Interview with

CHRIS CAINES

of

COASTS

Interviewer: Kelsey Hentschel

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COASTS. Left to right: David Goulbourn, James Gamage, Chris Caines, Liam Willford, Ben Street / PHOTOGRAPH PROVIDED BY Hopkins, Ben

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Coasts is an English rock band hailing from Bristol. The 5-piece has recently come off a massive tour across the UK, following the release of their sophomore album “This Life Vol.1”. Set to bring their live show down under in January, Vocalist Chris caught up with Kelsey to have a chat about their new record and the upcoming Australian tour.

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Your first Australian tour is coming up in January, which I’m super excited for by the way. Have you ever been to Australia before?

Chris: No, none of the guys have ever been over there, but we’ve always wanted to so its really exciting to be getting down there to play a few shows.

What are you most looking forward to? Any tourist attractions you’re keen to see?

Chris: I’m not sure how long we have between shows but yeah I mean we’d love to see all of the really big main stuff that everyone wants to see you know.

You’ve just released the second album “This life vol.1”. Can you tell me a bit about the sound of this album compared to your first record “COASTS”?

Chris: The first album we wanted to do like 10 singles, and you can kind of hear that, its really upbeat, really quite punchy, really euphoric. Whereas with this second record we wanted to do it slightly differently. We worked with loads of producers on the first record. We wanted that modern kind of album sound where each song is really distinguishable, and they can be on different playlists and all that sort of thing. Where on the second record we wanted to draw that in and refine what we think we had become. There a few more songs on this record that are more down-tempo, a bit slower, more contemplative. I think this is a much more rounded record.

What have you guys been up to since the release of This Life vol.1?

Chris: We did a huge UK tour, obviously the UK is tiny, but we managed to squeeze in 38 dates into it. It was pretty insane, nobody ever really does that. We went to loads of places that bands don’t usually go to. Tiny little towns that we knew we had people that wanted to see us but maybe didn’t wanna take a 2 hour train journey to a show. We wanted to do that for the fans. We love being on tour so that was good. And we just got back and me and Liam have just been writing. We did some writing in LA, which was really cool to get away from the british weather. And now we’re back in it as you can see my hair is soaking wet! (we were on Facetime). We’re back writing, im in the studio at the moment. We’re just writing again and carrying on.

We never wanna stop we always wanna be releasing new music all the time so…

What inspired the name “This Life Vol.1” there be a This Life vol.2, vol.3 ?

Chris: Haha I don’t know. Maybe. The idea behind the name was the record was all about our 6 months to a year of being in a band, and the stress being in a band puts on relationships, and on your mental health and all that sort of thing. I came up with the name because I felt there were moment on the album lyrically where I reference that so it was kind of a running theme anyway and we felt it copulates what we were trying to say.

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What do you like to do outside of music that contributes to your artistic process?

Chris: Well it doesn’t really assist in the creative process but we love playing sport, we love going out, partying. We love food, like when we go on tour to see and sample the food that’s in each place. Like going across America was amazing, and coming to Australia is gonna be so cool especially because we’ve never been.

What’s your ultimate goal for the band? Do you want to make 10 records? Sell out Madison Square Garden?

Chris: The main thing for us is we want to have longevity. That’s why were always writing. We just want to get better as musicians, as a band. If we’re able to keep doing this for another 20-30 years that’d be a bit of a dream really. In terms of how big we want to get I think the sky is the limit. We’re super ambitious, we want to be as big as possible. And when we started out we said, “Right, we want to be as big as Coldplay”. We want to be like that kind of size. That’s always been in the back of our minds. But obviously at the moment we’re just focusing on chipping away. Keep building the fan base and we’ll get there one day.

You’ve done quite a few tours in both the US and the UK. What has been your career highlight so far?

Glastonbury was a pretty special one. We played the John Peel stage, which is quite a big tent, and that was amazing. I grew up just down the road in Bristol so playing in front of like 10,000 people that was insane. That was probably my most memorable, and most loved moment.

Do you have a favourite Coasts song?

I go in and out with different ones. At the moment “come on over” on the new record is probably my favourite. It’s got a bit of a different vibe to it from the other songs. Yeah it’s really chill. We really enjoy playing it live.

Do you ever change the lyrics in live sets?

Yeah sometimes. Not like whole verses I wont change, but like a little phrase here and there I might slip in. You’ve got to try and keep it fresh when you’re on tour and playing shows every night for sure.

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Have you ever forgotten the lyrics during a performance?

Loads of times. Yeah. My memory is awful. I’m usually pretty good. I used to be much worse. But that was just because I was lazy and I didn’t practice. Yeah I do forget occasionally, especially with like the new songs. If we haven’t played them loads that tend to just disappear. But its weird, a song will start and you’ll be thinking “oh crap I cant remember the first line” and then it’ll just come to you about a second before. Muscle memory.

Artist or band you would most like to tour with?

Loads. Uh I’d love to tour with artists that aren’t really bands. Id love to tour with Frank Ocean, someone like that. The Cure would be pretty insane to play with. Or even like The Killers, I think we’d probably fit pretty well with those guys.

If you could have another artist join Coasts who would it be?

Maybe like a girl, Rae Morris or Alessia Cara. Someone like that could be interesting. Mix it up.

Do you get much time at home these days with getting ready for these big international tours?

We have a bit of time. When we finished our UK tour Liam and I went to LA for a couple weeks to write and we’ve just come back. We have about a month off until we start touring again in January. That’s time to see family and see friends. And its nice we obviously get Christmas at home too so that’s great.

Thank you so much for having a chat with me. Cant wait to see you just in January.

Yeah no worries at all thank you. I’ll make sure to come find you at the show. Cya.

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