{"id":16090,"date":"2019-02-13T05:30:45","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T10:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16090"},"modified":"2019-02-12T07:23:24","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T12:23:24","slug":"the-struts-under-pressure-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/13\/the-struts-under-pressure-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"The Struts Under Pressure, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

Luke: And the thing is, there was so much added pressure as well. We weren\u2019t allowed to leave any of those sessions without a great demo. That was what was kind of expected of us. Because it costs money. [pauses a beat] No one said that directly<\/i>, but there was definitely \u2026<\/p>\n

Adam: We<\/i> wanted it as well. Where we were doing it, as well, was at this little island called Jersey, off the south coast off England. There\u2019s nothing really there. So, we\u2019d stay in a hotel, just me and Luke. We\u2019d go to the producer\u2019s house at 9:30, 10:00 in the morning and we wouldn\u2019t leave until 10:00 at night. And it was just like, \u201cFuck.\u201d [laughs] Thinking about it now, though, I actually can\u2019t wait to do that again.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Luke: And that particular working experience, working with Ray Hedges in Jersey was \u2013 and is always \u2013 a joy \u2026<\/p>\n

Adam: Kind of. I mean, it is<\/i> stressful.<\/p>\n

Luke: It\u2019s an absolute brain fuck!<\/p>\n

Adam: Yeah, that\u2019s a better word.<\/p>\n

Luke: But it\u2019s a fantastic, enjoyable brain fuck. We\u2019ve known them \u2013 him and Nigel [Butler] for, it must be, eight years?<\/p>\n

Adam: Eight years, yeah. And they were the ones that me and Luke first ever worked with, before we even had a ban. There are songs on the first album we recorded with them: \u201cDirty Sexy Money,\u201d \u201cRoll Up,\u201d \u201cBlack Swan,\u201d \u201cWhere Did She Go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luke: They really helped us give us this sound of adding in these great synthesizers, which we didn\u2019t really think about, and they helped us carve our songs into much better pieces of music, basically.<\/p>\n

Adam: And great arrangements, as well, and stuff like that. Me and Nigel are quite chordy-nerdy. We\u2019d sit down and, \u201cCan we do this?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know. Fuck it. Let\u2019s do it!\u201d And it was just really fun.<\/p>\n

So \u2026 unlike the first album, you ended up working with just one producer for Young & Dangerous<\/i>?<\/b><\/p>\n

Adam: Sadly not.<\/p>\n

Luke: No, and I don\u2019t think, really, in the near future, we ever will.<\/p>\n

Why not?<\/b><\/p>\n

Luke: Because we have such great results with different people. If you want something which is undoubtedly inverted-commas \u201cStruts,\u201d then we go to Ray Hedges; he can bring that out of us. If we want something which is a little bit more, dare I say, cutting edge and really forward-thinking, then we would go to someone like Jon Levine, who we\u2019ve recently worked with.<\/p>\n

Adam: We did \u201cBody Talks\u201d with him.<\/p>\n

Luke. \u201cBody Talks,\u201d \u201cPeople,\u201d and he produced the finished version of \u201cIn Love With a Camera.\u201d And you\u2019ll hear on the album, there\u2019s a couple kooky ones he\u2019s done with us. So, yeah, we worked with lots and lots of people in different locations.<\/p>\n

One of the most thankless tasks is being an opening act. When you were opening for Foo Fighters, did the audience just embraced you right out of the gate, or did you have to win them over?<\/b><\/p>\n

Adam: All these people here tonight are pretty much all saw us with Foo Fighters. Look at all the Foo Fighters t-shirts. The people at the VIP event were like, \u201cWe came here because we saw you open for Foo Fighters, and we just thought you were amazing.\u201d I think we\u2019re going to see a very similar thing across the whole country, really.<\/p>\n

Luke: I think the Foos fans are particularly receptive, which made our lives a fuckload easier. And to be honest, when I started doing \u201cUnder Pressure\u201d with them, it was just circling across the internet, and for the fans to go to YouTube and their Facebook feeds or whatever and see that happening \u2013 Dave and Taylor [Hawkins] giving me a hug, and then Dave saying this amazing speech about us \u2013 it kind of started a bit of a wildfire. Especially on the second leg of the tour, the audiences were really responsive. I felt like that they listened to the music and were really getting into it. It was a really, really great experience.<\/p>\n

Adam: A nod of approval from Dave Grohl goes a long way.<\/p>\n

One of the things that impressed me last time I saw you \u2013 and it\u2019s true again tonight \u2013 is how young the crowd is. Actually, it cuts right across generations. <\/b><\/p>\n

Luke: It\u2019s a real mixture.<\/p>\n

Adam: I really enjoy that about our fans. I think sometimes it\u2019s easy to envy the big pop acts, especially guy groups or boy bands and stuff like that. You can envy their success \u2013 and nothing on them, but \u2013 when you have a fan base of fourteen year old girls, it\u2019s very rare that they kind of stick with you long. I really feel like our fan base is so great and varied; families, actually have emotional investment in the music. It feels very long-term for me. The people who are coming to the shows, some of them come thirty-odd times.<\/p>\n

Another thing I noticed the last time I saw you onstage was how much you evoked the spirit of a \u201870s rock concert, and you did it without sounding retro. Do you consciously work at trying to get the vibe of the big arena-rock kind of thing, or does it just sort of happen?<\/b><\/p>\n

Luke: Well, first and foremost, how I work the audience is just my taste. And I think my taste does have massive echoes from how Queen would address an audience, how Slade would address an audience; it\u2019s a very English thing to kind of do. It\u2019s kind of like Little Richard, and that\u2019s just what resonates with me; that\u2019s what I enjoy. I think what gives it the modern twist is where and how we\u2019re doing it, and the music that\u2019s behind it. It\u2019s not like I\u2019m talking about things that were only specific to 1972 or anything like that. But there is<\/i> a conscious effort, especially in the music, that we don\u2019t want to regurgitate a genre which \u2013 let\u2019s be fair \u2013 has been milked to its limit. And what makes me laugh is when people turn around and say that we\u2019re \u201csaving rock and roll.\u201d It\u2019s very cute, but all we\u2019re really trying to do is just play<\/i> it. But we don\u2019t want to copycat, if that makes sense. We want to push it in a slightly new direction which makes it more exciting.<\/p>\n

I also couldn\u2019t help but notice that most everyone in the audience knew the words, even though you weren\u2019t all that well-known here two years ago. To what degree is your performance affected by the feedback from the audience?<\/b><\/p>\n

Luke: Immensely. It\u2019s always these two things in every show: every single song, every opportune moment, or every given moment, there\u2019s something in my head which says I have to work them. Especially if I see the people just sort of nodding their heads. And especially with the new stuff; the new stuff is where you\u2019ve got to get them going the most. People associate good times and memories with movement. For instance, when we play \u201cFire\u201d now, I know I\u2019m going to have to work them even harder. Because they don\u2019t know it \u2026 <\/p>\n

Adam: They might now. It\u2019s been out on Spotify for a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Luke: Yeah, but there are still cues. It\u2019s like, \u201cOkay. Not everyone is going to know this chorus. So, what I\u2019m going to do is I\u2019m going to get everyone clapping with every single chorus,\u201d right? So, at least when the chorus happens, there\u2019s something happening. Not everyone\u2019s singing the exact words at the same time. A song \u201cCould Have Been Me\u201d or \u201cPut Your Money On Me,\u201d for example, or \u201cKiss This,\u201d I can sort of take a little bit of a back seat. Just a little bit.<\/p>\n

Because they know it \u2026 <\/b><\/p>\n

Luke: Yeah, because they know it, and I can see everyone\u2019s singing every word. So there\u2019s no need for me to be pushing them.<\/p>\n

Adam: They\u2019re moving without you needing them to.<\/p>\n

Luke: Exactly. But it\u2019s the new stuff that you want to get them going even more.<\/p>\n

But they don\u2019t<\/i> know the new songs. And the album\u2019s still not out. Is it a challenge to be doing these shows without the album out there? <\/b><\/p>\n

Luke: It just had to be done. As a band, we\u2019ve been wanting to get out there and do our own shows for quite a while. Because it was almost the best part of a year that we were touring on and off with the Foos, and we were having to do all the old material. So, we started working up the new material in our spare time and in soundchecks, and I think we just got to a point where we were just getting really anxious to get out there and start playing new stuff, new show, new dynamic, new set list. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… Luke: And the thing is, there was so much added pressure as well. We weren\u2019t allowed to leave any of those sessions without a great demo. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,41,49,62],"tags":[237,2805],"class_list":["post-16090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-glam","category-interview","category-new-release","category-rawk","tag-asheville","tag-the-struts","cat-34-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16092,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090\/revisions\/16092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}