Crows: Interview

Crows release their third album imminently, marking a healthy progression from the aggressive, foggy, reverb-heavy style of their prior material. They worked on the record with heavyweight indie producer Andy Savours (My Bloody Valentine), helping to achieve the cleaner, less conventionally post-punk and more artistic sound they sought. As well as their most distinctive record sonically, Reason Enough is also the most frank in terms of vocalist James Cox’s literary lyrics. Hence, the band’s extensive songwriting sessions for the album – recording masses of potential ideas in a church crypt in Stroud then perfecting them into tracks in London – have resulted in some of their greatest anti-rock tracks yet.

Below, vocalist James Cox and guitarist Steve Goddard discuss their new sound.

Why did you want to have a similarly long, methodical recording process with this album, given that it was involuntary last time?

James: The expected turn-around on album cycles now seems to just get shorter and shorter, so when we realised we were not realistically going to write and record an album within a year, we decided to take a step back. We wanted to write as much as we could and really take our time to make an album that we loved and was enough of a departure you’d expect in a third record without going completely off the wall or just making a clone of the last two. Being able to shelve ideas, go work on something else then come back and try it again was quite liberating. It meant we ended up with a strong, cohesive album.

How much evolution was there between the first sessions in the Church to the later, London-based recordings?

James: Quite a lot. The aim of those initial church sessions was to come up with as many ideas as possible with the intention of finessing them later on. Rather than spend loads of time developing after initial conception, we would fuck around with it a bit, get a rough verse/chorus down, record it in voice notes and move on to something else. We might come away with further structure if it was really clicking but we would then do another weekend away where we finessed it even more after sitting with it for a couple of weeks.

Once we thought we were in a good place and had about 15 tracks, I spent a few days with a good friend, Joel Amey (Wolf Alice), who helped us look at the tracks from a different perspective and made some suggestions about structures, progressions, changes, lifts, backing vocals. It’s like a puzzle, all it takes is someone else to come in and look at something you’ve been trying to figure out for hours and then spot it in 30 seconds.  

Literature has previously played a role in the lyrics, what was that role this time?

James: This record is definitely my most honest. In the past, where I’ve drawn inspiration from other people’s situations, or quite often used character writing to create stories, this album came out of quite an intense year of life changes, mental health dips and personal growth. It felt like I was no longer scared to write about what I was going through. I could be really open and vulnerable and not second guess or doubt. That combined with a relentlessly miserable news cycle meant I was able to write an album’s worth of lyrics that are politically charged, but also incredibly personal and sincere. 

How did you balance the personal and political in the lyrics?

James: To me this album feels much more personal than political. Maybe that’s because some of the tracks that didn’t make it onto the album were really personal and I count all the songs as a body of work written in the same time period.

Now I look at the final track listing, it is a pretty even split of personal and political but it’s all pretty much personal as I’m writing about the way things affect me. I’ll start writing melodies and then I’ll look at words I’ve written down in the past and see what fits, then the song will grow organically into its final form.

Were there any vocalists you looked to for inspiration on this album?

James: There were two albums I remember listening to a lot around the time of writing which I think probably indirectly influenced me. When you’re sad, you just want to listen to sad music: Introduction, Presence by Nation of Language and Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C. are both really great melancholic albums by really great bands. I think people often want me to say I’m influenced by really avant-garde post-punk albums, and whilst I do listen to that, I’d say I feel more inspiration from my peers and current music than anything else. 

Can you expand on the more experimental nature of this album?

Steve: We took some time with the writing and in doing so we had an opportunity to explore different sounds, tones, effects, etc. I think the opening track, Reason Enough, demonstrates this pretty well: there’s some more industrial sounding effects and sounds, and it’s the first song where we’ve detuned the guitars and ended up using the song. We have written in different tunings before but have found them to feel too “rock”, but I think with the time spent fucking around with effects, it stopped being an issue.

What was the decision-making behind the choice of producer and cleaner sound?

James: We’ve done the last two albums and our second EP Cold Comfort with the same two producers, Philip Brillo and Felix Rashman at the studio Fish Factory. We’ve loved the process each time but knew it was time for a change. The third album has to be a progression and once we had got a few songs down and we knew it wasn’t necessarily going to be a fast punk record like the last one, we wanted someone who could push us into uncharted territory; someone to roll back all the reverb and delay and focus on the songs and capturing the right performance, building layers and emphasising dynamics. 

We’ll have some input if we don’t think it’s working but generally in all aspects of Crows we like it to be a collaboration. Music videos, artwork: we are fortunate enough to work with some amazing people who know the brief and know how to make it ‘Crows’. Andy Savours was really good with this as he’d suggest things that at first we thought wouldn’t work, but we wanted to get out of our comfort zones and went with it – and the result was fantastic. Usually we only do three or four takes max in the studio; Andy is more of a fifteen, twenty takes guy, so that was something strange to get used to, but once we started hearing the results we understood. He doesn’t make it easy, but he gets the results. 

Where did the ‘fervent’ in ‘Bored’ come from?

James: I think originally it was ‘urgent’ but it just didn’t work, so I was searching for a better fit. I’ve got a very old, very worn thesaurus my dad gave to me so I think I just found it thumbing through that.

What type of ‘indie bangers’ informed the guitar parts?

Steve: Around the time we were writing this record we would put a lot of music from our youth on. We listened to the first Rakes album a lot, and then via that we went on a bit of a nostalgia trip of other bands from that era of mid-noughties indie music, which seemingly crept into some of our writing as a result. I’m a massive Black Rebel Motorcycle Club fan also, and I think they’re an influence that subconsciously crept in a lot too.

How has the balancing of full-time jobs with making music continued to affect the songwriting?

James: Creatively this record was definitely inspired by being exhausted and really beaten down at the pit of a mental health episode. None of us particularly hate our day jobs, but doing both can be stressful, and of course we would love nothing more than to solely focus on making music but that’s sadly not a reality. We’re a band stuck in that mid level which is hard to get out of; the cycle of working to fund it, touring using annual leave, getting older and wanting to do ‘life’ things. It essentially becomes a full time hobby and it’s tough to miss family things. Having supportive partners obviously helps but there is always a mild guilt. The reality is I get to travel the world with my best friends, seeing new places, and playing the music we’ve written to people who want to listen to it. 

Given how much more varied the songwriting is on this LP, was there any material left off the album?

James: Five more finished tracks and a voice memo app full of absolute garbage. Luckily, I think we can use some of it to get a jump start on album four.

Find everything Crows-related, including tour dates and more, here.

Listen to the new album here.

Find the band on social media.

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Interview by James Kilkenny. Read more of his Louder Than War articles here.