Charlie Pinhey
Music journalist & online sub-editor for CLUNK Magazine based in Bristol. Fumbling around on social media trying to tell people about my interviews and reviews. Follow me @charvawritesstuff
With their debut album ‘Poor Advice’ out this Friday 9th October, we chat to Dublin band Basht.
Coming off the back of an intense summer playing a string of high-profile festival shows including TRNSMT, Wilderness, Boardmasters, Leeds & Rock Werchter, the attention on Basht. is reaching fever pitch. Yes, their live shows are electric, but Basht. represent something more than that. We’re in an era of alternative music where gritty rock is coming back to the mainstream; Basht. are one of those artists who are the driving force behind that.
Their debut album ‘Poor Advice’, out on October 9th, challenges authority, religion, abuses of power, politics and exploitation, all themes ripe for feeling. I caught up with bassist Louis Christle and lead guitarist Lughaidh Armstrong Mayock to discuss these themes as well as a range of other topics in the lead up to the release of ‘Poor Advice’, including Lughaidh’s journey since joining the band.
I’m going to reel off some festivals you guys have played this summer: TRNSMT, Wilderness, Boardmasters, Leeds & Rock Werchter. How much of a crazy summer was it for you guys?
Louis Christle: It was! But it was nice because we had such an intensely busy February to end of May with a spring tour, so when you hit festival season and there’s a week or two in between one to the next, that breathing room feels unbelievable. It was pretty intense, but off the back of a very long and pretty intense tour, it was a bit of a relief. And also, festivals are just a little more chilled out. It’s nice weather and you’re outdoors most of the time so I had a lovely summer.
Lughaidh Armstrong Mayock: Absolutely. There were a few standout highlights in that summer run. Rock Werchter was particularly one, as was Rock N Roll Circus in Sheffield and Leeds Fest, they were the closing festivals of the summer, and we went out with a bang with them. There were some great crowds, some of the biggest we’ve played to. So, it’s fantastic. Summer is always a reflection of the work you have put in during the year prior, so there was feeling of reaping the rewards of the efforts.
Drilling down into the album then, did you start with a collection of songs or a concept first that informed the songs that followed?
LC: I would say it was the latter. It was a couple of songs first and then as we fleshed them out a bit more we noticed that there was somewhat of a running theme that seemed in the same universe and then we got to writing the rest of it. So, those first songs definitely informed the rest of it.
LAM: That’s probably true. It was kind of a feeling of things falling into place. The concept formed gradually over a period. At first we were just writing and picking the strongest songs that maybe stand alone. But a huge help to locking in the overarching concept was working alongside our creative director Pol Ocho and forming the music video and artwork for ‘Perfume’ with him, that was then used for the record. So we decided to tie in these themes of the church and power structures, scepticism and authoritative structures in our own lives and that kind of became the theme. Then we wrote accordingly because there were a few tracks remaining that we then tied into that world.
Why did ‘Poor Advice’ feel like the right title for the album?
LC: Poor advice passed down from one generation to another was his main idea, which is something contemporarily, at least, everyone can relate to. But then also messing with it in such as way so that it could be seen as a broader generational concept. Poor advice being passed down between families is an interesting concept and it’s such a wide thing to play with.
LAM: Jack is the primary lyricist, but it also encompasses what we have spoken about previously with the different power structures, authorities. But the album also talks about other themes, such as intoxication, relationships, so all these things tie in a mould you. I’m sure, though, that there’s plenty of good advice out there as well though!
LC: It’s not all doom and gloom!
You worked with Ali Chant for this album. What did he bring to the recording process? Was there anything you felt that was previously missing or you hadn’t experienced before?
LC: I liked how he was quite hands on and he was never afraid to give his opinion on a specific recording technique or how we approached certain elements of a song. It’s easy for a producer to hone in on a guitar or a topline melody, but he was equally as intricate with bass parts or percussion parts which I really liked and what drew me to him.
LAM: He has great attention to detail, very switched on. Sometimes you need that in a studio when you’ve hit a wall or you’re creatively stagnant. You need someone who’s a force of energy and driving things on. He’s great.
The artwork is really striking as well. I think it will really stand out on shelves. Where was the shot taken and were there any other similar shots that were almost used for the album’s cover?
LAM: We shot it out in a place called Rush, a town in Ireland, in a local church. It was tied in with the ‘Perfume’ music video and Pol Ocho is an incredibly gifted artist and photographer, so we weren’t short of options. But we just thought the image of the boy in the church and the gun was very striking and, ultimately, grabbed us all.
The thing that your fans really connect with is your playing style, in that nothing is left at home. How much did your playing styles inform the overall pacing of the album and, potentially, the track ordering?
LAM: That was something that was really exciting about this process. A lot of the record was written intermittently with touring. So, what that allowed for was that you could figure out pretty quickly which bits were working or what sections needed a lift. Also, it was almost tactical. We would feel at some points in the set, just from a live perspective, we needed a lift here and there. So that actually ended up bleeding into our writing process. We would say, “lets write one to get people moving” and, going back to ‘Circadia’, that was one late coming where we wanted to write a really buzzy, energetic song. That was actually done during the Miles Kane tour.
LC: Agreed. I felt like it was such an interesting way to write an album. It’s easy to think at one stage that the way we approached writing would be detrimental to us, because you could think “I just want to stay in this one physical or mental spot and finish them all.” But I really enjoyed how we played in front of people and creating whole new songs with festival season in mind and thinking about songs that people could run around in circles to and go fucking bananas. It was obviously objectively a bit chaotic at times, but it turned out well.
Controlled chaos they call it!
Why did it feel right to end on the title track, ‘Poor Advice’, rather than start with it?
LAM: I think because of the theme of the song. It’s about waking up after a long night on the drink. The opening line is, “Look at you now, the party’s over.” So there is this closing feel to the song and it feels like the character is maybe reeling from the night before or the songs from the album and the journey of it all.
LC: It felt like a perfect full stop. This album can be a pretty heavy listening experience and some of themes be quite dark. So having this track where the themes are a little bit dark, yes, but also there’s a lot of lyrical references to a flicker of a light or sparks of hope, so it just made sense to have that at the end.
What was the last piece of poor advice someone gave you?
LC: This is weird one, but one of my friends had said, “Try not to eat a big meal all day!” I don’t know why I took it, but it was terrible advice because I drank on an empty stomach and had way too much fun. Food is obviously good for you.
LAM: My friend swears by this routine where the morning after a big night at a festival he will give you a crisp and peanut butter sandwich and a shot of whisky. It’s as bad as it sounds and it doesn’t help much!
What’s the strangest fan interaction you’ve had recently?
LAM: One fan had drawn up almost like a detective wall of notes and diagrams you might see on a murder detective’s wall of all the different Irish bands of who knew who and who used to be in what bands and how we, as Basht., are at the nucleus of that. It was down to bands that we all used to be in when we were in college.
LC: Yeah, it looked like a conspiracy theory, but the more I looked at it, they were just facts. Then I was just like, ‘Damn, this person has done their research.’ It was at a gig in Paris where the fan showed us that. There was a lot of time that had gone into that. Colour coded and everything!
Do you have a favourite Keira Knightley film?
LC: ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.‘ All day. It has to be ‘Dead Man’s Chest.‘ It’s fantastic. It’s aged the same as ‘Transformers‘, which has just amazing CGI too. She’s in ‘Phantom Menace‘ too, which is great.
LAM: I would go with ‘Curse of the Black Pearl‘ for sure.
Debut album ‘Poor Advice’ is out on 9th October via LAB Records.