Weekly > Interviews
The Hair
The Hair are a band that we never tire of telling you about, sooner or later you’ll sit up and take notice of these boys trust me. They’ve already supported The Sunshine Underground, released their album in Japan and are causing a huge stir whenever they play live in Leeds.
Sam Robson, the bands energetic lead singer took time out from training up a new drummer on their back catalogue to talk to me about touring with TSU, Massive Attack humping Jeff Buckley (no really), he gives us a Hair world exclusive and very kindly does our jobs for us and reviews loads of really good local bands…why doesn’t every interview work like this I ask!
You seem to have built things up steadily in the last 2 years, rather than rushing forwards after the different successes you’ve had, its almost as if you pull away and are keen to do things in your own time, is that something you’ve been conscious of or just how it’s worked out?
A bit of both really. I think it worked out like that at first and then we found we were comfortable doing things in our own time…or at least grateful for the time we had. We were offered a record deal around two and a half years back and then another a year after that, and didn’t go for either. However as we stand now we’re still glad we didn’t as we just wouldn’t have had the songs or ability we have now.
Things have obviously kicked on a lot quicker for you in Japan and your album has been released over there now before it gets a UK release, how did that come about?
That was literally the power of the internet! Two Japanese labels found us around the same time and started offering us deals over email!
What are your plans around releasing the album in the UK?
Here’s an exclusive for you kev…how exciting…we’re actually going to hold the album back as we think we can make it better for the UK audience, and instead going to self-release some singles/eps for a little while and see how they go. We like to think we’ve still got a bit more to develop for a full long-player, as hinted in the first question’s answer. Plus we want to do it right for people who have supported us a long time and release cds, rather than vinyls and the odd free download too.
Whats the current situation as far as the drums go, the couple of times I’ve seen you previously you had one and then the other week you had the Duels drummer filling in for you?
Ah yes James Kenosha, he filled in for us for our Radio One Session and recent recording, but our next gig (9th april at the Brudenell) will be a debut for a new permanent drummer! Our last drummer Rich moved onto something a bit more suited for him really.
The set list seems to keep evolving each time I see you, are you constantly writing new songs or do you have a Secret Stash of them (sorry for the pun)?
Bit of both, just did some recordings and half of them were old songs reworked and the other half two new ones. Song-writing’s sporadic but we have a decent work-ethic towards it because it keeps the experience fresh, so we’re always trying to do new stuff…when we’re not training up new drummers on the old stuff!
Are there certain songs that you can’t see you’ll ever want to replace them with, for example Hooker seems an integral part of your set?
We’ve not played that track at a few gigs. Songwise it’s not as strong as tracks like the first single “Ghosts”, but it’s right fun to play. I’d like to think we get to the point where we have so much confidence in our set we can play any number of songs…two entirely different sets if you like. We’re pretty much there. For a while we thought about doing a side project where we gigged as another band playing entirely different music just to see what would happen!
Do you feel your song-writing style has evolved now you’ve been together a while?
Yeah I think so. It’s probably mellowed a bit and we focus more on producing something we can go away with in our heads rather than just banging out lots of noise!
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Add to favouritesDespite it being relatively early days still yet, you’ve already played with The Sunshine Underground and at Leeds Festival, how were those experiences?
Both out of this world. TSU were my favourite band at the time and they are brilliant lads as well (Daley’s just done a remix for us – see http://www.myspace.com/thehairremixed), the only thing is we should have capitalised on it but we were a bit naïve. We were offered 11 dates on the tour but could only take 5 or so because of work. If that had been now we would have realised we should quit work and do all 11.
Leeds Fest was amazing too, it never fails to surprise me (pleasantly) how well things go for us live, people just turn up. This seems odd because it doesn’t seem reflected in our myspace or website hits like with other bands playing to those audience sizes (this might be as a lot of people own the early demos) but there seems to be a strong set of people who see us on a listing in Leeds and just want to come.
This interview is going into a West Yorks best of the new bands special issue, who else should we be looking out for that you’ve seen, heard or played with recently?
Interesting question, there’s absolutely loads, so if you’ve got space here’s my list (all have MySpace pages!)
Grammatics – Amazing vocals over complex song arrangements, set off some cello and interesting guitar stuff. I LOVE this band, they should be huge.
Middleman – Lots of fun this band, not everyone’s cup of tea it seems but you can’t deny the infectious enjoyment of the music.
Dinosaur Pile up – New band/project from ex singer of Mother Vulpine (who I admittedly didn’t like too much), this is kind of lo-fi manic depressed punk/post punk rock. Much more exhilarating live, and catchy stuff on the myspace.
Stateless – Have you heard their first album? It’s wicked. Sounds like Massive Attack being humped slowly by Jeff Buckley.
Jonjo Feather – enchanting low fi scuzz-pop. That description sounded a bit like the NME. Sorry.
The Lodger – new single with Bad Sneakers is a polished return – sounds fab.
The Rosie Taylor Project – bed wetting music that’s worth the change of sheets.
Breaking the Illusion – Awesome awesome hip hop by one of Leeds’ music’s biggest talents.
This Et Al – nutcase post-rock somewhere between The Mars Volta and Interpol.
Pavillion – just heard this wakey band recently – awesome wandering pop songs
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