Apr 02 2008 9:44 am,
Profile: The Courteeners
Words: Matt Thompson
Two singles in and the one thing you can’t accuse Courteeners frontman Liam Fray of is lacking confidence. It literally pours out of him; colours each of his sentences; almost defines his very being. For a rock star in waiting, that’s no bad thing of course. And if it takes assured bravado to work your way into the public consciousness, this lot will be as big as Oasis by the end of the year.
“It’s exciting,” he says when The Fly grabs a word prior to his band’s December show at Cardiff Barfly. “The tour’s been fucking brilliant. The crowds have been mental. People are loving it, but in our opinion we’ve still got so much more to offer. We’ve put out a couple of singles (‘Cavorting’ and ‘Acrylic’), but that was just testing the water really. We’ve got better songs and for me right now it’s pretty difficult to be judged on just those two tracks; even though they are fucking cracking. I just really want the album to be out.”
Expected to be released in the spring, the LP he speaks of is being recorded during the band’s infrequent breaks from touring and is already being hailed as a likely record of the year. Of course, Fray agrees. “We know we’ve got what it takes, so we’ve just got to nail it and make the most of the opportunity,” he says. “Y’know, I don’t want to be some shit indie outfit that gets forgotten about by their second album. I wanna fucking matter. There ain’t nothing wrong with that either. Ambition ain’t a bad thing.”
To realise their obviously lofty goals, the band could have done much worse than recruit fêted knob twiddler
“We’d been in the studio with a couple of other people, and then
“He’s been really good too, because he’s not one of those producers that thinks, ‘right, I’m going to have as much input as I can here’. Y’know, there are bits that he put in there, but there’s nothing that you’d think ‘oh that’s a bit weird’. The songs still all make sense.”
Speaking of the songs, if many of them sound familiar, that’s probably because they are. Before pulling the band together, Fray spent many years as an acoustic songwriter, playing gigs in the band’s
But don’t suggest this is a one man effort. “That would be like saying Oasis were Noel Gallagher’s backing band, when they weren’t,” Fray says. “Just cos you’re the songwriter doesn’t mean you’re there like a dictator with a notebook; although I am fucking great at doing that.”
And so what about other bands? Is there anything else of merit at the moment? Apparently little: “There’s just so much shit in indie,” he spits. “And I don’t just mean shit bands, I mean shit people. It’s like they’re so plastic and boring. Can you imagine being on some of those bands’ tour buses? There are no personalities. We need some fucking Elvises out there. More Elvises and more Bowies.”
With that, we leave the band to play rock stars for the evening, certain we’ll be hearing a lot more of their smartly assured indie jangle throughout 2008.
‘What Took You So Long’ is released on Loog on January 14th.
To download Courteeners music, click here.
