TALKING to the Edinburgh band at NOS Alive festival in Portugal last weekend, TTV catch-up with Young Fathers on their rollercoaster year, awards, the new record and how if you call them a hip-hop you don’t have a fucking clue.
Over the last few years you guys have been on a bit of a rollercoaster, becoming a lot more widely known in mainstream audiences. Did you ever think you would make it this far?
A: Yep. For us it’s always about building, getting to the next level and having as many people listen to us as possible. We’ve always been very ambitious; it’s never been about being underground or cliquey, but to make music for the world and everybody.
K: At the moment we still feel there are not enough people who’ve heard about us, so that ambitious nature that we have is still there. We don’t think we’re in a special position or whatever. We think that we have more opportunities and there are more people listening to us, but still not enough.
Last month you were on a succession of tour dates, first on your own UK tour and then followed up with loads of festival tour dates. How do you keep the momentum going and energy up?
A: We try and keep it fresh for ourselves. We always want to have an element of danger when on stage where both we and the crowd don’t know what’s going to happen and I think it’s that which keeps the momentum going. We need to excited ourselves first and foremost. We make music for ourselves first and then after that we want as many people to hear it whether they like, love, or hate it. It doesn’t matter to us as long as they know that we exist and that kind of music is out there.
How have you been finding the audiences in places far afield like Portugal and how do they compare to back home?
A: It depends if you’re doing a festival or your own show. When you think of it, at a festival nobody is here for you. The people who come mostly do so because they enjoy the feeling of being at a festival. There are bands that we want to catch but ultimately we’re there to hopefully attract new fans and convert people, but really most are there for the whole experience of just being at a festival. When you take that into account it’s different each time. At some places folk are lively and they feel more at home and want to move, but there are places where people don’t move at all yet after the set the reaction is great. You can never tell.
So your latest album, White Men are Black Men Too, was released earlier this year and has had amazing reviews while sparking a lot of discourse because of its name. How do you feel about it in comparison with ‘Dead’?
A: It needs to be always be better than the last one. You’re only as good as your last album so we need to always challenge. It needs to feel awkward in the sense you don’t know what it is but you like it. When we did Dead, it finally came out a year and a half after we had done it so we’d had to wait. We’d put out Tape One at the end of 2011, around November time, then two weeks later we did Tape Two which we were about to release, but then the label from America got involved and were like “hold it back” and ended up making us do so for another year. So we had Tape Two ready while Tape One was doing the rounds, and then when we put out Tape Two we’d already done Dead and had to wait again. So with the new album, the turnover was only four months, which was the shortest time to fill and it felt like “thank fuck, we can actually get this stuff out”.
So with all the disparate sounds on your new record, what challenges did you face when capturing the unique energy of tracks like “Old Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Nest”? How was it translating those tracks into live performance?
A: This whole album sounds like a band. It sounds like we’re an actual band. There’s more instrumentation and percussion stuff, but at the same time you have to have the balance where we’re still very raw and physical. When we started touring we put the tracks one by one to test them and see how they fit. Figuring out what songs to add from the album is still a process we’re making. We’ve added ones before and been like “this works” or “this doesn’t work” or “we need to refine this and change this bit”, so it’s always just a work in progress.
K: It’s trying to keep it fresh. Most of the time when we’re performing the songs they modify on their own over time, and a lot of the instrumentation part is also the words. The words allow us to perform it with the amount of passion that we do because we care about them.
You’ve spoken a lot about your distaste of being tagged as a hip-hop group. Do you think this is the record that’s going to shake that off?
A: Well, I think if anyone calls this hip hop they don’t have a fucking clue. There are elements of rap and so much more which go beyond hip hop. We love pop music. I’m not the greatest fan of hip hop but at the same time if it’s on when I’m out in a club or whatever it serves its purpose and I’ll dance to it, but none of us want to make that kind of music. What’s the point? If you do that you’re only going to do it third rate. We want to create something that hasn’t been done and it’s so frustrating and does us a disservice when people say it because it turns a lot of people off with some of the negative associations. It goes back to the album title. It asks questions like “why is there white man?”, “why is there black man”, “why is there Muslim man?”. People want to put things in boxes and say you’re this and that when the world isn’t like that, it’s complex. It’s acknowledging those points and putting them at the forefront. When people label it that it does my fucking nut in. Listen to a track like ‘Shame’, for example. Is that fucking hip-hop? What other group are you going to hear that can go from a song like ‘Shame’ to ‘Old Rock n Roll’ then to a song like ‘Low’? There’s so much inspiration and influences from different fields that just to label it hip-hop does it such a disservice.
K: I couldn’t have said it better than Alloysious. If you think it’s hip hop you don’t have a fucking scooby.
A: That’s the thing though, people are always going to say that because it’s easy to put people in boxes. It’s like an old business plan. At the same time, if we go to America and we get put on a hip hop stage then we’ll go and be like “we’re hip hop today”. We’ll utilize the space and get more fans converted. We can dip in and out. We’re not hip hop solely and that’s what’s annoying.
Since we’re on the subject, what do you think of the hip hop scene in Scotland with bands like Hector Bizerk and The Lafontaines coming through?
A: Growing up in Scotland we’ve never been any part of a scene or been like “oh, we do Scottish hip hop”. From when we met at 14 it was always about music for the world. It was always about writing songs and arrangements. It was never about representing Scotland or anything and I think that’s what brought us together and made us strong almost like family. We’re not aware of what’s going on with the Scottish hip hop scene. It’s there but I dinnae ken!
So you’ve always had your sights set higher than the local scene in Scotland, but are there any Scottish artists that resonate with you at the moment?
A: We played with a singer-songwriter recently called Siobhan Wilson with this really angelic voice.
K: The Merrylees were another. Callum Easter as well.
K: We watched Golden Teachers recently as well who were exciting.
Whose work generally is inspiring you at the moment?
A: I’ve been listening to The Child of Lov recently. He’s a Dutch artist who died at 26 last year and Damon Albarn ended up working on the album. Onuka is an electronic act we discovered in the Ukraine. Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA is fucking brilliant, honestly, I was shocked by it when I first heard it. I also got this Kenyan album which featured loads of East African tracks.
What’s next then and do you plan to follow up ‘White Men are Black Men Too’ as fast as you did with ‘Dead’?
K: I don’t think we’ve ever been in position where we’ve felt pressured to get it out quick, but rather necessary. We were itching to follow up ‘Dead’ with ‘White Men are Black Men Too’ just because it felt right at that moment. Now we’re gigging and concentrating on building our fan base and pushing ourselves in performance as well to see how far we can take it. What’s for certain is that we do have time and we will constantly keep recording. In November we’ll put ideas together and see where they take us. If it’s one song we decide to put out then it’s one song, if it’s an album then it’s an album.
To finish up then, with your popularity blossoming right now, how do you see yourselves in 5 years time and how do you plan to maintain your integrity as artists as you get bigger?
A: We don’t worry about integrity. The kinda music that we make is hard for people to get into to begin with and we’re not about “let’s make a hit”. We could literally write those tunes in “5 minutes”, I swear to God, they’re that fucking easy to write. It’s more about doing something that excites us so we can sleep at night and those things are always going to take longer. It’s only now people are starting to know the name Young Fathers and we’ve been doing this since we were 14. In 5 years time? Fuck knows, man. Hopefully we’ll have bigger shows and I’ll have a girlfriend or something like that. Maybe even a bairn *laughs*.
