Getting back into the swing of things can be a challenge for anyone; especially for young bands such as Flyte.
After a cracking debut album and two protracted years of hush, the harmonic wizards from London are back with a glimpse into their next journey, their stunning EP ‘White Roses’.
Here to tell us about their next steps is the man himself, the band’s lead singer, Will Taylor. Fortunately, he was able to slot us in for an afternoon gossip despite having a busy day at the studio planned… you know, finishing an album 'n' all.
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How does it feel to finally be getting back onto the scene?
It feels really good. It feels like a relief to be back on stage playing in front of the fans. That really makes us feel like what we’re doing is worthwhile, you know, it’s really meant a lot.
The last album made more impact than we realised, when you get to meet people in the flesh, you get to hear people’s stories about how they discovered us. People play our songs as their first dance at their wedding and that sort of stuff. It really adds extra fuel to your creative urges.
It feels like people have been on the edge of their seats waiting for you to release something new.
Yeah, they definitely snapped up the tickets! Which, again, is a really lovely surprise for us because when you go away, there’s something in the back of your head going, “they’ve forgotten about us.”
‘The Loved Ones’ was very much an exploration of different characters, is there a story behind ‘White Roses’?
The first album is a lot to do with telling different people’s stories, there are a lot of characters. It was a real sort of exploration of the world that we were living in and the people around us. The second album is very, very much about ourselves and those people that are closer to us.
It’s a much more personal album. ‘White Roses’ is about losing my granddad and loss in general. Moving on, gears shifting and people changing around you. I think there’s been a lot of loss, a bit of heartbreak and I think that’s definitely coming across in the EP. Like I said, we’re trying to really bleed it into the album coming up. So it feels like a fantastic way to warm people up.
What’s your favourite track from ‘White Roses’?
‘Sometimes’ is a track that we really love. It was one that we produced ourselves. It came out really quickly and naturally and felt really right.
Does it ever frighten you releasing music that is so personal?
When you’re in the act of writing a song in it’s early stage you’re not thinking about how it’s going to feel putting it out to the world. You’re really just doing what comes naturally to you. What you need to do is pour out your pain, I guess. Just get it out of your system to make yourself feel better. It’s really afterwards when you go “oh shit, we’re gonna have to let people hear!”
But it’s the absolute opposite because it gives people a good opportunity to relate and project their own similar feelings. I think that’s been an exciting evolution for us. Really letting go and letting our guard down.
Talking to each other, sharing our thought process and our emotions a great deal more than we actually did in the past, breaking down those male, English, depressed stereotypes that we definitely live by.
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You worked together with Burke Reid on your debut album, have you continued to work with him on the EP and second album?
We did make the EP together with Burke, yeah. Although, there is one song from the EP called ‘Sometimes’ which is something that we wrote and put together very quickly and we ended up just producing it ourselves which was actually really fun to do. That song is about being away on the road a lot and trying to maintain a relationship while being apart from someone. But other than that it’s all been based with Burke, who’s really a long-term collaborator now. I think we’ve worked together for about four years.
After we heard the first Courtney Barnett album we thought “Who the hell produced that brilliant sounding record?” We found out it was this lovely man who lived in the middle of nowhere in Australia. It’s something that’s definitely rare and took us a long time to find, but we really need that relationship.
The way you guys record your music is interesting too, you all stand around one microphone to record your vocals a la The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.
Yeah, we do it together, normally around one mic. That’s the way we found sounds best. It’s at times arduous, but it’s a very pure way of sculpting and playing with the voices as if they were an instrument and using it as an extra form of expression.
The melodies sound really beautiful on stage when the voices melt together in the right way. I think that’s something we work very hard on and care about. Getting it exactly right. And that seems to have ended being one of the things people say sticks out to them.
What would you say that your defining moment as a band has been so far? The 'we’ve made it' moment.
We had just wrote Faithless which was quite quick to be snapped up by people. It launched us into being in front of audiences and having the luxury of not having to keep up normal jobs and making music full-time. I think putting out the first album felt like a real special moment, more than anything else because it was something that we were very proud of. It had gone down well with the fans and most critics and it felt like, “OK we’re not the biggest band in the world but we have made something that we’re incredibly proud of and something we can build on.”
I think until you’ve got your first album out, you don’t really have that sense of who you are you know in that definitive way and I think our first album really did that.
Do you ever miss the normalcy of everyday life?
Definitely not, haha! The privilege of being able to wake up in the morning and the first thing you think about is “Right, how can I make music and how can I be the best I can,” and do what I love, is a really rare thing.
It’s something you’ve got to try and earn every single day because there are thousands of bands out there.
So the EP is out, what’s next?
I don’t want to say anything, I might give the game away. But you can definitely expect a song from the album by the end of the year.
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'White Roses' is out now. Catch Flyte at London's Village Underground on November 11th.
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