Priests To Pilots: Where They Are and ‘The Infinite Melancholy of Mr Happy’..
Priests To Pilots – London, England, United Kingdom.
For our previous work on the band – Click Here.
Priests To Pilots have their fingers in more than one stylistic pie and are a band that serve as an excellent example of how to overcome the trials and tribulations besetting the underground circuit and how to coming out swinging – pardon the Pop-Punk pun.
Recently I caught up with drummer Nathan Coote to talk about his feelings on the band’s sound as well as the inspiration and the making of the latest video – ‘The Infinite Melancholy of Mr Happy’:
So introduce yourself and your band in the most abstract way possible, without thinking too much and then we will get down to business.
Priests To Pilots are based in London, UK. All you need to know about our sound is that we are Ian Beale’s favourite Pop-Punk band.
Well if you can’t trust Ian Beale on Pop-Punk, who can you trust?!?
So, first of all, the track, what’s the story and how did it come about?
Mr Happy was one of the later demos we came up with for the record. At first we weren’t sure if it would make it because the vibes were so different but it really fell into place when the vocals were written.
The name came about from the idea of the duality of having a super happy song with negative lyrics, and it’s supposed to represent the front you have to put up when everything feels like it’s falling apart but you have to pretend everything is fine.
For myself at-least and I should think a whole host of other people in amongst the hustle of everyday life, the whole ethos within the track likely rings very true. Before we talk of the video, in what way does ‘Mr Happy […]’ fit within the greater scope of the band’s sound and influences?
I think for us we really wanted to challenge ourselves to make all of our songs sound new and fresh. No disrespect meant to any other local bands but I think that a lot of the time people can nail down a formula and write a bunch of songs but at the end of the day they all sort of sound the same.
With this EP we really wanted every song to have it’s own distinct identity as well as fitting within a wider sound – I think we’ve pulled that off and ‘Mr Happy […]’ fits within that – with regards to influences we used to always call that song the “Seaway” song when we were in the demo phase and I think that ‘Mr Happy […]’ definitely draws on that with the upbeat, beachy vibe of the track.
That’s not a bad way to be.
So the video, give me the “ins & outs” of an underground band attempting kill the radio star.
So the video idea kind of started off as a joke – there’s been a lot of Pop-Punk videos recently following the same sort of formula, and we wanted to kind of parody it in a way while being self aware. I think we set a precedent with or last music video that we wanted to keep, that being of videos that are part funny, part weird and part “WTF”.
As we developed the idea it started to become something else – the basic premise being that as we find this book that teaches us how to be a “proper” Pop-Punk band it starts to suck the soul out of what makes us unique if that makes sense. We present it in a pretty abstract way but that’s the gist of the concept – haha.
So with that, you have quite impressively half-answered my next question pre-emptively. Where do you see the band going with it’s musical direction?
Clearly the idea of monotonously following the same old Pop-Punk pattern isn’t something you are down for. That and with the EP heading off down various little routes of it’s own, you certainly have some breathing room!
We’re in the early stages of demoing now, but I think the plan is to just let the songs sit naturally and exist as they are without trying to force in labels to make it sound more Pop-Punk etc… We definitely still consider ourselves a Pop-Punk band but we want to remain self aware of the content and genre as we’re going forward so that the songs remain authentic and hopefully give a sense of personality that only the combination of us five guys could achieve.
There we go then! Thanks for putting up with my questions my friend!
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