‘Amnplify Snapshot’

BRITISH INDIA

Interviewer: Chelsea Wood

It’s been less than a year since Australia’s favourite Indie rockers, British India, released their critically acclaimed sixth studio album, ‘Forgetting the Future’, and they’ve recently announced a national tour supporting new single, ‘Midnight Homie’. Kicking off in Bendigo in May, ‘The Midnight Homie Tour’ will see the band visiting regional and metropolitan cities throughout Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland; all before finishing up at The Gov in Adelaide on July 6th.

Chelsea Wood recently caught up with vocalist and lyricist Declan Melia to chat about tour planning, crazy sleep patterns and the change of direction that led to ‘Forgetting The Future’.

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Hey guys! So you’ll be heading back out on the road for your Midnight Home Tour that begins in May. How’s the planning going for that?

Well to be quite honest there hasn’t been much planning so far. In fact this is the longest stretch of time that we’ve ever taken off. It’s nice though, we’re sort of letting it creep back up on us so that when it comes we can’t resist it. About a week before the shows start back up we’ll get together in some pokey little room somewhere in the back alleys of Melbourne, the danker the better really, and have some laughs and see if we can still play music together. It’s not necessarily that we will play through the songs we plan to play, we’ll just play whatever comes into our heads to try and shake some of the fuzz off. Old songs, covers, new songs, whatever we feel. I’m looking forward to it to be quite honest.

The last tour was huge! Have you been itching to get back on the road again?

Well yes and no. The thing about our tours is they sort of wipe you out. Often by the end of them we’re all a bit like at the end of Apocalypse Now, streaked in blood and whispering ‘the horror, the horror’ to ourselves. So a bit of a break is always nice. Strangely though it all comes back around and you want to flex the muscle again, the country would miss us if we didn’t. We’ve only done the one tour since putting out the last record ‘Forgetting The Future’ so it only seems right that we do another lap of the country before then.

What can we all expect from this tour?

I think people should just come down expecting to have a cool time. Our shows have always been all about people coming together to jump around to loud music and have a bit of a party. It’s not about perfectly executed renditions from our back catalogue, our best shows are the spontaneous ones, where not even the band knows what’s going to happen next.

Are there any songs from Forgetting The Future, that you’ll be playing for the first time?

Yes! On the last tour we got a lot of requests for the last track on the record ‘I was looking back at you to see you looking back at me’ so we’ll put that one in the setlist every other show. Other than that we try and keep it pretty spontaneous, the only thing we definitely wont play is ‘Absolutely Disgusting’, but that’s because I don’t know all the words!

On the single Midnight Homie now, I feel like it adds a fun party vibe to the album, is that the vibe you want to the tour to follow?

That’s the vibe we want all the tours to follow! Yeah, it being a fun song was part of the reason we chose to release it. A lot of folks who know us for ‘I Can Make You Love Me’ and ‘Summer Forgive Me’ think we’re a very serious band, but we’re also a band that’s always loved pop and punk as much as more emo and progressive stuff.

How do you choose the setlist for the tour?

Well, like every band, there are some songs – big singles – that the audience just needs to hear, but apart from that we’re now free to be really spontaneous. With five albums, all of which have a part to play in our story, there are lots of songs we can draw on to put the setlist together. It’s just a matter of walking that line between what the audience digs and what keeps the band feeling loose and free. My ideal partner would be assertive, do you agree? Very much? Not very much?

‘Midnight Homie’ follows ‘My Love’ and ‘Precious,’ what prompted the decision to release this next?

Well, to be honest, when we had wrapped up the recording of the album none of us could really decide which of those three songs could be the first single release, as far as we were concerned we would be happy with either so we left it up to the label and management. A flip of the coin really. It was cool to release ‘Homie’ first though because it’s a little more fun, whereas ‘My Love’ and ‘Precious’ are pretty heavy, serious songs, it’s a bit more lighthearted. I’m really happy that we can do both and our audience are cool to follow us there.

All your music videos have such cool concepts behind them, do you guys have much influence over this?

Hehehe not really, pretty early on we decided to leave that sort of stuff to the professionals. I find clips really stressful, it’s so hard to determine what will work and what wont work based purely on the pitches, then sometimes there are great clips that don’t seem to connect with the audience! It’s such a roll of the dice man!

Back to the tour, are you heading to any venues that you haven’t played before? Are you playing any old faves?

Every tour is a combination of old favourites and new unexpected ones, it’s jumping between the two that make each tour unique and unpredictable.

Forgetting the Future is such an energetic and honest album, do you think you’ve found a new sound?

Well yes quite frankly I do. It took us a long time in the studio to find the right balance of audio sophistication and raw emotion, it’s something we’ve been striving for more or less our whole career. It was really just a matter of taking our normal approach to writing but then when it came to recording we had to do it in ways we hadn’t done before. Oscar Dawson, our producer on this one, helped us a lot with that.

Did this sound happen naturally or did you shift your creative focus? Does it reflect where you’re at as a band currently?

I really believe that it’s important to shift your creative focus with each project. It doesn’t do to keep writing and recording the same record over and over, not just from a careerist point of view but also from a personal point of view, you need to put a little bit of yourself – where you are in that moment – into each project. In that way records are like bookmarks in the pages of your life.

Lastly, you’ve toured countless times, do you have any favourite tour memories?

It’s not exactly a fond tour memory but on the last tour I did two shows in a row without sleep. We played Friday and Saturday and the last time I had slept was Wednesday night. I was having a lot of fun I wont deny but, yeah, towards Saturday afternoon things started to feel pretty weird. I have severe fear of missing out so sometimes you do stupid things like that. I Wouldn’t recommend it though.

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