The Beat Surrender

Every now and again a band comes along that are amazingly upbeat, fun and write cracking indie pop tunes that thankfully don’t sound anything like The Feeling. One such band are Brighton outfit My Federation who have just released their debut album Don’t Wanna Die, which we recently reviewed and gave it four out of five.

As if life couldn’t get any better for the band, they’ve just been out on a massive UK tour with indie legends James, we caught up with them recently, unsurprisingly they were very chipper and in a fun mood…read on dear reader, read on.

I’ve got to start with the album, it must be nice to get the debut out, was making your first album everything you thought it would be?

It’s gotta be said, making the album was torture. None of us get on at all and every day ended with someone crying, often Greg, who gets very emotional at times. Neil hospitalised Dylan twice during the recording of Honey Bee coz he said he looked at him funny while laying down the drum track. Still, we’re looking forward to the next album!

The reviews I’ve read suggest that it’s been really well received so far with some very positive reviews, have you scoured the net reading them all?

No need, it’s mainly my mum writing the reviews.

It seems a very upbeat album with a real sense of fun about it, is that something you set out to do from the start?

Absolutely. There’s so much in life we have to take incredibly seriously and we’d had enough of writing and listening to miserable shoe gazing songs. We want people to have a bloody good time with our music. We’ve actually got a whole heap of songs that’ll make you wanna slash ya wrists, but we’ll save them for Lee’s solo project.

You’ve just supported James on their tour recently, were you fans of the band before and how did that come about getting such a prestigious slot?

Its well documented that Lee wasn’t a fan of James when he was a kid. However, Lee made an album with Tim Booth the lead singer of James few years back and has just produced the new James album. It aint what ya know…………

How do you approach shows like this where you aren’t playing in front of a crowd that has come to see you, in comparison to your own headline shows?

We treat the gigs exactly the same. We just take all our clothes off and touch ourselves in true Jim Morrison style while playing fat riffs and singing lush harmonies. Robin’s buff body wins em over every time!..............Mmmmmm, the truth is……I was aware that we had to be careful. Usually we are super confident and have a laugh on stage but I was aware that there would be people in the audience who would think we were twats before we’d even started, so I took it easy. But we always won over even the flattest crowds, which was an incredible feeling.

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