Sky Larkin

With their truly excellent debut Golden Spike out this week (review to follow), Leeds three-piece Sky Larkin - Katie Harkin (vocals, guitar), Doug Adams (bass) and Nestor Matthews (drums) answer a few ragged questions.

With 'One Of Two' released almost two years ago exactly to the day, has a full debut felt a long time in coming or was that required time to make The Golden Spike as strong as it is?

Katie: I think a lot of bands get tipped and rush things nowadays and make record they're not happy with. In a way we were blessed with the difficulties we had to overcome because it meant the time that we did have together was very focused and we had a lot of time for reflection in between. When one of two was released, I was only half way through my degree in London, Nestor was living in Leeds and Doug was in Scotland so there was a lot of distance we needed to conquer!

Nestor: I'd much rather take the time to prepare and record something that I was completely happy with rather than rushing something that ends up riddled with mistakes. This is our first album and its going to be our first album for the rest of our lives so I'm happy we took the time to make it.

Correct me if I'm wrong but close to half the album was available in previous guises so were you at all tempted to start from scratch with the album?

K: There were songs that were discarded and songs that were kept, I think we wanted to make a record that hung together as a coherent whole the as best we could. Some of the songs were written the week before we flew to Seattle so its a real mixed bag.

N: I think it was important to show the development of the band in the album. Yes, some of the songs have been released before but we've been lucky enough to have the time to refine them and record them all in a brilliant studio with a talented producer. This meant that we could unify all our songs and point them all in the same direction as opposed to a single here and a demo there.

How important was it to get away to Seattle to record? Do you think a London or Leeds conceived Golden Spike would have turned out very differently?

Doug: John (Goodmanson) obviously brought a very northwestern sound to the album which we wouldn't have achieved in this country, but I think a major factor was also that we had little else to do in Seattle other than go to the studio. When we do things in London there's always a niggling thought that 'while I'm down here I could just nip and see my friend', but obviously in a city that you've never been to this isn't so much of a problem...

K: And I wasn't a coffee drinker before Seattle, so maybe that affected it...

N: Plus Jason from Death Cab very kindly let me use his wealth of drums while we were in his studio. I'm not sure there is anyone with a collection as magnificent as that here in Leeds!

I interviewed another band recently - Dubliners Fight Like Apes - whose minds were made up to record with John Goodmanson after the first words he said to them were "I make records good by default." Was he similarly persuasive with you guys? And how was he to work with?

D: For us there was no persuasion needed on John's part, we'd found his name on the back of so many of our favourite records that we were more than keen to record with him. Our label had worked with him before, when he mixed the first Los Campesinos! record and knew how good he was so were as eager as us.
I LOVE FIGHT LIKE APES.

K: He has a great intuition for sound and can dial up tones super-humanly quick! I had so much fun playing around with guitar sounds with him.

N: I just remember him being as enthusiastic as we were about making the record, which I think encouraged us a lot in our performances. Considering the wealth of great records that he has been involved in it could have been easy for him to shrug off an unknown band from a tiny island on the other side of the world, but he was interested right from the start and hopefully had as much fun as we did.

Yeah I can imagine bands he's produced in the past - Sleater Kinney, Bikini Kill and Blood Brothers are one's you guys are fond of?

D: completely yeah, as I said, the label told us to have a look through our albums and see who we liked in terms of producers. John's name kept appearing, looking at his discography is amazing. The desk we used to track bass and drums had been used on so many great albums it was unreal.

K: and I think it used be at the Hollywood Bowl before that, so I hope we channeled all those stadium rock concerts through it!

Are your immediate influences as predominantly American as they seem to come through as on record?

D: Everywhere you go there's a desire to listen to listen to music from outside of your locality. We were amazed in Seattle, for example, to hear The Smiths being played in so many shops, and the musicians we met over there would always rave about British bands (including, most worryingly, The Fratellis). Growing up, I think Katie and I in particular listened to a lot of American music, and at the moment there seems to be a backlash to the lad rock and people are looking further afield, and also 20 years ago for music that excites them.

K: Totally, and the internet has made everything kinda post-national so I think people nowadays synthesise their identities from what they like, rather than what their locality prescribes.

N: I remember one of the friends we made over there innocently asking whether he should go and see this "hot new band from England" called the Ting Tings... This might not show a prominent comprehension of the British music scene over there, but as Doug mentioned, they are very much interested and thats a great thing!

Someone on a message board very simply and neatly described the record as "proper intelligent guitar pop". Do you think that's something that's particularly lacking at the moment as opposed to say the heyday of guitar pop music in somewhere like Seattle?

D: As I said above, I think there's a backlash from music buyers towards the lad rock that's been so prevalent over the last few years that there's a chance for bands like Los Campesinos! to be genuinely successful. With things like spotify and last.fm becoming more prevalent it's also so much easier to find and listen to music outside of your comfort zone.

K: I think guitar music in the UK went very thin in the last few years, and as Doug says there seems to be a number of bands about now that favour a fuller, more melodic guitar sound.

N: People have realised that you can't hide behind skinny jeans and a leather jacket any more. If the music you make is good then people will listen, regardless of what you or they are wearing.

Labels naturally keep an ear out for singles and I can't speak for Witchita of course, but they couldn't have had many complaints with you on this front 'cause The Golden Spikes got almost 12 of 'em! Would you agree?

D: Yeah, it was a pretty amazing situation to be in really, we were obviously happy with the record and from a label perspective they had a lot of breathing space. It did, of course, leave us with the problem of deciding what to put out as singles. There's possibly just an element of which would make the most fun video...

N: I think this is partly down to Wichita giving us time to hone and refine our songs before they said they wanted to send us to America to record an album. They could quite easily have heard a few tracks and whisked us away to reel off a one (or two) hit wonder album, but they wanted to see what we could do and had faith in our ability as musicians. God bless em!

Beeline is being released next week in the form of limited edition/ already-sold-out watches? I'm confused. How do they work?

D: Watches? Oh, I see.. well, so few people buy 7" singles to listen to, instead keeping them as a nice 'object' (and coloured ones sound terrible....) and then listening to the MP3 we realised that it was irrelevant what format the single was in, so we might as well have something that people could actually use. I think they're only available from some indie stores now, we sold our last one on Saturday, which is amazing - I just hope that we haven't forgotten anyone that we promised one to... Now we have to think of something even more amazing for the next single of course.

True or false, according to NME Doug rejoined the band last year after failing to realise his childhood fantasy of becoming a goat herder in Namibia when he mixed up said goats for ducks?

D: Unfortunately false. I was the one that pushed through the Wikipedia moderation changes after someone put this on our page. I still have no idea who it was, probably my dad. It's a piece of genius though, no doubt.

True or false - NME again - you've already had a cocktail named in your honour in a local Leeds pub?

D: Not so much in our honour, more as in one night my friend who worked at a bar and I spent an hour coming up with the perfect cocktail. I think this recipe was finalised after the 5th (very strong) drink in an hour, so it may be vile. I'm yet to try one after that night, as no bars seem to have all of the required ingredients. Maybe for our album launch we'll try and get someone to make one for us though...

If number one is vaguely accurate, how did the writing of the record break down before, between and after Doug's break?

D: I almost wish it was true so that we could have some epic break-up-get-back-together story. So here goes; well, things weren't working with Doug for a long time and eventually the stress of things became too much for him and he was forced to leave the country to fulfill his dream. It seems that he should've read a book before he went away however though because there were no 'goats' to be found on the hills of Namibia and he was forced to return home with his tail between his legs. The break seemed to be what he needed and we returned to the writing of the record with a new found gusto. (After removing the songs "Doug's a deserter" and "we hate Doug and hope he dies" from the album).

N: Its a shame though, those were some good songs.

After the recent UK tour, it's off to Europe with Johnny Foreigner. Fans of the band I assume? Who else around the country would you consider to be your direct contemporaries?

D: Complete, unashamed fandom for me I'm afraid. It seems ridiculous that we've played with them so little really, so this has been a long time coming. They're lovely boys and girl but Alexei does sweat a lot. As does Nestor so sharing a van is going to be an experience...

K: Recently we've enjoyed playing with Pulled Apart By Horses and Copy Haho, I love them both.

N: Cowtown! Cowtown! Cowtown!

And finally, the album's title refers to the driving of the Golden Spike to mark the completion of the American railroad when the Pacific and Atlantic rails met (thanks Katie’s Drowned In Sound track by track guide for that), but now that you've figuratively joined both coasts by making a debut record, what's left for album number two?

D: String sections, choirs and abbey road studio A. Or maybe just songs about a completely new set of experiences, our lives have changed so much over the last year or so that the music and lyrics on the second album are undoubtedly going to reference different things. Hopefully in a good way.

K: The most exciting thing for me about the next record is that I have no idea what it'll be like. I think a blank page can be scary for some but I think it'll be exhilarating to start the process over again, I'm always writing bits and pieces so I can't wait until we collate it all together.

N: I think all this touring is going to have an effect on the way we play (definitely for me anyway), as we'll be able to constantly tinker with little ideas and play them off each other on a daily basis. As Katie says we have no idea whats its going to be like yet, which is a bit daunting, but its also the best bit.