Photo: Press
Ten years is a long time in the music industry and artist longevity can often be difficult to find. It was back in 2007 that The View went from relative obscurity in their native Dundee to a number one album, a string of sell out gigs and a Mercury Prize nomination. Made up of four school friends, Kyle Falconer on lead vocals, Peter Reilly on guitar, Kieran Webster on bass and Michael Annable on drums, the band began life as a covers band, gigging up and down Scotland after their early promise was spotted in a school talent competition. Their debut album, _Hats Off to the Buskers_, became an overnight success, reaching number one in the UK charts. The album’s lead single, ‘Same Jeans’, reached number 3 in the UK charts and became a cult indie classic. Ten years on from its release, the band are now in the middle of a special anniversary tour to celebrate the album’s original release.
“It doesn’t actually feel so different to what it felt like back in 2007,” lead singer Kyle Falconer tells me when we chat on the telephone, just before the band are due to perform in Cardiff. “It’s great to be touring with the same people – it still feels exactly the same.” The View have always been known for their energetic, popular, punk-spirited performances – not least in their appearances at T in the Park – a festival they have headlined a record eight times. “It’s been a great response to the tour. We normally don’t do this size of venue in Cardiff but all the other gigs have sold out – there’s a few tickets left for this and another one but all the others have sold out. That feels pretty good,” Falconer says, when I ask about how it feels to be selling out tours after ten years on the road.
The View’s rise to fame in 2007 was a whirlwind, almost overnight success. Receiving air play by Edith Bowman, Zane Lowe, Jo Wiley and Dermot O’Leary after their EP release in 2006, the band were championed by Jim Gellantly on XFM Scotland’s Scotland XPosure show. When the chance to record came up, the band had only been touring a few of their songs for a short time. “The album was just the songs we had at the time, we never had any more or less. We went in and just recorded them. We’d only been playing them live for nine months and we went in and recorded them – and that was the album. We’d done cover songs before that and gradually we started to play our own songs. It all happened pretty quick: we got a record deal almost straight away.”
For a group of twenty-somethings to go from relative obscurity to selling out venues in a matter of months must have felt like the stuff of dreams; I ask Falconer to reflect on what happened. “It was great!” Kyle enthusiastically tells me. “All the time it was a bit of a whirlwind. There was so much going on – we were being played all over the world and we got signed at the same time. All the venues were quickly upgraded to 3000 capacity venues from nowhere. It all went really big, really quickly. There wasn’t much hanging around for us – it all happened so fast.”
“We were doing so much. We were headlining Glastonbury, T in the Park, The Royal Albert Hall…there were so many happy memories it’s difficult to pick a single one. It was something we always wanted, but I think we just wanted recognition for the songs because we knew they were good songs.” The success of Hats Off to the Buskers brought troubles further down the line for The View, as they eventually parted with their original record company and struggled to match the success of early endeavours until their well-received 2014 album, Ropewalk. Talking to Falconer, it becomes clear the band’s early partying days took its toll on him personally, the demons of which he is still fighting today.
“Stay away from drugs” is the candid reply when I ask him about the regrets the partying brought. Falconer has worked hard to overcome his issues, but it’s clear it is still something he battles with even now. “I’ve not really overcome it,” he says of the hard times he’s been through. “It's still kinda hard. It's much better, whereas before there were no limits,” he tells me. “Even now it’s a pretty mental [schedule], touring every night. The last tour was a year ago but since then we’ve all kind of calmed down a bit on the drinking and stuff.”
Falconer seems to have found a new drive and impetus to make new music and perform again, something brought about at least in part by the enthusiasm he sees in The Blinders, a group supporting The View on tour. “I’ve been writing a lot recently so I try not to listen to music because it puts me off. But I’ve been touring with a band called The Blinders. They are young guys from Doncaster and they are quality; they have got a lot of likeness to what we were like when we were that age. They like the same style of music as us but they’re quite heavy and grunge-like.”
“They are quite young compared to the band’s we’ve usually got on tour. They’re normally the same age as us, but these are like 20 year olds. It’s good because they keep us enthusiastic. They’re like ‘let’s go off and have a party’ and now we’re now like the old ones, ‘no, thanks for the offer!’” Falconer laughs about turning 30 next month and how he can’t keep up like he used to. “We’ve just got to keep doing it, you know. It’s great but even five years ago we were always wondering what we were going to be like as a band when we’re 30 years old. I’m thirty next month!”
The success of the anniversary tour has also brought about a successful Record Store Day release day for the band and a tour extension. “We’re going to finish [performing at] these venues and then do an upgraded tour towards the end of the year.” On their Record Store success, it’s clear the positive response from fans old and new has touched the band. “I think it got to like number one in the charts or something. It shows interest doesn’t it, and that it’s still there. And showing people something new and they still like it. It’s something new but it’s an old record re-recorded and putting a new style to it [still has interest].”
The band have also gone back to the DIY quality of their early days. Falconer tells me they “we’re always open to new ideas” from record companies, but at various points in their career, it didn’t always work. “We’d always been hands on with everything, like artwork, and we’ve stuck to doing things [ourselves] wherever we can,” he says, indicating that this is more in line with the punk spirit of their origins – a place where they clearly still find comfort and pride.
For the next ten years, The View plan to keep doing what they know and love best: making music. I ask about how it feels, to still be here ten years on, selling out venues, seeing old and new fans at gigs, when many of the bands they started with didn’t make it this far. “A lot of bands that were out at the same time, some of them still work. They also had other jobs before and had other plans…for us, we were always in a band and that was always the plan.” Ten years and five albums after Hats Off to the Buskers release, it appears The View have no plans of slowing down. If anything, the anniversary release and tour seem to have rekindled their love of making music and touring all over again.
