As part of Music Is To Blame's What's to Blame? interview series, we sat down with Canned Pineapple during this year's Y Not Festival.
If you could just start off by introducing yourselves and where you're from!
Hi! We're Canned Pineapple and we're from Brighton.
Very nice. So what is to blame for your band name? Where did it originate?
Sure. It's a Wong Kar-wai film called Chungking Express, and a gross way of describing the plot of the film is that he eats loads of expired canned pineapple. It's a much more complex film than that, but that was my takeaway from it.
Cool, okay. What do you think the biggest difference is between the music you first made as a band to today?
I think we're getting more and more passionate by the day. I think we're putting more effort into the arrangement and stuff. Also, putting more effort into being more honest and more expressive. You always think you're going to write the best song ever, tomorrow, you know? You've not written the best song ever, yet.
How do you think it compares playing regular gigs throughout the year to festivals?
It's a lot more tiring. It's a lot more expensive. But it's a lot more fun, you get to see a lot more bands. It's good. It's quite interesting playing to your audience when you're doing your own tour versus playing to quite a lot of people who are seeing you for the first time. I think, so far, the nicest thing for me about playing festivals this summer has been that everyone seems really up for it. Sometimes you can be playing a show on your own tour, and people aren't really that up for it. With a festival, I think people just kind of accept they're there for the music, whatever it is. It's interesting.
On a similar topic, are there any artists at Y-Not festival this year who you have been able to watch?
Lime Garden, they're from Brighton as well. We love their music and their records. Cliffords, we'd definitely recommend seeing them. They're brilliant and good friends of ours from Ireland. The Prodigy are always fantastic; we've seen them a few times. The Last Dinner Party was smashing, and the lads in Substandards were really good. They played before us on the Allotment stage, and that was a lot of fun as well.
My last question is, what's been your highlight of the year so far?
We played a show in a youth centre in Paris, that's my highlight. It was really nice and it ranged from six to sixteen-year-olds. They made us a lovely dinner. The whole trip to Paris was great, and the few gigs in Paris were a highlight.
Emily Teague
Image: Emma Austin (@emshootsbands)
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