-piano, the (very good) oddness of Sparks and a fine line in leftfield lyricism.

I meet up with Duncan and Dan in the veritable metropolis that is Manchester, at one of the Northern Quarter’s many bohemian bars. The lads order fantastically cloudy continental lager, and as I’m driving, I enquire as to the availability of any non-alcoholic beer. The bar-person actually ‘tuts’ at me for asking such a ridiculous question – and I sidle off with a mineral water. Thankfully, Dutch Uncles are more genial hosts, even if Daniel seems to find great difficulty in getting any air-time – Duncan is a talker.

Cadenza was recorded over a number of months last summer. Did you set out with an initial vision for how you wanted the album to sound?

Duncan: We did set out with a vision, but it changed a lot. I have still got in my old notebooks potential track-listing of things and a lot of that stuff has become B-sides. We were settling very quickly on what we thought was going to be an album and I am glad that we kind of stuck out on it and decided to write some weird shit. ‘Dolli’ was written as a sort of palette cleanser and ‘X-O’ was written very far down the line.

Dan: There was a lot more experimenting than the first album when we played the songs live and that was it – with hardly any over-dubbing. This time we spent a long time on each track, especially on the songs we weren’t as sure on but the producer could see potential.

You mentioned that the vision changed – why did it have to change and was there a point when you knew you had got ‘the vibe’ for Cadenza?

Duncan: I think we knew how much had to change. We didn’t know what – but we knew how much. We knew we had to step it up. The first song we wrote was ‘OCDUC’ and it took a few months to finally get that first song. After that, we started veering off again and it wasn’t until ‘The Ink’ that we had direction. When we had that written, we knew that it was the identity of the second album and that we would base an album almost around that one track. That piano was fidgety and sounded like a cop show theme. I play the piano and that is the style I like to play in – to make you move. It’s like my dancing but on a piano. We were trying to make minimal, classical composition into a pop song and we really went to town on it.

Dan: Songs started to flow and I started to write more music that made sense really. Things came together quicker.

Duncan: ‘Cadenza’ then took that to another level by making it more blocky and chord-based.

I believe ‘cadenza’ is a phrase used in classical music.

Duncan: Yes, it’s like a solo flourish. The important thing is that it is at the end of a movement and ‘Cadenza’ came from the lyrics, because it was a song written about death. Death, in its simplest terms is a parting of people.

The song is very upbeat and joyful. I’m intrigued that it is about a funeral.

Duncan: It was about my grandmother’s death. I was a pall-bearer and it was a really weird experience. The song was actually about seeing her open casket in the funeral parlour which was a very small, cold room. It was that feeling of seeing one of your loved ones and you know they are not going to open their eyes. I didn’t really feel much at the funeral at the time. You are losing someone who is very old and very ill and there is a sense of relief.

Pall-bearing – is that usual for close relatives to carry the coffin?

Duncan: She was Scottish and it is a Scottish tradition if there are enough male family members to do it. I only saw her because I was with my Dad and he was dropping off a bottle of whisky to put in the casket before the funeral. I wanted to see her, not in a weird, Louis Theroux way. I think the main reason I wrote the song about that was just because it worked against the music so well. I would never want to make something like that an obvious thing. I’d never have a dark song about that situation. ‘Zalo’ is about another funeral, and they open and close the album. The idea of writing about my grandmother’s funeral from an emotional point was seeing it all as factual stuff, whereas with ‘Zalo’ that funeral was a very different situation and a different person. It was a young person’s death and very emotional – it wasn’t anyone I was linked to, but I was there for someone else. So, there is a growth on the album.

You released a self-titled album on a German label in 2009. For many UK-based music fans, Cadenza may appear to be your debut album. Would that bother you?

Dan: We all have different opinions.

Duncan: This is the album we always wanted to be a debut album. It is written like a debut album. It’s young, stupid and full of young stuff in the lyrics – apart from the funerals. We’ve not developed the themes much more than relationship songs for a lot it – those things you are allowed to do on you debut album.

Dan: For a lot of people in this country it will be our first album and then they may find the other album if they look for it. I have no problem with people thinking it is our debut album.

You are from Marple. For such a small town, it has birthed Dutch Uncles, Delphic and Egyptian Hip-Hop. Is there something in the water? Is there a healthy rivalry?

Dan: We went to school with Egyptian Hip Hop. We didn’t go to school with Delphic. They were older than us and went to private school. Maybe we should have blue plaques everywhere and we can have music tours of Marple.

Duncan: The thing about Egyptian Hip Hop, is that they were already making it when they were still at college. It is really weird – their drummer is our old German teacher.

Dan: It is his son.

Duncan: Sorry, yeah – his son. We used to see them down the pub quiz all the time, but now they’ve all moved into their own house in Manchester. They are living the dream – it is well-earned, like. But we are very jealous that they have got their own house.

Dan: I can’t imagine the five of us living together.

Duncan: Delphic’s place is amazing. Rick was showing me round the flat and I was like ‘this is amazing’ and he was like ‘let me show you the other floor’. He had an organ/keyboard den that was absolutely mesmerizing. They invited me round to talk about the track ‘X-O’. They were listening to the album, bit by bit, as they would hear songs that we would send. They said ‘we’d like to give you some advice on this’ and I took it in and did make some changes after what they said. They were trying to help us make it a bit more radio-friendly. I don’t mean that in a negative way.

So, it appears that there is both a rivalry and a sense of camaraderie? Maybe there could be a Marple supergroup?

Duncan: Yeah, we just want to jam-out with each other. It would be nice to see if we could write songs together. It would be a very interesting experience. We could write something, and then Delphic would come up with some crazy organs.

I presume the next few months are going to see you hitting the promotional circuit for Cadenza?

Duncan: Yeah, although the summer is a hard time to bring out new music. If you are virtually unheard band, then the radio will mostly focus on who is headlining festivals and other bands get pushed aside. So, we are going to wait to September-October time to release another single after Cadenza comes out in May.

Do you have an idea when the next Dutch Uncles album may see the light?

Duncan: We are already putting down the basics for new songs. We have got quite a few now. We are still trying to find what we are going to say about stuff. I don’t know what I have to say and it feels like what we have got to say will be determined by what we have to prove. It depends how well the second album does. But we are looking to release a third album pretty quickly and that is why we are getting on it now.

And is there likely to be further sonic evolution?

Duncan: I think the sound could change again. We felt it had changed when we made Cadenza but listening to it, we had ‘only’ gone from lo-fi pop to regular pop. So, where are we going to go next?

Finally, I’m sure you are aware that ‘Dutch uncle’ refers to someone who ‘issues frank and severe criticism’. Have either of you got an uncle who fits that bill?

Duncan: I have got an uncle that isn’t nice. Uncles are supposed to put you down, aren’t they? You get on with them and it is all nice and eventually you will cross the line and they will tell you off like your parents don’t. That’s what happens.

Dutch Uncles – Cadenza

Dutch Uncles release Cadenza via Memphis Industries on April 25.

Photographs by Ian West.