UK buzz band Fanfarlo recently made an appearance on the Twilight soundtrack with “Atlas”, and now they’re 2009 album Reservoir has finally been released in Australia, too! I spoke to bassist Justin Finch during one of his brief breaks at home in London, about touring, baseball, music videos and plenty more… read on!
Not long now before you guys head down to Australia, but you’re making your way over to Iceland first! That’s just around the corner!
Around the corner!! *laughs* Comparatively I’m sure! Yeah that’s going to be great! I’ve always wanted to go to Iceland, we’ve got friends out there. And it’s a beautiful place I gather.
Yeah, from what I’ve seen it’s a pretty incredible spot.
They’ve done a pretty good job of making you want to go there!
So you’ve got a pretty hectic month ahead of you by the looks of things.
Yeah, but to be fair it is rolling onto the end of things now. Our touring schedule prior to this has been intense, but now, like I said, we’ve got a few days off. Admittedly, we’ll be running around for a good month, going to Australia and Japan. But after that we’re going to be hauling ourselves into a rehearsal space and writing a new album which is already starting to come together. So we’re super excited about the last few months of this year.
Have you been writing much on the road?
No, not really, writing doesn’t happen on the road. It’s best for a band like us, at the moment – the road’s not a place for writing. It’s too intense. But when we get back home to London, then the writing happens. And we’ve been making a real effort in the last month or so to get together and do stuff. We’re really really excited about it.
And it has been a year and a half now since you first released your debut album, Reservoir – which was finally released in Europe in April, and now Australia has it as of last month (June)! Has that staggered release helped you guys ease into some worldwide exposure do you think, or with the internet are release dates irrelevant these days?
I don’t know. To be fair, that’s not really our job to worry about that. We let the record label guys think about that. To be honest we don’t really know if it’s a help or a hindrance. I guess staggering it like that means we can take our time and concentrate on places where it was going well, where it was originally released. If it has done well, we can go back. Where maybe if we had done it all at once, we would have been very much in demand all at once. So I guess the way I see it it’s probably better. But I have no idea!
You’re just taking it as it comes, which is the only way to roll!
Yeah, it’s the only way to do it. We were told to not think about it if we can, because if we think about the logistics like this, it just gets too much! The performance and making good music, that’s our job.
So you went to your third SXSW this year – can you talk a bit about the documentary Brian Gonzalez made about your experience there?
Yeah, that was pretty interesting wasn’t it? Quite an intense experience, too, having that done by Brian. I mean we had a camera in our face the whole time we were there. We were just doing so much. Of course thing with Brian didn’t just end up as a fly on the wall documentary, there was a whole lot of acting and things like that going along with it. So it was hard work. But we’re pleased we’ve done it. We wanted to create some sort of visual short film, if you like, for a long time, as a band. And this was our first step in trying to realise that. So we were really excited. It was pretty intense.
You certainly picked a intense event, too!
Yeah of course – and that was the main reason we wanted to do it there. But it was good. It made it excited to have a camera on your back the whole time. We were recording there too, on our days off. We had no time off! On our days off we were either standing in a river freezing cold or we were in the studio recording another song.
You re-recorded “Atlas” for the Twilight soundtrack there, right?
Yeah.
Was it exciting to be back in the studio after so long?
Yeah, it was totally exciting to get back there, everyone realised that being in the studio was like a vacation. And it was fun to work with Mike McCarthy, who is a really great producer – he’s worked with …Trail of Dead and Spoon, so he was a really cool guy, and we’d been aware of his work before. So it was fun, just for a few days, to work on that. To just be able to focus on one song and really try and make it something.
You recorded the original album in the USA as well, didn’t you?
Yeah, in Connecticut.
How come you went to the States to record and you didn’t do it back at home?
Well I think at the time, it was really quite ritualistic for us that we really needed to get away from our home and record this album. Spend it in one place, in a house, in a studio and stay there for six weeks. We kind of thought if we do it at home, if we do it in London, we would have just gone home, and it wouldn’t really have interrupted our lives that much. And we were worried that we would have been too distracted.
So the concept of just dropping everything else and just focusing on this one thing, we felt was quite important for us. A ritualistic thing.
So I just watched your latest music video “Fire Escape” for the first time. One of my favourite music video directors, Jamie Thraves, came on board to direct it. How did that concept come about? Obviously there are two versions – one which is very dark, and another which is on the brighter side.
Well we really wanted a dark video for a very very poppy song, you know? It was that simple. At this stage in the way we think about Fanfarlo, we’re trying to turn our back on being so bright and light and uplifting. And the last video that we made for this song, we made a video years ago, a friend of our did it. Bless her, but it was so twee! And we feel a million miles away from it. So we thought, this is such a poppy song, wouldn’t it be great to have a really miserable video.
Well not miserable, a dark video. I mean Jamie’s treatment really felt that. Admittedly, we wanted something that looked a bit like a movie, too. And I think there’s a funny edge to it too.
This might have been just me, but I did feel a bit of a Monty Python element to it.
*laughs* Well I don’t know! I mean we didn’t write the video, but the whole time we were recording it, Jamie was saying “this is funny right, this is comical!” – And we were just like “OK?” because we weren’t really expecting any comedy, so I think that very well may have been part of Jamie’s idea. Quite a darkly comedic edge to it, which I think definitely existed. It doesn’t take itself too seriously.
So as we reach the end of our interview, we’ve got to talk about your Australian tour – I know it’s your first time down here as a band, but have you been here before?
No, not at all! I’ve never been over that side of the world. So I’m incredibly looking forward to it.
It must be a unique way to experience a new culture, to go there in a band.
Yeah, it definitely is. I feel like we do really get involved though. For the very short amount of time we’re there, I do feel we get to know these places a little bit. I think it’s a good way of doing it. I couldn’t imagine doing it any other way.
The Splendour lineup’s pretty great too, are you looking forward to being amongst it?
Looking forward to the Strokes! It sounds awesome.
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On a sidenote, we briefly discussed the World Cup, and Justin mentioned he much prefers Baseball. He’s an avid supporter of the Chicago White Sox! And that’s your fun fact of the day.
Don’t miss Fanfarlo when they arrive in Australia for Splendour in the Grass & Sideshows!
Sydney
Mon 2 August – Gaelic Club
with guests Guineafowl and Wim
supported by The Brag
Tickets from Moshtix and Civil Society
Melbourne
Thu 5 August – Northcote Social Club
with guests Alex (Oh Mercy) and Dancing Heals
supported by Beat
Tickets from the Venue and Civil Society
