Torches

- Photo by Medhi Lacoste

This Mile End quintet have got us all a-jitter with their smart, sparsely arranged, rousing guitar (yes, we said guitar) epics. There’s three Torches stunners up on Soundcloud to date, a couple of beautifully gloomy press pics and Wernzer Herzog, The Fall, Moderat and The Knife all cited as inspirations. We need to know more.

Poetic, passionate and brimming with ideas is how we expect frontman Charlie Drinkwater to be when we’re connected (via a computerized lady voice and cheesy samba track), and that’s exactly what we get over the course of an hour and a half long phonecall that takes in everything from the recession to Rihanna, cultural appropriation, Topshop, Borges and “fucking Michael Bublé”. Phew.

Hi Charlie, wow conference calls are weird aren’t they?

Hello, yeah, very strange. It’s my first one so wasn’t sure what to do.

Well we got there in the end. So we’re big fans of Torches already at Best Fit and there seems to be a nice buzz around you at the moment, how are you feeling about how it’s all going?

Thank you. I feel really very positive about it all. There’s buzz there but it’s not overbearing. This time last year we put up a couple of tracks on Soundcloud and they got picked up by a few people who seemed to like them but it feels like we’re being given time to develop which is a good thing. When we started it was very much just us producing our demos in our basement and from there we’ve had time to go out, play those songs and write better songs and just generally get better as a band. It’s all been very encouraging so far, I couldn’t be happier with it.

Your debut single ‘Sky Blue & Ivory’ (out 23 July) is a real anthem but you’ve got quite a few of those under your belts already. Why did you choose to release this track first?

For us it showcased a moment in time of where we are with the band. It’s quite a sparse song, and that’s what we try to do with our music, just rigorously strip it back and strip it back so there’s not actually a huge amount to it but keep the momentum and energy. Performing it live, it feels urgent and pretty big and it feels like quite a rallying call for what we are doing.

You record and produce everything in the basement of your Mile End flat in London, would you say living there has informed your sound?

Oh yes. London is a huge point of reference for what we do and who we are, it’s such a breeding ground, an incredible place for germinating ideas. And it’s the great creator and the great destroyer because it can chew you up and spit you out. With the creative process you are holding up a mirror to where you are and who you are and the time you live in, and inherently we are trying to write these big songs and intelligent pop music that reflects all of that, and the emotions that come from that.

So you’re holding up this mirror to your world, what’s the mirror showing?

I think hopefully it shows what it is to be young and in the city, living in a global and local recession. There are lots of great bands out there writing songs that are about partying and that has its place, but sometimes I feel you have to communicate something more. That’s what we’re really interested in, building a level of communication with people and I hope that emotion and that intensity of communication comes across because it’s something that we really strive for. We want people to hear our music and feel something special from it.

The words “doom” and “gloom” crop up a lot in reviews of your music so far, but I get a real sense of hope from your music too. Yes it’s unsettling but it’s also very uplifting too…

Well thank you, that’s interesting, I would say so too. I don’t really mind people saying we’re gloomy, it means they’re appreciating the emotion, and some of my favourite music is melancholy, but at the same time we’re trying to build that level of communication that doesn’t just encompass sadness, it encompasses joy too.

There’s a sense in your music too of a kind of knowing youth, you seem wise beyond your years… would you agree with that?

Yeah, that’s interesting, we’re in our mid 20s so there is a definite sense of being not quite young and not yet old… and having access to the Internet, the world has never been as open, it’s an encyclopaedia of the world and opens up so many avenues and histories, you have to explore it and be aware of your history. I’m aware of what influences me, and the music and film directors and books I like and that is part of who you are in the now and you can’t escape that. It’s too formative. You have to use those things as a tool and try and create something that only you can do with all of those influences.

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Photo by Medhi Lacoste

What about Torches’ history, how did you meet?

Myself, Ed (Kelland – Drums/Electronics), Nic (Smith – Organ) and Alex (Sprogis – guitar) all went to school together, it was your typical southern English suburban upbringing, nothing particularly bad or exciting and we bonded over similar interests and played in separate projects with Matt who is in Crushed Beaks now. And then we all dispersed when we moved around for university, and this time last year I had been living with Alex for a while in London, Nic moved back down and we felt this restlessness of we need to be creating again. We hadn’t really done anything with music for a while so we got to this point where it was like we need to do this so we just started demoing stuff, recruited Ed into it and then as time went on Ed took on a more electronic role and in December Stephanie (Anderson – Drums) answered an ad and it slotted in from there.

You mentioned similar interests, was it those that made you feel like you could form a great band together?

Yeah we’ve always had an interest in similar music which definitely bonded us together but we’re also quite diverse in terms of what we listen to, and that gives us a really rich hunting ground for ideas. When we were younger we all started out listening to a lot of 1970s weird avant-garde rock music and then we moved onto post punk, getting really into Gang Of Four. But now Ed is into dance music, I’m very much into Turbo-folk, which is a really dodgy blend of disco and hardcore brass band music that originated in the Balkans, my favourite band is probably The Knife and Nick has a massive love of ambient stuff. We also have a massive love affair with The Fall so it’s very diverse.

I guess what I’m saying is we don’t all just listen exclusively to Joy Division, although there’s nothing wrong with that… But at the same time I’m not a fan of bands who drop the most obscure names in the world into interviews either because then you look like a complete idiot. Like I listen to Mongolian mouth breathing music, no you don’t.

So what was it that then spurred you on to become a musician yourself?

For me it was about being able to play live. I love the creative process of writing and recording but the intensity of performing, for me, is incredibly special. It’s like being an elevated version of yourself and for that minute you are away from everything else in the world and you’re sweating out all of these emotions and you have the attention of three people in a room or a hundred or whatever, and you’re communicating something to them. I use the show as an opportunity for the realisation of the songs fully and I would urge people to see us live, that’s where we shine, there’s a sense of purpose, it’s powerful, like we’re coming at you, and you’ve got to be ready.

The name Torches is bold and direct and yet there’s something quite shadowy about it too. Was that intentional?

Yeah, because for us aesthetics is very important so Torches looked good written down but it also fits the sound that we create. It’s quite grandiose and I like that, and it’s got a clarity to it but it’s also opaque.

That brings me to your voice, it’s booming and emotional and direct but it has an opaque unsettling quality to it too. Who inspires you vocally?

Thanks, well not necessarily in the sound but for his intonation and passion and the poetic way he delivers his lines, Mark E Smith is a big influence. And I like really big strong sounding vocals so stuff like Red Army Choir, and Ghostpoet, the way he intonates and speaks/sings, it’s just very emotive and unique. Oh and Frank Sinatra, and a lot of crooners like Tony Bennett and Tony Curtis and Dean Martin, I don’t want to sound like fucking Michael Bublé here…

But with Sinatra, of course there’s a smoothness to his voice but it’s about his ability to deliver certain words and phrases, and his impeccable diction that makes him a master.

Oh yeah absolutely. Like Sinatra, especially later on was delivering really sad songs about his own mortality, they were essentially show tunes but they were about him dying and that passion and rawness comes across even in the most polished, Las Vegas way. The way he communicates that feeling is quite amazing.

We’ve read you like a bit of Julio Iglesias too…

Haha, well we mentioned his version of ‘La Mer’ on our Tumblr because it’s at the end of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Julio sings it in French to this kind of 1960s Bossa Nova lounge backing band and it works amazingly with the film so we were boshing it on the collective stereo and it got picked up by The Guardian which was weird. I use the Tumblr blog as a dumping ground for the internal monologue bullshit going on in our brains so I never expected anyone to look at it and make sense of it.

Better Julio than Enrique though.

Definitely. Julio is the best Iglesias.

If you’re listening to Enrique, best keep it off the Tumblr.

Haha yes.

Well we’re looking forward to hearing more from you, what’s next for Torches?

More shows, and because we live together we’re writing all the time so we’re working on getting an EP together for the Autumn. Ultimately though we have big ambitions in terms of what we want to do. You just want to write stuff that really, really connects. Being in a band is about creating moments for people, it’s a sacred position and we dream of having that special place in people’s hearts and imaginations and soundtracking their lives. We look at the Arcade Fire and the way that they connect with people, the music they make, the show they put on and you can see it hasn’t been conceived in a cynical way, it’s just really great music communicating in a really intensely amazing pure level and for any band starting out you want that, to have the big crowd with the hands in the air but also to develop in a way that will make people want to stay with us.

Sky Blue & Ivory will be released through Fractions of One on 23 July, and can be pre-ordered by clicking here.

12 July 12 – Shacklewell Arms, London, w/ Funeral Suits & Towns
26 July 12 – Sebright Arms, London, w/ special guest & DJs