Feldspar are busy chaps, they are currently into the third release of their Autumn singles series and its accompanying Compass tour, taking in all points of the country. Showcasing their brand of folk-tinged, earnest rock music, their new single ‘Beautiful People’ has a melancholic theme given life by grand arrangements and heartfelt vocals. We met with the group for a catch-up. 
‘Beautiful People’ is out now – tell us about the single? ‘Beautiful People’ is the third of our four singles this Autumn. It’s definitely the most melancholic – the first two are quite strident and big, so we thought we’d have a bit of a change of pace for November as the dark sets in. It’s a song about ageing and the way we change our attitudes to mortality as we get older. The three verses follow the course through youth, middle age, to old age and look at the different preoccupations that go with those stages of life. It’s not totally bleak – I think the most important line is ‘we are the beautiful people; we are here and we’re alive’. It’s sort of a slightly pessimistic carpe diem song.
It’s part of the four part single series to promote the ‘Compass Tour’ – what is the tour about and what was the idea behind this? We decided to release four singles in four months from September to December to do something a bit different. We could have released an EP, toured it, and left it at that, but we wanted to give each song its own space and identity. That was hugely helped by our designer Wayne Pashley who created a different design for each single based on the mineral feldspar in crystalline form. For the four releases, we’ve also had a mini tour visiting the North, East, South, and West of the UK – hence Compass Tour – which has been an excellent way to get to places we’ve never played before. Rather than selling CDs, we’ve had the artwork made into postcards, so people can buy four postcards at a gig along with a download code, so they get the music digitally but still get the physical artwork. You have to be a bit more inventive in the way you sell music nowadays, so that was our attempt at something different.
What will be the last single to released and when is it out? The last single is called ‘Hang Your Head’ and comes out 1st December, with the launch at the KPH in Ladbroke Grove on 4th Dec. It’s probably the most anthemic of the singles, so we’re hoping to round off the year and the tour with a bang. It’s more political than the previous three, dealing with frustration and anger at a political and social class that seems bent on alienating and disenfranchising ordinary people in general and young people in particular, as well as how we all conspire in our own disenfranchisement. It does have a singalong chorus though, so hopefully people won’t start shouting ‘Parklife!’ at us. Will there be an EP or album release soon? We’re going to release all four singles and some bonus material as an EP early next year. We’ll then retreat into the studio for a few months and hopefully emerge with our debut album next Autumn. We’re massively excited about making a full length release, so can’t wait to get started.
The music crossed both indie and folk – what genre would you say you fall into? We used to be a more of a folk band with touches of indie and have now progressed to being an indie band with a folk flavour to the writing. But that’s not especially helpful. As the songwriter, I grew up listening to Dylan and Paul Simon and John Martyn, so there is a folk-revival basis to some of the writing, but musically we’re very diverse, bringing elements of rock, prog, blues, and classical arrangements all together. Genre isn’t something we’re massively concerned about as long as it sounds good to us. As Louis Armstrong said, “All music is folk music – I ain’t never heard a horse sing.”
The lyrics are sometimes a little sad and sometimes they sound angry and political, what inspires you lyrically? There’s no single or repeating source of inspiration – and I rarely know what a song’s really going to be about until usually half way through writing it, or sometimes even afterwards. That sounds horribly pretentious, but writing lyrics and poetry isn’t a craft, like building a chair or telling a story. You don’t have to move from point A to point B in a logical fashion, and a lot of it is bringing subconscious thoughts up to a conscious level. Evidently for me, that process of delving into my undermind tends to be drawn towards darker subjects like anger, heartache, loss, and so on. But that’s a cathartic thing for me, and I hope it’s cathartic for other people too.
Since forming Feldspar, what has been the oddest thing that has happened to you as a band? We’ve struck up a slightly unexpected Twitter friendship with 90s pop icon and ‘Wild, Wild West’ star Samantha Mumba. For some reason, we offered her a crème de menthe if she came to a gig. She replied she couldn’t because she was in California, and anyway, it would have to be whisky. Since then, we’ve been able to rely on her for touring advice and general moral support. We hope to finally meet her in LA one day. She’s just had a baby girl. We were very pleased for her.
What’s the best thing about being in a band today? For us, it’s what’s always been the best thing about being in a band – writing music we love and getting out to play it to other people. Hitting the road in a van full of instruments to play shows to people that love your music is an incredibly powerful feeling and it’s why we all do it. You can get too caught up in the way music has changed because of the internet and downloading and iPods and everything else, but it’s still the same really – write music, play music, try and get paid for it.
Finally, describe Feldspar in 5 words. Serious, silly, passionate, drunk, self-conscious.
