TLOBF Interview: Left With Pictures

What better way to spend a May evening than in conversation with a representative of a firm TLOBF favourite? Left With Pictures songwriter and frontman Stuart Barter was on hand to answer questions, and once he’d turned down Micachu, we talked about the new LWP single, tweeness, Coldplay, and forthcoming gigs, among other things…

How would you describe your role in the band?
I suppose I have a few different roles. I write songs quite a lot, so I bring chord sequences, melodies, and lyrics to the table, which are then arranged by the band collaboratively. So I provide stimulus material which becomes the final songs, as it were. Also, I have quite a strong organisational role, it’s quite often me who’s contacting people and rallying the troops. And when we play live I kind of take the front man role, I banter very wittily with the audience and act as the link between the band and the audience at shows… I think those are the ways my role is distinct from those of the others.

One of the things I’d say about the songs we’ve heard from Left With Pictures is that the songs are deceptively simple aren’t they? They’re very immediate but under the surface they’re more complicated. How do you go about achieving that – is it in the songwriting, or the arrangement, or what?
Well I think it’s both – there’s a sort of mission statement of the band which is to create music which is interesting, and has something going on to attract the interest on a variety of levels, but we also love pop, and we like short songs and want things to be appealing on that immediate level. When we going about making it we also have that mind, so there’s sort of two sides to the songwriting. Usually someone bring in a sequence of chords, with a melody and lyrics hanging off it, that’s the first part, and that person sort of has the pop sensibility as it were. And we’re looking for ways to exploit as many possibilities as there could be within that chord structure.

Sounds like juggling different elements at the same time, trying to achieve different elements in the same song.
Yeah, I guess so. When it comes to the band, it’s kind of open season. Nothing’s really sacred, we often change things round and change the structure, and all kind of melodic stuff is added in. We all have a kind of technical background, I’m skirting round the phrase “classically trained”, but we are from that kind of background, which can be helpful.

That’s something that people are always referring to… it’s something people drop in a lot, “oh classically trained” as if it instils huge confidence in people – but is it a big influence?
I don’t know really… I think it only really changes the way we approach things, I don’t think it means we have superiority over anyone else, it jus influences the way we approach the arrangements and sometimes if we’re stuck, we can see what should happen, if you see what I mean… harmonically, what could occur next, conventionally speaking. We’ve studied musical convention and musical structures, so we’ve kind of got that prior knowledge to draw from, and can go with it or abandon it and go in the opposite direction, but it informs the process of making the music, I’d say. The extent to which it comes out by just listening to the songs, I don’t know. I would just say that it doesn’t give us access to any superiority over anyone else, or that the fact alone makes us any better or worse than anyone without that background. It’s fair, and it’s true, but it’s not the be-all and end-all.

Another thing that comes up quite often is that people often refer to the lyrics and vocals as being “almost twee” – people won’t say that they are twee, but that you’re sort of part of the way there. Is that a line that you’re aware of, is that a term that’s a curse? How do you feel about it as a word?
I don’t feel great about it actually… I’m not a big fan of it really. I mean I like a lot of music that’s described as being twee. I mean the “twee godfathers” I suppose are Belle & Sebastian and I’m a big fan of theirs. We’ve heard that word a few times and we consciously try to move away from it… I think it’s in our minds with the recordings we’re doing at the moment to try to move away from it. Whether we’re achieving that or whether it’s right or wrong I don’t know, whatever “twee” means.

It’s quite a vague thing isn’t it?
It’s very vague, and at the end of the day we’re pleased that people want to write anything about the music we make and that’s good thing, but as far as the word “twee” is concerned, I don’t think it’s that helpful a description, particularly because it’s so vague and we’re working off such spurious definitions as to what it means. But it doesn’t have entirely positive connotations for me, and I think that’s shared by others in the band.

I think one of the reasons you do get that label is because of some things that definitely are in the band, but whether the two need to be connected is a bit debatable. For example, some of the songs are quite idiosyncratic, and sort of uniquely English, and that sort of thing, that’s part of it isn’t it?
Yeah, I suppose so. I mean we’re all relatively posh and it’s not aggressive music, it’s more cerebral in some ways, it’s quite a long way from being punk, or something like that, which might be at the other end of the spectrum. And the presence of a glockenspiel always brings the word “twee” to mind really. As I said before, just being thought about and written about is a positive thing, overall. And when you’re making music, I think you have to accept what the response is, we’re making music to be listened to by other people and we have to say “fair enough” to whatever response is given really, that’s out of our hands.

It seems to me that some bands that try to throw off the labels they’ve been given, kind of come to regret it if they try to react against it, they tend to get villainised.
Yeah I’m trying to think of an example… I think Coldplay are quite concerned with their perception, Chris Martin’s always talking about the fact that they seem to be a sort of soft rock band or whatever, and he seems to be kind of wrestling with it, but their music hasn’t changed a great deal because of it. I think Chris Martin seems very aware of the perception of the band and the labels attached to it.

They called themselves “a very heavy soft rock band” didn’t they, which is a very interesting term, to say the least… I mean you said the word “posh”, but they’re aren’t a lot of bands out there that reference things like cricket are there? There is a sort of idiosyncrasy and Englishness to the lyrics isn’t there?
Yeah. Another thing is that I think you have to respond if you’re being creative in any way, honestly to whatever stimulus to you as a person, and if that happens to be cricket and croquet, then so be it. I think what stinks is dishonesty, and consciously trying to be one thing or another. That particular song, Toby wrote the lyrics to that, and I think it’s about being at school, and they obviously played cricket at the school he went to… you can’t shake off your experiences, they are as they are. “Posh” again, that’s not a helpful term but I’m aware there might be a perception when cricket’s being bandied about.

We ought to start talking about the new single now, which isn’t out just yet, but it’s very good. It’s in the same vein of Secretly isn’t it really, but how do you as a band feel about that, are you proud of this double A side?
Yeah, absolutely. We wouldn’t have recorded it if we didn’t feel good about it. I think it is an extension of what we’ve done before, and well this is for others to say, but I think it sounds a little grander in scope. The Secretly recordings sound quite intimate – which is a good thing – but the things we’re doing at the moment sound slightly grander and have a bigger sound, and those recordings are along with a new album, which should be out late summer, maybe early September. And we’ve done a lot more live recording, which we didn’t do at all for Secretly, which was recorded in a sort of walk-in closet, and we’ve used more live kit, rhythm parts all recorded together. Hopefully there’s a continuity but also a progression as well, but yeah we’re pleased with the recordings, and we’ll see how they’re received…

You’ve released a few EPs and singles now, and everthing you’ve done so far has been really well received – does it feel, recording this debut album, that you’ve got to top it all, and live up to all the praise you’ve been given?
I suppose so. At our stage, we’re still relatively small fish, and to an extent people don’t write anything if they’re indifferent to it. There might have been people who’ve listened to EPs and not bothered writing anything. There’s a wider audience to be reached. But yeah, we’ve picked up some quite firm supporters, and you wouldn’t want to disappoint them. But I don’t think you can be too preoccupied with that, you have to continue with the creative project. There’s all sorts of things in this game that you can get hung up about, you sort of have to try not to really and do what you think is honest and stick to your own aesthetic values.

We should talk about some live things – you had your launch party for the single recently, at the Lexington, how did that go?
Yeah that was great. That was a good show, we shared a bill with some acts… My Sad Captains were the main support, they were jolly good. Probably one of the biggest crowds we’ve played to, I’m not sure what the capacity of the Lexington is but it was pretty full so that’s always encouraging. We showcased some new material, that isn’t recorded, that’s going to be on the album, and it was well-recieved. It’s definitely been one of the highlights of the year so far as a live performance. When you’ve got a launch party you really rehearse for it, and pull out all the stops, so we were well prepared for it. Great fun.

Talking about launch parties, you’ve got another one coming up for which you’ll be the support, it’s for My Latest Novel later this month, and a TLOBF-sponsored gig so it’ll be a very very big thing!
We’re really looking forward to that, Bush Hall is a really great place. We’ve known about My Latest Novel for a while now, Toby and I actually went to Latitude festival three or four years ago and My Latest Novel were playing and we were impressed. I bought the first record on the back of that but haven’t heard much since… but then I heard about this show and thought “oh that sounds good” and heard about it before we were asked to play it, so that’s good. Bush Hall is a firm favourite and it suits our music to a tee, we’ve always enjoyed playing there so that’s great.

On the subject of the future, what do you think is next for Left With Pictures, what are your ambitions as a band?
We’d really like the album to be well-recieved and to give us access to a wider audience. That’s out of our hands to an extent. Organ Grinder Records will be releasing it and they are obviously in charge of making sure that it’s out there and they do a very good job so I’m sure that will happen. That’s the only thing that’s on our horizon at the moment, the album, and what concerns us is making it as good as it can be and as cohesive a work as possible. We’re quite concerned that it flows as ten songs, and that it works as a set of songs. We’re interested in the ways songs lead into each other, and the sequencing, and the spaces between songs. I suppose our ambitions at the moment are just to make that record as strong as it can be, and the shows we’ve got coming up are looking good so yeah our ambition will just be to nail the album, then hopefully, if we manage that the response will be good and we’ll just take it from there.

It’s an exciting prospect, we’ll definitely cover it when the time comes. So good luck with finishing that off, and thanks for talking to us. Good luck for the future!
Thanks, speak to you soon!

Left with Pictures on MySpace