TLOBF Interview :: My Latest Novel

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In the run up to their album launch at Bush Hall, London this Bank Holiday Monday (25th May), Ro Cemm grabbed a quick 5 minutes with My Latest Novel as they sat on the beach before their Great Escape shows to talk touring, poetry and thunderbolts!

So, you guys just got off the bus, you were in Leeds last night. Hows the tour going?
Well, we’ve only really played last nights show, but that went pretty well, aye. We’re excited about playing these new songs out live. It’s been a while though – it’s like we’ve had to start from scratch a wee bit.

It’s been over three years since Wolves came out. What took so long?:
Its just how long it took. We were touring Wolves for about 18 months, and then it took a while before we could regather and start recording again. We ended up holed up in an old pub in Greenock, where we come from. The thing was, we didn’t really feel under any pressure to rush something out. You know, we didn’t want to go and put any old rubbish out, so we just took our time. and we’re delighted with the new record…

Do you all write together, or are some of the songs identifiably one persons?
No, it’s all collaborative – we all bring in different bits. Things change a lot when you take them to five other people in a band.

You’ve talked a lot about the literary influence of the likes of Poe, Alisdair Gray, Thomas and more – how did they influence the writing?
Well, it’s more of a collective thing that we are all interested in. We didn’t deliberately set out to write a record with a lot of literary influences in it. I think it’s down to the fact that all five us write – we all just started talking and connecting about certain things and started building on that.

The title Deaths and Entrances is taken from a Dylan Thomas poem. Are you big fans?
Not mega, but yeah, definitely. It’s just a grand title for an album – it gave us something to work towards, expressed much of the sentiment behind what we wanted to do after we’d done with Wolves. The record is brave and ambitious and the title is just that – so we had to write songs that backed that up. I was delighted by the “pulling thunderbolts to shut the sun” bit. It sort of sums up what we were trying to do.

Are the themes on the new record as dark as the poem?
I actually think that there is a dark side but the title is also quite optimistic as well… even though it’s got the word ‘death’ in it. A lot of people have said that the lyrics are dark but I think that actually a lot of them are quite sentimental as well, compared to the first record. I think that the lyrics on this one are a lot more personal, even though there are some obvious literary influences in there. It’s not like we sit down and say we are going to write about something close to us – it just sort of happens.

Is that the main difference between “Wolves” and “Deaths and Entrances” then, the more personal subject matter?
Well, to some extent, but I would think the difference between “Wolves” and this album is the instrumentation- we’ve a lot more keyboards on this album, and a brass section- the acoustic guitars almost gone.

My Latest Novel’s sophomore album Deaths and Entrances is out now on Bella Union.

The band will play a special concert at London’s Bush Hall on 25th May to celebrate the launch. They will be joined by special guests: Left With Pictures, It Hugs Back, Stars Of Sunday League and Bella Union DJs. For more information and to buy tickets, click here.