Calling in from peaceful Portsmouth, vocalist and guitarist Ned Green, drummer Louis Grace, bassist Jake Martin, and guitarist Max Oliver sat down with Music is to Blame to name and shame the catalysts for their creative endeavours, sharing the perfect recipe for their new album as well as a delicious plate of fried butterbeans.
Talk to us about your band name - who or what’s to blame for its inception?
Max: Well, we've only got ourselves to blame.
Ned: Delusions of grandeur.
Max: The Five Bells.
Ned: Yeah, there's a pub in New Cross – or there was a pub in New Cross – called the Five Bells, which was home to a very loyal contingency of Millwall fans, because it was just by the den, where the Millwall players play. And it was also a music venue booked by a guy called Sam Huxley and he brought in a lot of experimental, interesting acts quite early on in 2015-2017. So just when this sort of, I guess, postpunk phenomenon was coming out of the woodworks. We spent a lot of time there and it was an amazing mix of a local community and a very student-heavy community just by Goldsmiths where three of us went. And I guess the merging of those two worlds and how we felt accepted by the locals, but also able to experiment and play and meet new people and feel settled in London was a very big catalyst for us starting a band. We'd all been in different bands and all played at the Five Bells. Our first show once we became a band. And sadly, like just before lockdown, it changed hands.
Louis: We booked our first gig before we even had a set at The Five Bells. They were good like that.
Ned: If you were friendly and keen or succumbing to delusions of grandeur, they'd give you a slot. It gave us encouragement to write and get ready. So The Five Bells is probably to blame for the formation of the band in many respects.
How has coming from such a diverse scene in London impacted the way you made your new album - if at all - and how has it moulded the way you navigate your path as artists?
Max: We've never particularly felt part of the sort of London scene or how it's thought of within the media or outside of London. I think a lot of these sort of scenes that have been talked about over the years were mainly just sort of collections of friends that all played similar venues at similar times, like around The Windmill, and we kind of fitted in between, we filled the gaps. So I don't know how much that's really affected how we have made our music, or especially the album, it's more about how we've done it in a more insular way, it's just us four, or at least our team around us – the people that we've chosen to work with over the years, like The Reids or Balázs Altsach the producer. They’re slightly more instrumental in how we've formed the album.
Ned: I think it's a dangerous thing, blaming London for everything, because it makes it feel like there aren't amazing producers and bookers and reps and whatever in Doncaster and Burnley and places all over the UK. London has a high volume of producers, but we would have met similar people in other cities as well. I think what London did outside of like, help us make the record practically, was influence our songwriting musically and lyrically.
Max: I guess you get exposed to quite a lot, don't you? Even before we made this band, going as a fan, first year at uni or whatever. Turning up to Goldsmiths or The Five Bells, partly as a social occasion, but then also because of these great bookers like the aforementioned Sam Huxley and Tim at The Windmill, you do get exposed to all sorts of stuff. I guess by osmosis, you just slowly start taking that all in and it all inevitably comes out in your writing further down the line. I'm sure my music, taste and palette grew infinitely within the first year that I moved into London.
Louis: Finding the underground and these subcultures within a big capitalist melting pot is how we've created our sonic terrain. It's definitely so much influence from all the bands closest to us. Lyrically, there's a big poetry scene which Ned's very involved with. There's a feeling of living in London, which is exciting, but oppressive when you're at an awkward age and it just kind of slowly, unconsciously comes into the music. But no matter what your environment is, that's always going to enter your music somehow, whether consciously or unconsciously.
What or who would you say is to blame for your music career?
Ned: There's no one to blame but us, really. We've worked so f*cking hard. We really have been. We’re unsigned, not having management, having some very, very, very close and integral supporters to the band.
Max: We've willed it into existence. Because we want it. And because of how close we all are - I think.
Ned: We've worked full-time. We've put surplus cash into producing ourselves. We've all got into debt. We drive around ourselves, we load in, we load out. We write all the music, we choose who mixes it, we put it out, we find the distributors. It's us four. We've been doing it since 2018. Really nonstop. Honestly, f*cking no one's helping… I’M JOKING!
Louis: They say you can't polish a turd, but we've been really very dedicated to it!
Your music is littered with influences. Who are the biggest musical inspirations for the sound you’ve curated and how important is it to you to have reference to these influences within your music? Listening to ‘UNREAL’ you can hear everything from Bowie to Bauhaus to Death Cab For Cutie to Cursive; what is interesting is that no two reviews mention the same references.
Ned: I think we are a band that wears our influences on our sleeve. We do try so many different things out and dip our toes into references and influences that we love, not even knowingly sometimes. I think we're drawn sometimes to having like a nice jangle pop attempt at a chorus or a verse and then other times we want to be as minimal as Bauhaus or The Fall and electronic artists and a lot of ambient music. It's all there to see. All the ones that you've mentioned are true, and I think if people hear it, then it's definitely there.
Louis: Collectively, we've got quite a broad palate of influence. When an idea starts, somebody pulls it in a completely different way than you imagined it. You have songs like ‘Bit Rot’ where it's like super spacious, super heavy, but you also have really delicate moments of nothing, the ambient stuff. In the world which we’ve built f*cking anything is up for grabs! You probably should stick to a consistent sound, but what we've been doing to get to this point is constantly taking influence and being super aware of what we like and really, really, really, really trying to push each other to kind of get this sound that we've managed to achieve on the album. Even then we are already thinking of what comes next. I think having a cohesive sound, something that sounds like us, goes a bit beyond genre. It comes down to more of an ethos.
Ned: I think that's a really good point about us sounding different at every stage, not just release-wise, but song-to-song on every release. We've done so much learning together. When we started, none of us could really play our instruments. So in terms of progressing, even though we've been playing together for such a long time, we're still so desperate to learn and get better. So every song we're trying to push whatever sonic dynamics we've landed on for that arrangement. And so I think Lou's right, that the Legss sound isn't necessarily one connected to a genre. It’s one connected to a plethora of different sounds, which are always pushed to their nth degree in the arrangement. I think that's why a lot of our songs are quite long, a lot of them have different paths that feel like they don't fit together because we're trying to push whatever new way of playing together that we've landed on for that song. That's more Legss than anything else... It's that ambition, but also pretentiousness. Do you know what I mean? We’re comfortable with being pretentious and trying to [experiment] because we're not trained musicians.
Going back to the idea of poetry and monologues, how do you feel that kind of direct address changes the way a listener experiences your music?
Ned: I think there's a really simple answer. When you soliloquise and you write outside of essentially the rhythm of the song. You've written a bed and with all our songs, the lyrics and the words will come last. If the lads put a song together and there's been a decision that it would be better for it to be a spoken vocal performance on top, then you're making a like a clear distinction as to not to try to write something which hits on the vowels and the syllables, and therefore you're trying to communicate more clearly. So the only difference is whether the song feels like it befits a really clear message, and the best way to get that across is to talk over the rhythm, so that it is communicated in a way that makes the listeners prick up their ears. The decision for where a song feels like it is befitting of that poetry is always just down to the music.
Louis: Lyrics like “it's not that I don't wanna talk about it / I just don't want to talk about it with you” are super tongue-in-cheek, very honest. It’s something that people can relate to about being vulnerable. It's all about communication, really, isn't it?
Ned: It is pertinent, that idea of failing to communicate things, which sort of comes back to what we were influenced by and how you define the Legss sound. It's a series of successful and very unsuccessful communications between us four, between us and like our partners and wider friendship groups, and then also observing the breakdown of communication of wider society. I think a lot of those things are integral to the music and the lyrical themes of the album. But I wouldn't say it's all autobiographical. There are a lot of fictional elements there because to embellish and create a world and to push it in the direction of the uncanny, I feel like there always needs to be elements which don't sit right. Sometimes you need to do a bit of conjuring, which the artist obviously has license to do.
Louis: I would say musically and lyrically it's not being experimental for experimentation's sake. It's not trying to hide behind anything. It's very direct. I just hope it's relatable. Like the feeling of the music, the feeling of the lyrics. I hope that we communicate exactly what we're trying to.
Ned: We're intentionally trying to communicate uncommunicatively.
Speaking of communication and kind of pushing the music, you've made a short film before, since that experience when writing your music has there been a visual element to the way you write your music? Has that experience changed anything about how you've written since then?
Louis: For ‘Fester’ we made a whole visual document for how the record should sound.
Max: The visual part of it is super, super important, isn't it? There'll be ideas of it floating around as the music comes along, because things that come as we write the songs. I see it personally as like an extension of the world that we create with the music. We want to further that and create a more immersive experience through artwork and video. Putting this album out without a label by ourselves, we've been working insanely hard at capacity for quite a long time. Apart from the artwork, which we're super, super proud of and think is a perfect representation of the record itself – I think we would have liked to do things like short films against stuff, we just haven't really had the time or the money to be able to do it with this release.
Louis: Yeah, I think the location of where we recorded it had a big impact on the sound. We recorded it in a really scenic, remote, beautiful spot in the Isle of Wight. That combined with how much we had to do in such little time [was inspiring]. We were very present the whole time; the scenery, the sunsets, the fields, the ales, the, the group dinners. Basically, three meals a day, trying to record 13 songs in five days, how are you gonna eat? But we managed to, we had a good rota going. If you take the structure that we put in place of how everybody can be fed and still make the music…
Ned: It’s like a new world order!
Louis: …It fed into the music!
Ned: For the only music video we did (‘Gloss’), that came from like a very clear idea of drowning. We had one strong visual motif for that song that we’d had for a long long time. We built that music video, and the cast, and the world around that one image of someone drowning or just staying afloat. If we had more budget and capacity, then we would have loved to have really done more to accompany the music with a visual identity. But having said that, I actually think the album artwork does all the work.
Jake: It’s perfect for what we wanted to achieve. As a band we’ve always been super, super keen on the idea of world building – and like you were saying earlier about the music, taking whatever we're doing at the time to the nth degree – for our own satisfaction and to demonstrate the best immersive experience that we can possible, take our ideas as far as we can. So if we could have done that with the album, we would have absolutely loved to do it.
Ned: It's such a good question, at what stage does the visual intercept or start to complement or jar against the music; how do those two art forms coexist? Sadly, I think it does come down to capacity and we were just so stretched trying to get the music ready. In previous years we'd had a bit more time to be able to think visually alongside it and be a bit more expansive, but I think a bit off more than we could chew for this record. But I think we will always be a very visual band.
Louis: We just put out a book as well!
Ned: So instead, we decided to make a book, which is a sort of visual in memoriam of the band. It’s a visual documentation with some words in there as well.
That's more exciting than a music video in a way, being able to kind of hold something in your hands and feel as if you're kind of experiencing the music in a physical, like sensory way other than just hearing is really interesting!
Max: It’s nice to have something tangible.
It is really one of those albums that's really dense in texture. I’ve heard you say it feels like you've got a really firm block of tofu in your hands and you're like tearing it apart, right? But it's just nice to be able to kind of hold it in your hands and experience the album in that way adds so much to the experience.
Ned: I think you're right. I think it's a really tactile haptic album. I think it is really rich in depth, potentially to a fault, but I think there are things you can taste and feel and smell and wade through.
It's been just over a month since you released ‘UNREAL’! How have you found the reception to the album and what has the response taught you about yourselves? musically or otherwise.
Max: I've developed a way of just being like, “I f*cking love it. I'm so proud of it”. even if I don't 100% feel like it's the perfect thing we could have done. I think throughout this, I've sort of taught myself to be like, “it is f*cking really good”.
Louis: It takes so long to make, you know. Like, you kind of have to hang on to that. You're in a different headspace. We wrote it ages ago, but we recorded it last August, and it's hardly just been a month since we released it. You just have to remember your response to the sound of it in the studio when you're recording it for the first time. It's just teaching yourself that it is good. You've done what you can.
Ned: That's so true, because I think we had such a beautiful time writing it together in Spring last year, it meant that I think every time we look back on it or thought about it or heard those melodies, it transported us to a really positive,safe writing space. I don't know if all artists have that when it comes to writing an album, so when it comes to releasing it, the foundations were really strong which was important. Spring.
Max: All music should be written into spring..
Max: I agree. I’ve learned to be proud of it. I think so often in this whole process of writing and releasing our first EPs, it's taken a while to come to that. I think people treat an album differently, don't they? Rightfully so, it's such a big body of work; it has been so much work to get to that stage. It was hard work, and we have sacrificed a lot. We should be proud of it. It’s been great. Every step of the process has been great writing, recording. I think we're a really good team and it shows, we have time and patience for each other. I hope that shows through in the record.
Speaking of spending time together as a team, what was the best meal you ate together while you were recording on the Isle of Wight?
Louis: That’s gonna be a bit of a competitive one!
Max: The one [Louis] did with the butterbeans…
Max: Yeah, the butterbeans.
Jake: …I still cook that!
Louis: I think it's like three ingredients. I'd suggest cannellini beans. You want to use the juice they come in, don't rinse them. Straight in a frying pan. Three spring onions, a whole lemon, and then artichokes.
Jake: Tomatoes as well, no? Cherry tomatoes!
Louis: I would use that as a foundation and then add whatever you like. It's so salty, fresh, mmm, just comforting. I would pickle some onions and put that in those little garnish on top. We were well into pickling as well.
Ned: What we also did was we had this massive pot porridge, whatever we didn't finish, we'd add more porridge and mix it together.
Jake: Like a perpetual medieval soup.
Ned: We put frozen berries in it and all those colours would reemerge, sort of like blood droplets in the cauldron. It was pretty f*cking epic.
This is probably going to be your first interview with a full recipe kind of halfway through. You know how like when you're trying to make a cake and there's a novels worth of a read before the recipe. This interview is just one long preface to a recipe.
Louis: Turn your oven to 200 degrees and meet at The Five Bells!
Lastly, in ‘Sleepers, Awake’, you talk about reading a book in public, but only reading a random page to look like you’re reading. What book would you pick to make yourselves seem intellectual to the people sitting around you?
Ned: Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol. Yes. That's a classic.
Louis: My Booky Wook...
Ned: Well, I guess the joke is that it isn't actually one of the most important literary works of all time. When we played in Leeds there was one guy who clearly, really joined the record. It’s only been out a month and [Sleepers, Awake] wasn’t even a single, but he just screams that line back at us and goes, “BUT I’M NOT REALLY READING”. That lyric is maybe like a good three years old. Before all these performative male TikToks but obviously that is exactly it!
Louis: My favourite lyric, the one that got me when we were recording is; “it seems like some people only exist just to…
In unison: Prang me the f*ck out!”
Ned: It’s like being in The Truman Show, it's just like you've literally put here purposefully to piss me off…
Legss’ sensationally dense block of tofu of a debut album ‘UNREAL’ is a triumph, pushing modern post-punk to its limits and getting away with it unbelievably stylishly. It can be found here, or wherever you find your music. Do not miss the chance to get your hands on the record’s companion book which can be found here! The band are currently wrapping up a UK tour that has seen them bring their self-proclaimed pretentious punk to venues across the country. Legss are undeniably ones to watch as we witness the shift of post-punk into the mainstream, their refreshingly bold lyrics and obsessively detailed instrumental are a mesmerising take on the genre.
Most importantly, if you fancy giving the fried butterbeans a try, here is a recipe for you to follow sans preface - because MITB and Legss have kindly provided that experience for you.
Eylem Boz
Image: Jacob Ray
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