ON Friday, Declan Welsh & The Decadent West shared their eagerly anticipated second album ‘2’ via Frictionless Music.
We’ve written plenty about West’s lyrical smarts over the years, his roaring punk anthems, his vivid articulation of universal experiences, his songwriting swagger and his empathetic, passionate indie-rock. But ‘2’ marks another distinct shift for the outfit – signalling ambitions far beyond what they have already achieved.
The follow-up to the acclaimed ‘Cheaply Bought, Expensively Sold’ was written and demoed in n Welsh’s room before beting recorded between Los Angeles and Glasgow over a period of 12 months and produced by Grammy-nominated, Mercury Award-winning producer Gianluca Buccaletti (Arlo Parks, Big Piig, Easy Life). Featuring previously heard singles like ‘100 to 1 (Saturday night)’, ‘King of My Head’ and ‘First to Know’, the record finds Welsh pushing the parameters of his writing, musically and lyrically; pulling from a wider range of influences while also delivering some of his most introspective moments to date.
A product of the environment in which it was created, it’s imbued with feelings of isolation, anxiety, rumination but also humour, hope and love, as Welsh shows plenty of artistic growth in offering a vivid reflection of the world we live in. It’s all about light and shade – oscilllating between hypnotic basslines, dense lyrical reflections and spacious synth passages to light funk grooves and soaring anthemic highs.
So, with the album out in the world, and a mammoth European tour coming up, we caught up with the frontman to find out more about ‘2’, its inspirations, recording and more.
When did you start working on ‘2’?
The first song on the album that I started working on was either First to Know or Ok Now early lockdown, so like may 2020ish. I couldn’t play live so I knew I had to keep developing in some other way. I got a grant from Creative Scotland and it allowed me to get a decent computer and production software, without that this album isn’t made. So I just learned by doing. Watching YouTube videos, making mistakes. The album came about as much due to the material circumstances of me making it on a pc as it was down to my mindset but both absolutely made an impact. I wrote more music in 2020 than I maybe did any other year of my life. And kept writing into 2021 and in 2022 we recorded it.
There’s a definite shift from your debut sonically – what was inspiring you at the time of writing? Did you have a desire to expand your sound?
I always do, I would get bored doing the same thing and I get bored of artists who don’t develop. Our fans, I think, get this and seem to be quite happy with us taking some different directions. Plus, I simply don’t listen to the same music I did when I was writing the first album. So it’s gonna naturally sound different. I think this has been influenced a great deal by funk, soul, disco, electronic music – all a lot more than the first. Plus bands like Radiohead, Fleetwood Mac… there’s a tonne of influences kicking about.
The singles also feel more introspective than what we’ve heard before. What headspace were you in at the time of writing? Were you more comfortable to show more vulnerability?
I was probably feeling more anxiety than I’d ever felt and as quite an extroverted person, the lack of group gatherings and extended periods of time isolating even from my partner if one of us had Covid was tough. And of course, with less going on, you really are stuck in your own head and thinking about thinking about thinking…
I didn’t really think about the being vulnerable side of it. These were the lyrics I wanted to write and the songs we wanted to make. They were honest to the tunes and I guess they are vulnerable but what good art isn’t? That’s sort of the deal I think. Even if you’re being confident, you’re opening yourself up to criticism in a way that’s vulnerable. It’s always about baring some part of yourself to people who could go – nah, no thanks. That’s difficult but it’s part of the job.
What other themes do you cover throughout the album?
There’s a few from song to song; our relationship with substances/addiction, love, isolation, mental health, paranoia, failure, the apocalypse… all the hits, all the big ones. But I think the overarching narrative of the record is summed up best in a question. “How long can you pretend it doesn’t bother you?” What “it” is depends on you, but it’s usually an emotion, or something with the capacity to provoke an emotional reaction. Every song in its own way is wrestling with some issue or emotion and it’s doing it in a way that’s at least in part an attempt to run away from confronting that emotion, before the emotion catches up and it’s released. Musically we try and mirror that by having a lot of these long spells of loops and build ups broken by these huge moments, usually choruses.
You continue to show artistic growth with each release. What are you still learning as a musician/songwriter?
Everything! I am so fascinated and obsessive about songwriting. I love it, I think it’s the most exciting and interesting subject and I never stop learning about it. I am never off YouTube or reading books or trying stuff in Ableton. Outside of spending time with people I love, it’s my favourite thing to do.
If anyone is reading and wants advice – write as many songs as you can regardless of quality AND stop thinking of music as good and bad. Art is subjective. If you want to understand songwriting, the best gift you can be given is a song that you know works but that does nothing for you. It means you can look at it like a mechanic looks at a car. You can understand why it works in a clearer way than if you just went “I like it”. Then you can apply those rules to your own work which you will naturally (hopefully) emotionally connect with!
Can you tell us a bit about the recording process? What was it like to write both in Glasgow and LA? How did this affect the overall outcome?
So I wrote all of this and about a hundred more songs in Glasgow in my flat on Ableton, then I sent the rest of the guys the tunes and we started talking about what ones were our favourites and piecing together an album. Then we reached out to Luca in LA and he loved the tunes and started working on them remotely. The finishing touches were applied in LA and I think he really brought something amazing to the whole thing. As did getting Ben, Duncan and Murray on them as opposed to it all being me playing.
I think the overall sound is quite shaped by its environments. At first, these songs were all a lot more electronic and a lot weirder. That’s a path I might still go down with another project, but the end result of this has the album sounding a lot more together and tighter.
You’ve played some of the biggest gigs of your career this year. What’s been the highlight so far?
I think it’s still to come for this year as we’re due to head out on our own headliner to UK/EU with the album out and those tours are always amazing, when you get to really see and hear what songs people are loving. But I must mention TRNSMT main stage and playing w the Reytons at Sheffield Arena (14k sold out) as being pretty cool moments in our progression. Playing with a string quartet in Cottiers Theatre was also a ridiculously cool experience.
You’re about to head on a huge European tour, with a few sold out shows included. Why do you think your music resonates with people in these countries?
I guess in 2023 music resonates everywhere. I listen to artists from all over the world, so most places and people will be the same. There’s an energy to our music and live performance that transcends language, but to be honest the rest of the world embarrasses the English speakers with their fluency in our tongue. So I don’t even know if the language barrier is an issue anymore.
We’ve sold out gigs in Amsterdam, Prague, Budapest, Vienna and Hamburg and we haven’t even got on the van. We feel very lucky to be appreciated all over the world and my biggest ambition is to tour Africa, Asia and South America. Get me to Vietnam, Peru, Brazil, Egypt, Algeria, Cuba – I want to go everywhere!
You’ve been releasing music for a good few years now. What is the secret to keeping up such strong momentum?
God knows. If I had a secret I’d tell you. Write a lot of songs. Release them. Tour them. Keep going. Write for yourself, then rehearse and edit for the audience. Try and forget about numbers on screens and understand that giving one person one moment of transcendent beauty at a show or listening to your music is one of the most unbelievable gifts and makes all the work worth it. Being famous is a pointless, vain, nonsense pursuit. Try and make a difference. Make the world a better place. Whether you succeed or fail in that you’ll tend to come out the other end a better, happier version of yourself. And the worlds a better place with the best version of you in it.
Where do you see the band going next?
I have about 15 albums worth of material good to go. I never want to wait this long between albums again. I want to release loads of music. I want to tour as far and wide as I can. And I want to become the best version of myself as a writer and performer that I can.
The band will continue to grow. We’ve been unlucky with Covid and we’ve never been massive game players, networkers etc so it’s maybe taken a couple extra years, but I truly think we are good enough to become as big as we want. We just have to decide what that looks like. I’ve now experienced West Hollywood and The West Bank. I know which one I felt more at home in.
Listen to ‘2’ below.
Photo by Graham Noble.
