Photo:
Innercity Pirates are all over the airwaves at the moment and have just announced a summer tour with Hadouken!, but this Welsh four piece are not the average indie-cum-pop band you'd expect. Having seen them play a searing live set the night before, it struck us that their eclectic music which flicks from the disco-synth sounds to more melodic tunes full of ‘do-whoops’ and harmonies is very different from the conveyor belt of indie bands. Imbued with variety, they really do have a song to suit everyone and anyone.
Catching up with them in the pub the following day, Gigwise sat down to talk all things musical and beside with the band post-previous night antics which appear to have been drunkenly covering each other in makeup several times over (the traces of which are still faintly visible across their slightly nervous but grinning faces) and picking up an artistically decorated cheese board and matching dinner place mats along the way.
Vocalist/guitarist Russ and synth player Jon are the most bubbly and extrovert of the group and leap in straight away telling the magazine how they got Innercity Pirates together. Before bassist Stephy and sticksman Dave joined the band there were some ups and downs with the first incarnation of the rhythm section which culminated in their departure, but which spurred Innercity Pirates on to brighter things.
All natives of Cardiff, they came across each other via the music scene although Russ reckons his first meeting with Jon was slightly more emotional, “When I first looked into his eyes it was like the first time I listened to The Beatles! I don’t know who these two are”. He gestures at Dave and Stephy who are sat at the other end of the table laughing into their drinks. Russ quips “We met Dave online” to which Dave responds with an indignant look shot at the comic frontman.
It actually turns out that Dave is a mate of Stephy’s from university and was roped into the band that way. The conversation turns from Russ slagging everyone (predominantly Dave) off, to their single, the brilliantly titled 'Cockney Sparra', which is an upbeat summer song layered with synths and vocals and sweetly mumbled lyrics pertaining to cockney rhyming slang. This is the very single that Steve Lamacq has added to his ‘Rebel Playlist’ after it proving to be such a hit with the listeners. “Cockney Sparra is very different to the other singles or Ear Sex”. The difference between these two singles epitomises the variety in sounds the band are able to pull off and maintain huge support from their fans. Russ elucidates what the single is about: “It’s about my girlfriend, and the lyrics confuse people. She calls me Rusty which is like a dusty bin and she’s my cockney sparrow and so the lyrics mean ‘kiss my face’”, before “Shut the fuck up!”.
“We’ll go and move to a different planet” continues Jon quite calmly against the ensuing chaos, as he explains what they’ll have to do when they hit the big time, which won’t be too far off in the future especially with their Hadouken! support slots and festival appearances from ‘Till The Cows Come Home and Secret Garden Festival to ‘Waynestock’. As soon as Russ mentions this last ‘festival’ a chorus of that infamous line “Book them and they will come” rings out from the table causing the rest of polite society to stop drinking for a moment and stare.
Sadly, Reading and Leeds aren’t on the cards this year, but the Pirates popped that cherry a while ago “I was playing Radiohead songs till nine in the morning on the camp site and the next day we heard this guys saying to someone ‘Did you hear that dickhead playing Radiohead?”. In stitches, the four of them get up and stage a brief re-enactment of various camp site scenes, before Jon stops dead and says “Ask us anything and it’ll always come back to cock. Ask us a question and we’ll link it to cock!”.
Right...But mind you, when you’re a band travelling around the country in a beaten up ambulance with a medicine cabinet stocked with booze and a constant Guns N’ Roses sound track, what do you expect?
