Interview

Courteeners

by Lizz 26 October 2016

If you’re a fan of Embrace, Doves or Elbow, get on board with Courteeners. They’ve been together for 10 years, toured with Morrissey, been celebrated by Manchester United and their debut album reached platinum status. Not bad. Their latest album Mapping the Rendezvous shows a burgeoning maturity and confidence for these Manchester darlings. I spoke to lead singer Liam about garage rock, helping men to express their feelings and that time when he found out that Stephen Street wanted to produce them.

Even from the very start with songs like Kings of the New Road you sounded fully formed and together. Who were your early influences as a band and when you first began did you have a strong feeling of what sort of sound you wanted?

I suppose at the time I was listening to The Walkmen, The Kills, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but they all have quite exciting singers whereas I wasn’t. So I had to get this energetic garage rock sound. I’m so pleased you picked that song because not only is it one of my favourite of our songs but it really encapsulated what I wanted us to sound like, dark, scuzzy and fuzzy rather than the jingly jangly thing that we ended up doing more on the first album. So to answer your question yeah I did know the sound I wanted to achieve but I’m not sure we got it!

Maybe you need a little side project for your darker work!

Do you know what it’s so weird because every time I go to start writing a song you’d be surprised at how often it starts off dark and scuzzy. I love pop music although that’s a dirty phrase, those pop sensibilities I love. If I write something dark and scuzzy those songs very rarely have those great pop moments, it’s more a vibe or an aesthetic rather than this is a great song that everyone’s going to want to sing. It’s hard to have both.

You first went to university to do business studies but changed to creative writing at Salford – was it hard to explain to your parents that you wanted to be a writer and musician?

Not really cos my mum’s an English teacher and has always written poems and done creative writing. I did business studies to start off with based on what I did well on at school rather than what I was interested in, and that’s what most people did. After three weeks of cost benefit analysis I thought what am I doing, this isn’t me! So I took the rest of the year off and worked in a shop in Manchester and got to know some promoters, started putting on club nights and then started playing myself at the club nights making up to £300 a night. After that I thought I’d re-enrol and do creative writing to help with my songwriting. As it turned out we got signed very soon after I started that course but I’d love to go back and finish it. I didn’t tell my parents and kept pretending I was still going until we got a record deal.

What was it like when Stephen Street approached you and wanted to produce your music?

I remember exactly where I was - I was getting on a train to go see the Arctic Monkeys and my manager said Stephen Street wants to produce you, and I said fucking hell as if he has the same name as Stephen Street! Our manager said you idiot, it’s the same guy! I couldn’t believe it. To work with him was brilliant, he’s probably one of the best people I have met in music. he was exactly what we needed, he didn’t try to change us, he just eked out everything good about us, left all the rubbish bits to one side. It was so well thought out but not conceited or calculated. He left a lot of raw things in there which a lot of producers would have taken out as well. He’s got to go down as a legend really.

Two years after you’d formed you were playing arenas supporting Stereophonics and playing at Coachella alongside Paul McCartney and Morrissey. How did you cope as a band with this rise to the heights?

I’ll be honest with you, it was really really really easy! We supported Morrissey all across America and it was a fucking slog – freezing some times, boiling on others, we were miles away from home but we couldn’t get enough of it. The other thing that bothered us was how much the British press built us up right at the beginning – we knew we weren’t changing the world, we were just writing half decent songs and connecting with people. There were so many indie guitar bands around but a lot of them weren’t very good so when we came along people noticed. The whole ‘rise to the heights’ thing just passed us by really, maybe because we were right in the middle of it.

The last words on the new album are “having such a good time”. I wondered what the best thing about being in the band in 2016 is for you?

It kind of feels like we’ve been through a few sticky patches, like at the end of the second album I felt under some pressure regarding writing songs. It’s a really really lonely place being a songwriter..sometimes it can be quite daunting as you can spend days and days which turn into weeks just on your own with your piano and if nothing comes there’s only so much you can do. You can feel it on your back that you need to get some songs soon to bring to the rest of the band. But this time round right from the first chord I put together I’ve felt like I’m floating. I wouldn’t say writing this new album has been easy but I’ve been happy – whether that’s due to the people in my life or because I’m focused on the job at hand I don’t know. I decided to make a good record..I’m not fucking about any more. We are so privileged to do what we do, we don’t want to piss that away. It’s not that we were being blasé about it but we’ve realised we don’t want to be rude about having this opportunity.

Your fifth album is out at the end of this month, Mapping The Rendezvous. Are there any particular themes or subjects to this album?

It’s no secret that we like a night out, but I’m 31 now and I’m the baby of the group. It’s about bad decisions, carefree abandon, regret..all the balances in life. I’s very indecisive and the band is too – we’re not sure where we stand or how people feel about us, but who cares. We just want to have a bit of fun with it.

You write all the music and lyrics and cover everyman subjects, sometimes laddy and funny, but sometimes serious and heartbreaking, or angry and lost. Would you say you make sense of the world and your own emotions through your music?

I think there’s probably lots of guys 15-25 who go through through all that and can’t really articulate it. I don’t want to say that I am that flag bearer but sometimes I do feel a bit like Guy Garvey for the younger generation who like their football. Just because they go to the football though doesn’t mean their emotions are any less important, and that’s a huge thing in this country. Boys who might have a tough time feel like they can’t say anything. They deal with it in the wrong way, so if I can help them to chat it out that’s great. You can feel it at our gigs, when we play a slow one you see them stop and listen and that’s a really nice feeling.

The Manchester music scene supported you especially at the beginning though word of mouth. Is the scene there as strong as it always has been, and has the city as a whole been a character in your music?

Yes I think so. It’s changed a lot since I was 16 when Manchester felt like the centre of the universe. There was some old Manchester left then but I’m not sure that’s there now. People are paying £7 for a cocktail in a jam jar – that’s not Manchester. These ideas that are in every city centre in the UK don’t fit for me, but it’s the Manchester people I love. It’ll always be my home but it’s not the place I used to write about, and I guess as you get older you look for different things from a city. We love the new bands Cabbage and Blossoms that are from Manchester – they’ve asked us for a spot of advice. We’re the older brothers of rock!

You played a sold out 25,000 gig at Heaton Park last summer…would you say that’s one of the most memorable moments of your career so far?

I would say so, yeah. We grew up less than a mile from that park so we used to play football and had parties there so it held a place in our heart. But there is something coming up next year that might eclipse it…very exciting times!

Courteeners play the LCR on 15th November. Tickets available from ueatickets.ticketabc.com

2016 nick rayns lcr uea