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<\/p>\nThe Struts burst onto the American scene in 2016 with a retooled version of their then two-year-old debut album, Everybody Wants<\/i>. Combining an arena-rock musical approach with glam swagger, the Struts evoke the sound and feel of a bygone rock era. But they\u2019re more than a Queen retread; their anthemic songs strike a chord with modern audiences.<\/p>\n
There was an unusually long gap between the release of the revised Everybody Wants<\/i> (March 2016) and the long-awaited follow-up, Young & Dangerous<\/i> (out October 26, 2018). In fact, as the band kicked off its North American tour, the new album was still several weeks from release.<\/p>\n
I first saw the Struts in December 2016, on their first U.S. tour; I was interested to see what changes two years had wrought upon the group. After the sound check for their October 10 concert at Asheville N.C.\u2019s Orange Peel, I spent some time backstage with singer Luke Spiller and guitarist Adam Slack. We chatted about the long wait between records, the advantages of Dave Grohl being a fan, and how to work a crowd.<\/p>\n
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Young & Dangerous<\/i> isn\u2019t out yet, but the band has been rolling out new songs ahead of its release. Was there a conscious effort to write songs that are consistent with the sound and feel of the last album, or were you trying to do something different?<\/b><\/p>\n
Luke Spiller: We definitely decided to progress. We wanted to create something that was joyful and a lot like the first, but we also wanted to push forward as well, if that makes sense.<\/p>\n
Adam Slack: We wanted to make something that was similar to the first, but push it in a new way \u2026 like, try it with different sounds in the studio, and different synths. We don\u2019t want to stray too far away because we didn\u2019t want to alienate our fans or anything like that. But at the same time, we didn\u2019t want to just reinvent the wheel \u2026<\/p>\n
Luke: Not like we<\/i> invented the wheel.<\/p>\n
Adam: We wrote a lot of music off the first album a long time ago. So, we\u2019ve grown as writers as well.<\/p>\n
Did you feel pressure to come up with an album to follow on from the success of the first one?<\/b><\/p>\n
Adam: Massively.<\/p>\n
Luke: Especially after the reissue of the first, because the English issue \u2013 let\u2019s call it \u201cthe original original\u201d \u2013 was good, but when we signed with Interscope and we added four or five new songs. And it was just like, \u201cWow. This is so much more stronger.\u201d Everything was finished, recording-wise, unlike the very first. So, from that moment on, it was in the back of everyone\u2019s head that this is definitely going to be tough to follow up. Yeah, some of the writing actually even started earlier. \u201cOne Night Only\u201d [released 2017] was going to be on the new album, but it was just one of those things where we really needed to get a song out there. So we put that one out just to kind of keep fans interested, and now it\u2019s kind of like a bridge track. I mean, it was very, very tough.<\/p>\n
Adam: We kicked off 2017 in the studio writing and stuff. We were working with loads of different people and none of it was clicking, and that\u2019s what kind of made the pressure even more. It was like, \u201cShit. We\u2019re three months into writing a second album and we\u2019ve got fuck-all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luke: We couldn\u2019t get the right producer, the right chemistry. We were kind of just being yes-men for about three months. I mean, look, we wanted to please everyone; we wanted to trust in a lot of people\u2019s advice. And to be fair, there were some great people that we found from those suggestions. Like Butch Walker, for example, and Jon Levine, another guy who really has given us great new sound, which features on this second album. But yeah, the first three months were painful.<\/p>\n
When I last interviewed you in December \u201816, you were talking about how you had some time set aside to start writing. And there\u2019s no delicate way to ask this: It\u2019s been a fairly long period of time between the albums. Was that really just down to really not having the right chemistry?<\/b><\/p>\n
Luke: Well, firstly, we don\u2019t write on the road.<\/p>\n
Aha. And you\u2019re on the road a lot.<\/b><\/p>\n
Luke: So, you do the math. I\u2019m not not saying nothing<\/i> happens on the road, but once you kind of get a feel of what the schedule is and the things that we do for our fans \u2026 for example, it takes up a lot of our time between the meet-and-greet, and we love having a good soundcheck as well, and we always capitalize on that time. I mean, honestly, there\u2019s probably only a few hours in the day where you kind of want to eat, or wash, et cetera. And there\u2019s so much for us to do. We\u2019ve got to get ready, do the makeup, get our outfits all sorted \u2026<\/p>\n
Adam: And we didn\u2019t want to tour. Other than the Foo Fighters [opening gig] that came later on in the year, we went on a tour in the summertime. And that was right in the middle of \u2026 we just wrote one or two songs and we were like, \u201cFinally, now we know what we\u2019re doing,\u201d and then it was like, \u201cNow you\u2019ve got to go on tour for six weeks.\u201d It was broken up like that<\/p>\n
But the Foo Fighters tour was amazing. You can\u2019t say no to that. So we managed to squeeze it all in, and then we finished the album off at the start of this year. And I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s fucking October already!<\/p>\n
Luke: To make things even more difficult for ourselves, all of our time off was spent writing and recording. There would literally be a week here and a week there. Sometimes we would do a show here in the States, and then and we would fly back, and then we would be booked for four days in the studio in the UK the next day after we land. I was falling asleep while Adam was playing a riff; I could barely fucking keep my eyes open.<\/p>\n
Adam: And I thought, \u201cIf he wakes up, it will be a good one.\u201d<\/p>\n