Photo courtesy of Official Fin site http://www.fin-online.co.uk
Jamie and Tim talk about hometown heroes, frustrated musicians and their first 'real' video shoot...
How would you describe your sound?
Tim: It's an amalgamation and fusion of light and colours and sound laughs. No, it's the music that we want to hear on the radio, but don't! I mean, me and Jamie are influenced by so many different types of music, it's guitars, cool lyrics, great singing, everything. Sonically we try and push things as far as we can really, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
You recently had a video shoot on location for "Waking Up On A Sunday", what was that like? Did you enjoy it?
Jamie: Well first of all it wasn't filmed on a Sunday laughs, it was a Thursday. No it was great, really good. The weather was perfect for shooting apparently from the directors stance. We can't say it's great until we've seen it but we've got a good feeling. The band performance part was good, all these swooping cameras and stuff! It's very energetic.
Tim: We were grateful for doing one!
Jamie: We tried to make our own ages ago, and that was a bad bad idea.
Tim: We basically decided that we didn't want a video that would go wrong so we decided to experiment ourselves, real cheaply, and of course it didn't work. This bloke got involved and he was like "let's do two videos before lunch, fuck off and have some tea, come back and we'll do three more then I'll send them off to Jools Holland" laughs. We were like "Er, it doesn't quite work like that...". But it was good, we actually learnt a lot from it from doing them.
Jamie: We were a lot more prepared for the actual video.
Tim: We got a lot of ideas what not to do on camera.
Jamie: The best thing about videos was that you see all these people hanging around, you ask "what are you doing?" "oh I'm in charge of the barbecue, we need some more sausages so we're just off to get it", It's great!
What is your favourite song of yours and why?
Tim:You can always say it's the one you've just written.laughs. 'Waking Up On A Sunday' is my current favourite, as well as 'Spin'. It's hard to have a favourite as we don't just have the one song that's 'The One', where as quite a few bands have just the one strong song that they've written.
Jamie:'Only On A Day Like This' is my favourite song, it's such an understated song but at the same time it's retained it's depth. It was the first time I actually sang differently to how I used to.
You recently played a gig in Newark for the first time,how did that go?What was it like to get to play a gig in front of a "home crowd"?
Tim: Surprisingly, it was awesome.
Jamie: It was really nice, a real buzz.
Tim: I think a lot of people were expecting it to be 'good', so when it was amazing they were all stunned. Y'know, everyone was like they couldn't believe it.
Jamie: We were interested to see how people would react really, to a little bit of press, sticking a few posters up and stuff, see how they'd react to a band that were actually signed. The noise they made after the first song, my ears rattled!
Tim: Also that gig was in front of our harshest critics, the people we've known for ages, they didn't like what we were doing musically before but they were like "my god" when they heard it which was great.
Jamie: The whole reason I wanted to do a gig in Newark was so I could get all my groceries paid for me on Saturday afternoon! laughs. I've been hanging around in waitrose in Newark hoping someone will pay for it for me!
Tim: Like in the back of those american guitar magazines "Hometown Hero". Now there's recognition, "Someone bought me a mars bar!"
Jamie: A couple of people look and they're like 'is that him... nah!'.laughs
You're currently working on your debut album,how is that going?
Jamie: Confusing!
Tim: Extremely confusing as I reckon we're going to have about 26 songs to choose from by the time we get to next year!
Jamie: It's confusing in a way as we could sound like two different bands on it! As in the songs, the style of songs. There's a big board over there, on the left you've got the heavy songs, in the middle you've got the mixture of heavy and light dynamically, and on the right we have the "save until your careers really taken off", they're blatant number ones but we just can't put them out yet! laughs
Tim: It's difficult, I mean we've got a track there called "Ghosts", we can't finish it but if we finished that i could alter the whole thing. Because the label gives us so much freedom, they're like we want to put out your best music, we don't care what track it is we just want your best music you have.
Jamie: There isn't one song on that board that we're not happy with.
Tim: Like if we asked you to pick three singles off of the album, they might be three totally different songs than what we'd choose as you hear it in a different way, we're so wrapped up in the songs and we hear things that noone else will ever hear as we've listened to it hundreds and hundreds of times recording it, and we love that. I mean some of the songs we've dismissed or haven't taken to as much, other people could listen to and said "I really understand that that means a lot to me". We've got to listen to it otherwise we'd end up releasing some bizarre crap that noone else understands, like with one of Jamie's languages hes developed over the years while touring...laughs
Jamie: That's what you do when you've got time on your hands!
Is there any particular story behind your name?
Tim: We tried loads of names and we were just stumped. I walked into a book shop and there was this "fin" written in cool letters and I thought it was great.
Jamie: It's also our cliche motto of "the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end."
Tim:I've always thought the best names don't really mean anything.
Jamie: I mean all band names are shit, The Beatles was a shit name yet it's a great name because the band are awseome. Nirvana's a hippyish name but the band made it great.
What has been your best gig?
Tim: The last one we did, Bull and Gate. Our best shows have the last 3 or 4 we've done.
Jamie: We're harsh on ourselves, we're perfectionists to an extent but we just want to do our music in the most honest way possible and sometimes if we don't get any feedback or we don't sit down and talk about it we carry on regardless. Like if the bass player strikes a pose that counteracts a lyric i'm singing at the time, it confuses the crowd at the front. It's not just about entertaining the crowd Robbie Williams style, it's about getting the music out as well.
Tim: That's hard when you've got so many different type of songs. Some of the lyrics are quite sci-fi almost while others are emotionally understated, its hard marrying the two.
Jamie: We're still trying to get the set right. We know there are knew songs that will take the set through the roof. Bull and Gate was great as we were so nonchalant and really didnt give a shit at the time and it ended up having a great vibe.
How about your worst gig?
Tim: We did a gig at Peterborough Met Lounge. It wasn't anyones falt but the bass went off on the PA. It wasn't anyones fault but someone pulled a lead out or something, we went out the front to hear the next band and the sound was awful.
You've been on the receiving end of a lot of positive reviews about your live performance and for the "songs at altitude EP", a lot of bands say that the whole band experience begins to feel a lot more 'real' when the positive reviews start rolling in, how does it make you feel to read the raving that's been going on, does it make you excited for the future and how "waking up on a sunday" will do or do you try not to let it go to your head?
Jamie:It's nice to there's someone out there that actually shares it. If we didn't think we were good we wouldn't sit in this studio everyday, but it's good to have that confirmation that we're heading in the right direction.
Tim: It's like Jamie says, it gives us confidence, because until we get a reaction we could be living in cloud cuckoo land about whether the song's great or not. It's good because you then thing "well if they love that then they'll like all these songs we've got too".As for it being real that's right, because you're creating emotions in people and that's amazing.
Jamie: I think it brings the songs to life as well, because they're old to us but people are hearing them for the very first time so it kind of puts life into them.
Who would you say your inspirations are?
Tim: Anything that's good. Whether it's funk, motown, rock, metal, anything, I don't care as long as it's good.
Jamie: You're open to inspiration more when you're a kid, once you're living it you listen to music in a totally different fashion, you don't listen to it to enjoy it but when you do enjoy it you know it's great.
If you could tour with any band past or present who would you choose?
Jamie:The Stranglers. I've really got into them over the past year or so. Queens Of The Stone Age are cool.
Tim: They're the coolest rock band.
Jamie: I'd like to tour with U2, and take one of the lightbulbs out of their massive screen thing and see if Bono throws a fit and refuses to play. "I'm not going out on the stage, there's a fecking light bulb out!"
What are your ambitions for this band?
Jamie: Just that we get our music heard, we're happy we've got it out of our systems, musicians can be the most frustrated people in the world and become very confused, like my dad.
Tim: laughs We don't want to go into that!
Jamie: Crossdressing ex army soldier that's just moved to Spain, you can quote me on that! Dad, fuckhead, laughs very confused man because he didn't get it out of his system, he joined the army! That's why we do it.
Tim: laughs Jamies dad's cool! As long as we can keep writing music that's all that matters, if we sell 20 million albums then great but if we don't so be it!
What advice would you give to anyone who's interested in starting a band, is there anything that you wish you had known at the beginning that you know now?
Jamie: Just take yourselves seriously, not as people as I don't but take your music seriously. Even if you know you're not the best convince yourself you are as then everyone else will.
Tim: You'll probably have to write 50 shit songs or more before you get a great one that your friends will even listen to, sometimes it's 10, sometimes 100 but if you're what you want to do. Song writing in any form is a craft, you've got to work at it. If you want to do it it's got to be the only thing you care about outside friends and family. If that feeling isn't there you shouldn't do it.
