Sky Larkin: Interview

Where: Brighton, The Great Escape

Sky Larkin are definitely one of those success stories of how MySpace can give an unsigned band’s music an early platform in the absence of enthusiastic pr campaigns and wads of cashola.  Theirs is subsequently an organic growth that has been nurtured in their hometown of Leeds and has taken them as far as Seattle, where they recorded their long awaited debut record ‘The Golden Spike’ with John Goodmanson. 

Utilising the true meaning of a DIY ethic, Sky Larkin waited until the time was right and their craft perfectly honed before recording their long player.  The traditional path if you like, which bands had to follow before the birth of the Internet and everything was unnecessarily sped up.  And their patience seems to have paid off with praise and acclamation being poured upon them by music-arbiters, radio and press.  Furthermore their creativity extends beyond their musical expertise as they have become renowned for packaging their releases in varying and quirky formats.  So far they have had releases in the form of a watch (‘Beeline’) and a tape cassette ('Antibodies'), all with art-work commissioned by the band and bonus features, providing something that extends far beyond the usual digital download or limited edition vinyl.

To date, Sky Larkin have toured extensively throughout the UK and Europe, as well as successful stints in the States with fellow label mates Los Campesinos and Conor Oberst.  And in March they paid a stomping visit to SXSW where they showcased to the gathered masses.  Their solid mix of alternative pop-rock with prominent guitar lines and delicate female vocals provides an overwhelming breath of fresh air to a tried and tested formula.  Intricate layering and an eruption of noise capitalises on their angular sounds and insightful lyricising with a cool self-assurance that is replicated in the live environment. 

Leeds is well and truly thriving in terms of its musical community, and Sky Larkin are at the forefront with their brilliant record, steady attitudes and superb musicianship.  4or The Record hung out with the Yorkshire trio at the Honeyclub on Brighton’s infamous promenade before they played the final of their 3 Great Escape shows.  Here on a bench in the rare sunshine we contemplated the creative aspect of releasing music today, their recording processes and decamping to Seattle with John Goodmanson. 

4TR: So Sky Larkin you signed to the incredible Wichita recordings in 2008, how did that come about?
Nester:  Well whenever we had shows in London they would come down and just as friends really and then we started building up a relationship over time.  They came to us when we were ready really, which I think is the really important thing.  So many people rush to sign a contract and go off and make an album before they really know what they want the album to be or what they want to do, whereas Wichita waited for us to be sure we were really ready to make an album.
Katie: Yeah I think it’s a bit strange for a band go be around for like 6 months and then go and make an album which they have to kind of stand next to for the rest of their careers.  It took us like 2 ½ years to get an album out but like before the dawn of the Internet that would be perfectly normal.  We put our demos on the Internet as soon as we started writing songs and made things more transparent, which is great because people can have more contact with bands, but then I also think it means that people sort of grow up in the eye of the world.

At this point the interview is halted by Matt from You Animals requesting a cigarette.

Katie: [laughing] this is Matt who is also playing a gig tonight.  He drove us around in his van when we went on tour with Stereo Labs because our van died a little bit.
4TR: Was that the Royal Mail van you use as a tour bus?
Katie: Yeah it’s better now though, but it hemorrhaged outside king tuts in Glasgow.
Nestor: Er, I have just noticed there is like 2/3s of a dead fish on the ground over there.
[Points out a very dead, headless fish on the floor that a seagull has dropped.  Unfortunately the Dictaphone didn’t pick up the sound of the impact]
Doug: I’m going to go for that being 7/8s of a fish.
4TR: oh my god that’s disgusting.
Doug: It’s missing its head and its skin.  I didn’t think seagulls skinned fish before they ate them.
[All laughing]
Katie: Well that’s authentic Brighton for you.

4TR: Back to the album then, which came out in February.  You spent a long time getting everything right for when it came to recording it in Seattle, so does it reflect the time and effort you put in?
Nestor: Yeah definitely, it was brilliant because we knew we didn’t want to rush recording an album so we had time to really refine the songs.  We went over there knowing exactly how we wanted it to sound because we had had the time to get it right.
Katie: When we went to Seattle to record with John we already knew what we wanted the songs to be like, so it meant we could actually work on the sounds with him and get straight to laying it down rather than meandering around trying things out.

4TR: John Goodmanson produced the record, what did he bring to it?
Doug: He brought his indie goldness I think.
Katie: And he has got so many nice toys, I mean something that I really learnt from him was about cranking little amps rather than having a massive amp because your ears really fool you if its too loud.  The biggest sounds on the record are from this little cigarette amplifier, which is like an amp speaker built into a cigarette packet, he taught us a lot.
Nestor: It was an amazing experience; one of the most positive things for us was that John was having as much fun as we were.  It could have been a really hectic and nerve wracking process for us but because he was so laid back and excited about it, it was the best atmosphere to record a debut album.

4TR: Did you request to work with him specifically?
Katie: Yeah it was totally our choice, that’s the great thing about Wichita, they are really artist friendly and just said turn over your favourite record and tell us who you would like to work with.  John is someone that’s made a lot of sound that we respect and so there was a natural gravitation to him, plus he wanted to do it which was great.
Nestor: Wichita had also worked with him before, so were fully backing him as well.
Doug: And his new baby is really cool.
Katie: Yeah he has got the coolest baby in the world, its the most laid back child I have ever seen.  We were in a restaurant when we were on tour with Los Campensinos with all of them and all of us in this busy restaurant and loads of other people he had never met before and he was just like ‘hey so what yeah its loud and yeah its past my bedtime and I don’t know any of you but how you doing.

4TR: Did you stay with him when you went out there?
Nestor: [laughing] No we stayed in like a Craig’s list apartment, Craig’s List is like Gumtree and it was with a Romanian woman.  We turned up about 3 in the morning our time and were so tired then had to wait ages for her to turn up and then when she did turn up with her brother she said yeah me and my brother are still living here so we will sleep in the bedroom and you guys can sleep in the living room.
Katie: It was basically a one-bedroom apartment with no bed in it.
Doug: She was about to sell it so she had stripped it.
Nestor: She was basically making out that she was going to stay there too and I don’t know if we completely misread the situation but we were like no I’m sure we’ve paid for the whole apartment, so she went oh well I can just go and stay with my friends if that’s what you want. [Laughing] We were like yes that is exactly what we want.
Katie: I slept on an air bed for the recording of the album and these guys slept on the sofa bed, but there was literally nothing in there.  So it just meant that there was no attraction for us to stay in that apartment whatsoever.  We did laugh at the time.

4TR: How long did the recording take?
Nestor: 3 weeks and it was nice because Seattle is like a home from home, its similar to Leeds so it was very easy to move into it because it has a really close knit music scene and its very laid back.
Katie: I think there’s definitely a cultural exchange program between the Pacific Northwest and the North of England; like it rains, everyone is friendly but tough at the same time, and people in the Pacific Northwest are really laid back.

4TR: Some of the tracks on the album were re-recordings of tracks you had previously released. Did you decide to do that because it made sense in terms of a cohesive package of Sky Larkin material?
Katie: Yeah kind of, there were things we put on the album and things we left off it. For the debut we wanted to make sure that even though it is an anthology of sorts and although the songs were written at different times, they worked together and hung together right.  So there was certain things we left off as well, but I just think we tried to make the best kind of gang together.
Nestor: A lot of the singles were recorded you know in 1 or 2 day sittings, we would kind of run in and record it and run back out again because we were based all over the place, so they were recorded at different times and places and different stages with different kind of attitudes towards them.  Whereas when we had the time to record everything in one go with amazing gear and amazing people it was nice to make every track equal as an album track and then decide on the singles later rather than going in with singles in mind.

4TR: And how have you found its reception?
Katie: It’s been really great.  Its one of those things I think that if we'd made it with any preconceptions of how things were going to be then it wouldn’t have been satisfying to us, we kind of made the record that we wanted to make. 

4TR: With your singles and their format, you have gone above and beyond what most people just whack out.  You have the cassette out now for ‘Antibodies’, you had the watch for ‘Beeline’.  What is your motivation to work in that way?
Nestor: I think its like you just said, singles people just seem to whack out as like throw away items which people will either buy it or download it, then stick it on the i-tunes and chuck the cd on the pile.
Katie: I think because since the dawn of downloading music the song, the object and the idea have become really divorced from each other, especially in terms of singles and the way people digest individual tracks.  So for us it was a way of thinking hang on how can we make the objects more tailored to the actual song, rather than it just being a cd single that someone might use as a coaster after they've put it on their i-pod.  With the tape we wanted to have it as a way of having content that was only available on that specific object, so when you order it online you get the a-side as a download, plus the b-sides and the remixes etc and then the actual b-side of the tape is content that will never be released digitally, it will only be on the tape. So each of us had 10 minutes to do what ever we wanted [laughing].
Nestor: Mine is like minimal electronica but because it’s on a tape its quite shit with crackles for a few minutes.
Katie:  And mine is just talking and Doug’s is talking as well, but it’s more of a story [laughing].
Doug: It has characters.  I’m a little bit obsessed with Gumtree and the personal ads that people put on there in the casual relationships area.  So we got some friends around and my girlfriend did it and the bassist from Dinosaur Pile Up and a photographer called Liam Henry and we just all sat in one evening, drank loads of red wine and just went through the casual relationships adverts on Gumtree.  I had a whole list to do and they are word for word off the website and it was just like who the hell are these people who do this?
Nestor: [laughing] you read it in your head and it’s really funny and then someone reads it out load and its just horrible.
Katie: [Laughing] It was sort of a platform to do something a bit more bespoke I guess and it worked.

4TR: It demonstrates a deeper element of creativity in terms of what you do, and extends to your art-work which was done by a collective that you commissioned right?
Katie: Ahh thank you yeah we were involved in all the decision making!  The way music is digested by people is by the objects that it’s carried on, so some bands might just send it off to a media company in London or whatever to take a nice picture of them and put it on the front but we didn’t want to do that.
Doug: That’s another great thing about Wichita, any ideas we came back with they were like well to be honest we are Wichita so are not going to say don’t do this because in the end its your stuff so do what you like.
Katie: Yeah they wouldn’t tell us what art-work to have even if they didn’t like it, they are not like where’s the pictures of your faces, make them bigger, take your clothes off, look nicer [laughs]
Nestor: Music and design etc is all creative so it’s all just as important.

4TR: Its amazing how many bands or artists who still don’t get that correlation, its almost become a lost art in some peoples minds.
Nestor: Yeah and I think that’s part of doing something that is an object rather than just a cd single; there is still an art to 7 inch singles but its still not like the tape.  We have 3 different covers for the tape and its all been hand drawn and looks really nice.

4TR: Would you say the Leeds music scene is continuing to generate new up and coming bands and simultaneously nurturing the talent?
Nestor: Yeah, its because it’s a very small city anyway and the area where the bands are is very small, so its very supportive and everyone looks out for each other you know, like everyone goes to each others shows or they do your artwork etc.  It’s a really close-knit scene and it's still producing great music.  There is a great band called Wonderswan who are starting to break out from Leeds and then its amazing you can get bands like Quack Quack who are brilliant but who have no interest in getting bigger than the Leeds scene where they are huge.  It’s crazily incestuous but in a good way.
Doug: Its not nurtured so much its just one massive community.

4TR: So any Sky Larkin tips for new bands to keep an eye on?
Katie: God loads, bands like Pulled Apart By Horses, Dinosaur Pile Up, Napoleon IIIrd, Wild Beasts are also doing well for themselves.
Doug: And Quack Quack. 
Nestor: I think Copy Haho are going to be the next big thing and Calories, plus Sunset Cinema Club deserve more respect.
Katie: And Joy Formidable are really good, and Telekinesis, that's Michael Benjamin Learner's, who was one of the assistants on our record in Seattle, band.  Definitely check all of them out.



Words: Francesca Strange

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