Five Day Forecast: Pleasure Beach

Pleasure Beach hail from Northern Ireland, but sound like they've been steeped in the balmy backwaters of Southern USA. Don't expect twangy banjos or washboard scrapes, but the band's twisted version of psych-Americana conjures visions of sprawling, freedom-soaked roads that the UK doesn't have - this is more Route 66 than M1. Pleasure Beach are grand, expansive, intense, and meticulously crafted, and beckon stadium-sized crowds. Imagine The War On Drugs with the 1980s setting turned up to 11.

Tickets for the Five Day Forecast are on sale now.

Stream the outfit's track "Hayley" below, and then read the Five Day Forecast Q&A after.

Could you introduce yourself for those that might not be familiar with what you do?

We're a synth-drenched dream-pop syndicate that call Belfast home. Three-fifths girl group, two-fifths boy band.

What do you try to do with your music and how do you achieve this?

We had a pretty loose mission statement when we started out - something about busting out good night-time driving vibes. We've really just ended up make music we'd like to hear ourselves, be it on headphones in a gloomy bedroom or from a huge stage on a warm summer's night. Big drums, big guitars, a little sad, a lot of love.

Can you tell us what musical and non-musical influences have shaped your sound?

Geography plays a part in what we sound like, trying to straddle the line between sunshiny cosmic West Coast noise and something a little darker and more, well, Northern Irish! Musically I guess we take a lot of Americana as a jumping off point, old and new, and put it through a shimmery filter of contemporary pop. Kurt Vile's Wakin On A Pretty Daze was rotating heavily on our collective turntable in the formative days of Pleasure Beach. I love the way most of the tracks on that album are seven-plus minutes long but are never anything less than totally engaging. When it comes to writing lyrics I'm kind of a Leonard Cohen freak. That combination of enigmatic fantasy and stark personal realism that gets alternated every other line taught me most things I needed to know about putting words to music, even if he does need to lighten the fuck up sometimes.

What should people expect from your Five Day Forecast show?

We love playing London and we're especially looking forward to this one. There will be singles, maybe a cover, and definitely thousands and thousands of silvery sequins.

What are you working on now/next?

It's a really productive and creative time for the band at the moment. We're in the process of mixing our next single which is always an exciting process, and at the same time we're spending all the hours we can hauled up in our rehearsal room, writing and refining our live set for the heavy touring schedule that's looming up on the horizon.

How is 2016 shaping up? What are you looking forward to this year?

We'll have been together as a band for one year in January, and it's been a bit of an awesome whirlwind so far. We now have a great team behind us and a whole batch of new material lined up to take us through these next twelve months. It's going to be great hitting the festival circuit in the summer and spreading our wings out into Europe and beyond. But most of all I'm looking forward to spending so much time hanging out in vans, clubs, cheap hotels and rainy service stations with my favourite people in the World.

Pleasure Beach play London's The Lexington Tuesday 12 January with Oscar and Pumarosa also performing. Grab your tickets now.