Interview: The Xcerts
We catch up with the hotly-tipped Scots trio.
If you like your music full of catchy hooks, big melodies, and singalong choruses then you should bag yourself a copy of The Xcerts debut album, ‘In The Cold Wind We Smile’. It's one of Rocklouder’s favourite albums of 2009 and one of the best debuts in a long time. Having toured relentlessly throughout the UK supporting the album, we caught up with frontman Murray MacLeod prior to their final gig of 2009, a sold out show in their hometown of Aberdeen.
Rocklouder: Good to see you, how’s it going?
Murray MacLeod: Yeah good, but my throat is slightly going. But only one more gig to get through so it’ll be a screamed 45 minutes, but I’m really looking forward to it.
RL: You’ve been touring pretty relentlessly this year, but this is a nice fitting place to finish things off.
MM: Absolutely, we seem to tour every December, it’s like an annual event and I always forget how depressing it can be travelling in the snow and rain and the dark, but this tour has been really great and our booking agent realised it would be great to finish the year in Aberdeen so we’re dead chuffed with that.
RL: You guys have had a pretty good year by all accounts, the album first of all which came out in March, which is superb, and was pretty well received by the media in general. It’s a collection of songs which you’ve built up over a long time, which means you’ve had the time to hone them and work them into the form they appear on the record. But it must have felt like ‘finally it’s done’ when you finished recording?
MM: Yeah, the feeling was almost relief, it was a strange feeling. Because as you say, the songs had built up over a few years and a lot of people were waiting for it, and it was just so nice to finally sign a deal, knowing we were going to get our record out and then get it out. And all the publications I wanted to like it liked it, like Rocklouder, Kerrang!, Rock Sound, and even Q!
RL: Last time we saw you guys out on the road Jordan had broken his wrist, so there was limited bass, and keyboards instead. That was unfortunate given how much your and Jordan’s guitar and bass parts play off each other?
MM: Yeah we had to make a decision there and some people were weirded out by the set choice, but there was nothing we could do but do our best and it’s bad to say, but we’ve been on the road for pretty much a year straight and sometimes you have to get selfish sometimes. So bizarrely the wrist break gave us a chance to change things up a bit which was nice for us.
RL: As you say, you’ve been touring relentlessly for the last year or so as any young band has to do these days, and you’ve done headline tours, support slots with Idlewild, Funeral For A Friend, My Vitriol… that must have been amazing for you guys, these would be bands I imagine you grew up going to see and listening to?
MM: Idlewild especially was amazing for me, and I remember seeing My Vitriol on Top of The Pops years ago and I thought ‘what a cool band’. Idlewild and Funeral are super guys. Idlewild are one of my favourite bands of all time, and the amount I learned from them as a band and as people was great. And I got to play Captain on my birthday which was awesome! They asked if I wanted to sing a verse too, but I thought guitar was enough I didn’t want to mess it up!
RL: Idlewild must have been one of your dream supports, but any other bands you’d love to share a stage with?
MM: Brand New, I’d love to play with them, the last two records I’ve become fascinated with. ‘The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me’ just blew my mind and I love ‘Daisy’ too, although there seems to be a lot of divided opinion over that one. There are a lot of bands I just want to see for free basically, Neutral Milk Hotel, they’re not playing shows but would love to see them. Weezer too, but from the Pinkerton era.
RL: You also went out to Japan earlier on in 2009, which must have been an amazing experience to have so early in your career?
MM: Yeah, for all of us it was a dream to go there. Collectively our favourite film would be ‘Lost In Translation’ and actually just being there as a tourist was amazing.
RL: And the Japanese go crazy for British bands….
MM: Yeah, the day we arrived there was a group of fans waiting at the hotel. I was completely jet lagged, extremely tired and so confused by this group of people holding vinyl even I don’t have and asking for my autograph. I was like ‘do you actually know who I am?’, it was just crazy. We did an HMV signing and we expected there to be no-one there but there was a massive queue, they all knew our names, and our record wasn’t even out yet!
RL: That’s the power of the internet!
MM: Yeah exactly, and that was the day we had our first article in Kerrang! so I was excited enough about that, let alone finding out all these people in Japan knew us!
RL: Going back to the album, as we said, it’s a collection of songs you’ve honed over a few years, you’ve had time to rework them, had all the experiences of your teenage years to write about and so on. Given that have you found it hard to write new tracks for album two without the same length of time and experience to call?
MM: I thought you might say that! At first we wrote a few songs after a couple of months of touring and to be honest I didn’t really know what I was singing about and I had a bit of panic. As it turned out those songs sounded too much like the first album and we don’t want that. But since then I’ve experienced a lot, and some quite hefty stuff during touring, so I’ve had that to write about, and as such the new songs are more about me than other people’s situations. And when you’re on tour you’re in this little bubble with the same four or five faces every day, so when something from the outside happens it totally throws you. I can’t really describe it. So actually I’ve found it quite easy to write as of late. I don’t think it’ll be as open a book as the first record, so although it’ll be clear to me and those involved what the songs are about, I think it’ll be harder for others listening to know what they’re about. But hopefully they won’t think it’s just some made up bullshit!
RL: It sounds then like you’re well on the right track for album two; do you have enough songs to put yourselves into the studio at this stage?
MM: Yeah, we could record now, but we would like to write a few more. We have three to finish off and we’d like to write another couple, but there’s talk of some recording in January. It might not be until after the Fightstar tour now, which is in February.
RL: You worked with Dave Eringa on the first record, do you want to work with him again, or given the new themes and new sound for this record do you want to go with someone different?
MM: We’d love to work with Dave again, and it’s looking more and more likely that’ll happen mainly cos he got us a great sound on that record and he knows us, but we want a different sound on this record given the kind of songs we’ve written. So we really need to sit down with him and discuss it. There is the possibility of someone else, but we’re not sure about that yet. But more than likely it’ll be Dave and our mate Paul Steele, he’s like a young Brian Wilson, he’s a mad genius!
RL: And where will you head to record that? Back to Wales?
MM: Don’t know as of yet, Wales would be great, we’d go back there, that’s where Idlewild recorded their last one.
RL: Apart from the album and the Fightstar tour, what’s in the diary for 2010?
MM: As far as The Xcerts are concerned it’s all about the album really, get that done and touring lots again, building it slowly. If we get big success then great, but given the kind of songs we’ve written I don’t think it’s what people would be expecting us to do. I think a lot of people in the industry are expecting us to release another poppy record, or an even more poppy record taking the route that Biffy Clyro have done. Which is great, they deserve that success more than anyone, but we’re trying to not be too poppy. I think there’s a big grunge and 90s influence in our new stuff. Aside from that, I have another project called Cold Crows Dead which is me and my friend Paul Steele and that’s getting released in 2010 too.
RL: That’s a dark and deep name!
MM: Yeah, it’s just real fun. Its awesome, I’m really excited about it, it’s so different from what I do with The Xcerts, we basically wanted to rip off Sparklehorse, Grandaddy and The Flaming Lips.
RL: How about festivals? You looking to get around as many as possible again?
MM: Hopefully we’ll get on some bigger ones this year, step it up a bit. Reading and Leeds would be good. But it all depends on the next record and how it’s received. We’re not expecting big success as I said, so we’ll see how it goes.
RL: Now you can answer this in terms of the band or yourself. Do you have any new year’s resolutions?
MM: I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve had any in a while. I guess I should call my Mum more often!
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