We can’t say with any certainty what the future holds. But we can at least tell you what The Futureheads hold, and it’s a new album.
With a new generation of bands clearly indebted to the breakneck bravado of the Britpop 2 era, this would seem the perfect time for Sunderland’s favourite sons to return, and long-player number four is set for the spring.
“It’s been a very different experience recording this album,” admits singer Barry Hyde. “We’ve had to do it in a much more disjointed way, since my brother Dave [the band’s drummer] and his girlfriend had a baby back in April, so we’ve almost had a year off. We’ve had to work quite slowly.”
The Futureheads’ concept of time is rather different than that of most other bands, however. It seems only relatively recently that, having been written-off after being dropped by major-backed label 679, they burst back onto the scene in dramatic style with instant indie anthem ‘The Beginning Of The Twist’ and summer ’08 album ‘This Is Not the World’. Factor in the requisite tours and they’ve hardly been dawdling.
“Well, yes, but we did ‘This Is Not The World’ in twelve days!” laughs Hyde. “We did that in mountains in Spain too, whereas we’ve been tucked away much more in our own studio this time around. We’ve been working with [legendary producer] Youth a lot, though, who worked on that with us, and with David Brewis from Field Music, and we’ve still managed to make a record where everything’s sort of tied together. I always think this about what we’ve just been working on, but I do think it’s the best we’ve done.”
The album is almost ready to drop, with just the name to be finalised, and, of course, a release date, which is looking like late February, early March. The fourteen tracks form “a very definite Futureheads album, high tempos, complicated melodies, loads of nice harmonies,” says Hyde, while the subject matter has hardly gone all ‘rock star’ in the meantime.
“We’ve got a track called ‘The Local Man Of The World’ that’s about those blokes you see in pubs who’ll tell you they’ve travelled everywhere when in fact they’ve never left their own town. There’s a good one called ‘The Baron’, and, of course [recent download] ‘Struck Dumb’. That’s been getting a great response from people, and we produced it ourselves, so I’m really proud of that.”
The album is again set to emerge on their own Null Records, a label set up chiefly as an outlet for their own material, although a “much more psychedelic” album by the aforementioned David Hyde, as Hyde And Beast, is also likely to get the Null treatment. Generally speaking though, Hyde would recommend other bands starting their own imprints too.
“I love the optimism and confidence we’ve had since we’ve been doing that. It’s just a shame that the music business has forgotten it’s the music business and seems to spend all its time swimming against the tide. I think we got out of the major labels at just the right time. And you know what? It really feels like we’re on the winning side.”
Words by Iain Moffat
