INTERVIEWING THE SUNSHINE UNDERGROUND (By Ben Shafran)

It's another awesome Leeds band! The Sunshine Underground put the "dance" into, erm, dancable indie. Singer/guitarist/cowbell-basher Craig Wellington talks us through their excellent debut long player Raise The Alarm and what it means to play the festival he frequented every year as a fan.

Hi Craig, what are you up to?

I’m on holiday. I’m in Barcelona actually at the moment.

Sorry for disturbing your holiday.

No, that’s fine. It’s something that came up randomly. My dad just bought me a ticket yesterday and told me I was coming over to watch a festival with him. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s a bit of a freebie.

I saw you live for the first time about two years ago. Why do you think it has taken the band so long to get some recognition?

Just poor management I think really (laughs). No, no, it’s a bit of a weird one really because we haven’t played that many shows. We’ve only done two tours. We’ve achieved quite a lot but it has taken us a while. But we’re still writing at the moment, it’s quite an early stage in developing our sound. We were probably gigging before we should have done. Maybe we’re just a little lazy too. It’s taken us a while to get our shit together, but we’re ready to rock now!

Why did the band decide to relocate from Shropshire to Leeds?

There was no reason really, other than that our drummer [Matt Gwilt] was already planning to move up here anyway to do a music degree and we were really bored. Where we were there was nothing to do really, there was a definite lack of opportunities to play anywhere or do anything. We knew we wanted to get the band going properly, so just thought “Let’s follow Matty up there”. It just so happened that there was a scene kicking off at the same time, so it was just luck really.

We’ve been asking every Leeds band about this – how do you feel about this supposed Leeds scene?

We see ourselves as slightly outside it because we’re not actually from Leeds, but we’ve got a massive following there. We’ve played some wicked gigs there, the people are really great. But I don’t think we’re classed around Leeds as a “proper Leeds band”.

A lot of Leeds bands like yourselves, ¡Forward, Russia! and The Pigeon Detectives seem to be reaching mainstream consciousness around the same time…

I don’t know why that is, we’ve all got our shit together at the same time. We were gigging with ¡Forward, Russia! for a little bit. They’ve done it quite quickly actually, they wrote a lot of songs and they’ve been gigging endlessly, haven’t they? We’ve sort of been taking our time, so it just happened that we’ve all made albums at the same time, and that they are also being released in the same couple of months.

With yourselves and a lot of bands in the Leeds scene as well, there seems to be a desire to play “events” as opposed to conventional gigs…

Personally, it just makes playing a little more exciting. Leeds has only really got three venues that you can play at, so when you’ve been in a band for 4-5 years you’ve been playing the same places for so long. Everyone’s bored of going to the same nights.

We’re starting our own club night in Leeds as well, in a place called The Common Place. It gives us something else to do, which is quite exciting. Doing your own thing, rather than just conventional gigs.

You are named after a Chemical Brothers song, and obviously the dance element is very prominent in your music. But have you thought about taking it further and using computers and sequencers and so on?

We’re writing quite a lot of new stuff at the moment because we’ve got this time off rehearsing the album. When we finished the album we got a lot of new equipment and I think things will go a lot more electronic maybe, which we’ve hinted at but we haven’t quite got there [yet]. Yeah, I think the dance element is going to take over really, so we’re probably going to be less rock and more dance in the future, but you can never really tell.

Can you talk us through the songs on Raise The Alarm?

OK, what’s the first one… ‘Wake Up’ was the last song we wrote for the album but it seems to work putting it right at the start. I think it’s an introduction to our sound. It’s got a weird sort of verse-chorus structure. It’s not very poppy, but quite immediate and in-your-face.

And then track 2 is ‘Put You In Your Place’, which is I think is our sort of banging anthem. It’s the oldest song we’ve got, to be honest, and the first one we recorded as well.

The third one is ‘Dead Scene’. That’s actually quite new, has quite a lot of dancey elements to it, samples and things like that. It’s quite Rapture-esque actually, got a lot of groove and yelping.

Then it’s ‘Commercial Breakdown’, which is just ‘Commercial Breakdown’ – I’m going to get run over! The traffic’s coming from the wrong direction when you’re in Spain – yeah, ‘Commercial Breakdown’ is our anthem. It’s the most obvious single, probably the most immediate song as well.

I can’t really remember the tracklisting for the rest of the album, to be honest with you. I know it ends with ‘Raise The Alarm’, which we got FC Kahuna to produce and it really goes off on electronic, crazy noise. It’s a really good end to the album, explosive.

It seems to be the highlight of your live shows…

Yeah, it’s the climax. But on the record it has less cowbell and more electronic craziness. And it suggests something a bit more electronic about our [future] sound as well.

Why did you decide to re-release ‘Put You In Your Place’ as the album’s lead-off single?

It came out as a really limited edition 7”, but it’s one of the obvious singles on the album really. So we thought, really our record company thought (laughs), that it’d be a good idea to release it just before the album.

I mean, when it first came out I don’t think anyone really knew who we were. So I guess a lot of people kind of missed it, and it’s quite an obvious single. I don’t think there are many obvious singles on the album really - only about 3 or 4 - because they’re all quite long and they don’t have choruses and they’re not very dancey as well.

Somewhere we might make different versions of them in the future. So I don’t know if there [many] potential singles in there. It’s a lot more of a beginning-to-end proper album. But yeah, ‘Put You In Your Place’ is just a good tune really.

Is it safe to assume you are happier with the new version than with the original?

Yeah, there’s not a lot of difference. We got Cenzo Townshend to mix it and he’s really good. He’s done pop stuff for Graham Coxon and Kaiser Chiefs and he’s a genius, he just knows how things should sound. That song has got a massive driving bass drum through it now, it’s much more a House tune now than it was before. Guitars down and drums up for that version, so yeah, definitely happier with it.

How important was winning the Best Live Band award from the Leeds Music Scene website in terms of your confidence levels and your belief in the band?

I think it was really good. We didn’t expect to win it at all because we were up against ¡Forward, Russia! and Kaiser Chiefs so we definitely didn’t think we would win it. And there was the award ceremony – [we thought] maybe you get told that you did actually win, but no-one said anything to us. No-one even made sure that we were going to go to the show. So we just turned up because we knew we were up for this award and then we jus won it – we were taken by surprise really.

It’s definitely given us confidence. It’s nice to know that people recognise what you do live. We only had one single out back then, so it was good to know people have come to see us live and actually enjoyed it.

What do you think is the commercial potential of the band? How far can you go?

 It’s tough to tell. Depends on how we play it really. I think there’s potential for it [the album] being commercial. Songs like ‘Commercial Breakdown’ and ‘Borders’ could be played on daytime radio, which I’m sure our record company would love. But I guess it all depends on timing really. I think we’ve got the potential to sell quite a few records but I don’t really mind if we don’t.

How excited are you about playing Reading and Leeds?

I’m really excited. It’s going to be the highlight of our whole summer.

Did you use to go to Leeds Festival as fans?

I’ve been to Leeds Festival for the past 8 years. I’ve never been to Reading, but I’ve been to Leeds for like forever.

We played the unsigned stage [in Leeds] last year, which was great, so I’m really glad we’re playing the Carling Stage this year. It’s sort of an ambition, a box to tick.

Who are you looking forward to seeing at the festivals?

I thought that the dance day with 2 Many DJ’s and them doing Nite Versions live, I thought that was on the Sunday [in Leeds], but it’s not. It’s on the Friday, and we’re playing Reading on the Friday. I’m really regretting that I’m not going to see them. But I’m really looking forward to seeing Primal Scream, they’re one of my favourite bands.

I haven’t seen the Arctic Monkeys before, so I’m going to go and watch them. I think Dizzee Rascal is playing as well. I’ll watch ¡Forward, Russia! and The Pigeon Detectives, all the locals… There’s all the sort of Leeds-ish area unsigned bands in the new tent as well, so I’m hoping that there’s a few bands that I know and like.

I’ll also be watching a lot of stuff I haven’t heard before. There are all these bands you hear about but never get an opportunity to check out, so that’s the best thing to do [at a festival]. Basically I’ll just wander around, but I’ll make sure to definitely watch Primal Scream.

Thanks to Craig for taking the time to answer our questions.
The Sunshine Underground will be playing the Carling Tent at Reading on the Friday.
All pictures are copyright of Gregory Nolan.