The band’s release of Driving at Night saw fans introduced to a new side of JAWS; the dream-pop group have undoubtedly continued to experiment with their sound. The band are now set to start a UK tour, which will hopefully see a celebratory atmosphere to match, or even rival, that of their last few shows.
Do you ever feel a nostalgia for the 2013 music scene you entered into with the EP’s?
Of course, it was a great time and we all gained a lot of friends from it. It definitely shaped us as a band musically. I think it was a case of Birmingham was the NME’s flavour of the week (except for about a year) and naturally they moved on. It was sad to see a lot of local bands break up in the aftermath but it never crossed our mind, we kind of just rode the wave.
Did the release of the latest album feel how you’d expected it to?
The feeling we got was kind of the same as the last one, the thing that differs is the experience of making it. Once that’s done there’s nothing to do but release it and then it’s in the hands of those who want to listen to it. So to answer your question, pretty normal.
Are there any songs from the The Ceiling you’d never play live? If so, which?
For some reason we havent got round to practicing ‘Patience’ since we wrote and recorded. I think we know our potential when it comes to playing live and that particular song we all sub-conciously know that we won’t be able to do it justice without alot of work. Maybe we’ll bring it out as a wildcard in the future.
Was the loss of the dream-like, whimsy sound a conscious decision or did it just happen?
I think it just happened. Although we were aware of the general sound we’d compliled up that point, we still went in without any concious decision to move in a certain direction, but only to push ourselves.
Do you listen to any of your own music day-to-day?
Only when we we haven’t played one in a while and need to re-learn it!
Is there a song of yours that’s like a favourite child?
Gold is seen as ‘old faithful’. It think its ended every one of our sets since it came out. I could be wrong there though.
A close second is Stay In.
I think it’a important to be seen as a unit rather than four individuals.
How much do you care about your image as a band?
I’d be lying if we didn’t take pride in our image. Lately, we’ve been putting the effort in, with the jumpsuits for example. When we see bands, we know what we like and what we don’t. I think it’a important to be seen as a unit rather than four individuals.
Would you like to shed the label of ‘indie’?
Not really, indie is such a broad umbrella to be put under that you can do whatever you want and it still be put down as indie. Which means that indie has brought us all sorts of weird and wonderful music over the years, which i’m not against being apart of. Anyway, i don’t think we’d get away with being put in the Metal section.
Why was ‘Anyway, Now’s Not The Time’ not included in The Ceiling?
In the latter stages of the process, it came to compiling the order and we felt it was a bit long and dragged a bit. We’re fans of the album format being one whole piece of work that you sit and listen to entirely (which we understand hardly anybody does now), so we decided to cut a couple of songs. Obviously we put time and effort into every song that we recorded so we felt it still had to be released because it deserved to be and we’re very proud of it.
TWELVE INCH 