Music, Style & Culture

Best Of 2011: Slow Club: ‘Being Played On Made In Chelsea Was Pretty Cool…’

Rebecca talks to DIY about ‘Paradise’, their annual Christmas cracker of a gig and their music appearing on Made In Chelsea.

Back in September, on the 12th of that month to be exact, Slow Club released their second album ‘Paradise’ - follow-up to the warmly received and brashly-titled debut LP ‘Yeah, So’. This second album exhibited a cohesiveness that the first record may have lacked, with the band - consisting of percussionist and vocalist Rebecca Taylor and guitarist and co-vocalist Charles Watson - tightening up the more naive parts of the predecessor as well as trying a few new things for its successor.

But on the very day of the duo’s new release on Moshi Moshi, a certain little band called Coldplay had to go and spoil the fanfare by releasing their comeback single from their very own new album. “What’s wrong with that?”, I hear you not exactly say but probably think silently. Well, the single in question just so happened to be called ‘Paradise’ also. I know right, ouch. Moreover Drake released song ‘Club Paradise’ on the Monday too, just to add a very surreal insult to a weird coincidental injury.

This could have dented the album’s release, at least from a commercial aspect. But it is Slow Club that have their album slotted at number 19, with Drake as well as Chris Martin and co. being nowhere in sight. So I guess it’s Rebecca and Charles having the last laugh now.

‘Yeah, So’ came out two years back in 2009, when did you first start working on this one? Was it a long graft or a relative quickie?
Well, there were a few songs that we had been working on a good while back. But to be honest, we had been touring so much on the back of our debut that we didn’t even think about writing the next one! Then we had a few weeks in a studio in Finsbury Park where we got together and really started working. It only took two years in the end because we weren’t really trying that whole time. It was only when we forced ourselves to do it a bit that anything started getting done. Funny that.

But I guess the tour after ‘Yeah, So’ was your first properly extensive one as a band, so it’s probably the one time in your career where you definitely need a bit of a break to recover from things before starting things all over again for that tricky second album.
Yeah definitely. And we’re not really good at writing on the road anyway. I always feel like we just have to wait and see. We’re not the type of people who can force ourselves to do things if it’s not right. I always wonder what the magic formula is for us, but I don’t think there actually is one. It’s just whenever it happens. I tend to get this feeling in my tummy that stops anything productive happening, but once that’s gone we’re okay. So it’s waiting game!

Does that ever make you a bit nervous? Going into the studio and thinking “Oh bugger, now we’re going to have to produce something”.
Yeah but luckily once it’s come to this point we have the time off and the opportunity to focus all our energy and put in the hard work. I think ‘Paradise’ was definitely helpful, in that now when we go in for the next one, we’re a lot better at communicating and should probably get to an end result a bit quicker.

So you went into the studio after a bit of a mammoth touring stint following your debut. Was there any intent when you went in that you wanted to make this second album different to your first?
Well with ‘Yeah, So’, there were so many songs from when we were like 17 - basically all the tracks we had ever written up until that point. So this one is us kind of shaping a clearer idea of what we wanted.

Would you say you’re better equipped technically too after making this album?
I’d say so. The first album was a bit formulaic in the way that all the drum patterns were all the same kind of way so that I could sing and play them at the same time live. But this time I wanted to make them a lot sexier and better paced. And now we have a fuller live band on tour with us, it means I can achieve this at gigs too. Because you can’t really do either well at the same time.
I think making records is like anything else in that you learn more with every one. And also that those parts you enjoyed the most about the previous record, you want to expand on in the next. So I’m really excited for the next one as well.
I think as people you’re constantly changing and this is definitely the same in a band too now. You wouldn’t want to always sound exactly the same would you? We’re different songwriters now, we like different things and I’m sure this will continue in the future.

The jump between debut and follow-up is always utmost important to any and every band, but thankfully yours has been so well received. What have responses been like live? You say you’ve grown technically, has this been mirrored in your live shows?
Oh it’s been fantastic touring on the back of this record. It dawned on us before setting out to play that we hadn’t performed live in almost a year. It’s been good to revisit the same kind of places that we used to tour where only 20 people would turn up - but luckily that’s not the case now! It’s been such a relief to not have to worry “Oh God, is anybody going to show up?” “Should I invite anyone?”
I think a standout show from this past year has to be the Shepherd’s Bush show, which was our biggest one to date. That was such an amazing feeling. But all of these shows have been so much more enjoyable in general because we have a full band on tour with us, I mean - we did well as a two-piece, but there was also the possibility of things falling apart at any time.

You have your Union Chapel gig still to look forward to! That’s always a highlight of many fans’ festive season. What can we expect from it compared to the last few years that you’ve done it?
Well this is the thing, this is now the fourth year we’ve done it and I was worried that people might be getting bored. So we started to think about what we could do to make it stand out but it just seemed a bit silly. No dancers booked yet, or any interlude with a nativity play. I think we should just enjoy that it’s at a venue that we know and love, and get to play some of our more quiet numbers that we can’t fit into our normal gig setlist.

So we’ve listed your album in our top twenty favourite albums of the year, you must be pretty happy with all the high praise ‘Paradise’ has been getting?
Thank you so much! I think with the reviews this time round, we’ve been lucky that people have started to “get the point” a bit more. Some critics were really hitting the nail on the head with what we had intended by certain bits. It’s easy for bands to be misunderstand I think that for ages we were labelled as “twee” and bracketed as “folk” and it started to feel like something we couldn’t shake off, so it’s been good that now we’re a bit more well-known that people have been taking the time to really consider things. It’s also been really nice to read bits where writers have admitted to being wrong about us.
We actually haven’t had that many bad things written at all really, which is a good and a bad thing because sometimes when that happens I get a bit like a rottweiller and I want to just throw myself at them. But there was nothing like that at all. Probably for the best.

And commercially, the album’s fared pretty well - charting pretty high for an indie label and some songs have even been featured on such TV shows as Gossip Girl and Made In Chelsea lately. While it’s no X Factor, which I know you’re a big fan of, this must still be a pretty surreal and funny feeling though no?
Haha, oh yes. I’ve actually never seen Gossip Girl surprisingly, but I do absolutely love Made In Chelsea! So that was pretty cool when that happened, I didn’t even know anything about it until I saw it and then everyone started phoning and Tweeting me! It was nice at the time but I don’t think it changed anything. If anything, I guess it just makes this all seem a bit more proper to people we meet that don’t know us. They’ll go “What’s your band called?” and I’ll say “Slow Club” and they won’t have a clue. Now I can say we’ve been played on Made In Chelsea and it’ll all seem worthwhile!

Slow Club's new album 'Paradise’ came 19th in our Top 50 Albums Of 2011. Read numbers 20 - 11 here.