Jung would be proud...
Echo Lake are a five-piece band who sound like Ride, Lush and Slowdive all rolled into one. However, rather than being a straight-up nostalgia fest, the band create soaring, ghostly indie rock that picks you up and sort of whooshes you up in the air like one of those over-excited Manga characters in a Studio Ghibli film. Put even more simply, it's dream pop but that’s way less boring than most other stuff out there.
Seeing that they’re playing Field Day next week and it was a nice day and all, I decided to meet up with guitarist Thom Hill and singer Linda Jarvis in Hoxton Square for a quick coffee and a chat. Thom ended up having a beer and we were interrupted by puppies, but hey that’s music journalism for you...
So let me get this straight. Thom’s a Brummy and Linda’s from Luxemburg, right? How did you ever end up meeting, let alone forming a band?
L: We met on the same course at Camberwell. I’d just moved from Brighton and Thom has just moved from Birmingham, and we just started hanging out and talking about music.
T: I’d been writing songs on my own for about a year, and I’d kept them secret until one day I thought what the hell, and played them to Linda who then mentioned that she could sing. She came round mine, did some vocals and that became ‘Everything is Real’. A week later we were releasing a single on No Pain In Pop. We we’re getting gig offers so we drafted in Steve, Pete and Kier. We really should have started Echo Lake a year before we did.
It’s been a year since your first gig at Radfest – what have been your highlights?
L: Releasing the EP. Actually having something you can show your kids is a total buzz.
T: Overall the last year has been a really amazing experience. It’s like all of a sudden your life changes – last year I was sitting at school worrying about deadlines and now I’m travelling around, seeing new cities and meeting loads of new bands and promoters.
Does it ever bug you being tagged as a retro/shoegaze band by most of the internet?
T: It doesn’t really bother me that much. I mean you have to categorise it some way. Almost everything has been done already, so it’s pretty much inevitable that you’re going to end up sounding like someone.
L: That being said, we are progressing away from shoegaze now. Our more recent tracks are trying to go in a totally different direction; they’re more pop and soul than ambient indie rock or whatever.
T: Obviously we don’t want to get lumped in a genre and stay there. I think every band has the potential to advance and progress their sound and we certainly want to do that. I mean look at a band like Radiohead – they first sounded like Nirvana and ended up making 'The Bends'. I don’t think anyone should judge a band on their first couple of records. Hopefully in a year’s time people will be saying, “Echo Lake sound like Echo Lake”.
L: Let’s be honest, they’ll be saying. “Oh Echo Lake? I liked their old stuff...”
So an American friend of mine could have sworn you were from LA because your name references Echo Park and Silver Lake...
L: Yeah I heard about that too, it’s totally by accident.
T: The name is actually from a Peter Doig painting. I just saw it one day and though that would be a cool name for a band.
L: The weird thing is that it really fits the sort of music we play. I thought it has more of a chilled out forest sort of vibe than all those beach referencing bands that were coming out in 2010. We didn’t even think that it has the word Echo in it and it sort of fits with all the reverb we use; we let the journalists figure that one out.
T: Nah, the weirder thing was that later on I saw a painting also called Echo Lake by a guy called Thom Hill...
Wow – real life synchronicity!
T: Yeah, it was done about 150 years ago. My girlfriend’s dad pointed it out to me and it was one of those moments where worlds collide and you go, “I think we’ve got the right name...”
L: Wasn’t there a picture of his grave at the end of the article?
T: Yeah. That was creepy...
Echo Lake have just released Another Day/Breathe Deep on No Pain in Pop. They're having a bit of a party down at Flash Back records on Essex Road tonight that will feature a super stripped down set from the band themselves. It's free and you should totally go.
Field Day takes over Victoria Park on Saturday 6th August. Photo by Anita Lawlor.
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