Twin Atlantic
Free'n'easy (Asking the questions: Nina Glencross)
With a tour taking in several Scottish dates including Glasgow’s Twin Atlantic’s star is rising. Second album Free made the UK top 40 earlier this year, and the band are set to round off a successful year with a tour that includes a hometown gig at the O2 ABC.
itm? chatted with the band’s Craig Kneale…
So you’ve just left the US touring with AWOLNATION and Middle Class Rut, how was that? Got any interesting stories from the tour?
The tour was great, probably the best reaction we’ve had as a support band. Pretty varied sound between the three bands too, so it was enjoyable to watch every night. I don’t know about interesting but there was an idiotic story when I filled our Diesel van with Unleaded petrol? I’ve had a perfect track record up until that point so it was a shameful moment for myself. One pretty large repair bill later though and we were ok.
How does playing over there compare to the UK?
It’s pretty much the same i’d say. The crowds are probably a little more vocal in what they think of you (be that good or bad), but for the most part it’s just the same except they have more restaurants over here. And they have root beer, sweet sweet root beer.
You’ve got the Free-ze tour starting very soon. You’ve said this will be your best tour yet and you feel you have something to prove. What can we expect from the band at these shows?
Well, it’s more the fact that this is the first tour we’ve done where the shows England are starting to catch up with Scotland? So we just want to prove to people how serious we are about this band. As for the live show, you can expect fireworks and cabaret dancers. Oh, and loads of balloons. In between this we’ll be trying our best to play our songs in time.
What do you enjoy best about coming back home to Scotland?
Seeing friends and family, they’ve shown us so much support over the years which we all probably take for granted. It’s also just nice being in Scotland because it’s a beautiful place. Living in Glasgow gives you access to so much culture, and you only have to drive 30 minutes to be surrounded by mountains.
Are you looking forward to touring with Dinosaur Pile-Up and Arcane Roots? What other new UK rock bands have you been into lately?
Yeah, we can’t wait. We’ve been big fans of Dinosaur Pile-Up for a while so it’s really exciting to get to spend some proper time with them. We heard about Arcane Roots through our friends Sucioperro and everything i’ve heard by them sounds great. Well, we’re all massively into And So I Watch You From Afar at the moment, i’m not sure if they count as rock though? Apart from that there’s a great band from Glasgow called Carnivores who are amazing.
With your debut album ‘Free’, the band have grown quite considerably. What lessons have you learned since starting off playing small venues in and around Glasgow?
Just to not lose the reason that made you want to be in a band in the first place mainly. I think we all still have that thirst that made us want to start making music together. In the grand scheme of things we’re still a very small band so we always remind ourselves of that. Apart from that, we’ve learned to always trust our instincts on decisions, nobody knows your band better than the people in it.
What advice would you give to young bands seeking similar success?
The only advice I could give would just be to throw everything at it if you are able to. I think the main reason that we’ve gotten anywhere is through hard work, and we still have such a massive way to go. I don’t think we’ve lost that drive though, if we did I think it would all fall apart. So it’s an obvious one, but everyone wants to be in a band so you need to work harder than everyone else.
In just a few years, the band have experienced so many great moments but what would you say are the main highlights so far?
It would be hard to pick main highlights because they kind of happen all the time? We play to more people in Scotland but it felt just as good selling out the Barrowlands as it was selling out a 300 capacity room in Leeds? Or we just played in New York and there was maybe 20 people in the crowd that knew who we were but that in itself was mental. I think we’re just lucky that the kind of job we have means you never really know what’s going to happen, so great (and bad) moments happen all the time.
You were recently involved in the Radio 1 programme ‘The Next Big Thing’ which set out to try and prove whether rock was dead or not, how did you find that experience?
It was good, and Radio 1 were so supportive of the band. It was just cool to work with such a great institution, everyone knows Radio 1 so it got our band out there to a lot of people. It was also cool to listen back to it aswell and kind of track our year, we’re so used to living in this bubble that we kind of forget how much we get to do in the space of six months.
Do you think rock is dead? Why/why not?
I don’t think rock will ever die, it just maybe isn’t the fashionable thing at the moment? When Disco happened being in a rock band was deemed seriously uncool and then Punk came along it turned things on its head again. And bands like Foo Fighters and Muse are some of the biggest bands in the world, so I think it was just a dramatic statement that got a lot of publicity.
Do the band have any plans for next year so far?
As far as I can see from our proposed schedule the first half of the year involves lots more touring! We’d love to find time to record the next album at some point in 2012 aswell, we’re starting to get that excitement about getting the next batch of songs fully written out and we don’t want to sit on them for too long.
What ambitions and goals do you still aim to accomplish as a band? How far do you want to go?
We want to honestly go as far as we can, we have massive aspirations for the band and we’re in no rush to reach them. We just want to go at the pace that feels natural. As long as we’re still moving forward, no matter how slowly, we’re happy. At the moment we’re still doing that so everything is really positive. As far as goals go, we like to set them small so they’re realistic. Every time we move up to a bigger venue in a city we consider that a goal reached and then we move onto the next one. I do have one huge ambition to sell out Madison Square Garden, at this rate we will reach it but I will possibly be around 85 years old.
The band tour Scotland as part of their Free-ze tour – on Fri, December 9 they’re at the Edinburgh Picturehouse. Then, on Sat, December 10, it’s Glasgow’s O2 Academy. Sun, December 11 sees them in Aberdeen at the Forum, and on Mon, December 12th they round off at Dundee’s Fat Sams.
More at free.twinatlantic.com
Nina Glencross
