TLOBF Interview :: The Northwestern

A few years ago almost completely nowhere, Hope of the States split up. After two critically acclaimed albums, the band called it a day after performances at the Leeds/Reading Festivals with little fanfare. It’s almost been 4 years since then, but finally we’re starting to see something come out of the wreckage of one of the most underrated indie bands of the middle of the decade in The Northwestern. Sam Herlihy talks to us about the release of new EP Ghostrock.

With two of the band coming from Hope of the States and Johnny coming from The Open, would you view your past successes as a blessing or curse coming into The Northwestern?
I think when we first started it was a help. Some people were more interested in hearing what we had been up to than if we had never been in bands before. As time goes by it probably becomes more of a hassle
as those bands ended a long time ago but I totally understand it. It’s probably why I’m even in a position to do this interview, play shows etc. I guess it’s up to us to make music and play shows which make what we did before pretty irrelevant.

How would you say that the sound of your old bands come into this outfit? The tracks that I’ve heard suggest that you’ve moved on from your post-rock roots, so which direction would you say the band are going in?
I have no idea what direction we are moving in. We write a lot of songs and scrap a lot of songs. They always sound different depending on the time. I don’t think Hope of the States were a post rock band. We had some of the signifiers of that stuff, wailing guitars/instrumentals/big build ups and stuff but especially on the second record, we junked all of that.

You’ve released your debut EP ‘Ghostrock’ this week, could you tell us a little bit about that and how it came about? HOTS were famed for their political songs, so is there any concurrent themes running throughout these few tracks?
We did the telephones/alltheones 7” and then we wanted to be able to do more songs to try new things out. It’s too early for an album and EPs have always been a cool little thing to us. There is nowt political whatsoever in any of the songs. Thematically as far as I can tell they are all about blood, drinking, videotapes and recording memories so you don’t lose them. The Northwestern songs tend to only make sense to me a while after we’ve finished them, which is a bit weird but kind of exciting too.

‘Ghostrock’ was released through your own label, Bloodbank records. Was this a purposeful move away from the major record labels or something else?
It’s just at this limited release level I’m not sure a label can or will do a huge amount for you. It’s just a few hundred records. Unless you are on some hipster darling label you may as well stick it out yourself. It also means we can put out limited runs of side project stuff and friends music.

You started touring again this summer – how did it feel to be back on the road? Is it something that you have missed?
I think we definitely needed a break from touring and then we missed it loads. It’s been exactly what it used to be: really unhealthy, tiring, amazing. Loads of arguments and awesome moments. Laughter and carnage….

And what about getting back into the music industry as a whole? MP3 and file-sharing has been news for over a decade now, but how much do you feel the landscape has changed over the past couple of years?
All the digital/file sharing blah blah conundrum is what it is. There’s nothing we can do about it except try and make amazing records, make cool packaging and hope that people can spare a few quid to keep the band sustainable. Anything more than that seems pretty unlikely for a lot of bands.

And finally, with the year soon coming to a close, have you got any hot tips for 2010 that you could tell us a little bit about?
We just heard the Clues record on Constellation which is pretty cool. Hopefully Broken Social Scene will put out a new record, Cape Wrath coming soon on Bloodbank is awesome… Hopefully a new Tom Waits record and less bands sounding like Joy Division/Interpol…

The Northwestern’s Ghostrock EP is available now on Bloodbank records.