A pocket full of Glaswegian charm and on the cusp of stardom with the release of their new single ‘Wendy’ and hotly tipped album ‘Friday Night Lights’ later this month. Eleanor Conway chats to lead singer, Kev about his intergalactic dreams, sharing urinals at V Festival, and meeting David Gest down a dark alley.
EC: Hey, what you up to?
KS: Sitting reading my comics. We’re in the studio recording some b sides today…
EC: How rock and roll is the session? Going on a scale of one to ten. Is it non rock and roll, or is there drinking and topless girls dancing on the mixing desk?
KS: (laughs) We’re being very well-behaved today, we’re probably 2 or 3 on the rock-o-meter, we’ll probably phone in for some topless dancers later.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of an early record producer called Kim fowley a notorious maniac, he was producing a band in Manchester from LA on the phone, they were doing it live and so he called up a local Manchester brothel and ordered a bunch of prostitutes to come round and dance in the studio so the band would play better. I don’t think our manager Francis would actually do that but you never know.
(raucous laughing)
EC: You recently played at V Festival, how did it go?
KS: We were up against The Verve and Kaiser Chiefs, I was still surprised we got a crowd it was great. People came along to see us.
My favourite part was the backstage area you go to the toilet and you’re taking a piss next to Ricky of the Kaiser Chiefs, Richard Ashcroft would walk past you to take a dump. You’re like ‘what the hell is going on here!’
EC: Let’s talk about your latest single, ‘Wendy’, I’m assuming you are not talking about a cheap mode of habitation, such as a Wendy House, so who is this girl called Wendy?
KS: She’s a mixture of various girlfriends of all the guys in the band have had over the years. She’s a Frankenstein character to be honest, bits of different people all mashed together to make Wendy as you know her.
EC: If you were to make your ultimate girl, like in the movie ‘Total Recall’, where Schwarzenegger is in the chair and he designs a perfect girl, what would be yours?
KS: I’m always getting slagged off in the band as I go for small dark haired foreign girls.
EC: One’s that can’t understand you?
KS: Yeah, it means that my general inability to communicate with human beings isn’t a problem until they master English and I master their language.
And at that point they’ll dump me.
(laughing)
EC: Wendy has been remixed by The Fratellis along with The Vaselines, I’m a househead at heart, so I don’t really get the indie remixes. What did The Fratellis mix add to the orginal?
KS: We were kind of surprised, I suppose there’s an element that if you change the chords in somebody’s song it could be see as an insult, but it also takes a lot of balls. It worked, we were like, ‘fucking hell, we never thought of that chord’.
I’m a big dance music fan myself, I love getting the remixes, the more dancey ones. It’s kind of made me think I should get myself a sampler and start writing some German minimalist techno.
EC: You’re shocking me, this is like a genre crossover, you can’t do that.
KS: (laughs) I kind of grew up listening to indie and going to hardcore dance clubs at the weekend, it’s a strange dichotomy, one day we’ll hook up with Fat Boy Slim and come out with some wild dance stuff. That would be real cool.
EC: You actually supported Paul Heaton who was in the Housemartins with Fatboy Slim earlier this year didn’t you?
Maybe that’s a subconscious connection in my head. We did a short tour a couple of months ago, he’s the nicest guy in the world. I’ve never played with a main act who has said on stage, ‘this is our new single, if you don’t like it, go and buy Attic Lights new single’. I’m in awe of Paul Heaton.
EC: I watched a short film about you guys on YouTube. Kev, you were described as enigmatic, talented, hopeless, optimistic, hyperactive, an intelligent space cadet — now which do you relate with more?
KS: Colin calls me a hopeless optimistic all the time, Tim is always loathed to sit beside me on the tour bus because I’m totally hyperactive, and end up screaming at him and poking him and tickling him, so it depends what mood you get me in.
EC: Virgin are embarking on intergalactic space adventures, Virgin Galactic, if you were to go up to space, what is the one thing you would like to do? Pee, make love, or make music?
KS: That’s very difficult, because all three would have definite appeal.
I’m not sure actually, I’d genuinely love to go to space, it would be tremendous. In case my mum encounters this interview I won’t say make love in space, and making music in space would be quite good, but being a basic infant, I’d probably want to pee in space to see what happens.
EC: I agree with you, I’d probably do the same.
I generally dislike comparing artists to people that have been before, but you’ve been described by journalists and reviewers as the Beach Boys with distorted guitars, do you see that comparison yourself?
KS: I suppose it’s an easy thing to do, there’s part of me that’s like ‘you know we’re more than that’, and every band is more than their comparisons. When we started Attic Lights the idea was, we wanted Beach Boy melodies, uplifting yet slightly melancholy songs, we want loud guitars, coz we grew up with Weezer and the Pixies and stuff like that. So aye, it doesn’t bother us too much and I’m sure people will get a handle on it and make their own minds up.
EC: It’s been said that you guys love Glasgow, and I can’t remember which band member said they would love to work for the council if the opportunity arose. How good is Glasgow, and how much fun can I have for a tenner?
KS: It kind of depends on what you want…
(Noel boisterously shouting in background)
KS: (sternly) Noel, you can’t say things like that.
Noel is being extremely rude.
Colin said he actually worked for the council, much to the amusement of everyone else.
(Shouts to band) Colin you go out more than anyone else, what can you do in Glasgow for a tenner?
(shouting– musician styleeee ) A bottle of Buckfast, take it to the park or five white Russians at Nice and Sleazy, which is a pretty cool bar.
EC: Obviously as your success grows (fingers crossed) there will be big pull towards the smoke. Have you considered moving to London?
KS: Do you know what? It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. I think previously we’d been down in London on a regular basis, we thought London was a bit too big for us. Now I’ve fallen in love with London, it’s absolutely fantastic I just love going down, the architecture is amazing, the difference between Camden and Kensington and all that. Everyone that is a real music aficionados from the States, always talk about London bands, and the UK scene. There’s definitely kudos. I guess to people in London it’s not that amazing, I just love walking around Camden it feels like a really incredible multicultural mix. I’d definitely like to live in London, London is definitely one of the great cities of the world.
EC: Just before calling you I was looking at your video for ‘Bring You Down’ which weirdly has David Gest in it….. er why?
KS: It’s not ours. It’s a long story, I’ll give you the condensed version, it’s rather bizarre. Our tour manager, John, met David Gest on a flight from London to Glasgow. They ended up getting pissed and having a party back at John’s flat, he played Gest a version of our song and then phoned us to come round. Everyone’s hammered and David Gest is like (Kev adopts American/Glaswegian accent), ‘I’d like to do a monologue over this’. So we let him put a monologue over it, and he wanted to his own video to it as well. So it’s a bit weird isn’t it?
EC: It is, because the video features the ‘Small people of Davidland’ and ‘The Chinese girls with Herpes’, so my next question is, which would you like to meet down a dark alley?
KS: I’d go for the small people, as opposed to the girls with Herpes. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac, anyone with a disease I try to stay away from.
EC: What would the people of Attic Lights land look like?
KS: Good question actually, y’know you got me stumped, if they were anything like the band they’d probably be a mixture of hyperactive or stoned or confused. Basically like five headless chickens, because that’s what the band is like, but somehow we always seem to get things done though.
EC: With a little bit of Glaswegian charm I’m sure….
KS: We always put on the charming smiles, especially for lovely journalists like yourself.
EC: Excellent. Correct answer.
And on that note….. Attic Lights release their new single ‘Wendy’, and album ‘Friday Night Lights’ on 6/10 and 13/10 respectively.
Attic Lights:
http://www.atticlights.co.uk/
http://www.myspace.com/atticlights
Words: Eleanor Conway
www.elle-online.com
www.myspace.com/elleuk
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