TLOBF Interview // Goldheart Assembly

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Celebrated not only by 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq but also TLOBF’s Euan Mackay, Goldheart Assembly are a band on the ascent. Their debut LP Wolves & Thieves and its infectious single “King of Rome” have accumulated deserved praise, and this summer they have toured relentlessly to support the songs. After catching up with them for a half-hour’s chat behind the scenes at this year’s Summer Sundae festival in Leicester, I present the band’s views on confrontational gigs, the state of British music radio today, and the combination of excitement and nervousness their success has left them with. Not bad for a band who claim they “don’t say anything interesting”. Goldheart Assembly are James Dale (bass, vocals), John Herbert (guitar, vocals), Thomas Hastings (guitar, vocals), Jake Bowser (keys) and Nicky Francis (drums). We begin just after their Saturday afternoon set.

So how do you think it went?
James: I think it went quite well. We could see quite well; I had quite a good view. I was happy overall with it.

You’ve got the best seats in the house though, surely?
James: Well, yes – the worst sound, though. The sound was pretty bad. My monitor was terrible, every time I sang it was distorting! Then there was the feedback that sounded like it was the bass, then it was the acoustic…

When you were playing it sounded loud enough, but when you were speaking…
Everyone: Well we mumble.
James: Yeah we’re mumblers, that’s the problem! Everyone always says “there’s something wrong with your mics when you speak but when you sing it’s beautiful!”
John: We don’t say anything interesting anyway.
James: It’s all very negative… always pretty negative banter. But we say thanks! You know, we’re humble.
John: We say, “we can’t believe you came”, but we get into trouble for that.

You seemed a little bit surprised by how many people there were, actually.
John: I was surprised.
Thomas: There was a rush when it started tipping it down…
James: It’s not always good when it rains, sometimes when it rains the people that wanted to see you won’t come over. We’ve had people say, “I was going to come but it was pissing it down…”
John: Sorry, we haven’t answered any questions yet, have we? I think it was alright, let’s not complain about the sound. It’s nice when we turn up and sing and there’s a few people that know the songs, I try to pick them out when there’s a few people who know the songs.
James: There were a couple of girls in the corner – I thought, “these are gonna be trouble”, they were mouthy weren’t they? Then they were singing along to all the songs! The girl with the hat!
John: She was mouthy, yeah.
James: We find that our audience sometimes turn on us, because we turn on the crowd…

You’re not the most confrontational band in the world though, surely?
Thomas: Well, no.
James: John swore at someone once…
John: Did I?
James: Yeah.
John: Oh that time, yeah.
James: That was our booking agent.
John: No, that wasn’t our booking agent, it was actually someone else!

Everything seems to be very brisk at Summer Sundae compared to festivals, you have your set and they sort of kick you off right away…
James: Yeah…
John: Everyone on that stage had 30 minute sets I think. Normally we’re used to 45 minutes but half an hour’s quite nice…

Where else have you been, then, this summer?
John: Everywhere.
James: Where haven’t we played?
Thomas: Festivals really every weekend since June, and up to the end of August.

For a few bands it seems to be the end now, The Leisure Society were saying it was emotional because Sundae was their last show of the tour.
John: Well, they’re very emotional aren’t they. I imagine they’d cry at anything…
James: We’re sturdier than The Leisure Society and if it were our last gig we wouldn’t even mention it! We’ve got more gigs, we’re going to Austria next weekend, Reading and Leeds the weekend after so we’re pretty busy at the moment, then there was Glastonbury, and yeah a lot of festivals over the last few weeks. It doesn’t end! We’ve got a European tour at the end of September and then there’s a break. Then before long we’ll record the new album.

Speaking of which, how does your writing process tend to work?
James: It’s usually very reluctant.
John: I think the thing is, there’s no formula. As a writer – as we all are – it’s important to keep it fresh and to not look to a formula that’s worked in the past. But there’s no rhyme or reason to how songs come about, it can be about walking down the street, the rhythm of your footsteps, stuff like that. And yeah, sometimes it’s sitting down with a guitar and saying “I’m going to write something today!”
James: And then you do a little bit and then you go, “I’m never going to finish this” and then six months later the band go “we need new songs” and you go “well I’ve got this little thing…” and you play it and it sounds really good and you’re shocked.
John: Sometimes you have nowhere to go with it unless you have the input of other people. You could sit in a room all your life but you can’t finish some things without the input of other people.

What would you say Wolves and Thieves is about?
John: Me.
James: It’s not a concept album in any way, it was gelled together by where we recorded it, in a way. We used a steam engine museum to record the album, we used steam engines on a few of the tracks and that – production-wise – gave the album a bit more of a theme and a sound. There’s themes that run through the lyrics though…
John: There’s quite a lot of religious references. It affects us all I suppose, doesn’t it? It’s all encompassing, everywhere, all around us.

I came to you through hearing “King of Rome” on Steve Lamacq’s 6 Music show just before I sent him some interview questions, he speaks highly of you.
James: Most of our fans came from Steve Lamacq – he’s been our big champion on the radio and yeah I think most of real fans have come through him and it’s nice that there’s someone like him that’s into it! John’s going on Roundtable with him next week actually.
John: I’d forgotten about that…
Jake: You’re going on the Roundtable?
James: Lammo was talking about you yesterday! He said “I’ve got John from Goldheart Assembly in next week on the Roundtable, that’s gonna be interesting..”

John: Actually I don’t think we give him enough credit, because often when we’re around him-
John and James: -we give him a lot of stick.
John: We do owe him quite a lot.

So how do you all feel about the whole 6 Music debacle, for want of a better word?
James: I think it would have been devastating. I think it’s a great thing that they’ve now doubled their listenership, after the big poll the BBC were going on, said that 80% of people had not just not listened to it, they’d never heard of it.
John: The whole principle of the BBC should be that if 20% of people have heard it, then that’s a niche market and the BBC should be championing that, because no-one else will, commercial radio won’t.
James: We played a few “save 6 Music” gigs. They had no effect, but…
John: What? I like to think we saved 6 Music.
James: We announced that we did! Well, we didn’t, that was a joke. But we should have done. Apparently Lamacq put our album on the desk of the head of the BBC or something like that and said “this is the reason why we need to save 6 Music, because without it bands like Goldheart Assembly wouldn’t have even done an album”. No that’s true! And he turned round and went, “well that’s a pile of shit.”

John: I don’t think we’d have gone as far as we have without that bit of support, it’s so vital, so important. “6 Music changed my life”.
James: Now there’s a quote for you!
John: Stop being flippant.

Discussion about “the state of British radio” continues for a bit. James likes hearing “all the great British 90s reggae hits” on Absolute Radio.
James: There’s no counterculture anymore, is there? Everything’s accessible. You used to get people in suits leaving to go to obscure clubs to listen to weird music that they wouldn’t really talk about in their workplace, now you can be into whatever you want.
Thomas: I do think that the fans you get from something like 6 Music are the fans you want, they’re probably more likely to buy records and so on.
John: I think it’s always been the same, underground music has always been word of mouth in a certain way whether its imparting mixtapes under the table… it just so happens that we have a radio station now which is an equivalent, that works in that way. I remember we did a Mark Riley session and he was really enthused about this new band, playing it off air, like “it’s this perfect piece of pop music that will never be heard…” I don’t even know if he played it on the radio, he just played it to us. DJs like that are kind of portals to new music.

That must have been an interesting experience, that’s not neccesarily how I’d expect DJs to behave.
James: One of the problems is that a lot of the DJs, especially on commercial stations, are basically celebrities, they’re not trendsetters, they don’t have a history of finding new talent. They’re just celebrities aren’t they? They get on the radio because they’re celebrities and that’s it. It’s that idea of having a celebrity because of what they’re going to say, not what they’re going to play but what are they going to talk about, what are they into.
John: I mean we’ve been played by Jonathan Ross, but it’s got nothing to do with Jonathan Ross, it’s just that his producer likes us and has said we can be played; essentially Ross doesn’t know anything about music.
James: He doesn’t listen to half of what he plays – whenever he’s played us he comments on our outros, he’s not heard the rest of the song but he goes “ooh, nice bit of keyboard there!”

Beyond your immediate plans, what do you ultimately hope to achieve?
John: I think we’d like to feel that we’d made a better second record, that we’ve done things differently to before.
Thomas: We just want to be able to continue making the music we want to make…
John: …which is why we’ll probably never be played on Radio 1.

Do you ever feel intimidated by the prospect of doing another album?
John: Yeah, but I think that’s a good thing, I think that sharpens you.
James: It’s really worrying, I mean we have no idea what the next album is going to sound like, even though there are a lot of songs knocking around we don’t know how they’re going to come together. It’s exciting, we’re a bit nervous about it but it’s exciting.
John: It’s the same as going on stage.
James: We’re not nervous there because we worry about how people are going to respond… it’s more nervous about things going wrong. When we went on stage at Glastonbury I was nervous purely at the size of the crowd, I really wanted it to be a really good gig.
John: It’s always a great relief that nothing went badly wrong! But hopefully along the way you enjoy it. I always just imagine people booing halfway through a song…
James: Better that than if the whole audience is just chatting. If they’re booing, you getting a response, you know… I saw Andrew W.K. once, someone threw a bottle and he kicked it back in mid-air, everyone stopped throwing bottles and cheered him!