“For a new band, Vaults sound startlingly mature. Their songs are meticulously arranged, with a captivating voice poured over the top like a really advanced gravy.”
– Gus Unger-Hamilton, alt-J
It’s better to get the mistakes out of the way first. Introduced to Vaults, it’s clear from their easy-going confidence that this is a group who are comfortable in their identity, who have gone down wrong paths and survived to tell the tale. “It really helps to be a little bit older and to have made a few mistakes along the way,” states Ben. “With Vaults, we basically just sat down and said: ‘Let’s do the best thing we can do.’ We didn’t want it to be contrived, we just wanted to go for it.”
Placing debut track ‘Cry No More’ online last year, Vaults certainly went for it. Amassing one million SoundCloud plays before their first show, the band is the very definition of viral success. Not that singer Blythe has let this go to her head, matter-of-factly stating: “I was so sceptical about it in the beginning. I asked our manager if he’d hired someone to press the button over and over again…”
Currently adding to their large bank of new material, Vaults are rooted in that artful sense of uniquely British pop. Visually engrossing, their songwriting – soft on the ear yet lyrically hard-hitting – betrays a gorgeous melancholy. As a group, the trio continually return to visual metaphors when discussing their approach. “It’s poised,” continues Blythe, “as in, there’s a sense of suspension, a sense of waiting. A slightly Lynch-ian cityscape there; a little uncanny.”
This uncanny feeling could well come from the production – the responsibility of Barney, it seems to be fed by the gut feeling of all three musicians. “I think, you get to a point where you just have to sit down in the studio and try it,” explains Barney. “Talking about it too much can lose all meaning.”
To which Blythe simply smiles: “We just put that lyric in our new song: “follow your instincts”.”
WHERE: London
WHAT: Artfully produced synth-pop with a sense of the uncanny
GET THREE SONGS: ‘Cry No More’, ‘Vultures’, ‘Lifespan’
FACT: All three have some form of classical background, although Blythe admits that she failed Grade Eight sight-reading.
Photo Credit: Eliot Lee Hazel
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