English rock band Boston Manor have been making quite an impact within the scene since the release of their debut album in 2016. Now, over eight years later, the group are getting ready to release their fifth studio album, Sundiver, which is serves as a contrasting second part to their 2022 album Datura. Recently supporting Trophy Eyes on tour, I had the pleasure of catching up with lead singer Henry Cox pre-show at The Forum to chat about their upcoming release.
You’ve got Sundiver coming out this Friday, I understand it’s a contrasting album to your previous release Datura, was it always the intention to create a two-part album?
“So the concept of a double album, or twin albums, was conceived from jump. We knew when we started writing Datura that we were going to do Sundiver and that there was going to be this part two piece to it and we also had laid out some of the framework of the record..but we deliberately didn’t want to write it until after we finished writing Datura. We didn’t want to write something and then have to wait so long before we released it and to get tired of it. We wanted it to be very current to us musically, but we also wanted it to come from a very natural and genuine place emotionally and lyrically. We wanted to be able to still write about what was going on in our lives at the time. And we didn’t want to cynically do that ahead of the time, if that makes any sense. So we kind of wrote, I guess, a blueprint, and then we’re like, ‘we’ll come back to this in a year’s time,’ which was hard to do.”
And as far as the writing and recording process, was that the same across both albums?
“So they were recorded in really contrasting places by pure circumstance. Our producer moved, we recorded Datura in the very centre of London. And it was the winter and the studio that we were recording in recorded a lot of famous records, mostly like techno and electronic stuff. And there’s no windows in there or anything. And then our producer moved out to the countryside in this really lovely like, green belt town that has trees and meadows everywhere and stuff. And he basically bought this place that had a studio on its property and we recorded it in the summertime, so we were just out grilling every day, like chilling in the garden and just sunbathing in between takes. So really, really opposite processes but not deliberately – sort of just worked out that way.”
You guys are opening for Trophy Eyes currently, and in September they’ll be returning the favour on your European tour, what can you tell me about that relationship?
“Yeah, they’re just our really good friends. I absolutely love them to pieces. We’ve known them for- getting close to a decade now, you know. We started in 2016, started touring together. And by pure circumstance, we ended up on the same sort of tours, I think three times in a row in 12 months. So we just spent such a long period of time with them. And you know, I’ve known those guys so long, they’ve sort of seen relationships come and go, they’ve seen us become parents, they know my family, we know each other really really well so it’s really lovely to be able to keep doing this and I’m so glad it worked out this way that we get to essentially tour swap, which is fun.”
Apart from Trophy Eyes, are there any other artists or people in your personal life who you think truly made you feel seen as an artist?
“Wow okay that’s a great question. Seen as an artist? In a way I think I’m always grappling with that I think. To be totally candid with you, I don’t think we’ve ever had that elder statesman figure, in either music or the wider scene, ever really vouch for us. And in a way that’s kind of made us a bit scrappy. We’ve always felt like we’re kind of doing this on our own a little bit, which of course we’re not. We have an amazing team around us, but we have never had that cosign from a bigger artist, and we’ve never really had an artist mentor us. And sometimes I think that would have been really helpful. We definitely had to navigate certain career challenges or just experiences that no one prepares you for when you get through certain stages in your career… I would have loved to have had that bigger, older band advise us on how to navigate those waters and we never really had that.
When I say that, I can’t say that I’ve also done the same for quote unquote smaller- whatever that means- smaller artists. But I suppose I think that’s because I don’t feel that we’re big enough to necessarily make that legitimate, but that’s all subjective as well. Because to some, like when I was a kid, I thought the band that was headlining the little venue around the corner from me was the biggest band in the world. So it’s all relative, isn’t it? But yeah, I suppose ‘seen as an artist’ is a really interesting one because you then start to get into ‘what does that mean? What does that mean to you? And do you need somebody else to make you feel seen as an artist?’ I don’t feel like I need anybody’s permission to make art, but I also sometimes think that if you act like you don’t give a fuck about anybody’s opinion, I think you’re lying as an artist. Because I think every artist has that need for validation whether they want to advertise or not.”
Boston Manor has a really unique and visually pleasing aesthetic with everything from your videos to merch, is that something that you guys have a lot of involvement in?
“Thank you, yeah I do a lot of it. Not all of it, for the music videos we work with a lot of really talented filmmakers like Zak Pinchin and Tom Dream. We also have an incredible photographer that we work with called Nick Barkworth- check him out on Instagram, his handle is his name- but he does just the most stunning documentary photography of Blackpool which obviously is the town that we’re from and which is a huge part of what we do and our aesthetic and everything so we’ve been lucky enough to have him helping us out with all the photography across these albums, from the covers to some of the insert stuff. But I design a lot of our merch and do our album covers and stuff, so thank you for saying that, I appreciate that. And I’m super lucky that the guys trust me with a lot of stuff like that and I get to have a bit of creative freedom.”
Lyrically, your work is quite introspective and personal. Does that come naturally for you or do you find it difficult open up in your writing?
“I’ve found it really difficult. I listened back to our first record recently; I hadn’t listened to it in quite a long time and I was quite surprised by how candid it is and how ‘heart on the sleeve’ it is. I think a lot of that comes with being younger and more angsty, I was quite impressed, actually. I was like ‘I don’t think I could write like this anymore’… Sometimes I don’t think I naturally am very good at writing, I suppose for lack of better term, blunt lyrics that are personal. I prefer to make things a little bit more open-ended, you know? But that also comes down to taste. I’m in awe of people that can write very beautifully and candidly and tell stories about their own experiences but I’m not able to do that, I just don’t have the talent. I quite like lyricists that can be quite playful and I suppose lyrical with their lyrics and do stuff that creates a lot of imagery that gives you a feeling rather than walking you through the steps of what the song’s about, you know? That comes more naturally to me, but when I think about the artists that I listen to a lot, that tends to be the style of them as well, so maybe that’s just what I’ve grown up listening to, I don’t know.”
You’ve been playing a couple of tracks off of Sundiver during this tour, how has the reception to the new stuff been and what other tracks are you keen to play live?
“I’m absolutely over the moon. I just can’t wait to play all of it, to be honest. We did those few headline shows on this tour, and we played two songs that haven’t been released yet. So that was a really interesting experience to get to see a completely genuine reaction to some music that they haven’t heard before. We haven’t ever done that before. But there’s a song on the record called ‘Fornix’, which I love. We’ve been sound checking with it, but I think that’s a song that works really well live. It is probably the best summary of the record, if you were to pick one track off it. So I’m excited for people to hear that and then to be able to play it, with people hopefully singing the words as well. Yeah, that’d be great.”
Sundiver is out September 6th. Read our five-star review HERE and be sure to stream it wherever you listen.
To keep up to date with Boston Manor, check out their website. You can read Sarah’s review of the show in Melbourne at Melbourne Forum HERE.
