Having started out as a project between lifelong friends, Lip Filler have steadily grown bolder, honing their stage presence through a series of energetic live shows and indulging in ever more poetic lyrics and a sound increasingly attentive to subtleties.
The way in which all band members are deeply comfortable with each other shines through in their chemistry on stage, and may well be a main contributor to the way their music is shaping up in the studio: there is a sense of ease with it, of true enjoyment, that permeates the way the new releases are constructed and delivered. This same companionship comes through during our conversation with the band, in which we discussed touring, festivals, the writing process, and the way their collective voice has been evolving.
MITB: You’re very much a live band, and you’ve been touring recently. How’s that experience been?
Lip Filler: We did a little tour last year, but this was our first proper four-day UK tour. It was just a good experience, pretty nomadic. We all love the life on the road. It felt like we kind of removed ourselves from real life and just ate loads of junk food, drank loads of beer, slept on floors. But I think we all like that element of touring.
MITB: Life on tour sounds like you’re in your element.
LF: Well, it was only four nights. It wasn’t three weeks. If it had been like two, three weeks, it would have been a different story. We just kind of did it for the honeymoon phase and then got out, left it before we got stretched out. So we got the romance of it.
MITB: And then there was the London show, which was one of your biggest to date.
LF: It was our biggest London headline, for sure – our biggest headline, actually. We got to play a club, Peckham Audio, which is like a place that we’ve been out to, on nights out. So it was really nice, that it’s around the area that we live in, that we know it. That was really endearing, we really enjoyed playing there. And we got to bring a lot of our friends, so it felt like we were at home.
MITB: These live shows recently have also been a good occasion for you to get your new music out. How has it been playing it live to an audience?
LF: It feels like we’re writing better music than we have ever done, really, and it feels like that comes across in our performance. And, you know, when you’re feeling a song, when you’re playing it, it kind of translates better to the audience. You see the excitement. And I think we’re excited about the new songs that we have. We have studio dates booked soon to get some of the new material heard by everyone, but it was really nice to debut it, really nice to see the crowd’s reaction to the new songs. It brought a really fresh element to the tour, because we were playing songs that we haven’t been touring for years. It felt like it was a grown-up tour.
MITB: Is it a challenge, do you find, to take that energy that you have live and bring it to the studio?
LF: No, not difficult at all. We find ways to incorporate it. We’re all very excitable in the studio. Hence why we all just go in individually now. But when we get to the production aspects, the last day of recording, that’s when those little ideas start bouncing off each other. We do occasionally need a bit of a mediator. We’ve been working with St Francis Hotel, and he’s quite – he’s a maestro. He’s a three Michelin star chef. He always really understands what we’re going for. He’ll normally make a playlist before we go into the studio, what we’re going for, the sound. And he always nails it.
MITB: So it’s a pretty relaxed process?
LF: We’re all good friends, so at the end of the day there is never any bad blood. It’s like a sibling relationship we all have, because we’ve known each other for years. Quite often, when we’re being creative, we’ll be shouting at each other and have little kinds of interventions with each other. It’s constant communication and we’re always learning and growing from each conversation. It’s always super helpful when things do escalate occasionally, because we’re all so passionate and we all have such strong ideas. Because there’s so many cooks, we’ll get to the bottom of it and kind of negotiate. It feels like that’s been a benefit to our later music.
MITB: What direction do you feel you’re going in now?
LF: It’s more about leaving things out, to be honest, because we spent so much time trying to add new things. You write a song and then the next one sounds completely different. We’ve tried a lot now. So now we know what we’re not. Our first EP was a bit more obnoxiously ambitious, it was all over the place. You know, let’s try this – and it’s really quite a big in your face sound. Then the second EP was a bit more experimental. We were just throwing things at the wall, seeing what stuck. With this new project, we’re using everything we’ve tried to refine it all.
MITB: The single that came out in March, 'Laugh Track', you recorded straight to tape. That was an interesting choice.
LF: Again, it was St Francis Hotel’s idea to do that. The reasoning was that you spend more time considering what you’re doing with your instrument, what the take’s saying, how you perform for the tape. And you get less room to make errors – or maybe you make an error, like something will go wrong with the machine mid-take and it makes some weird cool sound effects, but then it becomes part of your take. You’re kind of stuck with it, but in a way that adds to the character of the track. It’s all about character, isn’t it?
MITB: It sounds like you’ve got a lot to be excited about.
LF: For sure. We’ve played everything we’ve released live on this last tour, and it was great to see everyone’s reaction. About the new tracks that haven’t been out yet, as well. That gave us a lot of confidence. Every song we write lately is exciting because every one is a step forward, it’s always a development. Like a little flower unfolding.
MITB: If you were to give a sense of your vibe to someone who’s never seen you live, what would you say?
LF: It’s like – like an excitable dog who’s eaten an edible. And then some chocolate. It’s about, you know, it’s going to die. But it’s also going to be okay. Well, you’re not sure it’s going to be okay – but you’ve got faith.
Chiara Strazzulla
Images: Aoife Hyland
