White Lies Interview

White Lies have become a firm favourite in the music scene and over the last few years they have toured with Kings of Leon, Snow Patrol, Coldplay and Muse. There second album ‘Ritual’ has just hit the shelves so I had a chat with drummer Jack Lawrence-Brown to find out what they make of their journey so far.

Your second album was released on Monday, can you tell us a bit about it?

I think the record is essentially a rock record, certainly more than the first. It has a lot more forays into electronic music and touches of electronic music that we have picked up over the last few years since touring the first record which I think was probably more straight forward than this one. It’s been an exciting few days, having to wait so long with it already finished and finally getting to release it was a great feeling as we have been sitting on it for about six months. It makes a difference for the live shows; it makes a difference for ticket sales and all that kind of stuff so it’s good that it’s finally come out.

You have been playing gigs all over the world, where have you had the best reaction?           

The best shows are often the ones were you’re not really expecting much or you don’t really know what to expect. I think we have had amazing shows in Poland, the first time we went there we were blown away. We weren’t really expecting much at all as we had never played there so we were really shocked at the reception over there, the same in Russia. The same with Holland, its one of our biggest markets which is kind of bizarre. I think it’s usually the ones where you’re not really sure what’s going to happen and then if you have a good show you’re much more surprised by it. We could go and play a show tomorrow in Glasgow and we know it would be an amazing show as it’s always an amazing show there. If you’ve never been somewhere and you have no real idea of how its going turn out they tend to be the best ones.

What can people expect from one of your live shows?

Really the goal for us is to do a performance that is essentially an improvement on the album, whenever we go on stage we are aiming to better the album sound and better the feeling that the album has. I think for this record especially we have really been able to push what we are going do for production and that kind of thing so hopefully it will be quite visual as well. We like to make sure we have an interesting visual show to watch, we like to make sure that its not exactly the same as the record. Yeah I think we are pretty good now, we have been doing it for quite a few years and in the last eight months especially I really feel like we have progressed.

You have supported some really great bands, is there any one else you would like to tour with?

Yeah we have played with some great bands and I would love to play with some of them again. We had a great time on tour with Kings of Leon, I think that was one of the favourite tours we have ever done. I would love to do some more touring with those guys because they are really nice guys and they look after us and we have a good time. We have supported most of the big bands now, I’m not sure who else there is for us to support really apart from maybe U2.

It’s being pretty amazing, it certainly wasn’t something we were really considering when we started the band. We were just thinking about releasing a record and doing our own shows. You forget that there are bands that require support as well. It’s been amazing for us because we have basically played in some of the biggest venues in the whole world supporting these bands so it’s a huge opportunity for us.

How has the speed at which you have gained success felt for the band?

Its something that we didn’t really notice, we started touring immediately after the first album came out so its not like we sat in the UK and gained all this hype and attention or anything like that. We just got on with touring because that was what we wanted to do so we didn’t spend much time here at all so it didn’t effect us much as we didn’t really have a minute to stop and think about it. We were always playing a show somewhere new. I don’t think it was too much too soon for us, I like to think we can continue to build our career and grow as musicians at a natural pace and we certainly had that opportunity on this record, we didn’t have to rush anything, we had as much time as we wanted so I still feel that it has been a fairly good pace for us.