Interview #54: Turin Brakes

By the end of 2001, Jockey Slut had proclaimed them "so good it hurts," and Skint head honcho Damian Harris, aka Midfield General, reckoned they could probably make him cry just by singing Happy Birthday.

A Mercury Music Prize nomination, various awards and a multitude of stunning festival performances and many singles later, the mighty Turin Brakes are releasing their third album, JackInABox and taking in a few dates across the UK in June. ilikemusic.com caught up with the lovely Olly to chat about live experiences, life in the studio and lurve.

“I Like Music because… it has a certain kind of magic that nothing else in the world has.” Olly Knights, Turin Brakes

ILM: So first up, your new single, Fishing For A Dream is out next week. Can you give me your own description of it and its whole vibe?

Olly: As usual with our songs we just attempted to take a slice of feeling or emotion and turn it into a song. And I think this is quite a romantic song about two lovers and is from the male perspective. It’s the kind of slightly tacky things that boys say to girls when they’re feeling deeply in love with them. Things like, "celebrity parties – the red carpet mile" all these words that you associate with cheesy things, but when they’re said at the right time it’s really nice and slightly quirky and the song is just trying to capture one of those moments that everyone has in their lives.

ILM: Which track on JackInABox did you have the most fun making?

Olly: Probably Red Moon because the rhythm of it is so full on and for Turin Brakes it’s a pretty up-tempo track. We’re known for being quite mid-tempo and reflective and this is almost the opposite of that. It feels like you’re driving in a car at 150mph, so it was a lot of fun to record because it just felt so fun and fresh and extremely exciting.

ILM: A good one to play live then?

Olly: It’s definitely one of those songs where people stop going to the bar and turn round and listen.

ILM: You self-produced The Optimist. Did you do this one too?

Olly: Yeah, but we did even more of a self-production than The Optimist. The Optimist was us and our manager and a couple of engineers and this time it was just me and Gale. We engineered it ourselves and produced it ourselves in our own little studio, so we took a longer time to make it, because obviously when it’s just the two of you it takes longer, but it means that we’re really attached to every single element of it and it’s all passed through just the two of us as opposed to a load of people. When you have too many people involved I always think it’s a bit like when you hold onto one of those electric wires in a field that stop cows from wandering off, and you hold hands with all your mates and the signal gets weaker and weaker, kind of dilutes it, it’s kind of like that. And that’s what we’ve found. When it’s just the two of us, whatever is in our heads goes directly into the tape machine, and that’s what is so good about it.

ILM: Tell me about your Brixton studio, do you own it? Having your own studio must be the artists dream?

Olly: I guess we could have taken the money we’ve made and gone and got ourselves sports cars, or we can do something like this and invest in the future of the band and make sure that even if things go a bit awry and not so many people buy the records in the future, which is always potentially possible, we’d still have a place to go and write and record and make records without it costing an arm and a leg. So that’s what this is all about, and this is the first record to be made in that way. Ever since we signed the deal we’ve talked about and thought about how good it would be, so to have finally managed to do it, for us, it’s amazing. It’s not easy because record labels aren’t necessarily inclined to encourage you to do things like that, because it’s taking the control away from them slightly, because they can’t put you with a producer, but our label are really cool so they let us do it and they seemed to be very pleased with the results.

ILM: You’re playing some UK dates in June, what can fans expect?

Olly: It’s probably a lot more upbeat than we have been live; more direct and more energetic but it’s still got all the old Turin Brakes moments. What we’ve tried to do is to weed out the stuff that we didn’t feel was working so well and really pump up the stuff that is working well and I think all in all the gigs are going to be of a more consistently high quality. Not that they weren’t before, but I think it’s got consistently better with age, like a good wine.

ILM: So organic growth?

Olly: Exactly!

ILM: What’s your favourite TB song to sing live?

Olly: There’s Emergency 72 from the first album. It’s a really emotional raw track and I wrote it just after I’d broken up with someone I was madly in love with. I was in my early 20s and even though it kind of makes me laugh now because I think it’s kind of sweet, I still love singing it live. It’s just one of those tracks that’s just right for my voice and I can really get into it. It’s always a favourite for me to sing.

ILM: Does the girl in question know it’s about breaking up with her? Do you wonder about that?

Olly: Yeah you do, I certainly did in the early days, when I still had strong memories of this person. It’s one of those things where eventually you might get an email which suddenly appears from this person years later, and it is always very bizarre. But especially if they broke up with you, because it’s like you’ve got the power back because they’re suddenly all interested again, and you can just go, "sorry I’ve moved on."

ILM: And the songwriting process must be therapeutic in itself?

Olly: Massively therapeutic, but the trick is to not let it be too cathartic or too personal, because, I think there’s a point where people lose interest when it becomes too much about the person singing the song. So there’s a way of writing a song that makes it more of a universal feeling and that’s what we’re always trying to make sure we do.

ILM: Can you remember the first booking you ever got?

Olly: The first booking was at the Twelve Bar Club which is off Denmark Street where the famous old guitar shops are, and it’s this beautiful little 16th century club. We went there to see someone else one night and saw this flyer that said Turin Brakes and we couldn’t believe it. A friend of ours had organized this gig without us even knowing and it was a month away. So we were really excited and rehearsed and rehearsed and turned up and just had the most killer night. It was a real buzz and kind of where the buzz of the record labels started happening because there just happened to be a few key A&R people there and we happened to play a really good show. And it just felt like the beginnings of something really special. We bought that friend many drinks and other things over the years.

ILM: You’ve done all the festivals, sold out gigs, can you give me your best festival story/highlight/anecdote?

Olly: For one of our performances I think it was V2002 where we were in between albums and did this one-off acoustic performance in an acoustic tent, second headliners just before BDB and we really didn’t know what to expect at the time as it was one of those quiet moments in between records and we kind of figures that nobody would remember who the hell we were. So we turned up on stage and the tent was absolutely packed and there were queues of people still trying to get in, thousands of people in there and they just went ballistic and they drowned us out and we just had to stop playing, because they wouldn’t shut up (he laughs) and it was just the most amazing experience of my life. They proved their undying love, it was amazing.

ILM: You’ve been friends with Gale since primary school. Tell me the best thing and worst thing about him?

Olly: We’ve known each other a very long time and that itself is the best thing because it means that when you write music together, you can communicate with barely any words. One look has 20 years of reference behind it. But at the same time it’s also the worst thing because that person knows when you’re lying and you can’t get away with anything, because they know you too well, so it’s the best and the worst thing.

ILM: You must feel like brothers?

Olly: Totally. We always say it. Life is much more normal when Gale is in the same room as me, than when he isn’t. I mean that’s how much time we’ve spent together. Just because we always seem to get together to create stuff; and music is just one of the things we’ve done which has become successful. And that’s just the way our relationship has always been. We spark each other off and get each other excited about stuff.

ILM: Talking of creativity, The Door EP was released in summer 1999. The film never got made. Will you do it one day? Have you scored any films yet? Do you hope to?

Olly: I doubt I’ll make that film. We’ve always been on the fringes of film for some reason. We’ve scored a couple of short films for friends of ours, and Gale does lots of work for friends of his who make documentaries for TV and he secretly wacks guitar tracks together for people, which I think is really nice. But I think we’d love to do a film soundtrack one day, but it just has to be the right one. We are slowly making friends with a few really cool directors who’ve done videos for us and are moving into feature films. Maybe one of those guys will ask us to do something in the future.

ILM: You had an initial lack of interest in recording contracts, what advice do you have for artists seeking a record deal in today’s industry?

Olly: Wait. Don’t rush. Have faith because if you’re good and you’ve got something special, people are going to see that even if you wait a while. The reason I say wait is because we could have signed a record deal a year before we did, and we wouldn’t have been as developed. I think the reason why people got excited about Turin Brakes when they heard us on the radio is because we’d spent so much time developing our own sound and not trying to become popular, just making the sound work for itself and of course, when it came out, it sounded really strong and fresh. So that would be my main advice. Make sure you’re developed in your own way before you start thinking about getting a recording contract.

ILM: You’ve been mercury nominated, among other awards and have had such incredible reviews, in fact ‘you’re so good it hurts’ – how does success feel, are you able to smell the roses and enjoy the journey?

Olly: Oh yeah, more than ever now. Most of those amazing quotes were from when we were in our honeymoon period, when we were fresh and young and everyone got behind us, and then you hit the other side on your second album where there’s a backlash and some decide, to slag you off, so we’ve had both sides now. And one thing we’ve learned now is not to worry about quotes or what’s being hyped and enjoy the bits you know you like, and really enjoy them and try to ignore the horrible bits. You shouldn’t let the negative stuff ruin your life, because a bad review can really mess you up, but you have to deal with it because you’re going to get bad reviews because not everyone is going to like it.

ILM: Sure. I Like Music has a no-slagging-off policy, and just won’t review it if we don't like it, rather than slag things off, because you can't just slate someone's creativity, especially if it comes from the soul.

Olly: See that’s bloody really progressive and a really intelligent thing to do. I think the more sensationalistic publications think slagging people off sells magazines, but I agree with you, I think karma has something to play. And you have to remember it’s all art. Criticism has its place but nobody is a God.

ILM: I read that artists have to buy their own gold discs, that’s outrageous surely?

Olly: I think that is true. Our record label were so happy when we went gold they bought us discs, me and my mum and my dad, very nice of them, but yeah, that is the grand irony of the whole thing. It’s quite strange.

ILM: Can you describe your favourite place on earth?

Olly: There is place in Nova Scotia, Canada, where my uncle lives called Little Harbour which is basically a whole bunch of wooden shacks on stilts sticking out of the sea and it’s amazing. It’s the most peaceful place on earth, just water lapping. You can’t hear a car, there’s no roads, you might hear the groan of a bear waking up but that’s about it. I think it’s one of the best places on earth.

ILM: What is in your CD player right now?

Olly: A new album by LCD Soundsystem which someone’s given me to check out and various old classics like Can’t Buy Thrill by Steely Dan and Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd.

ILM: Tell me your favourite tune to chill out to and one that instantly makes you smile/dance?

Olly: To chill out to - Virtually anything written by Joni Mitchell especially from her mid '70s period when she was at her best, they just remind me of being a kid with my mum, dad, sister listening to them in the summer and her voice wafting around the house so it has an amazing effect on me. I must admit I don’t do a huge amount of dancing. I’m not really a dancer.

ILM: Do you shake?

Olly: I shake, I nod. I can dance but I’m not fit and healthy enough any more. Any kind of disco based stuff, although not very fashionable to say, but I’m a big fan of disco, because it was when dance music was still musical, rather than some of the stuff from Europe these days which isn’t music at all.

ILM: Can you describe the Turin Brakes process of making extraordinary music?

Olly: How do we do it? Most of the time I’ll start writing a song and then, if I think it’s any good I’ll play it to Gale or put it on a minidisc and secrete it into his pocket without him realizing it. And then months later he might come back and say I really like this one or he might not, and that’s the natural process we have of weeding out good and bad tracks, it’s whether or not either of us are really excited it. And Gale writes songs too, but if I write 10 songs, Gale will write three. But normally Gale will take one of my tracks that he likes, and we’ll start working on it together, and Gale will have lots of suggestions about making it better, to his ear and we’ll carve it into a finished song, and that’s really how it works. So Gale brings in a lot of the music elements, especially the guitar and lots of other things, and I’m much more about the lyrics and what the vocals are doing. Without one or the other it just wouldn’t work.

Turin Brakes release their new album, JackInABox on May 30th, preceded by single, Fishing For A Dream, out on May 16th.