Following on from their brooding 2019 debut ‘Silver Tongues’, Crows’ latest effort pushes an even more ferocious side of the band. Truly serving as a maturation of their sound, sophomore release ‘Beware Believers’ is a refined embodiment of everything Crows have to offer: and the result is dark, poignant and spellbinding.
Totally different from the slow, meticulous process that lead up to their debut, ‘Beware Believers’ was crafted with an ever-ticking clock in mind. Immediately set on striking the iron while it was still hot, ‘Beware Believers’ was set in motion as soon as their debut hit the shelves. And strike the iron they have; this release perfectly builds on ‘Silver Tongue’s strengths. Burrowing further into the underbelly of gothic post-punk, ‘Beware Believers’ is a pitch-black dose of raw, thrashing guitars and charged emotion.
We had a chat with vocalist James Cox about Crows’ latest effort, considering the ‘sharp’ recording process, the restrictive nature of genre and delving into the darkness encased within ‘Beware Believers’…
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Congratulations on the new album! Hopefully the celebrations didn’t leave you feeling too rough the next day – we did notice that you had to push your pop-up forward by an hour and a half! How did you celebrate, and how did the pop-up and tattoo sessions go?
Haha, the plan was to just go for a nice fancy meal on the Friday of release weekend – just us, our manager and Elliott who does the artwork – and save ourselves for the Saturday. But a couple of bottles of wine later… we slowly began to realise that a 10am start was going to be ambitious.
Saturday at OHFY (Only Here For You Tattoos) was really fun! Lots of new and old faces came through and got tattooed, we drank lots of Whiteclaw and got pizza for everyone. We then went up to Someday in Finsbury Park, where we met even more legends and drank many margaritas, before finally finishing where it all started at The Shacklewell Arms til the early hours. A true Crows celebration.
Let’s talk ‘Beware Believers’ then – how did this album come about? And was there a lot of pressure to deliver after such a solid debut?
We really wanted to follow up ‘Silver Tongues’ as quickly as possible to keep the ball rolling, so there was definite pressure when we were writing it. We wanted it to be a logical next step – more cohesive and more of a statement than ‘Silver Tongues’.
It helps that we wrote ‘Beware Believers’ as an album, where as the debut was more of a collection of songs we’d written over five years. I love both albums but I think ‘Beware Believers’ is a better representation of us. It especially captures our ‘live’ sound quite well, which I think ‘Silver Tongues’ lacked slightly.
In terms of the recording process, I have heard knives were involved? I’m intrigued, albeit a bit concerned…
Making an album can be quite tedious in places! There is a lot of sitting about when it’s not your turn to do something, or the producers are faffing about with computers, so we always try and entertain ourselves in different ways.
Just so happens that Fish Factory (the studio) is great for hide and seek and also has a good selection of knives. That’s a recipe for fun if I ever saw it.
Do you think the environment you record in has a huge impact on the record overall? Would you ever go abroad or venture into a secluded cabin to root yourselves in the desired vibe you’re going for?
We’ve not really experienced that with recording per-say, but have 100% done it with writing. That’s the way we write best – take a long weekend somewhere secluded, no distractions, and just write, write, write. It’s sometimes hard in London to get in the groove of writing; there’s lots of distractions and it’s hard to shut off from your day-to-day life.
Taking a trip somewhere really helps you focus and find a good head space to write. We’ve gone to Wales and Dorset before, and really benefited from it.
In terms of the themes of the album, we’ve of course got a lot of politically charged lyrical content. Do you make an effort to speak up on political issues?
I wouldn’t say we are an overtly political band, but speaking up against injustice is always important. I think it’s important to respect other people's views though; rather than shout someone down because they disagree with you, it’s important to have discourse, hear the other side, then see if you can influence someone’s opinion in a civil, respectful way. I think that’s what's missing at the moment: people are too quick to be heard and not listen. You can’t make change with closed ears.
Favourite track on the album?
For me it’s ‘Sad Lad’. Really proud of that song. The production is spot on. Love the melody and the lyrics are quite special. I wrote it as an ode to Daniel Johnston on the day he died and the lyrics just came out so quickly, no need for editing. That’s a very rare, beautiful thing.
And what was the most difficult track to get right?
I think ‘Sad Lad’ again, actually! Right at the end you can here us all laughing and shouting at each other – that was because we kept making it all the way through, and then someone would finish too early and stop at the wrong point. The chat is Jith (bassist) losing a bet to us that he would finish at the right point. It’s the last track we recorded so we were all pretty battered, so that’s genuine delirium your hearing in our voices.
There’s also something so interested about ‘Room 156’ – the gruesome reality of the track really suits the darkness of your sound. Do you find yourselves naturally drawn to the darkest corners of humanity? Do you think you’d write more tracks based around historical cases such as this?
This gets asked quite a lot, and I always say, inspiration strikes whenever it strikes. I never set out to write about a certain thing – it just happens when it happens. Sometimes, something I’m reading will just click in my head and I’m like ‘that would make a good song’, and away my brain goes. Generally when I’m researching stuff to write about it’ll be weird and dark and that’ll send me into a rabbit hole – and who knows where it will lead.
Your sound and visuals can also feel incredibly theatrical at times. The Slowly Separate video in particular is mystifying! Do you make an effort to capture the theatricality of the classic era of post-punk, or does it come naturally?
I don’t know really. I don’t think there’s a lot of pretense with Crows to be honest; we just let the music and the live performance do the talking. We don’t make any particular effort to look a certain way or sound a certain way, it’s all quite low key from us. We’re lucky to have lots of amazing, creative and talented friends who make our artwork and music videos and we always let them do what they want with it. The brief is always ‘listen to the music, make whatever comes to mind.’
Speaking of ‘classic’ post-punk, do you believe yourselves to be re-capturing that classic feel or are you aiming to give it little twist… almost as a kind of ‘renaissance’ approach?
‘Post-punk’ is such an umbrella term at the moment for anything kind of heavy and indie. Like, we don’t sound anything like Yard Act, but we both get called post-punk? Genre is funny though, because where’s the line? Everyone takes influence from everyone else, and anything ‘new’ at the moment will have found influence from something or multiple things from the past.
People always hear such different stuff in Crows and I love it – they’ll say they hear, The Sex Pistols mixed with Black Sabbath, or The Fall mixed with Placebo or some crazy combo. It’s always different.
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'Beware Believers' is out now.
Words: Emily Swingle
Photo Credit: Jono White
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