Moon & Back Music

The Sunshine Underground singer Craig Wellington spared a few minutes from his busy schedule to tell us about the band’s new single ‘Spell it Out’ taken from their critically acclaimed second album, and their plans for a busy summer touring.

Sam Taylor (ST): Your new single ‘Spell it Out’ has a Muse-esque sound. Is that an avenue you’re keen to explore?

Craig Wellington (CW): It wasn’t a conscious thing, but we wanted to make a big, ‘in-your-face’ anthemy sort of album, so it does share similarities with the big sound of Muse. But it’s a good thing; there are worse bands to be compared to!

ST: The video for it is very Gorillaz-like in its animation. What was the idea behind that?

CW: We just picked the most interesting pitch from all the ones we received. We wanted a visual representation of the song that wasn’t just a band in a room. It’s really difficult to pick an idea from just a pitch, so we thought why not do something ridiculous?!

ST: Where have you taken your inspiration for the album from?

CW: We wanted a bigger sounding, more guitarry, riff-heavy sound. We also wanted a change on every album. We all write our songs together, so when lots of different personalities come together you get a different sound.

ST: Your debut was labelled as part of the ‘new rave’ movement, but your new one has more of an indie sound. Is that a conscious move on your part?

CW: We didn’t really want to be part of that ‘new-rave’ scene. We didn’t want to capitalize on that sound; we wanted to make more of a band album. However, saying that the new material we’re writing which will probably make up the third album has more of a dance-y feel to it.

ST: It’s got some good reviews; do critic’s opinions bother you? Do you think about this when writing?

CW: In a way, but I think that if you’re happy with it yourself, and your friends like it then that’s all that matters. We felt like it excited us and that we were onto a winner, so any critics opinions didn’t matter really.

ST: Did you feel the pressure of writing the ‘difficult second album’?

CW: Yeah definitely! We felt that album no.1 was more of collection of songs we’d written over a while, it almost wrote itself really. But album no.2 felt like more of a project to make an actual ‘album’, so there was definitely pressure with that.

ST: Moving onto the tour, you’ve got lots of upcoming shows. What can people expect from coming to see you?

CW:  Playing live is our favourite thing to do, it’s where we feel most comfortable. We put everything into our shows, so people can expect something really high-energy.

ST: You’re playing in Mexico City aswell. Looking forward to that?

CW: Yeah sounds great, we love to travel to as many places as we can.

ST: How do foreign fans differ from English ones?

CW: We’re quite popular in Japan. They seem to appreciate that you’ve travelled far, and are extra thankful because you’ve come a long way to play for them.

ST: Can we catch you at any festivals this year?

CW: We’re playing at T in the Park, and some smaller ones too. It’s always nice to play festivals because we get to hang out with people we know or haven’t seen in a while, and see our mates in other bands. We toured with The Maccabees in 2007 so it’ll be nice to see them again over the summer because a lot has happened for them in the past few years.

ST: What would your dream line-up be for a festival?

CW: I’m really into 90’s indie, so probably Blur, Radiohead and Chemical Brothers. We supported LCD Soundsytem a few years ago so they’d be good to see aswell.

ST: You’re from Leeds. What’s the upcoming music scene like there? Any new bands you’re into at the moment?

CW: There’s a band called The Spexhalls who are really good. They’re very Phil Spektor and 60s in their sound. Also Wild Beasts who were the last band to really cross over into the mainstream. Leeds has a brilliant music scene, there’s loads of really cool music venues considering it’s such a small city.

ST: If you weren’t in a band what would you be doing?

CW: We’ve all been really focused on music since we met at college and school aged 17 and 18, so I’ve never really thought about anything else!

ST: Finally, is it true you’re named after a Chemical Brothers track?

CW: Yeah, we used to go see them a lot at the start of the band, so we kind of adopted that. We always used to end with that track too when we played. I didn’t really like it for about the first year, but I really love it now.

The Sunshine Underground’s new album ‘Nobody’s coming to save you’ is out now, avaliable from itunes and Amazon, amongst others, and they are touring the UK throughout the summer. More information can be found at their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/thesunshineunderground.