Dots: First up, congrats on being among the first of few to sign up with Best Fit Recordings! How did it all come about and how does it feel to have now put proverbial pen to paper?
Jock: It's really exciting to be working with them. Rich from Best Fit is just really enthusiastic and nice, and getting good feedback and feeling like you're working with someone who's genuinely into what you're doing is great. He's been supportive since we first started out so it's nice to finally be working together.
Dashes: And have you already begun to feel the effects of this most holy of matrimonies?
Jock: Totally. Just having that enthusiasm there like I said gives you a really positive vibe and spurs you on to try really hard in whatever it is that you're doing, which in our case is trying to finish up our album. We've done some really great gigs off the back of it and hopefully we can shift a few 7"s too!
Dots: The debut single L.A.'s a right breeze bucket of estival vibe. What's the inspiration behind it, and was there a particular motive for opting to focus on West Coast America in place of, say, the shores of North East England? I suppose Redcar doesn't quite have the same ring to it...
Jock: Haha! Well, Ed had been listening to California Dreamin' loads and wanted to write something with loads of backing vocals, so I think "L.A" came out when he was working out a melody for it and it sort of stuck. We tried to write the rest of the lyrics around the idea of running away to L.A rather than being there because obviously none of us are from there so singing about how great it is wouldn't really make sense.
Dashes: The sound is too somewhat 'Americanised' for want of a better word, musically if not vocally. Do you believe certain transatlantic propensities (lustrous, lightly distorted guitars, choruses catchier than velcro etc.) to be more applicable to Fanzine than some certain quintessentially 'British' elements?
Jock: I suppose so, yeah. I don't think we've ever felt a responsibility to sound "British". I mean we're into a bunch of different stuff, but we all get pretty excited by music that combines heavy guitar with melody in an interesting way, and usually that's more of an American kinda thing. Other British bands that do it like Ash and even Teenage Fanclub end up sounding pretty American anyway; that kind of heavy, bubblegum pop quality. There's a bit of '60s British Invasion stuff in there too though, but I guess that was all a bit faux-American as well...
Dots: The vid's a similarly bright and blithe affair that seems to succinctly capture an external impression of Californian nonchalance. The use of film-within-film or camera-shooting-camera seems to accentuate this. Were you guys peeved not to feature onscreen or are you concertedly keeping your attentions onstage for the time being?
Jock: We didn't really want to be in it. I just imagined us singing into a camera quite awkwardly and thought it would look rubbish. Jacob Pearlmutter who directed the video is a friend of ours and when we approached him about doing it he happened to be spending a couple of days in L.A. so it worked out bizarrely well. He did a treatment straight away and finished the whole thing in a couple of days. We're all really happy with it.
Dashes: Like or loathe, the compartmentalisation of genres plays a fundamental role within our consumption of contemporary music. Fortunately for Fanzine, I'd propose, most parallels have been complimentary with the scuzzy sounds of the '90s providing a particularly focal point of contact. How conscientious was this shaping of sonic aesthetic or do you feel as though this can be accredited to the fact that your formative years can be counted within said decade?
Jock: To be honest I think it's more a result of the fact that it's the logical progression of the stuff we were listening to as teenagers. We all listened to loads of '70s and '80s rock and metal and then suddenly the bombast of all that stuff, which we loved at the time, started to seem silly. There's a sort of bored, sarcastic kind of vibe to a lot of guitar music that followed that's a lot more intelligent and relatable to than all that aspirational, virtuoso stuff. For the most part I'd rather listen to someone that sounds like they're not able to play whatever they want but are trying really hard to than someone who can do it all. It's more human.
Dots: Finally, subjectively, much of your work thus far feels tinged with a nostalgia for glorified things and times that may or may not ever have existed, a little like when you see a picture of your infantile self and photographic record assimilates into recollection. What are, thus far, your fondest memories of a musical tune?
Jock: When I was about 7 or 8 I learned to play Wonderwall on the piano just because I loved that song so much. I had What's The Story? (Morning Glory) on tape and me and my friend just listened to that and a Beatles Best Of on repeat all the time. Wonderwall was my favourite song of all though and I just remember being so excited every time I heard it.
L.A. is released Monday via Best Fit Recordings.
