Slow Club
Everyone's Invited
Oct 25, 2016
Slow Club
Photography by Wendy Lynch Redfern (for Under the Radar)
It’s a bit of anomaly in the 21st century for a band to grow organically artistically while expanding their audience. Slow Club have deftly managed such a feat over the course of 10 years and four albums. Originally hailing from Sheffield, England, the duo, composed of multi-instrumentalists Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor, now reside in different cities—Watson in London and Taylor in Margate. But they still exude the verve and chemistry of an act in each other’s back pockets, and again pushed the envelope by recording in Richmond, VA’s Spacebomb Studios for their newest LP, One Day All of This Won’t Matter Anymore. With production assistance from Matthew E. White they cultivated a more bucolic, slow-burning Americana feel akin to Gillian Welch, Phil Spector, and Muscle Shoals.
“Yeah, we are being pretty brave on this record having so many slowies,” laughs Taylor. “I like that though. I’m proud of our bollocks. We both love good woozy night time music. It became the one agreement we had going into the process of making another record. It’s still not even the down beat emo record we dream of making! We want to get darker and slower one day!”
“We’ve always tried to do each one differently, and getting out of our comfort zone was something we wanted to do,” says Watson. “It was very exciting, and we did it so quickly that we didn’t have a chance to over-think what we were doing.”
Watson emphasizes that the band did a lot of demos prior to the recording sessions, and that the players in Richmond kept things moving quickly. “It’s the sound of five different people playing, which is much being better than me on drums, because I’m a terrible player,” he laughs. “But in the U.K. it’s kind of a punk thing to not be good on your instrument, but in the U.S. we found that all these guys were essentially jazz musicians instead of indie pop, and they drew on stuff we wouldn’t have normally.”
The record also steps up the game for the act lyrically, exhibiting a maturity and self-awareness only hinted at on their previous work. Taylor and Watson are slightly guarded when lyrical content is broached. “It’s the least amount of communication [between us] we have ever had lyrically,” says Taylor. “I’m a bit of a brick wall on this record and so is Charles I guess. We are in very different places but bound to each other because we are fans of each other’s music. So we are still a band—it’s still us. Just a different pocket of time. We couldn’t write about being kids in Rotherham much more. Because we aren’t.” Watson adds, “It’s about the bigger picture, the outside world.”
That’s not to say the record isn’t intense. It is, disarmingly so at times, and Taylor admits, “Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it’s so funny I cry laughing, sometimes it makes me sick, sometimes I have so much love for the band that I get overwhelmed. It’s up and down,” she sighs. “All of it is. As relationships go, it’s my longest one so that stands for something.”
Despite the emotional wringer it can push them through, Watson is still enamored of his life, after 10 years with Slow Club. “Sometimes I just think of that Neil Young quote about burning out, and maybe we should’ve been one of those bands,” he laughs. “But we’re pretty blown away every time we get to do a record, to be honest. To me, it’s like, ‘wow, let’s do it again.’”
[Note: This article originally appeared in Under the Radar’s August/September/October 2016 Issue, which is out now. This is its debut online.]
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