Interview: Class of 2010 - Two Door Cinema Club's hard work pays off

When Ragged Words caught Two Door Cinema Club at Dublin's Crawdaddy with a couple or so hundred others this time last year, we knew they were good to go. Killer tunes, killer live show – it was obvious they were destined for bigger and better things. Quite 214 sold out shows, 60,000 UK record sales big, we didn't think to consider. Frontman Alex Trimble somehow managed to find a few minutes to take our call (made via a Vodafone connection, naturally) to talk about a triumphant year for the Bangor three-piece.

 
 
It's possibly an understatement to say that it's been a hell of a year for you guys. If you've had a chance to draw breath at all, can you tell us what some of your highlights of 2010 have been?

We've been asked that question a lot, and it's actually really hard to answer. The whole year has pretty much been a highlight, so much stuff has gone on. Actually releasing our record was such a big thing for us; this year we did our first sold-out show, our first sold-out tour, we went to America for the first time, Australia for the first time… There were a lot of firsts, all of which were just incredible.

 
That success has just grown and grown as the year has gone on - was there any particular point when you suddenly realised “Hang on, this record is going to go on and sell tens of thousands of copies”?

I don't know really. In a way it's been hard for us to gauge, being so cut-off; when we're travelling we don't really get radio, we don't get TV or magazines when we're in different countries. The only way we can gauge it is at live shows – how many people are coming to see us, and how people are reacting. This summer was pretty big, it was a really big step up for us. Seeing how many people were turning up to our slots at festivals. Glastonbury was one of the first we did, and we were on really early – first thing on the Saturday morning in fact! – but about 50,000 people turned out to watch us. That completely blew our minds, we couldn't really get our heads around that. The festivals more or less continued in that vein – we just couldn't believe that so many people had heard of us, liked us and knew our songs. That's really when we started to realise that a lot of people were getting into what we do. 

 
Have you noticed a broad range of people coming to see you? I think a (relatively!) old fogey like me, who'd probably have his arms folded near the back of the festival tent, would like you guys as much as the teenager going mental down the front. Is that something you've spotted?

Yeah, definitely. That's something we've really loved, that when you're doing a show you get all the young kids at the barrier, and as you work your way backwards through the venue, the people start getting older (laughs). It's kind of a funny thing to watch; there'll be middle-aged couples at the back watching - there's such a broad range of people that come to our shows. We love it!

 
I read a staggering statistic recently that you guys will have sold out 214 shows by the time the year is out. I think one thing that can be taken from that is that you've just toured and toured and toured. Do you think a large part of the success has likely been a result of working really hard?

We just want to keep working as hard as we possibly can, especially now that we've started seeing some results. We've given it everything we've got so far, and have hardly ever taken a day-off; if we're not touring, then we're usually writing or doing something like that. It's working: more and more people are turning up to our shows, so we're going to keep doing it like this for as long as we can. Basically, we're not going to stop until it doesn't work anymore.

 
How was the reception when you headed over to The States for the first time? Had many people heard the record over there, or was it a case of starting all over again and proving yourselves somewhere else?

It was kind of back to square one. The record came out during the first time we were there, so we were trying to tell people about it, doing interviews and just playing as many shows as we could. We spent five weeks there… But even the amount of people who knew us before the record came out was a bit overwhelming. The first ever time we played New York, 600 people came out and we sold out the show. We sold out our L.A. show too... We just couldn't really believe that that many people could have heard of us that far away without a record even having come out.

 
You mentioned that while you’re on the road you don't get to see much telly, so I assume you haven't heard yourselves on as many Vodafone ads as we have! But I wondered how well the likes of that and having your music used on the soundtrack for computer games like FIFA etc. helps get your music more widely known? 

We're really in touch with our online stuff - we run our Facebook and Twitter accounts ourselves directly - so we get a lot of messages from fans that way, and they'll tell us how they discovered us… “I heard you on FIFA…” or “in that advert…” or whatever, and that's a really good sign because it's something that we're using to continue getting our music out to people. First of all, it's given us that promotion and people are hearing us in a different context – people who perhaps wouldn't normally hear us. The other things is that we get money from all that, and that helps us tour more. It means we've got the financial backing to go out and play as many shows as we want, which is really the main thing we’ve always wanted to do. 

 
With record sales obviously not what they used to be, advertising is certainly now seen as a far more acceptable avenue for generating income from your music. The days of ‘selling out’ now seem to be over, but do you sometimes still get accusations along those lines?

If people did accuse us, it's not something we'd really care about to be honest. Even if other people saw it as selling out, we’ve never looked at it that way ourselves, probably because we're right in the middle of it. We were struggling: we didn't have a lot of money to start off with, and we needed to start making money because we wanted to tour and we wanted to make records. There has to be a way to make enough money to do that. It was just a case of trying to find other ways to keep ourselves going and keep us in this job that we love. I think that was the perfect option. We're very strict about who we go with, though: we get a lot of offers now for a lot of different things, but we won't just put our music on anything… It has to be something we like or agree with.

 
To sell 60,000 records is certainly no mean feat these days. Has it struck you how that must surely give a massive boost to Kitsune, on the back of which they now have far greater resources they can pour into yours and other great music? That must surely be something you’re proud of?

Yeah, that's brilliant. Ourselves and Kitsune became a partnership - we were a band that wanted to get heard, and they were a label that wanted to get their name out there. We both had a lot of mutual respect for each other and wanted to work together. Through them helping us get our music out there, we were then able to help them get their label out there, and it’s just worked really well. I don’t think we would have been happy working with any other label.

 
You've a few more gigs this week, followed by a rare break in the calendar! Does that mean you might get to enjoy a few days off at home over Christmas?!?

Oh yeah! We've got to shoot a music video (for 'What You Know') and do a few other bits and pieces this week, but we're not going to tour again 'til early- to mid-January. Given that it's been such a full-on year, we're going to need a couple of weeks to just sit back and do nothing, so we’re definitely looking forward to that!

 
Have you had any time to think about a second album?

Like I said, we don't get to take a lot of time off. I think the most we've taken was a week, and we didn't even take it off – we booked a studio and went in there for a week and wrote some songs. We've started playing one new song on the road recently, and hopefully over Christmas… Actually, even the Christmas break isn't going to be a proper break; we're going to have all our gear set up to practice, write and record, so hopefully after that we'll have a few more songs to show people.

 
You're back in the UK and Ireland in March for some big shows: at The Olympia in Dublin, Roundhouse in London and a couple more that have already sold out. Where's next after that? Arenas?

Who knows?!! Those are the biggest shows that we'll have ever done, and they’re mainly to mark the end of this album and us touring it. That's going to finish us up pretty much – although we are booking some festivals too – but in-between those gigs we're going to go away and write the second album, hopefully for release in early 2012. And after that comes out, who knows what's going to happen? Hopefully just onwards and upwards!