{"id":31128,"date":"2017-03-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mancunion.manchestermediagroup.co.uk\/blog\/2017\/03\/06\/interview-tall-ships\/"},"modified":"2017-09-13T11:00:22","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T10:00:22","slug":"interview-tall-ships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/2017\/03\/06\/interview-tall-ships\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Tall Ships"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five years after their debut album, Brighton indie rockers Tall Ships are touring their new album Impressions<\/em>. Following the success of their debut Everything Touching<\/em> I was excited for the opportunity to talk to frontman Ric Phethean about what they\u2019d been up to.<\/p>\n

After playing the first show of the new tour, Tall Ships are enthusiastic about returning to touring:\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s so much fun, we just love playing live. It\u2019s the first tour we\u2019ve done where we\u2019ve had songs out from the new album so we get to play them and see people singing along and enjoying the new stuff which is such a buzz!\u201d The band are no strangers to touring: after Everything Touching<\/em> exploded they\u2019ve had no shortage of shows, playing festivals and supporting a variety of bands.<\/p>\n

However after the initial swell of attention the band somewhat dropped off the radar. Ric says the band felt \u201cemotionally, physically and financially spent\u201d. I ask what the band has been up to in the last five years. \u201cWe\u2019ve been doing a variety of things. Firstly, the album took a long time to put together \u2014\u00a0we did about five different demos of each of the songs so that took a while to come together. After that we\u2019ve been working, playing in other bands as well. And just normal life really, everyday stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Discussing the subject of the new album Ric says: \u201cIt\u2019s been a difficult few years for us all really. We\u2019ve had different things going on in our lives. People passing away and being kinda ill. The usual stuff that everybody goes through. A lot of those experiences have influenced the lyrics and the writing. In particular the lyrics tend to focus on the bad things that we\u2019ve gone through as individuals and ways of trying to cope and deal with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear from the already-released tracks that the album will be an emotionally charged affair. \u2018Petrichor\u2019 has a sound that is unmistakably Tall Ships, but with an anthemic flavour that wasn\u2019t present on their debut.<\/p>\n

Like their first album,\u00a0<\/i>Impressions<\/em>\u00a0has been self-produced. \u201cWe were actually hoping to do the album with a producer in the studio. In the end we couldn\u2019t afford it so we sort of did it out of necessity. But it\u2019s also a way that we\u2019re really comfortable working. Our keyboard player Jamie does all the production and engineering.\u201d Complete control does have its drawbacks, though, Ric explains:\u00a0“The process can go on indefinitely. You\u2019re always thinking about it, tweaking certain bits and wanting to redo a certain vocal take. Until it\u2019s set in stone it always feels unfinished.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tall Ships have always been tied up to the math rock scene, despite their music having stronger indie characteristics to it. I ask how they got the label. \u201cIt was kind of coincidence. The first gig we ever played was with a band called Tubelord. They were signed to Big Scary Monsters records and they basically got us on some more shows with them and introduced us to the record label. That label is pretty big in the math rock scene. That\u2019s how we got that tag. It\u2019s something that we\u2019ve not always felt fit too well. We\u2019ve always felt more like a indie band or a rock band really.”<\/p>\n

“But now the new stuff is so far away from that loopy and math rock stuff it feels like we\u2019re a completely different band really,\u201d he adds.\u00a0This was an inevitable transition, Ric tells me. \u201cThings change and your tastes change. We\u2019ve been a band for ten years now, and what you\u2019re into changes. We\u2019ve all got older and have been inspired by different things. The biggest change was singing. When we started we were mostly instrumental. And now there\u2019s singing on every track and the lyrics are a much bigger part of it.\u201d It certainly sounds like Tall Ships are becoming a more confident band and we can expect great things from the upcoming album.<\/p>\n

Finally, I ask what\u2019s next for the band. \u201cMore touring! Hopefully we\u2019ll get to Europe and do some shows there. And start writing so the next album doesn\u2019t take another five years, hopefully.\u201d I couldn\u2019t agree more.<\/p>\n

Tall Ships will play Deaf Institute on Tuesday the 7th of March. Supporting them is Waylor, the project of Dry The Rivers’ frontman Matt, whose music Ric describes as \u201csexy\u201d and not to be missed.<\/p>\n

Impressions<\/em>\u00a0is released on\u00a031st March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ahead of their upcoming show and album, Calum Pinder speaks to Tall Ships frontman Ric Phethean about what the band have been up to and what to expect next<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[18423,18424,18425,1881,18426,1011,9328],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31128"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31128"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=31128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}