“The Foo Fighters stuff is in our DNA”: Nothing But Thieves on reference culture, musing on their past and falling in love with Fairlane Guitars
“It’s actually annoying how long we’ve been working on this music for,” Joe Langridge-Brown quips from the other side of a Zoom call, the heads of a couple Fender and Gibson guitars poking out from behind his head. The Nothing But Thieves guitarist is talking from his London home about the band’s fifth studio album Stray Dogs, out 25 September, before bandmate and fellow guitarist Dom Craik pops up on screen too.
READ MORE: How Fairlane Guitars built a brand beloved by some of the coolest artists on the planet
“This record was built for live,” continues Langridge-Brown, “which we’ve never really done before. We started [lead single] Evolution in March, I think, and we’ve been keeping an eye on how we want to tour it from the beginning, which has taken a long time. But I’m looking forward to it.”
“It’s a long time living with music, but it’s time for the world to have it,” adds Craik.
Ten years after debuting with a critically-acclaimed self-titled album, Nothing But Thieves found themselves back where it started in Angelic Studios. Three other albums had passed since the rock quintet returned to record Stray Dogs, but this record won’t try anything experimental. The writing process was based on what the band sounds like live – allowing the five-piece to dissect footage of themselves to compose new material that feels… bespoke. Like a tailored suit. For an album themed around familiarity, community and togetherness, they’ve quite literally stuck to what they know.
“To be totally honest, Angelic is an amazing studio,” says Langridge-Brown. “It’s for residency so you go and stay there for a few weeks, and there aren’t many of those in the UK, so we love it there. But it also just made sense. We’re referencing something that harnesses how we sound, and there’s also the subject matter being about our lives and community, so it felt right to go back somewhere we were familiar with.”
Image: Steve Gullick
True Path
For a seasoned outfit like Nothing But Thieves, every album is a stylised foothold on the journey to their true identity. 2023’s Dead Club City turned tables with a riskier route down a pop-tinted road, for example, with experimentally layered tracks and a lot more groove than fans were used to. But 2020’s Moral Panic leaned into girthy guitar and streaky choruses which, judging by the album’s angst and self-assuredness, felt like the band’s ultimate comfort zone.
“I do think the Foo Fighters stuff is in our DNA,” says Langridge-Brown, coming from his own perspective when a comparison is made between Stray Dogs and the shredded gnarliness of Dave Grohl’s rock megastars. “I listened to Wasting Light in the car for about two years every single day, and I don’t think that’ll ever leave. But in terms of other references in the guitar tones, either consciously or subconsciously, there’s probably a bit of Smashing Pumpkins and early nineties stuff in there. Pearl Jam too, which is kind of grunge, but with incredible guitars and some progressive stuff as well.”
“It’s quite interesting because it’s not like we sit down at the start and go, ‘Well, what’s the palette of the guitar tones?’”, says Craik. “Often the song comes first, and we try to shape the guitar tones around Connor [Mason’s] voice. Sometimes the heavier the guitar tones, the more challenging it can be. We’re almost steered by trying to accommodate Connor’s vocal and the song best.But there were those touch points like Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, the rawer nineties and the grunge stuff.
“There are always guitar tones that we take inspiration from, like Radiohead, as I’m sure a lot of bands do,” he continues, “just because of the variety and level of experimentation that they always do. There’s an endless pool of sonics to dive into there, so that’s something that we try and incorporate. But when we were writing this record, it was quite fun because we hadn’t really experimented with this wall of fuzz guitar sound before, and that gave Joe and I an opportunity to dig out some pedals, old and new, and plug those in to see how we could make it work with our sound.”
The Fast Lane
Talking of old and new, there were a few other changes this time round for Craik and Langridge-Brown, most notably their introduction to South London boutique builder Fairlane Guitars. The pair were approached by Fairlane – who you can read all about in their recent Guitar.com cover story – before they started using the brand’s flagship Zephyr.
“Reuben just approached me and said, ‘Look, I’ve got some guitars; would you like to try one?’”, chuckles Craik at the memory. “And I couldn’t believe this thing, it was unbelievable. It’s like an inverted Firebird body with a mastery bridge and a Fender scale length. It’s not anything too crazy, but the build quality is unreal, and they have these Monty’s handwound pickups which are just, again, unbelievable.”
The quirky Zephyr was so mesmerising that it became a feature on almost every Stray Dogs track. And it’ll likely feature pretty heavily on tour, too. “I remember when we started writing, we’d play just one chord and the boys were like meerkats at the back of the room,” Craik continues, grinning wide. “Their ears pricked up. And it’s one of those guitars that sounds like something new, so it was hard not to put it on everything. I think it might be on every song in one way or another. It’s just a beast of a guitar.”
The band’s something old, if you like, had to be all the other gear; the amps and pedals and speakers they’ve used for decades gone by whilst getting to grips with their identity. Stray Dogs might be decorated by a few shiny ornaments like the Fairlane Zephyr, but it’s those same sturdy foundations that give it a touching thrill of familiarity.
“This album was asking us to delve into all the gear that we’ve collected over the last decade and the new bits that we’ve been acquiring and not only learn them, but try and find new applications for them,” says Craik. “We were using a lot of sixties Fender Bassmans – we had a black and a silver one, which were both amazing. But I was also slowly getting to grips with the sound of different speakers: the difference between a 10-, 12-, and even a 15-inch speaker, which I know is quite unusual. But by the end of the process, I was able to dial in amp tones pretty quickly. It was definitely like going to the gym, though; it took a while to warm up.”
Image: Steve Gullick
Playground Games
With the right gear, the writing process in the studio becomes a playground for inspiration. “That’s what’s so exciting as a guitarist,” says Langridge-Brown. “When you pick up a guitar and it makes you play something that you’ve not played before, or you put a pedal in the chain and it comes out as something completely new. When we were travelling in the US, I picked up this 12-string Strat and that made me think in a different way. There’s a song called Number Five on the record which has this chorus-y 12-string sound on it and I think that was a change in the arrangement that we didn’t initially have. So, it’s always fun as a guitarist to pick up a piece of gear and be like, ‘What can I make of this?’”
But there’s trouble with a project harnessing too much familiarity; it gets too comfortable, even a little stale. A few fresh perspectives on gear and a couple different tricks up sleeves might not be enough to salvage it. But Stray Dogs is crisp. It’s a record evolved from the past – for sure – but it’s emboldened and vitalised by nuanced songwriting and pulsing vigour that’s, to be honest, pretty palpable. It’s fresh because Nothing But Thieves have themselves as their muse. There are sly winks of Foo Fighters and Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam if you claw back the thick, wiry layers of raw guitar power, but those guys aren’t the blueprint.
“It’s a weird balance where you’re trying to make a guitar-based record that isn’t cliche,” agrees Langridge-Brown. “It’s nineties-influenced, but you don’t want to come out with a record that feels like it belongs in the nineties. It’s got to have another added part of the conversation.
“You could look at our pedal boards now,” he continues. “I’m using this Chase Bliss Preamp MKII, which is a really posh distortion preamp, but with a RAT pedal. Those things together – even the order you put those pedals in – creates something completely new. And that’s one of the fun parts of the job, playing around with the sound and getting to call it a living.”
Reference Points
In truth, we’re moving through a period of reference culture where every art form has a standard of success. We’ve seen the best of what’s come before us, and it still stands up today – so how do you recreate the same effect without copying the past? “There’s a David Mitchell quote which is about culture eating and re-eating itself,” says Craik. “It’s about regurgitating anything that was good in the first place. It’s funny, because there’s definitely a bit of an eighties resurgence and the nineties has definitely been the ‘in’ thing. Whether we fell into that was definitely by accident, but we’ve always been inspired by the nineties, and it’s no bad thing for guitar music, especially in the UK, to be having a real moment. But it never goes anywhere.”
As Craik speaks, Langridge-Brown is in his own world of contemplation. “I think the David Mitchell quote Dom’s talking about is the human centipede of music,” he begins. “I think that’s where the magic is. There’s a song called Baby Kool on this record and a reason why it’s one of my favourites is because you have two worlds that are really the antithesis of each other. There’s a glam verse, and then there’s this nineties grungy chorus. If you just made a record that’s derivative of the nineties, that’s less appealing.”
Craik nods, adding: “Taking the best bits of multiple facets of genres – that’s the sweet spot. It’s hard to do, but when we land on it, something magical happens.”
Now that the album’s finally out, the biggest thing left to do – and perhaps the most important thing all along – is tour. And it’s the largest headline tour Nothing But Thieves have ever done, so it’s going to be huge.
“We’ve been doing a bunch of rehearsals, making sure the tone is bang on and making everything feel as powerful as possible, translated best from the record,” says Craik.
“At the heart of the record,” adds Langridge-Brown, “it’s us playing in a room with that simplicity of what makes a band good – without the bells and whistles. We’ve just got to give it the best version of itself live.”
Stray Dogs is out now.
The post “The Foo Fighters stuff is in our DNA”: Nothing But Thieves on reference culture, musing on their past and falling in love with Fairlane Guitars appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
