Veronica Falls

Veronica Falls

28 June, 2010
by: Domzig

Just don't mention c86 - alright?

Built from the spare parts of defunct Glaswegian indie bands The Royal We and Sexy Kids, Veronica Falls arrived on our stages as if from nowhere late last year, and have quickly become one of London’s most talked about bands.

Purveyors of a sound that takes Siouxie and the Banshees, Sleeper and The Crystals, meshes them all together and pumps it out as groove-laden gothic pop, Veronica Falls sound like the soundtrack to the sort of dreams you get after way too many mushrooms. The band have already released a single through effortlessly cool New York imprint Captured Tracks, and toured with Teenage Fanclub and Male Bonding – now they look poised to repair Britain’s battered reputation amongst the Pitchfork-reading, denim shirt-wearing indie crowd.

Don’t worry though – you can still see them pedalling through London Fields if you’re lucky.



How was Teenage Fanclub?

James (Guitar): Oh great. They were really nice and super supportive – their guitar tech set up all our guitars and their tour manager took most of our equipment as we were driving around in a Ford Fiesta or taking the train.

Hang on! You toured the whole of the UK with Teenage Fanclub out of a Ford Fiesta?

We did half of it by train, and the other half in a Ford Fiesta. We were meant to hire a van but our driver couldn’t make it. It wasn’t as expensive as it sounds.

How did you end up releasing on Captured Tracks?

Patrick knows Mike Sniper from New York, and we literally had the MySpace up for 10 minutes when we had a message asking if we wanted to release a single – simple as that really.

Is British indie rock getting a better reputation in the US?

I’m not sure to be honest. There’s always a tendency to see things from another country as more exciting purely because you haven’t seen them very often. I think people glamorise American bands in the UK and probably vice versa.

That being said, I wouldn’t say that there has been any particularly good bands coming from the UK at the moment, or that American see it that way. I think there’s much better things coming from the States, and maybe I’m doing what I just said, but I’m not really convinced by the UK’s indie scene at the moment. In fact, I don’t think there’s a scene or group of bands at all.

Yeah. My theory is that the internet is killing scenes in the UK. I think with the easy access to US music, kids are less likely to be inspired by bands in their town and are much more likely to copy the latest thing to come out of California or whatever.

I can kind of see that, definitely. I’ve noticed that a lot of people seem to have not only adopted an American sound, but also an American image as well. There are some very good bands in the UK like Let’s Wrestle, but even in New York they’re starting to say that British bands look and sound like they’re from the west coast.

Did you read that new bands thing in the Guardian – it must suck being constantly dismissed as just some C86 revival band?

The only thing I can say is that I think the guy hadn’t seen us play live. I think quite often people read something someone has written, give it a quick listen and not really give it any consideration. I don’t think we sound like a C86 band live, and I think our new songs will be even harder to lump in.

It does seem pretty hard to escape that C86 label though.

We definitely started to try and move away from those labels, and we’re certainly not as into it as people seem to think. It’s very much been a concern though, and we’ve been quite vocal about it in recent interviews.

I think it stems from our first photo shoot of all us all sitting in a park with flowers. A lot of people saw that photo, listened to the first single and assume we’re very much a twee band. We’d like to think we’re a lot darker. Hopefully this next record will finally help us leave that tag behind.

'Beachy Head' is out now on No Pain in Pop and Veronica Falls will be playing 1234 Shoreditch Festival on the 24th of July.

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