Wild Beasts Interview

Wild Beasts typify the exciting music that has been coming out of Leeds the past few years, evocative, honest and occasionally catching you off guard with the bands vocals shared by Hayden Thorpe with his emotive falsetto and Tom Fleming’s deeper croon. Now located in the capital and touring the globe they haven’t forgotten their first gig in Leeds “terrible, just awful” or the friends and fans they have made there. Ahead of the bands set at Beacons Festival we talk to Tom find out about the evolution of their albums and misconceptions about the band. 

You toured for two straight years, did you ever feel disconnected from things?

Not necessarily, it’s very easy to go into ‘poor me I have to tour the world’ you know what me? I think it’s more like anything, imagine if you were away from home a lot of the time and trying to have a normal life as well, it’s a tug of war. It’s not that it’s not worth doing, it’s just that it changes the dynamic of course. You can’t come home to your girlfriend every night, it’s just not possible. I think it’s necessary for musicians to put their stuff on the road and also think it’s up to them to try and keep your feet on the ground, remember why your doing it in the first place and not get caught up in the distractions. 

When Katie Harkin from Sky Larkin has joined for your live set, did it change the dynamics having a female on board?

Effectively she is helping us out on stage, I think Katie is too good a writer and musician and singer to actually stay with us forever. She has been wonderful, we have known her from way back and she has fit into the machine beautifully, she has been great to tour with.

Do you think there are any misconceptions about the band?

I am sure there are. I think for the most part people know what we are doing now. We have been accused of being over serious or being pretentious, we have also been accused of being to silly, I don’t know. Put it this way, it used to bother me and it really doesn’t anymore. I think to an extent we have a body of work now and hopefully it has it’s own kind of logic, we can kind of trace that back.

Delilah Interview

She wrote her first song at 12, signed to Island records at 17 and now aged 21, Delilah (born Paloma Stoecker), has already toured the world with Chase and Status. Having been brought up surrounded by musicians, her mother and late stepfather were involved in independent record labels and her father a club in Camden, her musical influences are far reaching and helped shape her unique style of dark, sparse, soulful pop. Before her performance at M Fest we spoke to her about the album, how far she has come and living on a bus with 18 men.

How did you decide on the album name?

‘From The Roots Up’ came from a mixture of things really. I changed my name to Delilah, it was my great grandmothers name, when I was investigating the real meaning to it, it was someone who up roots and I sort of took that and played with it. ‘From The Roots Up’ just kind of symbolised the beginning of something and growth, it made sense.

It was three years in the making; did you know straight away it was finished?

You do, you mess around with it and then suddenly it’s done and your like ‘oh wait it’s all done now that’s great.’ It didn’t all come together too easily, it took a long time going back and forth but when we put that last little note in and mixed it all down it was a moment of insane cheers.

What themes do the songs cover?

I guess it’s about life. I would sum it up like that. I know it’s a very broad statement but it’s about life and falling in love and falling out of love, falling back in love again, relationships, whether it be with your friends or family, yourself, all of that.

All songs are written or co-written by you, did you consider songs by other writers?

It wasn’t even something we thought about, it was just something that I’ve always done. I signed as a writer and I continued to do that while we were making the album. I started writing a lot of these songs for myself, I wasn’t writing for an album. It was just me going through stuff and needing to express it. I was always going to write the album because it’s an album about my life.