Story Books

by Emily Pratten

Where are you from, and how did the band come together? We’re from Kent, mainly - a couple of us are from London. We’ve been together as this formation for two years or so now, and we’ve been doing various things really. Kris and Rob were in a band a while ago and I actually interviewed the guys as a band when I was doing some work for a radio station before I actually joined the band, so that’s a bit funny.

Who would you say your musical influences are? I’d say individually we’re all pretty unique and into our own thing, but in terms of influences for the band as a whole it would be The National, Local Natives, and Wild Beasts. Each of our personal influences and ideas get taken on board when we’re producing the songs which is really cool.

What sort of music are you listening to at the moment? New stuff? Well I really like the new Sigur Ros, the latest stuff is really really cool. Volcano Choir a few of us are into, and Bon Iver continues to be a big feature as well. Most of us are big fans.

Your debut EP Too Much A Hunter is out now. Is there more production in the works? Yeah, there’s another EP coming out hopefully by the end of this year. And then who knows? We’d like to do an album at some point. We’ve been recording for the last few weeks, and we’re going to be mixing when we’re up in Scotland on tour, so it’s on our minds a lot. Definitely.

What’s your favourite song you’ve written as a band? If you could recommend one song that new listeners of Story Books could listen to that would best portray your general sound, what would it be? Good question! Um, I think the song that we first released and the song that people were listening to was Peregrine. It was the first song people heard and got a few bits of Radio 1 play but I think it portrays a lot of the elements of the band in that one song; it changes up quite a lot which is really cool.

How do you like touring, and are there any upcoming dates? No tour of our own just yet - this is only our second tour! We toured with King Charles previously and actually played at the Cavern here in Exeter which was awesome. We’re doing some shows with Public Service Broadcasting later on this year, so be on the look out for that!