Sivu

Where are you at the moment then? I’m in London at the moment. I had a couple of days off after Exeter so I’ve kind of come home to chill and then I’m off again tomorrow so yeah, it’s all good.

Cardiff tomorrow, isn’t it? Yeah it’s Cardiff and then a load of Cornish places.

Yeah I saw you were making a feature of stopping off at a load of places in Cornwall and Devon and stuff which is great because not many people do that many stops down in the South West. Yeah I mean that’s kind of why we thought we’d do it. I toured with Nick Mulvey a couple of months ago and we did a few dates in Cornwall and they were just really great shows. Because the whole thing is really stripped back we thought it would be cool to go and play at these tiny little places, and they’re all free as well, which is really cool. It’s gonna be really fun. It’s really surprising that no one stops so much because the crowds are really good down there. There’s always such a good turn out.

Now that you’re at home, away from the tour, what do you do in your free time? Do you have any time to be a Netflix slob? To be honest the last two days have consisted of that. Kind of like been sitting around, and I just watched a bit of Countdown. The last two days have been literally nothing. I feel bit guilty to be honest.

Are you into film at all? Did you see any of the Oscars? I didn’t. I saw Birdman, which I thought was amazing. I really liked that. I want to get to see Whiplash. I do watch a lot of films but to be honest with you I do watch a lot of really rubbish films, like easy to watch kind of stuff.

What’s the last gig you went to? Other than yours obviously. I saw Rae Morris play in London. She played in Brixton. My house is literally five minutes from there. That was awesome.

I was there actually. It really was great. Do you have any gigs coming up? I’m going to see The Staves. I’m really lucky because doing festivals over the summer means I get to see a lot of people I really want to see. I saw Maricka Hackman’s album launch the other day, which was insane. It was ridiculously good.

Have you got any festivals booked in for this summer? I’m not actually going to do any festivals this summer, which is really painful. It’s difficult, but we kind of thought about it and we kind of want to work on the next album over summer. It kind of was like we can do it again and do the similar stages that we did last year or take a year out and get the new album done and then come back and move upwards. I’m gutted not to be doing any festivals though. I saw the Latitude line-up today and that’s insane. It’s probably one of the best line-ups I’ve ever seen actually.

Are you gonna go to Latitude? I might do. I don’t know if it’d be too painful to go when I’m not actually playing but I might do. I’d love to go on the day that Alt-J are playing; and SOAK is playing and I really love SOAK.

A few funny questions now that go in a fairly dark direction that we’re now in the habit of asking people to mix things up a bit. Oh that sounds great, yeah, do it.

If you were a serial killer what would be your weapon of choice? I don’t know. I’m not very physical so it couldn’t be anything like that. It’d have to be like a sniper rifle or something that you could do from a distance.

What would your last meal be on death row? Wow. Ummmmm. That’s so hard! I would probably like…can I have three courses?

Yeah go for it. Okay for starters I’d probably have duck pancakes or something like that, and then for a main I’d have something like a pie, a meat pie with chips and gravy. For dessert I’d have a chocolate brownie, like a really really good chocolate brownie. Or a Ben’s cookie.

What’s a Ben’s cookie? Oh my god have you never had a Ben’s cookie? They’re amazing. When you’re in London next you have to go. They’re so good.

That’s cool. And what’s your favourite pub or place to drink in London? I’m spending a lot of time in Brixton at the moment because that’s where the studio is, and I spend a lot of time in the White Horse there, which is good.

Are you a beer man? What’s your drink? I am a beer man, yeah. I’m actually verging more onto ales and stuff now.

You’re getting old, you really are. I know it’s bad isn’t it. To be honest, it’s since I started touring because the people in my band are just real beer snobs so before I’m like ‘oh a Fosters will do’ but now I can really appreciate it.

What’s your favourite song to do live on tour at the moment? I think because the songs are really stripped back for the tour there’s a really old song called ‘God Speaks in Tongues’ which is really good really stripped back. Because the whole tour is really stripped back we’ve had to strip all of the songs right down, so a song on the album called ‘Sleep’ which is a really big song is now really chilled, but that’s normally my favourite one.

Do you have things for the new album written already? I normally write everything beforehand. Because the first album took so long to put out that once that album was done I’d already started writing, so I actually have about 30 songs written already. So I take those in, the bare bones of it, and then in the studio we layer it up and build it and see what fits.

Who would you really love to collaborate with? I would love to work with Wild Beasts, I think that’d be amazing. They’re like my favourite band. Or East India Youth, it’s kind of this dancey vibe. I’ve been really lucky actually, like with Rae Morris. I really love her and it was really great to do a song with her, and Maricka Hackman. So two of my favourite artists I’ve already been lucky enough to work with.

What are you currently listening to at the moment, between Countdown episodes? I haven’t been listening to too much music in the last couple of days but in the car we listen to a load of stuff. There’s this guy called Cass McCombs and I was given his album by a friend and that has been played quite a lot. The new Alt-J record got rinsed pretty hard as well actually. It’s so good.

Yeah oh my god Bloodflood part II. Also I just interrupted you, sorry, I was going to tell you about this great track I heard yesterday but that’s really not the point of this interview. No no no! It is! Tell me!

It’s Haim, they sing on the new M83 track which is for the soundtrack for the new film in the Insurgent series or whatever. It’s all epic because it’s cinematic and it’s full of strings and stuff and it’s just so good. I’ll tweet you a link in a second. Please do that really does sound amazing. Do that now.