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Push to Fire Interview: Twin Atlantic
The Scottish music scene is thriving at the moment, and good few bands
are being launched from it and into the limelight in the larger UK
industry. Twin Atlantic is one such band. "The Scottish music scene is
pretty incredible, and there're loads of bands coming out of Scotland
right now that seem to be doing quite well. There have been a few that
have paved the way for bands like us, for example Idlewild, and Biffy
Clyro. There really are so many, so many great bands coming out of
Scotland these days."
With such a vibrant music melting pot, it's no surprise to learn that
TA wasn't the first band that the Glasgow boys were involved in, but
it would be this band that offered a refreshing twist of authenticity
that would finally bring them out of Scotland. "We were all in bands
before where the singers had grown up listening to American pop bands
and thought that that was the way you should be singing. When we left
those bands we tried to figure out what it was about them that we
weren't totally happy about, and one of the reasons was that it seemed
like a kind of copy-cat thing and didn't really reflect us. I mean, if
I was to sit here in this interview and talk to you in an American
accent, it'd be pretty weird, right? And it works the same for music;
why would you tell someone a story, essentially a narrative, in a way
that doesn't reflect yourself?"
Their determination to stay true to
their Scottish roots gives their sound a truly authentic edge and the
lyrics are delivered with cutting passion as a result. One song that
touches upon this conscious decision is their single "You're Turning
Into John Wayne" which Ross explains is not an attack on the
Americanisms of today's world, but more of a commentary. "The
inspiration behind the song is kind of an opinion from all of us
really, it's not like anti-America or anything, it's just that we're
conscious of a general American influence on our culture. I mean, our
music has tinges of America in it, we all wear clothes that Americans
would wear, we go to see American films, and listen to American bands
and stuff so it's not like we're exempt from it. It's just really
obvious that that's the way the world is going, that America rules the
world politically and culturally. Some people aren't maybe aware of
it, so maybe it'll make them think about it a little."
Their desire to create a band that is a truthful and honest
representation of themselves didn't occur from a purely cultural stand
point, but also from their hope of branching out of Scotland's music
scene and approaching their music more seriously. "Sam and I went to
school together and we'd always talked about being in a band but never
did anything about it when we were in school, it was always like a
pipe dream. When we left school we were each in other bands but they
weren't really what we wanted to be doing. We wanted to be a lot more
serious about it than those bands were, so we basically started our
own band with another drummer and went on a wee DIY tour. The guy who
was driving us on that tour was Barry who is now a guitarist in Twin
Atlantic, and our drummer used to play drums in Barry's old band. It
all seemed to click in to place quite naturally really." Having
replaced their initial drummer with Craig, they had just three weeks
before their next gig with the new and final line-up. "We wanted the
gig to go really well so we practised every day up until the gig.
After that gig we thought 'you know, we can keep doing this. We can
practise every day and we can go to work at night... so why don't we
just keep practising every day?' So that's what we did, and we just
wrote and wrote and wrote new material and played as many gigs as we
could. Our manager then worked on getting us gigs outside of Glasgow,
which started off as maybe a one-off gig in Edinburgh or a one-off gig
in Aberdeen... and then we got our first tour support with Circa Survive
in 2007 which was pretty sweet."
Although they've been extremely successful so far for a band that have
only been around for a couple of years, their success is not something
they dwell on or really pay much attention to. "Being from Glasgow,
we're so far away from the actual music industry that we just get on
with it and don't really know how we're doing on a sort of 'success'
scale, but it seems like we're doing quite well. We're only just
starting to notice though, because at no point have we, like, sat down
and worked out how many people we've been playing to or anything. I
think it's because the industry is so far down south which is much
more focused on how many people you're bringing to the show etc, that
up where we're from we just focus on what we're doing musically and
don't worry about the 'success' part of it. We've been to a couple of
places on this tour, like Hull, where we haven't played there before
and 150 people turn up to see us play and it really surprises us and
we think 'how did that happen?'"
Keeping themselves sheltered away from the influences of the industry
at large certainly seems to be working for them and they intend to
keep things that way; even the album artwork reflects their lack of
desire to worry about such things. "The whole idea behind the artwork
for the 'Vivarium' is that everything's been sort of kept in an
enclosure and we've all been quite inward about how we operate as a
band, which is why we rerecorded some older songs for the record. We
wanted to put what we'd consider our best bits from the past two years
in this release so that then when we make our next record it's a
completely clean slate and a fresh start." Their inward focus also
translates to their live performances as Ross talks about how they
analyse their live shows quite intensely. "We're all really critical
about our live performance, and some of us are critical about
different things. Myself and Craig are hyper-critical about our
playing performance; whereas, Sam and Barry are more critical about
how they interact with the crowd in the show. The whole idea is not to
be a band that just stands and plays the songs, we want it to be an
exciting thing to watch. We've played festival tents to 3,000 people
and played shows like last night in Cardiff to about 100 people and
we've enjoyed both types of shows just as much but for different
reasons."
Twin Atlantic are clearly a very ambitious band, which is exemplified
by their pseudo-motto of "go big, or go home." Ross clarifies, "It
basically means, you know, never settle with anything. None of us are
too modest with our ambition, we'd all like to be a massive band one
day but that's not the sole driving force of being in a band. It's not
like if we're not, then we're not going to do it. As long as we can
look back and say that every year we've taken a step forward, we'll be
happy, but if in five years time we could be headlining a festival
then obviously we'd be really happy." Luckily for them, they're signed
to a label who give them the freedom to decide their own movements and
even their own supports. "We're not signed to a major, we're signed to
a new label called Red Bull Records. It's pretty much made up of
people who used to work at Atlantic or Warner Bros. It's cool 'cause
they have so much experience but they don't run it in a typical major
label way and they give their artists so much freedom."
With their new album 'Vivarium' released just a couple of weeks ago,
the band plans to support the release by playing a few shows in
America and out in other parts of Europe before doing another UK
headline tour towards the end of the year. After those tours, they'll
be heading back into the studio for the next recording which Ross says
will be a full-length album with "as many songs as we can fit on it."
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