Risking almost certain death on Byres Road at rush hour, whatsurmusic clambered onto the big, purple Athlete tour bus to catch up with drummer Steve Roberts, to find out how the pre-launch tour of 4th album, ‘Black Swan’, is going…

We’ve not been used to touring, we did a couple of things last year but they were really, really short and and it was kinda five days in a row with a day off in the middle, and half the time we were driving home after them.  It’s really good, we just need to get used to it!

The band won’t be releasing their 4th album ‘Black Swan’ until August, yet they released tickets for the 34-date tour months ago – what was the ethos behind that move?

We wanted to do loads of small venues and to play the new songs to people that have been with us from the start, first.  So rather than having an album out, or having a single on the radio to plug, which raises your profile a bit, we wanted to just do it without any of that. There wasn’t a huge amount of advertising for the gigs so it’s just the people that have been with us for a long time that are coming along. It’s nice.  So it also means that those people are hearing the new songs for the first time and they’re hearing them live, rather than buying the record, so there’s more of a connection.

At this point the tour bus door swings open and lead singer Joel leaps on, narrowly avoiding being hit by a taxi (the tour bus door opens directly onto the line of traffic, not the best parking job they could’ve hoped for…) and proudly shows off an urban outfitters bag stuffed full of shopping, before heading upstairs…

So how have the crowd been responding so far?

It’s been good, yeah really, really good actually. We’ve been trying out different songs and different sets and we’ve been getting to know the songs better ourselves too.

The band have mentioned that with their 4th album they really hoped to capture the raw sound of playing live…

We did a very short tour before we recorded the songs, so it was literally two weeks of touring before we went into the studio.  We played the songs in-front of people then went into the studio and played them exactly the same way, or the way they’d evolved.  I suppose it was just about carrying on that ethos of trying to keep it all about playing live.  That’s the focus of album, it’s the simplest one we’ve ever made. 

We’re really into our fiddling with production stuff though… We’re into our electronic music as well and we kindof want to tie that into it.  It’s quite easy to pick a song that’s alright and then tart it up until it’s quite good!

After the massive success of Tourist (their second album), does it concern them when they’re writing songs to try and make them more commercial and poppy?

I think the nature of this album is that we just wrote loads and load and loads and then picked the songs after, and so you kind of don’t think about that at the beginning, you just see what comes out…and essentially what people would describe as a big radio pop song or whatever, is kind of what we do anyway, if you know what I mean?  It’s not really a conscious thing, all the music that we’ve done comes from playing live again. The last record was a little bit more electronic and we let ourselves go off and try out some new things and it’s brilliant to make but it wasn’t so much to play live

cos it was more about us in the studio it didn’t translate as well live.  And so this time we definitely thought ‘how’s this going to sound live and is it going to move people?’.  Is it going to be something that actually means something to people, or is it just something that we’re enjoying in the studio now? 

The band have cited more obscure, cult bands such as Efterklang, the Flaming Lips and Sonic Youth as influencing them.  How do they feel about the more commercial direction their own career has taken?

 

  I think probably in the past we’ve been ashamed in a weird way, of wanting people to like our music.  ‘Cos I suppose the music that we’re into is probably a little bit more obscure than the music that we make, but I think on this record we realised that we actually really enjoy writing songs and playing in front of big crowds and having them singing along and enjoy it with us.  I can’t imagine Sonic Youth thinking ‘ooh I really want the crowd to sing along’ haha! But I think we’ve realised that that’s what actually really works for us, that’s what naturally comes out and coming off stage after a gig like that is really enjoyable.  Having people saying ‘oh that song really moved me…’.

After releasing the first single in 2003, Athlete were propelled to success within a relatively short space of time, particularly with hit song ‘Wires’ – did this create a negative, or positive, effect on the band in terms of the pressure it placed on them?

‘I’ve never really thought about it - I guess being signed to a major label you’re immediately under that pressure to take off to a certain level anyway, otherwise you don’t get to make a second record.  The record companies give you a spiel like ‘we’re all about helping you to develop a career, we’re a family’ but that’s actually not true because if they don’t make money off of it then, business wise, they can’t just let you carry on spending their money.  And I think we were probably a bit naïve to that.  But at the time we were just enjoying ourselves.

So, what lies ahead for Athlete after releasing the album in August?

We’re planning on touring America, though that’s all up in the air at the moment ‘cos there’s another label that we wanna put the album out rather than the one we’re on.  Looks like it’s going to come together, but all these things take 10 times longer than you expect.  But that will also mean going out there for a bit, which will be great.  All the plans for the rest of the year are slowly coming together, we keep getting asked can you do this, can you do that, so our diaries are starting to get juggled in all different directions – I’m just trying to stay out of it to be honest!

Before we wrap up the interview Steve wants to make something clear….

Glasgow, whenever we come here we always say it, but we always wonder whether people will think we say it everywhere - but of our top 5 gigs, one and two are definitely Glasgow. I think most bands say that, that Glasgow’s the best, but if the whole band were here and the crew, and you asked them individually without anyone else hearing each other, they would all say Glasgow’s the best gig.  Definitely.  Our best ever gig was at the Carling Academy at the end of our first record, it’s a great venue.  Our second best gig was at the Barrowlands on our last record.  The crowd, I don’t know what it is about Glaswegians that seem to give everything they’ve got!  You know being a band and touring then turning up in Glasgow is always an exciting prospect.  Make sure that comes across as genuine ‘cos it is!

Black Swan is due for UK release on 10th August 2009

Interview by Keira Macmillan

Also read a review of their gig at Oran Mor