The Howlers are a band that I fell in love with back in 2019 when they released their debut single ‘La Dolce Vita’, from then on, it’s been a whirlwind of a ride for the London based desert rock trio who have gone on to release a slew of singles and win the support of many tastemakers and radio DJ’s including Steve Lamacq (Radio 6 Music), KEXP’s Cheryl Waters and Radio 1’s Jack Saunders. In just 10 months, 3 of their singles received airplay on Radio 1 with their debut single receiving the prestigious title ‘Radio 1’s Next Wave Track’, remaining on the playlist for 12 weeks.
We chatted to Adam from the band during lockdown (early 2021) and things weren’t looking good, venues had closed, tours cancelled and the thought of getting out and watching live music seemed like a distant memory. Despite the doom and gloom, I picked up a spark from Adam, a sense of hope and from what we chatted about, it was clear that this plucky trio from London were not sitting around with their heads buried in the sand as many people were, they were writing, honing their craft and getting match fit for when the lockdown restrictions would be lifted some months later.
Fast forward to January 2024 and I received news via their PR Manager that the debut album was ready to go, with a May 17th release date, they have planned a tour of independent record shops as well as a couple of festivals where they’ll be happy to give the audience a peep of their new baby.
The last time I saw the band was in Bristol a couple of years back where they played at a venue called The Lanes, the place was one of these ‘multi-purpose’ spaces which incorporated a bar, pizza joint, bowling alley, a hostelry for any budding backpackers and of course, the stage where the band was performing. The show was great, they played brilliantly and certainly won over the crowd who were excited to see a band from ‘outside the shire’. Since this show, they have recorded a couple of EP’s and toured heavily to spread their music around the country.
I hooked up with Adam (guitar/vocals) last week to chat about the new record, their punishing studio schedule, touring, in-store shows, promotional niknak’s and much more, read on to see how we did....
I first jumped on board the Howlers bandwagon back in 2019 with the single ‘La Dolce Vita’, it’s been nearly 5 years since this was released, what would you say you have learned in this time?
Wow, that sounds so long ago, 5 years! but in terms of a band, that’s not very long at all. I remember it was June 2019 when the single landed and we hadn’t even played a gig at that point! You also have to remember that 7-8 months after the release of our debut single, the world shut down for the best part of 2 years. Now, considering that we had only been a band for 9 months prior to the lockdown, we spent a lot of those 2 years actually figuring out who we were, it was a tough time as we had music under our belts, ready to play live but there were no venues open and we weren’t able to get out there and that was tough. When things started to come back to life, we were ready to go, so I think that the forced period of time where we were so heavily restricted certainly did us a favour as it allowed us time to breathe and consider our next steps. We never really stopped writing and recording and looking back, between January and May 2023, we did around 30 live shows and come the time we went out on our tour later in 2023, it was as if we were a completely different band to the one that set out in 2019. I think it also allowed us time to admit our own vulnerabilities within the band and support each other through the tough times.
It’s very refreshing to see a band getting on well and I think, that as a fan, you can see that on stage as well as you guys getting on so well off the stage as well, I have seen many acts that just don’t have that chemistry and it shows!
Yes, it’s something that we always prided ourselves on, the ability to communicate well as a band and work together to get the job done, we’ve been through a lot together so it’s great that the fans feel that way.
I spoke to a lot of bands over the lockdown period and I think that I got a balanced reaction to how they dealt with it, some were happy to crack on with writing new material and use the time to re-plan, whilst others were more than content to put things on ice, bury their heads in the sand and wait for it all to end before re-emerging and taking stock, how did it affect you as a band?
As I said, at the time of the lockdown, we had only been a band for around 9 months and looking back, it was a great time to ask ourselves who we were and what we wanted to be. We’ve always been a band who strive to be better every time we play, even if we have just got off the stage, we’ll chat and we’ll find things that could have gone better and from this, we learn and put the changes into practise the next time we play so the audience are always guaranteed that we’ll be in the best shape that we can be when they see us. It doesn’t matter to us if we’re the support band on the night or the headliner, we’ll go toe to toe with anyone, we want the audience to leave thinking that they have had a great night and not forgetting us in a hurry, we also want the band that we play with to know that we’re a professional outfit and that may gee them up to up their game as a result, it’s all about learning and improving, all the time, we never stop!
I want to ask you about your role as ‘frontman’ of the band, is it a role that you enjoy?
Ha, I LOATHE the role of the ‘frontman’, we played a gig not too long back and after the show I did an interview and the interviewer commented on how ‘aloof’ I was on stage and I told them that this isn’t an act, this is just how I am, it was probably a combination of nerves, excitement and just how I am in real life, it was certainly not an act that I was putting on for the show. The person I am on stage is just an accentuated version of the person I wish I could be in my day-to-day life!
I hear you, and I think that there are performers out there that are born for the role, they possess a magnetic personality that just makes people feel happy, they really get the show going and get the crowd revved up and there are people that just don’t do that very well. I saw Mark Lanegan years ago in Bristol and he strolled on stage like a wounded cowboy, sang his songs and left, he didn’t interact with the room, he didn’t thank anyone for coming, it was strange, but in a way, had he had done that, it would have taken something away from the performance….
Your music has been termed ‘desert rock’ and you draw influence from a variety of genres including soul, pop, rock and folk, please share the names of some of the bands and artists that have helped to shape your sound.
I’m not a fan of modern music per se, I prefer older bands but I recall seeing a Tom Walker track performed on Jools Holland’s show a while back and I think it the only time that I have literally stood and watched, thinking “that was fucking incredible”.
I’m into world music, I love Afrobeat and musicians like Fela Kuti, I love the sound of the American West Coast, I love bands like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Cage the Elephant and I also love old skool hip hop, mainly for the beats and when I’m in the studio, I’ll say that I want a particular Hip Hop style rhythm to the track and then overlay more of a Jack White sounding guitar and it just fuses so well. So I guess this is the Howlers sound that people know and love.
I guess that’s what is so refreshing about creating music, you can pick elements of bands and artists and merge that with another to create a completely new sound and whilst people may be able to pick out these elements, they’re too engrossed in the whole picture to dwell on it for too long! I like to think of you mixing up a spell, stirring the ‘sonic cauldron’ in order to achieve the best result!
Yeah, sounds about right!
Do you all share the same styles of music as a band?
Imagine there are 3 Venn diagrams with each of the band having their own influences and whilst we don’t share common ground with ALL of these, there are elements where we do cross over and there are places that we completely disagree but it’s the sweet spot in the middle where it all comes together for us.
It bores me when you see a band who ONLY listen to the same bands and they end up sounding like a tribute act to that band, not that this is a bad thing but for us, we strive on creativity and having a wider pool of influences really helps us to create the sound that we want to without sounding like someone else. As the primary songwriter, I write how I write, there is no magic formula as such, the songs are the songs, when we start to demo the song, whatever the drumbeat sounds like at this stage is usually the one we go with for the finished product, we don’t tend to pore over things for very long.
I did a demo session with one of the guys from Black Honey recently and I played him a melody on the guitar which was quite slow but when he put a drumbeat behind it, the song totally changed.
From an influence point of view, I have listened to and enjoyed the output of Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys) so anything he has done has always excited me, he created a spin off band called THE ARCS with a guy called Richard Swift who is no longer with us, they created a sound which was an advancement of Dan and Richard’s own styles so, almost a completely new sound but founded on their individual styles, I like to think of The Arcs as a Mexican version of The Black Keys.
I guess that was Dan saying to himself that he has ideas that may not have suited The Black Keys and created another band as a side line to test the water without upsetting any hardcore fans?
Absolutely, it’s a failsafe way of getting new ideas out there and if they don’t work, they can return to where they came from and carry on.
The new record ‘What You've Got to Lose to Win It All’ is landing on 17th May, I wanted to start by asking you about the album name, how did it come about?
The title represents the journey that the band has been on over the last couple of years, the record (to me) is a deeply personal thing and it was written over the course of a couple of years, I have lost 4 close family members in that time, a couple of close friends and I have almost lost my own life a couple of times, Gus’s appendix decided to explode which wasn’t a great time and Tom (drummer) has also encountered loads and I think its that constant state of grief that doesn’t let up, you start to get over something and then BANG, something else happens and you’re back to stage one of the grief cycle again, it takes its toll on you and as a band and that can be tough to deal with. It’s important to have a strong team around you as well as the band members, you need to lean on each other from time to time and this support has really helped us all to go about our daily lives. So the album title sums up what we all went through to get where we are today.
There are 15 tracks on the new record, this seems a lot compared to the usual 10-12 that we get, did you find that you had a lot of songs that you wanted to include?
There are 2 interludes included on the album so I guess it’s really 13 tracks!
When we were demoing songs for the album, there were songs that I had written but never really progressed so it was good to get these out and added to the mix of songs that would eventually form the album itself. During pre-production, we worked as a democracy and we all have a say in the end product, it’s not just down to one person and as a result, what we started out saying that we didn’t even want to record, ended up being THE best songs on the record, which shows how much I fucking know! We started with a pool of approx 25-30 songs and listened to them and started to shape the record, we chose around 10 tracks and then someone would dwell over one song as it was so good and seemed a shame not to include it on the album. I guess it was a case of having too many songs for the album which were ALL of a high standard thus making it really hard to choose.
How did you get on in the studio? Was it a tough time?
We were in the studio for 8 days and throughout that time, we recorded 17 tracks!
That’s brutal!
Yep, we worked with an amazing engineer called Christoph whom we had worked with in the past and he commented that he had NEVER seen a band come in and produce that many songs to such a high standard in such a short space of time! I’ll say it now, we were all completely broken, it took every ounce of energy we had to do that and I remember, on day 5, I’d had enough and needed to get out of the studio and spend some time on the beach to get my thoughts together before piling back in and finishing the guitars on one track! The final 3 days consisted of me doing vocals back to back which you just don’t normally do. Even the guys in the control room said that it was like watching a boxer go out, round after round and take another beating. After one take, I was in the vocal booth and just turned out the lights and I must have passed out for like 20 minutes but NOBODY came to check that I was okay, they were all in the control room having a beer, whilst I could have been dying, bastards!
So what did you learn from the studio this time around? Will things take a little longer next time?
Who knows? We’re a very driven band but I will say that the intention this time around was to go in and record say 10-12 tracks for the record but you get carried away and come the end, we had 17 in the bag. I think that time is always the enemy, when you are a self-funded band, you need to weigh up the costs of studio time as it’s not cheap so you have a budget and once that is spent, you are out of there. You don’t really want to have to set up another session to carry on working on tracks so you tend to push yourselves in order to get it done in the allotted time.
Short term pain for long term reward!
Exactly!
Saying that, we haven’t learnt anything as we were recently in a London studio where we recorded 6 live tracks (audio and video) in a day….
You guys are mental…. Will this be content that you can drip feed ahead of the album release?
There are another two singles to be released ahead of the album, after the album drops, we will be releasing an extended (deluxe) version of it with a couple of demos that didn’t quite make it onto the original album, then we’ll release the ‘live’ album that we recorded recently and then another new single. We have spent a lot of time really planning every detail of this campaign and are excited to see it come to life!
Will the ‘deluxe’ version be released on vinyl or just as a digital download to sit alongside the record?
We’re playing it by ear at the moment, I guess ultimately, it will come down to cost so let’s see how the album goes first and then we’ll take stock and make a call nearer the time. In the UK, it’s as if we’re well behind the curve when it comes to radio stations jumping on board and helping to spread the word about the new record, I think in Europe, we have already enjoyed radio plays from some major stations (akin to the BBC in the UK) and that is always the case so let’s see how sales do in the UK once we start getting some airplay here.
I read that your recent single ‘Lady Luck’ is somewhat of a monster, I say this because it was formed from a variety of tracks that were in the progress of being worked on, is this an exception to the way that you normally write?
Sometimes, songs come easy, I can create a new song in a very short space of time which is ideal, other times, I end up with a number of ideas, riffs, melodies and more that just simmer away on the stove until I get to finish them. The riff from ‘Lady Luck’ came about years back when we did the first EP, I think there’s either a voice note or a live recording of the riff that I did in a rehearsal room during the lockdown, from there, it was always in the back of my mind, I’d play it during soundcheck and from time to time, I’d tell Gus and Tom that I have a new idea for a song and they’d be thinking that it was the same fucking riff (again) so it took a while to get going. Even the first demo we did for the track wasn’t right so we revisited it twice in order to add a bridge from another track and a verse from another until we settled on the end product! I think rather than calling it our ‘Frankenstein’ track, I’ll say that it was a good test of our perseverance!
I saw on your website thehowlers.co.uk that you have a bunch of different bundles available for the album ranging from gatefold-coloured records, CD’s, cassettes and even scarves, but no tea-towels or fridge magnets, I guess you could go on forever when choosing what items to offer?
You never really know what people want and it’s so easy to just get your logo slapped on anything, you need to sit and think about what you are going to put out there.
I love the ides of a cassette tape, I doubt many people buying them will have the means to actually play them, but as a collectors item, I think they’re a great idea!
We have always done cassettes, from our debut track ‘La Dolce Vita’, as you said, they are a nice collectible item and relatively low cost to produce. I liken the cassette tape to a business card that you just cannot throw away, they’re small enough to fit in your pocket but when you come to empty your pockets, you’re not going to get rid of it! The march element is based purely on cost and we, as a band are very good at running the business side of things (being an independent band, we have to be) so the MORE items you have for Sale, the less likely you are to make a profit (or break even), it’s always been a bit of a juggling act but we’re getting there!
I think that the range of items you have is just right and with the various bundles available, there’s something for everyone. I will say that I ordered my LP the other day and then you go and tell me that you’re releasing a deluxe version later in the year….
That’s the way it goes, you gotta hustle for your money!
There is also a section for videos on your site and there are 44 available to watch, do you enjoy making videos?
Erm, not really, I don’t think anyone really does (laughs), as a band, we’re almost forced into creating videos to cater to the way that people consume content these days. Creating a music video is a LOT of work, they are really labour intensive and costly but you need to do them in order to keep up with other bands. We’re never gonna be a band that’s going ‘viral’ but despite this, we need to make sure that every platform is covered. We’re not the type of band who are going to sell their souls in exchange for a few more ‘likes’ on TikTok….
Fans like ‘behind the scenes’ footage, driving to a show, dressing room action, walking to the stage, that sort of thing, footage that they would never be able to get their hands on…
Yeah, we have a load of stuff like that already and more planned for the rest of the year so I hope that the fans will like it!
You’ve got a very busy May lined up with a ton of instore performances....
May 2024
Friday 10th - Assai Glasgow (Day)
Friday 10th - Assai Edinburgh (Evening)
Saturday 11th - Wax & Beans Manchester [Bury] (Day)
Saturday 11th - Crash Leeds (Evening)
Monday 12th - Beyond Vinyl Newcastle
Monday 13th - Rough Trade Nottingham
Tuesday 14th - Rough Trade Bristol
Thursday 16th - Rough Trade East, London.
Friday 17th - Pie & Vinyl Portsmouth
Tell me more about these shows....
Pre-orders of the debut album will allow people to DL a free ticket to an in-store show of their choice. We’ll be doing full band shows, we might throw in a couple of a acoustic shows as well but we’ll see, it’ll be good to get out there again and with playing at the record shops, it’s a great way for people to come and see us, maybe some unsuspecting customers will be there on the day and enjoy what they hear and pre-order the record!
I am assuming that the record will only be available on the Portsmouth date as this is release date?
This is a tricky one - In respect of putting the album out BEFORE the release day, this would mean that any sales that we do leading up to the release date would not count towards the chart position, so we have to be really careful. On one hand we need to hold back until release date if we are to stand any chance of charting but on the other hand, we may have no chance of charting so fuck it…. We will be signing other items from the merch catalogue so if you want a Howlers signed trucker cap or scarf, form an orderly queue! Check the website for details of the shows as we are doing 2 in a day at certain places….
You guys knocked out 17 tracks in 8 days so I don’t think that getting from Manchester to Leeds in a day would pose any problems (traffic permitting of course!)
Are you planning to be on the road sometime after the album lands?
We’ll be putting on a headline tour of the UK and Europe in Sept/oct, there will be a few more shows and select festivals (to be confirmed) during the year but we’ll play it by ear and see how it goes. UK locations for the tour? No idea at the moment, speak to our booking agent! Hopefully everywhere!
Exeter Cavern?
We have played the Cavern before (I think it was April 23) but we’ll do our best to get down there again.
Where’s the best place to keep up to date with you on the socials?
Instagram/Website are the best places to keep in touch. There will be a couple of announcements coming soon via the socials so keep your eyes peeled!
2024 is going to be a very busy year for you, I wish you all every success for the debut album, the in-store shows, any live dates and festivals that you might be playing and anything else you get up to! We’ll be at the Bristol show, see you there!
Thanks man, great to catch up!
We’d like to thank Adam from the band for sparing the time to chat to us and we wish the band every success for their debut album which lands on May 17th and for the in-store performances that they’re doing leading up to this date. You can PRE-ORDER the album and get your hands on tickets to the various in-store shows HERE, for everything else, check their socials below…