Music Editor Lorcan Drury talks to alt-J’s Gus Unger-Hamilton about how the pandemic has affected the band and about making their new album
I had the absolute pleasure of talking to alt-J’s Gus Unger-Hamilton about how the pandemic has affected the band as well as delving deep into discussing their new album, The Dream, which is out now.
What do you think makes alt-J the band that it is?
I think part of it’s to do with chemistry and we got lucky when we met each other. I think there was a unique kind of compound that we made through all of our different musical backgrounds and shared inquisitiveness. If you put together a third of heavy metal, a third of classical music and a third of folky Americana and you kind of get alt-J. That was a really lucky meeting and I think coming from that is sort of like a kind of carte blanche we have from our fans and from our label that essentially means we can experiment with any kind of style of music we want. There’s no style that I can think that of that we’d be like ‘no that can’t be an alt-J song.’
You’ve mentioned that you’re inspired by so many different music, but what are your favourite artists and albums at the moment?
Gosh. I haven’t listened to masses and masses of new stuff recently. I’ve really enjoyed Little Sims a lot and albums from 2020 that I’m still listening to a lot like Michael Kiwanuka’s last album and I really like the last album by This Is The Kit.
How things changed since your last album Relaxer and how has the pandemic affected your work?
I think the pandemic gave us a sense of freedom to do what we wanted to do
I don’t think things have changed too much: our approach has always remained the same. I think the pandemic gave us a sense of freedom to do what we wanted to do and take our time with it. The pressure was really taken off and nothing was really expected from us from quickly. It was like time stood still. I don’t know if this means anything to you, but we had a sort of ‘Bernard’s watch’ situation where we could work in this temporal vacuum who which was the pandemic. And coming out of it with a new album was a very nice feeling.
So talking about the pandemic, how do you feel about touring this year? Are you apprehensive about it or do you just want to get out there?
I’ve missed our fans during the last couple of years because we haven’t been touring
A little bit of both really. If only one could wave a magic wand and get rid of the pandemic completely – that would be incredible. I’m desperate to play live, very excited to travel again and leaving the country, even leaving London! I just want to go to different places and see the fans again. I’ve felt like I’ve missed our fans during the last couple of years because we haven’t been touring. At the same time obviously I’m quite nervous about how touring is going to look and there’s a lot of uncertainty. I’d be naïve if I thought we didn’t have to cancel at least one gig this year. It seems like everyone has been cancelling or postponing gigs left, right and centre over the last two years. It’ll be strange as we’ve grown up as a band before coronavirus when none of this was a consideration. There were a million other things that could go wrong: flights could get cancelled, bags of equipment could get lost, weather could cancel a gig which has happened to us at least twice. I always took it for granted that people would feel safe being in the same room together breathing in the same air.
Now moving on to talking about your new album, I’ve noticed that all of your album’s covers really encapsulated the album. How do you think the album cover reflects The Dream?
I think it’s a strange cover which you could see from many points of view. You could say it’s quite nightmarish, you could say it’s cute, kind of charming or funny, relaxing or unnerving. I think that in many ways you could say all those things about the album. It’s quite intangible and hard to grasp exactly how it makes you feel. I think that applies both to the cover and the album.
That’s one of the things I love about alt-J, how your music is hard to describe. In other interviews, you’ve described it as having dark themes, could you expand on that?
I think that there is dark stuff going on in the album but there’s also lighter stuff. ‘U&ME’ is centred around being at a festival and being high on pills, having the time of your life. So there’s light and dark, happy and sad. I think that we don’t often discuss our influences in the studio, it’s more unspoken and instinctive.
So you chose ‘Get Better’ and ‘U&ME’ as the lead singles from the album, was there any reason for those two being picked?
I feel like they both represent opposite ends of the album. ‘U&ME’ is one of the most upbeat songs on the album whereas ‘Get Better’ is a very, very sad song. ‘U&ME’ is very much uptempo and a full band thing, ‘Get Better’ is a stripped down acoustic song, just a bit of guitar and piano. It felt like a nice way to show the breadth of the album with these two songs. At the same time, those decisions are somewhat out of our hands and are at the reserve of the label. I think ultimately the album is one of those albums where it’s hard to chose a few songs to give a flavour of what the album is like.
Did any of the songs change during the development of the album?
I think that sometimes different parts of songs were originally part of other songs. So, for example, there’s a song on the album called ‘Happy When You’re Gone’ where the riff from that actually used to be from a song we played in our student days. There’s a song that we used to play at our early gigs, don’t think we ever recorded a demo of it, but it was quite a fun song. We just got better songs and left it by the wayside. I think Joe [Newman, lead singer and guitarist] had always liked the guitar riff and was just playing around with it and ended up making a new song.
What is your favourite song from the album and why?
it’s got a big chorus that almost reminds me of Queen
I think my fave track from the album is the first track ‘Bane.’ I think it’s kinda like three songs in one and I really like it songs like that from other artists. You could say it’s like a microcosm of the album. It’s got a cool, dark, brooding, strange, build up of an intro and it’s got a big chorus that almost reminds me of Queen. It’s got catchy parts, a trip-hoppy section in the middle. It’s got medieval instruments in it, a children’s choir, so much stuff going on it that it’ll be the song that’ll take me the longest to get bored of. It’s just entertaining from start to finish. If I wanted to show somebody who had never heard our music what we were about, I think I’d play them that song. I think it says who we are as a band.
The intro sounds like it’s from an advert. Could you tell me a bit more about it?
It does. It sounds like and advert from the 50s. But it’s actually something we made ourselves. It’s our sound editor who mixes our music live on stage. It’s a bit of an in-joke really. The song is about being addicted to drinking Coke and he was once talking about how Coke can be ‘cold and sizzling.’ We just thought that was such a fantastic phrase. We loved that juxtaposition of something really hot with something really cold. So we got him to record himself saying it, then opening a Coke and drinking it. I’m well aware that a lot of people don’t like hearing people eating and drinking so it’s going to trigger some people!
I also thought the closing track, ‘Powders,’ has a really interesting outro. What more can you say about that?
It’s a little script that Joe wrote which was acted out by Tom, our drummer, and his girlfriend. We were inspired by that Elvis Presley style of putting spoken word bits into songs. Elvis did it in an overly sweet, sentimental kind of way. We thought how the song was about the first moments of teenage love in the West Coast of America and we felt it would be suitable to try something like that.
And finally to wrap everything up, what still drives the band to make music?
We haven’t touched the sides of what we can do musically
I think it’s the fact that we haven’t started boring ourselves. We’re still interested in this project. I still think we’re the same group of guys who’d meet up at one of our houses in Leeds. We were almost trying to impress each other and I still think we’re doing that. We haven’t touched the sides of what we can do musically and that’s a great feeling. I’m still curious about what Joe is going to show me and how Tom is going to respond to something I’m playing. As long as that remains the case, I think we’ll keep making music.
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