The most famous band to emerge from Cambridge in recent history, Alt-J wrote their Mercury prize-winning debut album, An Awesome Wave, whilst living together in the city.
On the dole and sharing a tiny two-bedroom house, they spent their days obsessively labouring over the tracks that were to make them famous, interspersed with the odd pint at their favourite watering hole, The Maypole. It’s a period of time remembered fondly by the band, says drummer Thom Green when I catch up with him in between rehearsals for their latest UK tour.
“Cambridge had just what we needed, it had a lot of space and a lot of inspiration,” he says. “Being in a city like Cambridge, with all the colleges and all the history and the architecture – it was all really appealing. I miss Cambridge a lot. It was such an amazing place to live – and with what we were doing at that time, we knew we were onto something and we were writing our music and finishing the album. I’ve got a lot of really good memories of that time.”
Once the first album came out, success, fame and critical acclaim arrived quickly. Their interesting, impossible to classify sound – which skips between genres and blends delicate melodies and high-brow lyrics with folk sensibilities, trip hop influences and shuddering bass lines – could have easily left them on the margins of the big time. But instead, they became a surprise hit, exploding onto the scene and earning themselves the Mercury Prize, an Ivor Novello and over a million album sales, all within a matter of months.
“Winning the Mercury Prize… it sort of gives you this ticket,” reflects Thom. “It’s like people see that and think, they must be good, I’m gonna check them out. It definitely had a big impact, it changed everything.”
“Cambridge had just what we needed, it had a lot of space and a lot of inspiration”
When interviewing Thom in spring last year, just before Alt-J’s homecoming gig at the Corn Exchange, I was struck by how bewildered he’d seemed by the idea of his celebrity. Over a year on, has he grown used to the lifestyle associated with being part of a world famous band?
“It’s hard because I still don’t really feel that comfortable like, say, walking into a room and everybody knowing that I’m in Alt-J,” he says. “Physically, I feel uncomfortable, and I don’t think I’ll ever really get used to that.
“A lot of the things we do – the press and the meet-and-greets, things like that – I know that it’s beneficial and it’s a good thing to do,” he continues. “But I also know that we’re doing it because we have to play the game, you know, we wouldn’t choose to do a lot of that stuff. We only do that because we know it helps sell the album. And it’s hard. I think it’s one of the things I just wanna be in control of – I want our music and our album and our band to be seen in the right way. I don’t want to compromise my own sanity to make other people happy.”
It’s a sentiment that has added poignancy in the wake of the departure of band member Gwil Sainsbury earlier this year, who Thom says had been unhappy for some time, struggling to deal with the ‘falseness’ of the music industry. A sad time for the band, no doubt, but Thom maintains that he never feared for the future of Alt-J.
“I was worried that it would affect the other two and they would worry… But I didn’t worry about the music at all,” he says. “I knew that we could do it without Gwil. You know, it might sound bad but Gwil’s role was very much that he’d add things and make it more interesting. We knew we had the skill to do that, we could do it ourselves… It never dawned on us that the band would end or anything like that.”
They seem to have weathered the storm in their own quiet way, putting their heads down and writing new material for their hotly anticipated new album, This is All Yours, which is released this month, coinciding with their latest UK tour.
After the phenomenal buzz surrounding An Awesome Wave, it’s fair to say that expectations are pretty high. The first single to be released was Hunger of the Pine, a bold choice perhaps since it demonstrated a drastically different sound for the band. Beginning with an ominous repetitive bleeping, the song gradually layers and builds with brass elements and flickering, distorted synths, carried along by lead singer Joe Newman’s distinctive vocal.
With its ambient electronica vibe it might be more of a slow burner than an instant hit, but nonetheless it’s a track you feel compelled to listen to again and again, drawing you in with its moody, atmospheric edge. The most eyebrow-raising thing about the track though is the female vocalist, whose “I’m a female rebel” lyric loops throughout the song, cutting defiantly though the misty melody. It’s none other than controversy-courting twerk queen Miley Cyrus – but out of the context of her saccharine pop, the sample sounds hauntingly beautiful and oddly perfect for the track.
“She was following me on Twitter and I knew that she liked the band, so I asked her if she wanted a remix,” explains Thom when asked how this unlikely collaboration came about. “It’s hard to remember exactly how it happened because it was so organic, but from what I remember, we were messing around in the studio, Joe was playing a guitar riff and I was building the track, adding the synth, drums and the brass sound, and then I put the Miley Cyrus sample in there and it just worked, it was the same key, the same tempo… What she’s saying kind of worked as well. For me, Hunger of the Pine is the most important track on the album.”
The next single to be released to an eager public was the brash, rocky, Left Hand Free; again showing the band exploring a completely different sound. It was written, says Thom, in under 20 minutes from start to finish (a far cry from the painstakingly intricate song crafting of early Alt-J) and was originally a “bit of a joke”.
“Left Hand Free is different from everything we’ve done,” laughs Thom. “Joe had that main guitar riff, which we just found quite funny. It’s so unlike us, so unlike Joe. He would often play it during sound checks and stuff and do this little dance just to make us laugh. One day Gus asked him if he had any more of that and Joe just kind of made it up and went with it, then I started to play a beat to it. It’s almost like we’re playing characters! It’s very simple and straightforward, but I think it works.”
As with every band who release a hugely successful first album, there’s been talk of Alt-J suffering from a touch of the dreaded ‘difficult second album’ syndrome, but the band (while “a little bit nervous about the reaction”) are pretty sure that they’ve produced something that will blow their detractors out of the water. “I’m really confident in what we’ve done,” says Thom. “I love it, I think it’s good and I trust my judgement, and the reaction that we’ve had from the tracks we’ve put out so far has been really good. I think people will love it. I’m more excited than anything.”
This Is All Yours is on sale now.
