Thumpers

Thumpers were forged from the broken shards of Pull Tiger Tail. The London-based duo – Marcus Pepperell and John Hamson Jr – met at school aged eleven and have been playing music together since they were about fifteen. There’s a big emphasis on rhythm in their sound, with booming drums taking the limelight and providing ample opportunity to get your limbs a-flailin’.

Their single ‘Dancing’s Done’ is a demonstration of pop done right, with layers of sublime vocals duelling against eye-widening synth and faintly bluesy guitar volleys – an example of a repertoire that contains genuinely affecting, infectious dream-pop with tribal beats and honeyed effects.

Do you remember the first song that you wrote?

John Hamson Jr: Unfortunately yes, and I’m sure its on a dictaphone somewhere at the house I grew up in. I think it was an ode to wanting to drive my dad’s car…

Marcus Pepperell: Thee first songs I wrote were pretty much instrumental piano songs. The first song with lyrics was one heavily indebted to Smashing Pumpkins. I think I wrote a few songs about the moon.

JHJ: Me too. If you’re asking about Thumpers though, it was ‘Sound Of Screams’. Before we named this band, we’d been writing for about year and had about six songs in total, all just still experimenting and trying to find a sound that we were happy with. ‘Sound Of Screams’ was the seventh song and it was clear when we made that that we’d found something that excited us, and from then came all the other songs for the record.

What made you decide that music was what you wanted to spend your time doing?

JHJ: Buying records and getting into bands as a teenager was what did it for me. I kind of couldn’t understand how anyone could listen to music and not want to make it, or want to know everything about it.

Have you tried to do anything different with your music to stand out from the rank ‘n’ file?

MP: I wanted to write songs that I thought had to be recorded in something other than a conventional band set-up. The way we approached the recordings was to give ourselves some freedom from thinking about how we would perform the songs, and to focus especially on the
arrangements.

JHJ: Yeah, and we wanted to use a combination of harsh sounds and lush sounds. Our production focuses on drums, with a pretty raw feel to them, and then combining them with the dreaminess of the layered vocals, especially female vocals. I suppose it seemed like not many British bands were going for that.

Have you deliberately distanced yourself from Pull Tiger Tail?

JHJ: Well, no, but we did want to give Thumpers a clean break from anything that we’d done before. Pull Tiger Tail was our art school, indie-rock band that came from three people playing in a room together. These new songs are more born out of experimenting in the studio and with our songwriting.

Has it been easy to lose the shackles of your former band, or have people not paid it any attention?

MP: I think we’ve been surprised by how often it’s been mentioned again.

JHJ: Especially considering how short the amount of time the band was together for. I guess that our only concern there is that that might influence how people approach listening to Thumpers.

What do you make of guitar music?

MP: People are making more interesting music with guitars now than they have done in the last five years, I think. whether or not they’ve been heard by the mainstream. Simply because guitar music may have been in the charts more back then doesn’t necessarily mean that it was any better at the time. What I’ve heard of Savages has been great. they were intense on Jools Holland.

JHJ: Haim we love. It’s great that band like Peace and Palma Violets are getting so much attention but I think we’re more into other new stuff like AlunaGeorge and Kwes.

What’s the best guitar riff in history? Who’s the greatest player?

MP: ‘Cherub Rock’.

JHJ: Graham Coxon.

News broke recently about the demise of HMV. What’s your take on it?

MP: I remember while at school we replaced every Britney Spears ‘Hit Me Baby…’ single on display at the top of the chart with copies of Blur CDs. Embarrassing now, but important at the time.

JHJ: Yeah, it’s definitely a shame. A place to buy music is needed on every high street. It’s a shame HMV developed a bad rep in the last five years. It made some pretty big mistakes but the need for everyone to be able to buy music is more important than that. I hope it stays.

You’re releasing your new single ‘Dancing’s Done’ on cassette and vinyl – why those formats?

JHJ: I love vinyl and still buy it, and I think it’s exciting for any band to release their music on it. Plus, the double release fit well with our artwork concept.

What about cassettes? Do you think we should be prepared for their comeback?

MP: Only if you mean C-90s! I want the mixtape back in my life.

How did you go about writing ‘Dancing’s Done’?

MP: I wanted to write a song that was front-loaded with verses and then had only choruses from the mid-point onwards. I wrote an early version of the drumbeat first on this song and then recorded the other riffs as competing vocal parts until one of them stood out. The rest of the song was formed out of the parts that were left – but recorded on different instruments.

What’s the video about? What did you set out to achieve with it?

JHJ: We wanted a dream-like video which dealt with adventuring friends. There’s an element of the characters making a den and imagining this journey. We wanted to make the last shot feature something that was so prominent in our memories of a childhood spent in cars.

MP: Lyrically the themes of this song – and the record in general – deal with youth and the intensity of doing things for the first time. The people in the video are real life childhood friends and I think their easiness in each other’s company fits in with the narrative of the song really well and the band’s atmosphere as a whole.

What’s it about? Are there any hidden themes?

MP: It’s about not wanting to tell someone to move on from a fantasy.We made a conscious effort to produce songs with a cohesive sound and the record we made does that both musically and lyrically.

Have you got a game plan for 2013? Anything on the horizon?

JHJ: We need to find a home for the album and then get it mixed. Ideally we want it out for late summer. We also have some collaborations in the works with other artists this year, as well as producing tracks for other people too. Obviously touring and playing as many festivals as possible.

‘Dancing’s Done’ is out now on 7” and cassette, via paradYse records.