Several million years ago in the year 1998, while singing stories of petty theft with his significant other and odes to John Hughes I first met Chris McIntosh. Inspiring a younger edition of yours truly to follow a similar path, it was beyond a pleasure that some fourteen years later I caught up with Mr McIntosh, now firmly part of the Liverpool music scene furniture he returns with his interchangeable menagerie 28 Costumes to talk about his recent endeavours and the latest offering from the Costumes.
Firstly, How are you? whats been keeping you busy since we last heard of the costumes?
We took a bit of a holiday in 2010. We all wanted to do different things for a while as we've been doing 28 Costumes since 2003 and it just felt like a good time to stop doing it for a bit until it stopped feeling good to not do it. Now it feels good to do it so we're going to do it again for a bit. There is almost certainly a more simple way of putting that! I (Chris) moved away to Berlin for a couple of years and Tony got himself engaged and bought a house. There are only really the two of us in the band now from the original line up way back in 2003 but we're always changing it. Right now we have Graham Jones from Voo playing bass, Andy Donovan on loan from Elle S'appelle (who are also having a bit of a resurgence) and Steve Carpenter, who used to play in Tokyo Adventures.
Its been 8 years since 'The Fake Death Experience' have you listened to it at all recently and if so how do you feel when'd you do?
I went a long time without listening to that record but I actually put it on last week to play it to some friends who had never heard it. It was weird really, it sounds like somebody else now, I guess we're pretty removed from it now. I sound really young on it and I'm not too fond of the way I sing...it's as if I wasn't sure how I should sing so I tried to copy loads of my favourite singers. My voice sounds different on nearly every track. I definitely still feel a sense of pride about it though and we'll still be playing some of the songs from that album when we play now.
I know you've spent a lot of time in germany and with Silent Sleep, how has that been as an experience and has if affected your mindset coming into this upcoming release from 28costumes?
I think so, yeah. I think everything you do, no matter how big or small, affects your mindset. Even the things that you may think of inconsequential eventually have some kind of consequence on the decisions that you make and the things that you do. Living away and playing gigs on my own in strange places, kindergartens and the like, really helped me on a personal level to realise that when you gig you don't always have to try and be really funny and charismatic if you don't feel like it, sometimes it's nice to let the songs be the good bits. I think if you're in the right frame of mind to be like that then it's great and it works, but I found myself kind of expecting people to expect loads of banter and hilarious story telling and that expectation sometimes sent me under. I think I feel quite comfortable with who I am now and I've probably turned into the person that I'm going to be for the rest of my life at this point so any of those insecurities that might have been niggling away in the past have probably buggered off now.
In spite of your hiatus you've still proven to be a reputable name in liverpool music, what do you think gives you that edge of longevity?
I think around the time when we were playing lots of gigs both in Liverpool and further afield, there was a really healthy cluster of really good bands playing around too. Elle s'appelle, Voo, Hot Club, Puzzle and Married to the Sea were, and in some cases still are, making really good music and playing live. I'm not sure if there has been too much since then to challenge that. There have been one or two bands for sure, but I think around 2008/2009 there just seemed to be a wealth of talented bands being really active, putting on gigs, releasing records, playing shows, touring not just in the UK but abroad too.
I don't think 28 Costumes were ever relying on a current fad or a specific genre that was maybe cool at the time, we just always wanted to make really good, loud guitar songs.
What should we expect from this LP?
Really good, loud guitar songs!
'This Band Has Eaten All Our Money' will be available for download April 5th from the Rekordmeister Music, Review To Follow
No comments:
Post a Comment