George Ward
Freelance journalist and online editor for CLUNK. Can be found out and about in Bristol, finding cheap records or having a pint on King Street.
With new single ‘I Can’t Wait Until I’m Old’ out today and debut EP out next month, we caught up with Brighton’s Flip Top Head
On 15th November, Brighton’s art rock 6-piece Flip Top Head are set to release their debut EP, ‘Up Like A Weather Balloon’. With lead single ‘So Much For Mole Catching’ capturing our hearts, their new single ‘I Can’t Wait Until I’m Old,’ is the EP’s opener, giving us another taste of the project.
Earlier this month, we caught up with three members of the band, Bowie Bartlett (vocals/guitar/synth), Bertie Beer (vocals/guitar/synth) and Ollie White (synth, guitar, percussion) to discuss their songwriting and just how the fantastic new EP came together.
Can you just give us a quick rundown on who you guys are and how you got to the point of your EP release?
Bowie: We are three members of Flip Top Head, who are a recently turned six-piece. We’re all based in Brighton. We kind of started off as a college band and then met members in Brighton after moving here to uni. We teamed up with Blitzkat for our first release and then have just been writing songs!
It’s kind of crazy that we’ve got to the stage where we’re now at the point of releasing the EP, but it’s happened and it’s coming, which is kind of cool!
Can you explain why you’re called Flip Top Head?
Bowie: My dad was a musician. He was in a band called Elliot and he wrote a song for my mum called Flip Top Head because my mum used to say to him that she loves him so much that she just wished he had a head that would come off so she could climb inside him and cuddle his brains.
So he wrote a really good song called ‘Flip Top Head‘ and I was like: “that’s going to be the band name one day.” And then I found the band members! I think from a young age, I always knew I wanted to do music and I always knew I wanted to use the name Flip Top Head so it was kind of there before the band was in a way.
Ollie: Which is good because names are so long to come up with. And then you end up being called bloody Arctic Monkeys or something.
With this new EP, you mentioned it was inspired by some chance encounters with strangers throughout your lives. I wondered why these small moments have proven to be such a profound inspiration?
Bertie: Well, I think the small moments in life are often more poignant than the big moments because you think about them less. And then when you do, you realise, “oh, that means this and this means that.”
With the second track, ‘Weightlifter’, that came from when I was working a long shift at a pub and then this man with extremely calloused hands picked up his pint. We got chatting and he was an ex-bodybuilder and this image stuck with me. Then I wrote a little poem when I got home and then it just made me think about lots of other things.
Similarly, with ‘So Much For Mole Catching,’ that came from when me and Bowie were at Pride and Bowie saw this girl sitting on the street across from our house. We went to speak to her to see if she’s okay and then she ended up coming back up to our house and then her partner came along.
We got chatting with them for hours and it turns out his dad was the British mole catcher of the month. That was such a cool thing! That’s just such a little part of someone’s life that he mentioned to us. We never met his dad and we’ve never seen them since either. That was two years ago and they’ve got no idea there’s a song.
Ollie: There’s a mole catching dude walking about somewhere with a song about him!
Bowie: I also think in terms of writing lyrics or poems, using small moments to write about just allows for more creativity, I suppose. You can kind of fill it in from your own imagination.
Bertie: Limitation breeds the most creativity. The first track, ‘I Can’t Wait Until I’m Old’ was a 15 second snippet from a song that we’d written, which was a six minute song and we chose this one little bit out of it. Then that limitation bred into another five minute song.
The lyrics have a repetitive, hypnotic quality. You focus on one line or a few lines and while they’re repeating over and over, the instrumentals develop around them. Why are you drawn to this repetitive quality of songwriting? Not in a rude way!
I come from a bit of a musical theatre background and, especially when playing live, I do see it a lot like that and see the theatrical side of it. So, with lyrics, I write them knowing that I’m going to be performing them live.
The storyline of ‘I Can’t Wait Until I’m Old’ is of wanting to grow up and wanting to be old and I just remember that feeling like it’s never going to come. When you’re younger you feel like you’re never going to be that age where you can do what you want to do or what your parents won’t let you do right now and I think the repetition just kind of worked nicely with that.
Ollie: As a listener, if those lyrics were just said once and then moved on from, they might fall by the wayside and not have as much of an impact, but because it’s repeated, I’m like: “oh shit, I’ve got to listen to like, I’ve really got to think about what is being said.”
Bertie: Because of the instrumentation, the lyrics are said in a different way every time. The inflections and the accents are completely different but it’s still the same lyrics.
Bowie: That was something I had a lot of help with from Theo Verney who was producing the EP. I went in with that worry of these lyrics being super repetitive and I didn’t want it to come across as boring. He was helping me with how to move with the music. When we perform live, I have Theo in the back of my mind.
Ollie: Ratatouille. Theo’s under your hat.
With Theo Verney, how was it working with him and did you find it easy for him to understand your vision?
Bertie: He was just the best.
Ollie: It ended up being his vision more than ours.
Bertie: We’d worked with a number of producers before, but he was so attentive in the way that he’d come up and have a whole story in his head of this dystopian cowboy apocalypse thing. So every time we’d record a part, he’d say: “right, now do this, but imagine you’re here.” It just changes everything.
Ollie: We’d do three or four takes and he didn’t get the take he wanted and then he’d be like “right guys, you’ve just come out after the bunker after the apocalypse and we’d listen and be like “okay, wacky dude.” And then we’d do another take and he’d be like “sweet, got it.”
The way he was creating little films for us painting pictures really helped because it was our first time recording like a bigger body of work. And I think that really helped to make it feel like it was one consecutive piece of work. We love him.
With six of you in the band, how do you balance aspects of creativity within the project? Is it a collaborative writing process?
Ollie: Normally somebody will bring something in. We tried for a little bit to do whole songs and bring that to the band but it didn’t really work out. Everyone needs their own input and it needs to be like a band effort. It will never be a thing where somebody’s brings an entire song and gives everybody their part, we bring a little something and then jam. We normally don’t slog around for too long on songs and a lot of them get done in a couple of sessions. Playing it live helps a lot.
And with two vocalists, it gives each track a different feeling to it. Is it a conscious decision each time you choose a vocalist?
Bertie: I think it is unconscious.
Bowie: I think you can just feel which one will fit. Going into it, I will always do vocals because that is my instrument really and then sometimes you’ve (Bertie) got good ideas.
Bertie: And it always just works out, doesn’t it? I don’t really know why.
You don’t need an intellectual reason, that’s good enough.
Bowie: It’s the vibes.
Ollie: Just put that as the answer: “it’s the vibes”.
You mentioned that you see ‘Mole Catching’ as a turning point for the band and that it gives you an encouraging glimpse into the future. What does that future look like for you?
Bowie: Well, I guess into the future as a six piece, we remain good friends and brothers with Alfie, who was in Flip Top Head. I feel like the songs we’re writing as a sixth piece have a more optimistic feel. And that’s not to say that everything was sad and gloomy before, but I think we’ve just kind of got to the point where we’re maybe a little bit done with writing the sad songs. It just feels like we’re taking on the slightly more major sounding tunes.
Ollie: When you get the full EP, you can see the full three years in one and have a look at what’s happened. It’s also not in order, so you can try and pick out what’s an oldie and what’s a newie. Now we’re writing new bangers ready to shred.
I suppose for you guys, these are songs that you’ve been living with for a while, so it’s nice to get them out in the world.
Bertie: I really have a habit of hating songs that are older than six months, but I still quite like these ones.
Ollie: I love ‘Jesse Paints The Houses’ still. That’s an old tune but we play it live and it slaps. I love playing it. We’ve been playing the EP just in order and when it gets to this last one, I feel like people know it’s the closing one. That’s when it’s a good gig, when people start to get hyped before the song’s over.
Bowie: Or they’re trying to stop us from playing.
Ollie: Like “Shut up! This song is so long!”
Debut EP ‘Up Like A Weather Balloon’ is out on 15th November via Blitzcat Records.
Listen to ‘I Can’t Wait Until I’m Old’ here:
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