The Duke Spirit Interview

The Duke Spirit has collected fans all over the world with their effervescent live performances and unique blend of squealing guitars, churning riffs, and powerful drumming. Having spent the past eight months nurturing their third album, the Duke Spirit are now ready to unleash it onto the world. We catch up with lead singer Liela Moss ahead of a free acoustic show at HMV Leeds to celebrate the release of ‘Bruiser’.

What can people expect from your new album Bruiser?

I think its pretty obvious sound wise that this is much more focused and profoundly more atmospheric, as a band we are much more galvanised. Things have been bought into a shaper focus on this record, certainly there are moments were there is more space whereas previously we had lots of smashing guitars, its still got a lot of force but perhaps more melody. The record is nursing, it’s sort of traumatic but medicinal at the same time.

We knew we wanted to strip away and make it feel learner and meaner on this trip so that’s what we have done. Rather than having lots of layers of things, which you can get carried away with making music, you want to keep adding. You want to keep playing but we resisted that and we joke that we put these songs on a diet, chopped out anything that wasn’t truly satisfying.

Free Acoustic show at Leeds HMV what was the motivation behind that?

As a fan of music it’s the sort of thing I would have done when I was first getting into music and seeing al lot of gigs before I was in a band. I would have loved that diversity of seeing a band you are going to see that night but see them playing a few shows acoustically. Seeing them in a slightly skewed perspective makes the gig more powerful and weirder. I think its weird seeing bands play in stores but a good weird.

Are you a natural lyricist or is it something you have had to work at?

It’s sort of a funny question to answer as I always feel like a bit of a fraud. No one teaches you how to write lyrics, if you are a fan of music you start to write in a way that you think other musicians do but you never really know. Certainly in the first two records I wrote in very coded ways, which is fine for me but I never really knew if it was too obscure. I just wrote instinctively, some sort of palette, some sort of poetry, words that felt delicious and worked together. For me that seems good enough.

What’s the reality of touring?

It’s such a funny thing, so much of it is repetitive and familiar and yet everyday is a complete mystery. You spend your time living in a really strange atmosphere where really stupid familiar things, the routine of getting up, travelling and unloading is so tedious that you almost loathe it. It’s kind of your friend though, you feel a strange magnetic pull to what’s going to happen tonight so you just walk in a really weird atmosphere where it swings from being great to hating it, and you just don’t know what’s going to happen.

As a band you came together organically, how do you feel about manufactured bands?

I suppose if there is some omnipotent observer going ‘you are brilliant at this, you should meet so and so because together I think you would be really good’. I think it can be really useful and it doesn’t necessarily mean that its contrived and phoney. However I suppose in the world of pop I would relate it to really phoney crappy stuff. Where people are trying to put some fairly attractive people together in a room and fingers crossed the public fall for it.

Went on a 12 day silence meditation, how was that?

It was just before we started getting down to writing. It was quite a selfishly motivated thing to begin with, it’s a course I have been interested in doing for a while that another musician told me about. I have always found that sort of world fascinating. I was so wrecked from two years of touring that I just wanted to go somewhere were I could be totally quiet, my head was just full of white noise. I went to try and calm down and it worked brilliantly and it was truly one of the most interesting experiences. I sort of started the record with another dimension in my brain somewhere and very rested vocal chords. There is none of the trappings that you might think of in terms of new age religion and things, its not about burning incense sticks, its really about the mind and brain waves. I think that I got a lot of colour to my imagination when I left and that fed into the record without a doubt.

What’s your philosophy on being in a band?

A band like us there is always something to lose so you have to at some point in your head agree that you will no longer be self conscious and worried. If you were anxious about what everybody thought you would never move forward and you would never try and you wouldn’t be expressing yourself authentically. My mission while I’m in this band has always been that I cant be anxious about what other people think and you cant be self conscious, that’s sort of the zone that I get in live really. There are moments were I am literally wrestling an imaginary beast on stage and then I am dancing to this music that we make and I am free, I’m into it, I’m enjoying it and I have an appetite to get to the end of the song, its liberating. If I was self conscious I would be terrified, I could almost think about it too much so I have to choose not to be self-conscious. That’s been the most wonderful thing about being in this band, you lose the fear. Find something liberating whatever that might be in your own world.    

Published in Yorkshire Evening Post