“There is always a nagging worry in the back of our minds that we’re not trained to do anything else. “The only pressure comes from us three,” McVeigh says. The absence of feverish expectation at this part of the White Lies story benefits their new album, As If I Try Not to Fall Apart. He says there was the usual major label pressure back then, at the start of the 2010s, and now that they are on respected indie PIAS there is a much more artist-centric approach. We had an amazing producer on that album in Alan Moulder and it was him who helped stopped the album from being a complete dud.” We didn’t focus on the songs enough and instead focused more on trying to make it sound crazy and doing mad production stuff. “I think we cut quite a few corners on that album, songwriting-wise. It’s such a cliché, but you have your whole life to be inspired and make your first album, but with the second album you’re kind of dropped into it and you have six months. We were under pressure to deliver something quickly. But with the second one, looking back on it, we made a lot of errors on it. People think so fondly of it and we do too. “I mean, that debut has given us everything, it’s the reason we are still going. “We felt a huge amount of pressure after the success of our first album,” he says. But he is remarkably honest about a record, Ritual, that he has considerable misgivings about now. McVeigh - speaking to Review on Zoom while on holiday in Tenerife this week - can afford to look back at their difficult second album with the benefit of years of hindsight. Then reality hit when it came to making the second album. There were support slots with Coldplay, Muse and Snow Patrol - then at the peak of their popularity - and it seemed as though McVeigh and bandmates Charles Cave and Jack Lawrence-Brown would enjoy an unstoppable rise. White Lies’ To Lose My Life topped the UK album chart - “and Ireland, too,” frontman Harry McVeigh interjects with a smile - and they went from playing intimate rooms to arenas like London’s O2 seemingly overnight. Your debut album is both a critical and commercial success.
It is the stuff of dreams for every young band.
0 kommentar(er)
