Photo: Shirlaine Forrest
"I feel like there's a lot of goodwill around the band at the moment," smiles Ryan Jarman, a little weary from tearing up London's Electric Ballroom in Camden the night before. "We did the 'best of' record last year then had a bit of time off, psychologically a lot of people might think that means that you're winding things down, but that wasn't the case."
On the contrary, instead of doing what many bands of their era have done (wind down and disappear), Wakefield's finest are in fact bang in the middle of a sweet spot. With one of the most consistent and immediate albums of their career out this week, and other 'punkier' Steve Albini-backed effort in the works for later this year, The Cribs don't stop.
Existing for their love of their craft, and dedicated to their legions of hardcore followers, The Cribs still exist outside of buzz and fads - but they remain one thing: the band you can trust.
"You never fully know when you go away if you're going to come back at the same level, but it feels like that never happens with our band - it feels like our fans always stick around," Jarman continued. "The audience are getting younger and younger, loads of teenagers - it's not just our old fans coming back. We're not one of those bands that just get older playing to the same people, I don't think we'd enjoy that at all. You just wouldn't feel relevant."
They remain as relevant as they always were. To mark the release of their sixth album, For All My Sisters, we talk to Ryan Jarman about Weezer, their insane fans, Steve Albini, progress, and escaping the indie landfill.
Gigwise: Every time we see a Cribs' gig, it strikes one that there's no such thing as a 'casual' Cribs fan - they all seem batshit mental and dedicated. Why do you think that is?
Ryan: I hope that it's because we aren't just about the music to them and that we identify in other ways. Mainly it's just the way that we operate or what we represent to them, or maybe it's just the fact that they like the songs. We always try to make the point of releasing as many songs as possible, doing b-sides and never doing remixes or live tracks. Hopefully, the reason our fans are so hardcore is because they believe in us and trust us. I think that's the case, our audience just trust us and don't expect us to do anything that lets them down.
There aren't that many bands left now - especially from the time that we came out. I don't know, maybe the longevity as well having been with these people for the last ten years.
What are you doing different to the bands who have disappeared?
We never live and die by the same things as other bands. We had some frustrations when we first started, we were being lumped in with bands that if we didn't have anything in common with - they would enjoy more success quicker, but we remained quite bloody-minded and were DIY from the start. We were making our way round in our own van and toured whenever we wanted, we toured a lot more than other bands. I think that's the best way of making a connection - if they've seen you live and hung out with you then fans forge a closer connection. We've always operated on our own, and we didn't depend on big advertising budgets or anything like that, so we were never rammed down anyone's throats.
People felt like we're their band. Our fans have connected online as a big community now, but if that hadn't happened organically then it wouldn't have worked. We weren't a flash in the pan like so many others.
Do you feel like you were unfairly lumped in with 'so many others' when you first came about? People might have associated you with all of that crap landfill indie when you were actually anything but...
I feel like the misconceptions are gradually getting cleared up now. There were points where certain elements of the press were happy to report them as well, maybe - we always got the impression that we were being misrepresented and that was being perpetuated to keep us down, maybe.
Because we've been around so long, I feel like the truth will always percolate out and I feel like that's the case now, but it was quite a struggle. We were constantly addressing the way that we were represented and correcting those misconceptions. It sucks because you waste so much time doing that over and over. Not slagging other bands off, but because we were trying to separate ourselves, it's not the most comfortable thing to have to keep doing. Now we just feel really relieved, because there aren't as many bands around, I think people listen to us more and just get us. We've been doing the same thing from the start. Recently, everyone's been so fixated on the 90s and people used to mock us for that kind of thing back in 2002 and laugh at us, but maybe now what we're doing makes a little more sense to people.
So where would you say that For All My Sisters takes The Cribs?
I feel like the record itself is very much a classic Cribs record. If you're a fan of the band, I don't think there's anything that would radically surprise you, but mainly I want people to take something away from the lyrics. That's something that we spend a lot of time on and don't get too cryptic. We don't put too fine a point on what the songs are about, but we want people to attach their own meaning. It's the record where we're most comfortable in our own skin, I don't feel like wee're kicking against anything. It's definitely a more melodic record, and we've definitely focussed on the more poppy side - that was the plan from the start.
But it's still heavy, we don't want people to get the wrong idea.We've not sold out or gone mainstream.
That perfect mixture of pop, aggression and rock energy is something that Weezer do really well. Is that something that producer Ric Ocasek brought to the album?
Really, it was quite serendipitous that we ended up working with him - we've been trying to for a long time, since the third record I think. When we were making this record, we'd actually written quite a lot of songs and we went out to meet him in New York and just got on really well as people. When we sent him the demoes, it just turned out that the poppy stuff was right up his street. With The Cars and that, he's made some very poppy records - but from a more leftfield place. That's exactly what we wanted to do with this record. It just really made sense that we worked with him. He helped bring out that poppy side because at no point in the studio did we ever second-guess making things as hooky as possible, and Rick has the same mentality, it made sense.
We really liked the seduction of Weezer as kids, and know when we go back and listen to them, I can definitely hear Ric's influence on it. I can draw parallels between the sound of that record and ours, and I think that's a good thing.
And we hear that you've been working on another record too?
Yes, we've had quite a bit of time off to write. At first we had a bunch of songs with the poppy stuff then we were writing more punk rock stuff and we start to feel weird about the pop stuff. This time we just wanted to fully embrace each side on each record. We wanted to make a fully-realised pop record, then go into the studio with Steve Albini and make a record that's as noisy and nasty as possible - with no sorts of commercial expectations or anything. With Steve, we recorded four songs in three days and we already have those in the can so when we were writing this record we did have a few more that we've earmarked. It's on the backburner for now but we will go out to Chicago, I just want to make sure we don't leave it too long so those songs don't get old. When things get old, it's quite rare we revisit things from the past. We're just really immersed in this record at the moment.
So when do you think we can hear it? Will you just burst back once this album cycle is over?I think that's quite likely. I think we'll try and work on it during the album cycle so it can come out quite quickly afterwards, we'll play it by ear.
Not going to try and catch that Christmas market?
With a Steve Albini record? Good luck, mate.
You've always done what you do outside of chasing any media attention or radioplay - so what do you think about people welcoming 'the return of guitar music' with the likes of Royal Blood etc?
I feel like at the minute, people see it as everything being pop and dance music at the moment, so there is definitely something. I wouldn't call it a conspiracy but we are told 'this is popular' and that's what you need to be part of to be down with the kids. That's the most important thing to the grown ups, that's the No.1 goal.
I'm not that sure what's going on as far as guitar bands are concerned, I don't have that good an idea of what's happening, but Serge was talking about 'working class' rock n' roll bands and there's definitely a point where there was a lack of that anyway. I remember when we were kids, you'd be working a really crappy job and you'd go and rehearse all night because being in a band and getting a record deal was this dream to take you away from that crappy job - it was seen as your way out.
Whereas now the industry has collapsed to such a degree that no one has that aspiration, you don't have that way out anymore. The vast majority of musicians in general seem to be people who can afford to be in a band. They have to be supported somewhere, because it almost became a vanity project for people that could afford to do it. I don't know if that's conducive to exciting music - I always thought that one of the good things about that whole attitude of working bad jobs was that there was an element of desperation to music where people want to get out. That's why bands tend to get crap when they get famous, they were making these watered down records about being famous and people weren't interested in that any more.
It's something that's missing and may never come back.
And what do you make of Serge from Kasabian saying that their lack of nominations at the BRIT Awards was a 'conspiracy against working class rock'?
As far as being in the charts and being nominated for BRIT Awards, we've obviously never cared about that at all, but I would be lying if I said I hadn't noticed that. I definitely am aware that that's the climate we're operating in at the moment, but that hasn't effected us - I feel like we're bigger than we ever have been. That's the beautiful thing of our situation, if you operate on your own, we can genuinely ignore these things. We don't live or die by being played on the radio, even though we have been. We enjoy our flirtations with the mainstream because we think it's perverse.
For All My Sisters by The Cribs is out now. The band will also headline Live At Leeds on Saturday 2 May alongside Carl Barat & The Jackals, Palma Violets and many more. For tickets and information, visit here.
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