INTERVIEWING PULL TIGER TAIL (By Ben Shafran)

Hi Jack, what are you guys up to?

At the moment we’re just doing festivals at the weekends and during the weekdays we’re just rehearsing and writing and just hanging out. It’s the summer, so we’re trying to chill out as much as possible.

For the uninitiated, can you tell us a little about the history of the band, perhaps starting with your previous band Anti-hero?

Anti-hero was just… I mean, anyone in any trade always has to start somewhere, so Anti-hero was just a starting point for us. After that, we moved to London and we were concentrating on university for a bit, then we decided that we wanted to start playing again and have another go at it. So we got our first gig in February 2006 and I think we signed with our label [B-Unique] in September. We’re still really sort of new [as a band] I would say, although we’ve known each other for 14 years. There’s a strong kind of bond between the three of us, a friendship and a music bond as well. Very very strong I would say.

When you first emerged with ‘Animator’, there was a lot of talk about your links to the London scene and to this whole “new rave” thing. Did you see this tactic as essential to getting your foot in the door and getting some publicity?

No. We never ever aligned ourselves with that because it was just plain and obvious we had nothing to do with that, all you have to do is listen to us. I think this whole thing came about because someone found out that we lived with Klaxons, which has kind of haunted us in a way because people always ask about it and it’s something that’s completely irrelevant [to our music]. I mean, it’s an interesting fact, but the fact is we grew up with them and that’s it. We’ve known them for as long as we’ve known each other.

When you write, is it generally a cohesive group effort or do you find that each member tends to offer a different angle?

 It depends on which song it is. There’s one song we wrote recently where it literally came out of Davo having a bass riff on the Moog, and we just built a song around it and Mark had a chorus from somewhere else. Whereas for ‘Animator’, for example, Marc had almost a finished song and then we just kicked it into shape and changed the structure a little. We all write individually, it’s not just a one similar vision. It’s all of us in it equally, not just a lead singer and their backing band.

Let’s talk about your latest single ‘Hurricanes’…

Well… Marc had a dream about playing this gig with a band that had loads of members and a bunch of singers and they had this song that went [sings tune from ‘Hurricanes’ chorus], which is the melody of ‘Hurricanes’ and when he woke up he went “That’s such a good melody, I wish I wrote that song” and we just said “You did write it!”. It just came to him in a dream… so that’s how that one came about. Lyrically, I think it’s about leaving your home town…

Which is obviously something that you guys can relate to…

Yes. But then it’s also about coming back to your home town and it’s all changed and you don’t know why. It’s all kind of weird…

I understand you’ve finished recording your debut album…

Pretty much. We’re still putting the finishing touches to it. We’re still in the process of mixing it and the moment, which is taking a while because we’re also touring. We’re doing the last section of writing [as well] at the moment, so I think we’ll finish a few more tracks in September and hopefully it will come out in the new year.

Did you re-record any of the singles for the album?

We did ‘Animator’. That was our single on a kind of indie label before we were signed. Actually we hate that [original] version. It was our first recording experience with this band; it was rushed. But we’ve done a new version of it and it’s brilliant and we’re very happy with it. That’s actually the next single, and it should be out in September.

Will you also re-record the French version?

 (Laughs) I think yeah. The version we brought out [as the B-side to ‘Animator’]… is not correct… from what I’ve been told. So we’re desperately trying to find lyrics that make sense. [Originally] We just kind of translated it from Google and Davo did French for A-level, but that was a long time ago. I think we can do a much better version of it, we just need the right… I think we need some help basically. We did ask some people to help us, and we got some alright translations, but it’s quite a weird song… it doesn’t really make sense in English either. It needs someone to fully understand the meaning behind it. We definitely want to do it again, just better.

Can you run us through some of the key songs on the album?

There’s quite a lot of new stuff actually. There’s a few songs that aren’t going to make it on, like ‘Mr. 100%’ – that’s been on so many compilations and was given away for free on our website, so I think that’s going to be left off. So there’s lots of room for new stuff. There’s a song in particular which is still untitled, which is based around this piano riff and it builds throughout the whole song and in the end it explodes into this big celebratory thing. I think that’s going to be the sort of centre of the album.

There’s also a song we refer to live as the ‘Ukrainian Dance Song’, which is quite upbeat an it’s got a great middle section and this crazy solo. We actually used 10-pin bowling pins for percussion on that one. I mean, when we recorded the album, we did it all together in a room with minimal overdubs. It’s very much us playing. There are a lot of songs where we didn’t use clip tracks, so it’s very free and very live. We really wanted to capture the three of us playing together and that song in particular is damn lively. There are quite a lot of up-tempo tunes where we were all getting excited and it speeds up a bit. But it works with the songs and we’re really happy with the production and the way it came out.

There’s also a new song called ‘Tom Waits For No Man’. It’s got a killer chorus and a massive riff and also really really great keyboards in it. That song might open the album.

Are the new songs more poppy or do you find they tend to pull more towards the epic side of the scale?

We’ve always had like a pop edge to everything we do and that’s definitely apparent in ‘Tom Waits…’. But then the untitled song with the piano riff is definitely more epic and that’s definitely something we want to explore more in the future. I think it’s the most ambitious thing on the album, and we definitely want to go further with it. But I think [right now] we’re only at this stage where we’re sort of hinting where we want to go with future albums, we’re happy with the way things are going.

We always said we wanted to be a diverse band and the festivals we’re doing this summer – I just looked at it the other day – are really diverse. We did Ibiza Rocks which was amazing, and Guilford which is a kind of rocky festival. And then we’re doing Reading, which is indie/rock, and V Festival which is more mainstream… and we’re doing stuff like Field Day, which is very like underground. So it’s really great that we’ve managed to achieve what we wanted to and hopefully appeal to different groups of people. It’s very exciting that we’re doing this sort of pop thing but still being around the kind of cool indie underground scene as well. And that songs on the album represent that too.

What does playing Reading mean to you as a band? Did you ever use tofrequent the festival as punters?

Reading was the first festival I ever went to, when I was 16… I had the time of my life. I can’t tell you how good it’s going to be this year; I’m so excited!

Thanks to Jack for taking the time to answer our questions

The pictures are taken from Contact Music