“I’ve positioned myself by the wi-fi, so I’d be surrounded by plants.”
This was Joe Evans’s opening comment to me at the start of this interview. So straight away, I knew this was going to go well, which is great, as his band, W.H. Lung, are not only one of the most exciting young bands on the planet right now, they’re actually very astute, and incredible songwriters to boot. After I’d told Joe that I recognised said rubber plant from the ‘Pearl In The Palm‘ video, we talked about the fabulous new record Every Inch Of Earth Pulsates, spectacular live shows, and the interesting juxtaposition of darkness and light that permeate some of the record’s songs…
God Is In The TV: In a year that I think has been the best for albums for well over a decade, it’s a credit to you that Every Inch Of Earth Pulsates is up there with the best of them. I have no doubt that it will be in my top two, come the time we have our yearly poll. It sounds like it really was a labour of love, and it also sounds like you just had the best time recording it…
Joe Evans: Oh that’s really sweet mate, thank you so much! That’s very accurate. This album definitely felt like the culmination of all the stuff that we’ve done up to this point. I remember me and Tom having a discussion about this, and we were saying that it was, kind of, both of the albums combined. So, we spent a long time actually, after the first album, trying to find what it was that was “our sound”, which I guess is the regular route, isn’t it? And then we found that was kind of long songs, synthy, passionate, working a lot with Matt Peel to discover all the sounds that we could make. And the second album, we tried to write a lot more melodies and hooks. On this one, we’ve almost, like, gone back to basics in terms of songwriting – actually trying to construct songs. It’s quite scary, I think, when you start out, because the best bands of all time are, obviously, the best songwriters of all time, and they are the best at constructing those songs, so you’re comparing yourself to the greats, and whatever you come out with early in your career won’t be matching up to that, because you’ve only just started writing. So we kind of felt intuitively naturally ready to give proper songwriting a go on this one. We’ve become a lot quicker at trusting our intuition as a songwriting partnership. So we’ll start writing a song together and we’ll work on it, and we’ll mutually find that we’ve got the ick – that’s what we call it – “getting the ick” and then we won’t work on that one anymore. So we wrote a lot more for this album than we did previously. We played a show in Sheffield – because the live show is a big part of the fabric of this band, and Ross (Orton, who produced the new album) approached us at that show and said “I get it, and I want to put it onto a record.” So, the brief was, making a record that matches the passion and intensity of the live gig. And yeah, it was a lot more fun to record, and a lot more spontaneous and intuitive. Ross is very much like “Don’t overthink it, just get it down!”
GIITTV: I hope Matt didn’t feel too pushed out, did he? Having produced the previous two, I mean…
Joe: Well, I mean, Matt has been a massive part of our story, so being in partnership with him was kind of what made us the band that we are today, and we’re tremendously grateful to him, but it just kind of felt like the right time to work with Ross in particular. He said “If you’re up for it, I have a real vision for this” and it just so happened that it was the same vision that we had. You know how sometimes something just feels intuitively right to do? It was just like a “fuck it” moment, and then the rest of the process seemed to be a bit of a “fuck it” moment as well, which is when I think you do your best stuff; it’s when you’re starting to channel proper authenticity. So it was like, not too much thinking, and a bit more just playing it.
GIITTV: I do know what you mean actually, as I used to be in a band, and we spent ages writing some songs, but the ones people always seemed to like the best were ones that took about three minutes to write!
Joe: It’s mad, isn’t it! I completely agree, and it’s always getting out of your own way with that. I think that the more effort you put into a song, it can feel like the more it deserves to be good, but it’s almost like, that’s the practice! That’s the practice, that you put in all that effort, so that you’ll be able, in a year’s time, to write a song in three minutes that you don’t know where it came from. You just don’t realise that you’ve accumulated this wealth of frustration that eventually allows you to distil a song, just like a thought, put down really quickly.
GIITTV: I was kind of saying this to John Grant when I interviewed him recently, and we were agreeing that sometimes it’s as much what you leave out that makes a song…
Joe: Exactly. You are kind of writing, with space as your canvas, or silence or whatever – simplicity, and just allowing the elements that need to be there. It’s difficult though, because it’s easy to make something sound superficially better to add elements to it, I mean, not to take away from the two albums we’ve already released, but they were quite maximalist records a lot more than this one. I mean, there’s still stuff going on, and it’ll be a big live sound, but we’ve tried to strip back in terms of input into each of the songs, so this album, me and Tom wrote more like with just a riff and a vocal. We wrote about half the album with just an acoustic guitar and a vocal – he’d send me an idea and, just like you said, the ones that have made it on to the album are the ones that we wrote in about five minutes!
GIITTV: And I can see where you’re coming from, when you say it’s like a culmination of the first two albums, but I’d say all three albums are very different from each other, yet are still unmistakably W.H. Lung.
Joe: I’d say we’ve done it well then! That sounds like a great assessment!
GIITTV: It feels like a very “warm” album too. ‘Bliss Bliss‘ in particular made me go all teary eyed at the memory of my own youth, back in the 1990s, recalling long summer days and drinking and laughing with mates at music festivals…
Joe: Yeah, do you know, that song has a lot of nostalgia in it, and it has a lot of nostalgia for me personally too, for the songs that I was listening to when I was growing up. I remember Tom sending me a riff, and I thought “I’m gonna write what I feel like this song is to me. I’m just gonna allow that to come out now” and it sounded to me like something I’d have listened to as, you know, like, a lonely teenager. Those things like, you find those songs and they become your friends. It gives me a warm feeling. It’s funny that you mentioned getting teary eyed, because there are songs that I wrote on this album that felt so right to me that I would cry when I was writing them. On multiple occasions it felt like they just connected with something so truthful, and I can’t even necessarily say intellectually what that is. It just felt like what it’s supposed to be, and I’m not gonna touch it. It’s a real blessing to be able to process yourself through writing songs, especially when you have such an amazing songwriting partner as I do, to get these pieces of material that I’m able to then…bring down some abstract sensation into a form with. Sometimes I’ll finish a song and then think “I didn’t even realise I was feeling like that!” and that’s why the sheer non-intellectual consistency of it can be quite emotional. I’m really interested to see what it’s going to be like to play these songs live – we played two of them live on the US tour – ‘Lilac Sky‘ and ‘I Will Set Fire To The House‘ and it always is…it always feels…quite ‘heart on the sleeve’. I think that was almost the accidental MO of this whole album – open-heartedness.
GIITTV: I love that, and I love the lyrics are very intelligent as well. Although some of your lyrics confuse the hell out of me! I mean, for example, on the last album you had ‘Pearl In The Palm‘ where the chorus goes “As the saying goes, I feel like a tethered dove with a broken nose“, and I laughed out loud, thinking “THAT’S not a saying…is it?“
Joe: (laughs) It is now! Yeah, that’s for the scholars of a hundred years time. But yeah, I think, like you were saying before, I think I write my best lyrics when they kind of just happen, rather than when I think too much. I think if you’re trying to be clever, then that’s obvious to the person who’s listening to it. I think it’s properly illustrated when you go into your live music – if they’re trying to be good at it, it’s no fun to watch, but if these people are trying to literally reach out and connect with you, honestly, and really really truthfully, you’re just there – you don’t even think about the fact that you’re at a gig, you’re just listening to this person trying to connect with you.
GIITTV: I know exactly what you mean, and I’ve actually put in my notes here that, as cliched as this may sound, I feel like W.H. Lung break down the barriers not between band and audience, but also bridge the gap between generations – I mean, my son, who’s nearly fifteen, loves the album, I love the album, and my mum, who is 82, has always said, when I’ve had it on in the car when I’ve given her a lift “Ooh, this is good!“
Joe: Oh mate that is so sweet! I love that. That’s really nice to hear!
GIITTV: Do you think there was a point, during making Every Inch Of Earth Pulsates, where you thought “Whoa! We’ve really got this!“?
Joe: I think we listened back to ‘Bloom And Fade‘ and Tom said “This feels like the song we were always trying to write,” and it’s not even that I’m saying it’s the best song on the album or the best song we’ve ever written or will write, but it just felt like the process, the content, the music, the way it was captured, and the life of that particular song represented what it was that we’ve been trying to create over this six years or however long it is. It was like a distillation of all that. Also, when we first listened to the final mixes, I got this really overwhelming thought that I didn’t mind if there were people who didn’t like it. I didn’t mind. Which is quite huge actually, for a sensitive young man, but I just thought “This was written and recorded with real honesty.” We weren’t being contrived at any point in this process. We got out of our own way as much as possible, and these songs were the ones that we felt rung truest for us, and then we recorded them. When you have a pure authentic process with a piece of writing, I think you’re a lot less “attached” I guess than you are to icky ego stuff like “Is it good?” or “Do people like it?” I mean I want people to like it, and I want it to connect with people when we play it, obviously, because that’s a really wonderful thing, but with this one, we just wrote what felt true to us, and this is what’s happened.
GIITTV: I used to be more upset if I’d written a song and someone said to me “Yeah, it’s ok.” I’d much rather they’d said it was shit than just ok. I even dated a girl once who I lost interest in after she’d said one of my songs was “alright“…
Joe: (laughs) Yeah, you want it to generate some kind of passion either way, don’t you? You want to be saying something, I think. But then that’s funny, ’cause I guess if you’re TRYING to be saying something, sometimes it can come across as contrived. Kind of like “What kind of band shall we be? Maybe we should be a political band. What are our politics, I wonder!” Do you know what I mean? You need to go out into the world and “feel” things, and automatically write about it without thinking too much.
GIITTV: So, you’re on tour soon. What can we expect from the live show? Obviously you’re noted for those live shows, so how are you going to manage to be even better than before? Because expectations are going to be high.
Joe: Yeah, we’ll be even better, probably just because of that! You just play off the energy and the juice that you’re given. If people turn up to a show and they’ve really loved the album, then there’s that in the air, then you just ARE going to be good, if you respond to that. We’ve played together for so long now that I just have so much trust in everyone, so I don’t need to talk about their particular input. I think it’s about the energy that we give as a band, and I know that we can do that. Sometimes when we’re on the precipice of a gig somewhere we haven’t played in ages, I’ll sometimes think “Maybe tonight is the night when we’re going to be shit and fall apart!” but honestly, it never really happens. There’s a lot of things that I’m not confident in myself about, but playing with this band, I am.
GIITTV: I can hear all manner of different influences coming through in your music, which makes me think that you must have a very, very diverse musical taste. I made some notes here that said I can hear shades of Bronski Beat on ‘I Can’t Lie‘, Springsteen and Neon Bible era Arcade Fire on ‘Bloom And Fade‘, a whole plethora of 4AD acts on ‘Flowers In The Rain‘ – probably because of Hannah’s fantastic vocal – and, to an extent, Depeche Mode on ‘Painting Of The Bay‘ among others, but it’s never a pastiche, which is what’s so great about W.H. Lung. So I wondered, do you ever put knowing nods to other artists in your songs?
Joe: That’s a very kind and generous list, mate, thank you. I think all of those are amazing. Do we ever give knowing nods? Do you know, on this album, we didn’t necessarily give any musical nods, but I guess we just love music, which I guess you do, if you want to be a musician, so perhaps it just naturally just filters through. Sometimes when I’m writing I don’t actually listen to all that much music, ’cause I’ve just got to trust that I’ve stocked up enough to process it all. Sometimes when you’ve done a whole day’s writing, the last thing you want to do is listen to music. I think that the more true a band becomes to their sound, the more influences you can garner from it, in a way. Because it’s like, you are then the absolute culmination of all your influences, naturally occurring. So it’s a compliment when you say our albums all sound different but are still unmistakably us. For example, you’d struggle to find a more idiosyncratic director than Quentin Tarantino, but his films are absolutely chock full of allusions to other films. Because he loves films. So it’s like, the more you are yourself, the more you allow yourself to be a completely open book, drawing in all your influences. And I guess if you’ve done your job right, everyone will see something different in it.
GIITTV: Great answer. Then you finish the new album with ‘I Will Burn Down The House’, which sounds quite ominous from the title but it actually transpires to be a really uplifting, euphoric closing song…
Joe: Perhaps, a lot of the time, that actually describes the combination between me and Tom. I think Tom’s very good at finding those subtle, dark elements, I mean he grew up listening to The Cure and then he saw Helena Hauff playing ‘A Forest‘, and he thought “Right, this is my musical trajectory as well“, so I think he naturally brings those subtle, classy dark elements, and I just want to sing with my heart open like this (holds arms aloft, Jesus-like) so maybe it’s a combination of us both. That’s another song that happened really quickly and it’s an interesting one because it was just an ambient jam that he sent to me – this swirling, ambient, synthy thing, and I’d just read a short story by Bud Smith, called Violets. It’s like a runaway love story – there’s this couple who are in debt and they’re going to commit suicide, so they burnt the house down. They set fire to the house and they watched it, and they were so overcome by the beauty of the house being on fire that they just keep going around America, burning things down, and they fell in love again. I just thought “What an amazing story for a song!” especially to end an album with, so I just sat down at the piano and played along with this ambient thing Tom had done, and it just happened. I put it in a future tense, because I wanted it to look like he was talking to her in bed, like “We’re gonna go on an adventure!” and I wanted that adventure to feel hugely, hugely meaningful, but I guess, in that last bit, she’s trying to bring him back down, isn’t she? She’s like “Yeah…but what is the context of our love together?” I love the opportunity to tell stories like this, when we play.
Every Inch Of Earth Pulsates is released this Friday, October 18th and if every inch of your body doesn’t pulsate when you hear it, then you’re dead inside.
ALL IMAGES BY Marieke Macklon.
Catch them live between November this year and February 2025 at the following venues:
- November 2024
- Saturday, November 16: New Century Hall, Manchester
- Sunday, November 17: Mono – Kings Court, Glasgow
- Tuesday, November 19: Cluny 2, Newcastle
- Saturday, November 23: The Bodega, Nottingham
- Sunday, November 24: The Hare And Hounds, Birmingham
- February 2025
- Thursday, February 13: Teesside University, Students Union, Middlesbrough
- Friday, February 14: The Mash House, Edinburgh
- Saturday, February 15: District, Liverpool
- Tuesday, February 18: Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
- Thursday, February 20: Foundry, Sheffield
- Friday, February 21: Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
- Sunday, February 23: Social, Hull
- Monday, February 24: The Portland Arms, Cambridge
