More about: Deaf Havana

Deaf Havana have long been one of the UK's most underappreciated rock bands. Over the last 15-plus years their output has remained consistently excellent, with their impressive back catalogue overflowing with soaring anthems and honest, heartfelt songwriting that would make any band envious.

Despite a hugely loyal fanbase and three Top 10 albums to their name, their commercial success has often been unjustly modest compared to that of their contemporaries. In another universe they would be one of the biggest bands in the country, but over the last few years Deaf Havana have just been trying hard to survive. 

From near-splits to bandmate departures, to relationship breakdowns and their own intense personal battles with alcoholism and depression, brothers James and Matthew Veck-Gilodi have both been put through the ringer. Now back from the brink and stronger than ever, they’ve returned as a duo with their sixth studio album, The Present Is A Foreign Land, which is shaping up to be their most personal and accomplished work to date. 

With the band finally looking set to claim the spot that they've long since deserved, we caught up with James and Matty to discuss the turbulent times that led to their new album.

Gigwise: It seems this album began life with the intention of being your final record, a swansong that has since morphed into a whole new rebirth – what was the situation coming out of Rituals, that led to that discussion of calling it a day? 

James Veck-Gilodi: All the joy had just kind of been sucked out the music.

Matty Veck-Gilodi: Yeah it very much felt like everything we used to enjoy, and everything that you should be thankful for when living your life as a musician, had kind of disappeared. I certainly had forgotten how to have fun and enjoy the everyday, I was getting really low and feeling super disenchanted with it all. James was in a similar place, so as a result we all just felt really disconnected and separate. It kind of naturally just fell away by the end of it.

JVG: I think we all dealt with it differently too. I dealt with it by just getting hammered every single day, so that in turn was just pissing everyone else off around me. So we all just fell apart really – every aspect that you should enjoy about playing music, had just gone.

GW: Obviously you’re no strangers to line-up changes over the years, James you’ve always been the constant in the band, Matty you’ve been doing it for the last decade now too – was there a lot of recalibration involved with the band suddenly becoming a duo in terms of the writing and touring, or did it feel like the natural evolution?

JVG: Writing-wise it was pretty easy, because to be honest we wrote everything before anyway. If anything, it made things a bit easier because 
— selfishly I guess — there were less people to please.

MVG: It also made us not think about the wider spectrum of what we should sound like or what we should achieve - we managed to remove all those expectations that we’ve always had when making a record. Instead, we just made it for the sake of making it, which might sound self-indulgent but it wasn’t like that.

JVG: Playing live is still challenging because we don’t have a set band anymore. The people that we have playing for us also have other jobs, so sometimes they’re not available. So that’s a lot more stressful than just having permanent members of the band, but once we get back on our proper touring schedule I think we’ll get there. The people we have playing for us are amazing too, so we can’t complain.

GW: With Rituals I know you guys wrote a lot of that album on a laptop with your technician Phil, whereas this one it seems to have begun life with Matty writing the first batch of songs over lockdown. Was it the pandemic that prompted that shift or was it a deliberate attempt to move away from what you had done with Rituals? 

MVG: It has to do with the pandemic in some way. All those songs kind of started because I had really fallen out of love with music. I was getting really grumpy every time I heard music playing, just not enjoying anything at all and whinging to myself about it. Then one day I thought I could actually just write something that I would want to hear, as opposed to just being miserable. So towards the end of the pandemic, it kind of naturally just happened.

There are actually probably more synths on this new record than the whole of Rituals, but because we used these outlawed modular synthesisers, it’s just got a very different sound.

GW: Although your records have always been quite autobiographical lyrically, this one already feels even more so compared to anything you’ve ever released. You’ve both been quite vocal about your own personal issues in the last few years and a lot of the time before and during the pandemic you were both confronting those issues. This album is obviously directly influenced by that chaotic time in your lives. Do you feel you had to get these things off your chest to move forward and has creating the album felt therapeutic in that sense?

JVG: Yeah definitely - for me, and probably Matty as well, I find it easier to write a song about it than I do to talk to someone. That’s sort of my way of dealing with stuff. But then I don’t really know how to write about anything other than what I have personally experienced, it’s always been like that. I guess that is also probably because I do use it as therapy.

GW: I know your relationship with each other was also strained for well over a year, you didn’t speak to each other – was there anything that caused that breakdown and what was the moment that you were able to reconnect?

MVG: It ties in directly with how things got strained with the band towards the end of 2019. James and I were operating in very different spheres. At that point in time, I wasn’t drinking and I was actively going to therapy…

JVG: …and I was getting fucked up every second I possibly could.

MVG: Yeah. I was trying to grow up and take myself a bit more seriously, looking to live as much of a non-miserable life as I can, and so we naturally kind of just drifted. Then the pandemic happened and with that came another bunch of personal things and it [the relationship] just fell away. I think we needed that space probably from one another, or at least I did anyway.

Then sometime in March last year, things were starting to open up again after the pandemic, but we were still in the mindset that we were going to be splitting up. So the idea was to release a song to go out on and that’s ended up being track two on the record, which is '19 Dreams', one of the songs I already had written. James and I got in contact about recording and it just went from there, on like a work basis.

Obviously its not ideal that we had a long time of not communicating, but I’m much happier in our relationship as we have it now. I guess there’s something to be thankful for in there. 

GW: The album is titled The Present Is A Foreign Land after track 9 on the record – where did that title come from and was there a reason behind naming the record after this song in particular?

MVG: It’s just a little phrase that I had bouncing around my brain that kind of explains how I feel about everyday life, and how alienated and disconnected I often feel. I really liked that as a title, so once we had that in the mix we just sat it as a working title. Then the more songs we got together, the more it sat really well as an umbrella over everything. Thematically you can link it to every song I think in one way or another, so I’m really happy with it.

JVG: Also I think people can make up their own mind as to what it means for them. Regardless of whether you’ve been through the same personal struggles as we have, we’ve all had a weird scenario thanks to the last two years of COVID. So I think it applies to everyone in some way, shape or form.

GW: You’ve just released 'Nevermind', which James you say is your favourite song on the record – obviously it’s a hugely heartfelt and personal track. Can you explain why this song is so important to you? 

JVG: Yeah, this song is probably about maybe the hardest period of my life to date. It was just after we had got back from some really rubbish tours in 2019, I ended up finding myself single at the age of 30 and I had to move back in with my grandparents. It was just a pretty awful time and I didn’t have any motivation to do anything, so it’s literally just about that.

Luckily when I wrote the song, I was in a much more positive space and I’d sorted pretty much most of my problems out. Well, some of my problems out at least! So I think there’s an element of hopefulness in the song because I wrote it in when I was in a much better frame of mind. I guess it’s also a constant reminder of where I want to avoid being - like the lowest place I’ve ever been, and what not to do to avoid getting back there. 

MVG: I said as soon as James sent it over, it was the second song we got together for the album, that I thought it was clearly the best bare-bones acoustic song that he had ever written, I think it’s great. It was also fun to just play around with, it was the first song where I got to put together a proper piano part which was nice.

GW: If 'Nevermind' is James’ favourite from the new record, what’s yours then Matty?

MVG: I think my favourite song on the new record would have to be track seven which is called 'Someone/Somewhere'. I would say equally heartfelt from James and, along with 'Nevermind', probably lyrically the darkest track on the record. But it's set against a quite chilled dance song, so it’s a really strange, very different song for us and I’m incredibly proud of how its turned out.

It's also got a feature vocal from a great band called IDER, they did an amazing job on just further elevating the song. I’m really excited to get it out there and see if people like it or not.

GW: You’ve just recently played Slam Dunk, you also did the Don Broco shows at Royal Albert Hall and you have tonnes more live shows coming up. How has it felt being back playing shows again and are there any new tracks you’re excited to play live for the first time? 

JVG: For me it’s been a bit weird because I’m definitely still out of practice. We’ve only played four shows so far and for me it takes more than that (to get back in the swing). This time it’s also with a completely new band as well. So probably by the end of the German leg of our tour I’ll be feeling more positive.

MVG: Yeah, it’s a groove that you need to exercise to get back into it.

JVG: In terms of new songs live, we’ve already played the three that we’ve released – 'Kids', 'Going Clear' and 'On the Wire'. 'Kids' is really fun to play live, the other two we just need to play more. There are songs off some of our albums that have taken a years’ worth of touring before they finally feel good live. Hopefully it won’t take that long! But you know, it’s all a process.

MVG: I think '19...' will be good; '19 Dreams', track two. Once we get that bedded in, that will really work in a live setting. It is just really interesting to see, because at this point before a record comes out you have ideas of what’s going to work really well and you’re quite often very wrong!

JVG: I’m really looking forward to it [the tour] though.

GW: You’ve always been a band that seem inspired by your travels, over 20 mentions of towns, cities, countries in your back catalogue. Which place do you think has had the biggest impact on you or been the most inspiring to you artistically, and did you find not having that as a muse during lockdown caused any writer’s block at all?

JVG: It definitely caused writer’s block for me because I write a lot when I’m on tour. I don’t write the music, but when I’m travelling, I always write down lyrics. I guess because I’m always in a bizarre headspace and seeing different scenery. The most influential country to me though, boringly, is England. You know because I spend most of my time here, it’s quite a depressing place - it just makes for the perfect backdrop.

MVG: I reckon Germany comes close as a runner-up. We’ve obviously got songs like 'Cassiopeia' in our back catalogue that are explicitly about Berlin.

JVG: That is about Berlin, but I wrote that when I was in Colombia!

MVG: I love a good street reference - I don’t know whether that comes from [Bruce Springsteen song] 'Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out'. 

GW: You’ve also been doing a lot of collaborative work in the last few years, some production work for Rob Lynch and some guest spots on a few tracks. Are there any artists you’re keen to collaborate with in the future?

JVG: Well those ones that I did, Rob’s my best mate and he’s shit at recording - so with that one it was basically that I said I would record him for free! Then those guest spots, I was just bored in lockdown and they sent a song asking me to sing on it. At the time we weren’t really a band either. I would love to do more collaborations with us, I just don’t know who would be up for it.

MVG: Yeah sometimes it feels a bit shoehorned in within our genre of music.

JVG: Yeah I think a lot of people use it to bump themselves up status-wise. I don’t care how famous someone is, it’s more if the song benefits from having them on it and they’re good.

MVG: Yeah I’d say with IDER on 'Someone/Somewhere', it elevates the track to a place it wouldn’t have been able to get to without those guys. If there is something like that where the fit is perfect, I’d always be open. As far as dream collaborations go…

GW: You referenced Springsteen there a minute ago…

MVG: That would be good, but I think with him you’d know what he would bring to the table. Fred Again… get him to do a remix or some production. Australian dance artist Tourist, he’s fucking fantastic as well.

JVG: Jonathan Davis from Korn!

GW: Finally, your new album is out imminently – what are your expectations and is there anything you are hoping fans take away from the new record?

MVG: I don’t really have any expectations and I think that’s the first time we’ve released a record like that. I’m very confident in it, we’ve had the record now for a year and it still does something different to me every time I listen to it. For me, it still makes me feel everything it made me feel at that time and it does everything I want it to do. 

So I just hope that it connects with people in the same way, because I feel we put a lot of ourselves into it. I’m really interested to hear how people interpret things and learn what it means to them; because I know what it means to me, but once it’s out it’s as much everyone else’s as it is ours.

JVG: I hope it can reach bigger audiences and help us to travel to different countries, that’s always an aspiration of mine. But in this current climate, music baffles me so I don’t really know. Do people even like this kind of music anymore? I have no idea. So I genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen. 

Like Matty said though we’re confident in it, this is the first record we’ve ever made where we love every single song and we believe in it. So the work’s almost done already as normally half the battle is getting ourselves to believe in the record, but we truly do this time. So now anything else is a bonus really, if people can like it — and I can keep being able to afford to live! — that would be wonderful.

The Present Is A Foreign Land arrives 15 July via So Recordings.

Grab your copy of the Gigwise print magazine here.

More about: Deaf Havana