The past year has been a tough year for everyone. Although it is now 2021, we are still seeing the effects of the Coronavirus. Musicians in particular are not getting normality, not to mention personal struggles. However, when I sat down to speak to Adam Young, frontman of The Howlers, we had a genuine conversation about everything that is going on in the world, even with all the uncertainty and loss, the band and him are staying positive: ‘I’m just trying to keep my head above water and keep on tracking through it, as they say. But we will all get there together. We have just got to keep going I guess.’

I hate the spotlight being on me, as the frontman of the band that is possibly the worst type of mentality to have

The Howlers are a trio from London and have a ‘sun-soaked Californian’ or ‘sun-soaked rock’ sound, as described by Adam himself. It ‘is something that has happy tones and sad tones to it. It is expressive.’ They have received a lot of critical acclaim from their fierce live performances and are determined to uproot the current foundations of popular music, emerging as one of the UK’s must-see bands. The band themselves are very close, they are collaborative. ‘I hate the spotlight being on me, as the frontman of the band that is possibly the worst type of mentality to have.’

During 2020 with all the pressures that were ensuing the world, The Howlers were working through it together, they appeared to find inspiration and motivation all around them, even with the difficulties of not being able to play live. ‘As a band, we hold a lot of sentimentality and we are all about being a family. We are a close-knit family, and our bond is really important to us. That shows on stage as well, and with not being able to perform live it has been really difficult, but we have filled our time by working on who we are.’ Despite personal losses, 2020 appears to have been a prominent year in The Howlers career, lockdown has allowed the band ‘to really understand each other more and understand the people we work with. We work with some amazing people and we almost re-birthed the band. We tore up our set list and we wrote up a new set list with new songs that were recorded. They all have meaning with the shit we were going through both in grief and, at the time, what was all happening during the Black Lives Matter protests.’ They dealt with the year ‘the only way we know how, and that’s together.’

The process had its challenges because you have to wear everything

The Howlers were working on their upcoming EP, they had a ‘bubble of normality’ back for some time when this was being worked on in September/October. They took the sensible decision to self-isolate as a team in order to work with them all when creating this EP. ‘We lived together, we ate together, we woke up every day and went to work together. It was nice to be able to get out of all the distractions, not that there were any distractions at the moment, but we had normality for a week. The team is really special and everyone has their own little stamp on things, able to express themselves, even down to the engineer. He’s on the record, the producer is on the record a little bit, and that was really nice. The process had its challenges, of course, because you have to wear everything.’ An interesting tradition that Adam talked me through after they finish recording or working with someone ‘as a thank you, and a token of our appreciation, we always order a curry. We do a run to the nearest off license to get beers and we sit down as a family and we all eat together as a family. That’s what we did, on the second to last night, and it was lovely to actually have that atmosphere that we missed.’

we take a lot from that sort of 60s and 70s, americano, west-coast thing, that sort of sun-soaked California in the 60s

Although the band has a distinctive sound, I asked if there were any artists who had been a distinctive influence on the band: ‘We all like the same music, but we also like music that each of us sort of detests. We all connect to the 60s and 70s and Afrobeat, things like that. But then, Gus our bass player will absolutely rave off to some post-punk stuff that I just can’t stand. And Cam will go properly down the rabbit hole of 60s hippie, trunk-tree music and I’m like, man that is boring the tits off me. I’m sure I have got musical tastes that they find absolutely abhorrent but, we get asked this a lot because we have a unique sound, and especially for the UK, our sound is very unique. But we take a lot from that sort of 60s and 70s, americano, west-coast thing, that sort of sun-soaked California in the 60s. A lot of film scores, like Spaghetti Westerns, such as Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, and Quentin Tarantino, although I don’t like quoting Tarantino as he is just following in the footsteps of them. For me, our sound is our natural sound, it is not like we aim to get that sound. When we plug in together, when we sit in a room together that’s just how we sound. That’s very rare, we don’t emulate a sound, the sound just comes naturally.’

‘We hope that people see that in our music, that it is a genuine and sincere expression of ourselves. Music is an outlet of your own mind and feelings, it is unique to every person. To have people that are on the same page is rare. We had a conversation the other week that our band is not like any of them [other bands], it is very collaborative, and it isn’t dictated. We don’t really argue about music, we argue about who’s got better hair. So, I don’t like pigeonholing us to say that we influenced by specific people. We take from loads. I take as much from Fela Kuti as I do from 50 Cent. There is no such thing as true originality, you have to make something your own.’

We have been like the world’s busiest band who hasn’t played a gig, it’s mental

Indeed, in their music you can definitely tell it has a distinctive Howlers tone, individual to them and not mimicking any other sound. Although their tour for 2020 has been postponed twice, the band has not been inactive. Their new EP gives the band a new renewal of hope, ‘We have been like the world’s busiest band who hasn’t played a gig, it’s mental. But things are looking up and we have loads of good stuff coming up. We’re working with people who have had Grammy and Mercury Prize nominated albums. It’s been like holding on to this glimmer of hope. And like please, please, people like these songs.’

it was like picking your favourite child, but it was like your favourite child to throw out the door first

When I asked Adam what his favourite song was from the new EP, he said that choosing ‘three singles from it that are going to be released over the coming months, the first one is on March 5^th, was like picking your favourite child, but it was like your favourite child to throw out the door first. There is like an angry mob outside and you got to throw a kid out first. It was difficult. It’s either between the second or the third, the second is called ‘Lost Without You’ and the third is called ‘Never Enough’. ‘Lost Without You’ was the last song we wrote before going into the studio. We wrote it the week before, and we were like that actually has something. It was one of those things that got stuck in our head, so we were like, let’s just record it. Then the studio came into its own. We’re working on so much more material, we have got a lot of material that we are going to record soon as well.’ The band has begun to be more themselves this last year, they have begun to not try and make themselves sound like someone else. ‘I think one we have found our comfortability we just went fuck it, we’re just going to be more of ourselves than ever. We have just been churning them out. I would love for you to hear it and you pick your favourite. As it seems like at the moment, everyone has a different song, and you can’t then pick out this one standout really good single. Everyone goes, oh I like this one or I like this one. And it’s like man, I haven’t got enough data to correlate which one is the best.’

The band are releasing a new single soon from their EP, the song can be seen to be a representation of the band. It ‘is all about love and loss and wanting to be loved and be kind. It’s basically a description of us. We’re giving out love left, right and centre to people, but are we getting it back in kind? Not all the time. The song is aptly named, ‘I Don’t Love You All The Time’. Whoever let me name that song? It is unbelievably long.’

We ended on looking into the future of the band, I asked what Adam was looking forward to in the future. He said that ‘We are just looking for a long and successful career and just to meet people. As long as people dig our stuff and they can come to see us on stage for like an hour and leave everything going on in their life at the door, or listen to our tunes for the three minutes they’re on or whatever, then that’s all we really want to give people.’ I, for one, look forward to seeing what happens in the future for The Howlers and I cannot wait for live gigs to become a reality again.

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