May 2006

THE FUTUREHEADS - in their own words...

The Futureheads ‘News and Tributes’ will be released on May 29th through 679 Recordings.

There was a song on the first Futureheads album called ‘Try Not To Think About Time’. It’s an idea, all right, but timing has in fact been everything to the Futureheads. When they first came out in 2002, they were surely ahead of their time, their taut, fizzing, thicket of staccato angularity heralding nothing less than a rebirth of British guitar music.

Playing faster and with a deal more going on up top than most of the new breed, The Futureheads were a slightly harder mass market sell than their peers. Celebrated as trailblazers and adored by those in the know, it took last year’s eventual release of their inspired cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds Of Love’ for everybody to finally wake up to the true wizardry of the Futureheads.

Now, working on the principle of changing before you have to, they have, if not ripped up the rulebook, then certainly taken a rubber to some of the sub-clauses, writing a second album every bit as surprising, refreshing and rewarding as their first – only pretty much completely different, and one destined to once again put them ahead of the chasing pack.

Of course when they first came out they didn’t take a lot of their precious time to get their message across; the bulk of material on ‘The Futureheads’ was easily shy of the three-minute mark. This time round it’s pretty much closer to four minutes, with one song even straying over. OK, so it’s hardly Yes, but you wouldn’t be wrong to call ‘News And Tributes’ a progressive album – in all the best ways.

“It was very important to us to come out with something dissimilar to the first album,” says guitarist/singer Ross Millard. “There are that many bands that sound like that now it would have been embarrassing to make another record like that.

“The last one was very much of the moment, with us showing off how many ideas, tempos, quick turns and twists we can throw into one-and-a-half minutes of music played at 160mph. This time we wanted more space in the music, less complex guitar, looser drums and a more timeless feel to the record. We wanted to prove we were more than a 180bpm one-trick pony.”

To engender this sense of space, the band left the town for a place where there actually was some space; a farm studio outside of Scarborough. Whereas their debut was recorded in the “laboratory” atmosphere of a slew of London studios, ‘News And Tributes’ came about among the light and isolation of rural Yorkshire.

Ross: “It was very important to us that we did it out of the city. Your immediate surroundings really affect you and the way you are thinking. While we’re really proud of the first record, it’s a claustrophobic affair, and was recorded under intense pressure. This time we had the opportunity to play around more, and decided to push the floodgates open on what was available to us to write in terms of subject matter and arrangements.”

Singer/guitarist Barry Hyde describes this as “an exhilarating process”. By changing everything about their methodology – producer, studio, guitars (largely Gretschs this time instead of Telecasters), ways of writing (Favours For Favours arranged without Barry for the first time) – The Futureheads sought to make a record that was “completely wide open”. “For the four individuals in the band this is a very important record,” says Barry. “We have been in control on this album and it could all have gone very wrong indeed, but luckily everything seemed to flow without being forced, and to us it proves we can do anything.”

The band were all still pretty young when they wrote the material that would later make up their debut – even now they are all under 25 – and the early songs were written to be played live at shows round their native Sunderland, with no notion of ever recording them. When they did attempt to get them down on tape it was all about capturing the energy of the live shows and what they now call “bombarding” the listener.

“When you start off playing really fast punk songs you are going to end up sounding like a really fast punk band,” says Barry. “This time we really wanted to have no obvious influences on this record, just to make music that we love.”

The music they were listening to in the run-up to recording was different too; out with the post-punk of Wire et al and in with Tom Waits, Fleetwood Mac and Bruce Springsteen (although none of these are remotely detectable on ‘News And Tributes’).

In fact, the impulse to make Really Fast Punk Music hasn’t entirely deserted them. Opener ‘Yes/No’, second track ‘Cope’ and instrumental belter ‘The Return of the Beserker’, all offer everything a Futureheads thrill seeker could hope for in terms of paint blistering riffage and desperate unhinged urgency. ‘Yes/No’ may, or may not, be the sound of confusion, a battering ram bi-polar convictions, but, as Barry sings, “I don’t believe it’s right to explain such a complicated thing”. Either way, it’s a cracking sit-up-and-pay-attention start to anyone’s sophomore record.

‘Cope’, with its indignant hook of “How dare you!?”, rachets up the patented Futurehead four-part harmonies to new levels, and throughout ‘News And Tributes’ the vocal arrangements are – as you might expect – both hugely effective and highly original. ‘The Return of the Beserker’, for its part, was written (or rather, made up) and recorded spontaneously, completely live, and its runaway bus white-knuckle ride is even more impressive once you know that fact.

Elsewhere, however, the ground has been radically shifted and the new landscape is both strange and inviting. First single, ‘Skip To The End’, ‘Burnt’ and ‘Thursday’ all reveal the space the band were seeking - and found - with producer Ben Hillier. ‘Skip To The End’ is airy and positive, almost funky even, driven as it is by clattering rim-shots from drummer, and brother of Barry, Dave Hyde

‘Burnt’ - perhaps the furthest The Futureheads have strayed from their blueprint of old - is an eerie and melancholy song about “getting the shit kicked out of you in a relationship”. But with great drums! ‘Worry About It Later’ is all about the voices and harmonies, their influence-free sound revealing perhaps just a touch of mid-period Townsend/Daltrey in its rising choruses and urgent yodels.

Later, Ross’s ‘Back To the Sea’ will prove that in terms of vocal arrangements the Futureheads are out on their own, the meshing and interweaving of their voices both sublime and unique. ‘Favour For Favours’ sees vocalists taking turns with verses over the catchiest of guitar motifs, to truly breathtaking effect. While elsewhere, on ‘Thursday’ there may be glimpses of Fifties doo-wop harmony groups.

Pretty much central to the record comes title track ‘News And Tributes’, Another Ross song, this time about the Munich air crash that killed much of the Manchester United team nearly fifty years ago. As with a lot of the record, the song sees The Futureheads expanding their sphere of lyrical interest by writing about other stuff than their day-to-day lives.

“We’ve expanded by writing fewer lyrics,” demurs Barry, in reference to the dense verbiage that characterised much of their debut. “We’re trying to make all the lyrics count a bit more and make the album work as a whole. I believe bands should make albums not just singles. If you like a song by a band you want to hear the rest of the songs by that band.”

By the time you’ve reached the warm and heartfelt sentiments of ‘News And Tributes’, it’s clear that The Futureheads have made a perfectly pitched second record. The flow and dynamics of the songs and the way they play off each other proves that the band’s desire to outstrip themselves musically and lyrically has with this triumphant record become a reality.


‘News And Tributes’ is released by 679 Recordings on May 29th.

Yes/No
Cope
Fallout
Skip To The End
Burnt
News & Tributes
Return Of The Berserker
Back To The Sea
Worry About It later
Favour For Favours
Thursday
Face



‘Skip To The End’ is released on May 15th


The Futureheads are:
Barry Hyde (vox / guitar)
Ross Millard (vox / guitar)
Jaff (bass / vox)
Dave Hyde (drums / vox)


The future starts here…


Press release from May 2006








All the latest news on THE FUTUREHEADS can be found by going to their MySpace section at: http://www.myspace.com/thefutureheads


1st ALBUM (2004):





JULY 2006:

"Worry About It Later" is the next single to leap forth from THE FUTUREHEADS second album ‘News And Tributes’ and is out on 7th August.


‘Future generations will be able to clone whole albums from this single strand of Futureheads DNA’ - 8/10 NME

“News And Tributes is pop music made by DIY heads, accessible sounds made by young men loath to sell their intelligence down the river.’- 4/5 Uncut

‘Again The Futureheads are just that one step ahead of everybody else. This album reaffirms that they are some of the best and innovative songwriters in Britain, and have been for some time.’ - Artrocker

‘The Futureheads’ finest material to date, stretching the band’s musical boundries but avoiding any distortion of what has already become a distinctive sound.’ - 9/10 Rock Sound

‘A unique force in modern pop’ - Q Magazine.