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It’s not often you come across a band today that are as large or eclectic as The Earlies; based up North with the exception of two members who live in Texas, this band is responsible for some serious avant-garde music. Gigwise was fortunate to catch up with them just before at their London show at The Scala, because when not on tour or recording, these guys literally disappear.
When three of the core members met on a recording course in Manchester a friendship was quickly struck up and a handful of tunes were made, these John Mark took back to Texas with him. After a chance meeting with now frontman Brandon back home, the songs started to fly back and forth across the Atlantic between the two Americans and the English contingent. That was back in 1996 and now eleven years on The Earlies have grown into a ten piece band when live, sometimes even more in the studio and as mature members of the music scene they are a force to be reckoned with - albeit a very chatty one.
The four main members of The Earlies are Giles Hatton, Christian Madden, John Mark Lapham and Brandon Carr; “That’s how it started but that’s becoming less and less relevant now” says Giles. “The first album we made it and it was a bit of a studio project, but with the second album we had played together for a couple of years so when we made the second album people were a lot more involved with it. That whole dynamic is changing”. The two Americans come up with the majority of the lyrics, although only Brandon appears on stage with the band as John Mark is more of a “studio person”, while the rest of the band put the music together.
Christian gives some grounding into this mind-boggling arrangement: “Most things are pretty democratic; people have always been very good at telling each other when they think things are shit and not falling out about it”. “If anybody in the band really hates something that we’re doing we won’t do it,” Giles continues, “we don’t have any of that inter-band angst or the feeling that somebody’s taking the limelight. It’s a very healthy way to make music...” he pauses before he and Christian bust out laughing.
Their influences include everything from British 70’s prog, to German progressive music, to Danny Elfman (composer of ‘The Simpsons’ theme tune and many of Tim Burton’s film scores as Christian so informs us) it’s easy to see why The Earlies are band that as they themselves say “ People either love or are completely ambivalent about!”. And this is true- this band are not part of a scene and never have been -the music they make is just too different to earn them any form of commercial success.
But this is not what The Earlies are about. Ask any band and they’ll tell you that they want to make music and change the ‘scene’ but very rarely do you find one that actually means it or even achieves that, The Earlies come from a different don’t-give-a-fuck breed, they started making music back in the 90’s because they wanted to and that’s exactly what they’ve carried on doing since then. They’re not part of any trend because they’ve no interest in being so. “We’re totally out of touch and don’t really listen to any of that stuff, we’re a bunch of fat old men- we really don’t know what’s going on at all! So we just make these records that we want to hear, but then people are like ‘Oh! Wow! You’re so going against the current scene!’, but I don’t know what the current scene is- I haven’t got a fucking clue!” declares Giles.
With nods of agreement, Christian carries on “I know there’s stuff going on that’s worth hearing but you’ve just gotta dig for it”. A nerve seems to have been smacked as they two of them cut across each other- “Because there’s no industry anymore kids now think that ‘I’m gonna be in a band and I’m gonna be a pop star’ and that is the idea they have not ‘I’m gonna write some awesome music’. They wanna be in a band more than they wanna make music, so that’s why you’ve got all these bands that…”, “…People want to be in a band ‘cause they think it’ll solve all their problems and they’ll get laid loads…”, “…They are more interested in a career than they are in making music...”. It’s Giles who gets the last word in though- “You can’t be writing about fancying birds…” as a quip about The Kooks is made.
Later on in the evening, The Earlies will put on a jaw dropping show at Kings Cross’ Scala full of tripping numbers oozing stomping bass lines and pounding beats; tunes dripping in keyboard skits and synth sounds. From the heavy King Crimson like instrumentals to the simpler songs it is a bloody mind screw of an experience not for the feint hearted- listening to it on record is one thing and it ca be quite hard but live it’s something else altogether. The music is tight, it needs to be for this kind of thing to work, and the band themselves hold themselves very steady and close together- you’d never guess they could produce such a powerful sound just by looking at them.
So what's next? There’s another imminent tour, some festival appearances over the summer and possibly another album if time allows this year, but for the time being it’s “Chin up, knuckle down, on you go”.
Live photos by: Linda Chasteau
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