On Day 4 of SXSW, Emily, Keira, Jude & Alex of Spyres joined us to talk about their first time visiting the United States, their musical journey and much much more!
Feeling a little exhausted from our jam-packed Day 3, we invited the Glaswegian quartet, Spyres, to join us for a little chat as we had attended their set at the Marshall Funhouse at Parish, the day prior. What ensued was a nearly 20 min long conversation full of musical/personal insight, story sharing and laughter.
Catalina: How your South By going so far? We saw your show it Parish yesterday and it was great!
Emily, Keira, Jude & Alex: Really!? Thank you so much.
Keira: Yeah. It’s been really good. That was such a good set I think.
Emily: Yeah. We came here on the first day. And then like our second day was the day we had our first gig and it was at like, one in the morning. So I think we were just about like, over stimulated and jetlagged.
Keira: Yeah the sound wasn’t like the best in there so when we went to do that one [show] at Marshall [Marshall Funhouse at Parish], it was like so—
Emily: —we felt so much more comfortable and kind of right at home there. And then we obviously got to finish the night off yesterday at the Scotland presents, the Wide Days showcase, which is like all your Scottish bands. So yeah, it’s been a really good day.
Keira: It’s been good so far.
Emily: Really good day yesterday. Really good day today already.
Keira: We’ve got two more shows left.
Emily: So the only way is up! (laughs)
Keira: The only way is up. (laughs)
Catalina: That’s good! (laughs) I saw y’all just came from New York. How was it?
Emily: Unreal.
Keira: So cool.
Jude: Amazing.
Emily: For those being like our first shows outside of the UK, it’s like—
Jude: —we were like who cares if no one shows up we’re playing New York (laughs). Even then it was a packed room.
Emily: It’s like things that dreams are made of, it’s like unreal to even fathom that we’ve done that.
Keira: That was like our first gig outside the UK, like not even like our first gig like in the States so it was a big moment for us I think to be like “Oh yeah our first gig outside the UK is New York” (all laugh). Yeah, it was so cool.
Catalina: How has Texas been treating you so far?
Emily: We love it here! We really really like it…
Keira: The food’s good.
Emily: Love the food.
Alex: People are good.
Keira: Yeah, the people here are really nice.
Jude: The drinks [are] good (all laugh).
Emily: And obviously there’s like a really good music scene already we can tell over here, but we would love to come back.
Keira: I know we keep saying like we could live here.
Catalina: Going back to the Wide Days showcase yesterday, how did it feel playing in a place representative of home at a colossal place like South by Southwest? Does it put into perspective how far you’ve come?
Emily & Keira: Yeah.
Emily: Yeah I think so. It’s nice to also see the people– the other bands that are there as well kind of like connect with them and kind of see how like America is just kind of treating everyone because a lot of us are in kind of like different genres. But it’s nice to see like a lot of people are kind of just united by music, like no matter the genre or the person.
Keira: It’s just home as well. I guess everyone’s traveled a long way, it’s nice to hear a Scottish accent. Like, I don’t know, that’s just about what we’re feeling.
Emily: It was also funny that it was like boiling outside then as soon as we went into the Scotland showcase, it was pure air con!!!
Keira: It was really really like so cold!
“It’s nice to see like a lot of people are kind of just united by music, like no matter the genre or the person.“
Emily (Spyres)
Emily: I like ugh back at home already! (all laugh)
Keira: Then we walked out and it was raining and I was like oh we really are back home (all laugh).
Catalina: Did y’all recognize any bands there?
Emily & Keira: Yeah!!
Keira: Humor were playing
Emily, Keira & Jude: Rory James
Keira: He’d done a really good set
Jude: That’s kind of all of who we managed to see, like we got out a bit late.
Keira: Because we had like shows and stuff before and we were hanging out at the Marshall [Funhouse]. Yeah, but those are the people that we managed to see and they were really good.
Catalina: Tell me in your own words who is Spyres and what message do you hope to convey with your music?
Emily, Keira, Jude & Alex: Ooh…
Keira: I guess we’re just like— Jude put it really well the other day that we’re kind of like a coming of age kind of band. I mean, I guess we are just kind of coming OF AGE actually. Yeah, so I guess like we’re just writing songs about our experiences and just—
Emily: Just hope people could relate to them. I can’t kind of really put our songs like into like one box. I feel like a lot of the times people can also like interpret the songs in their own way as well. Like whether you’re like someone young or someone old or a girl or a guy or whoever it may be, we just want to kind of connect everyone to our music but also like young girls as well. Like I think we just want to show that it’s possible to be in a band that’s in an industry that’s full of a lot of guys as well.
Listen/watch Spyres ‘Money’ here:
Keira: I think as well like we have such a close friendship like all four of us. I think it kind of like shines through like in the band’s personality and in the songs and stuff like that. So yeah, I think that’s like a big thing as well. But it’s just to be like a nice, friendly, really cool band.
Emily: I know oh my gosh if we all hated each other. (all laugh). That’d be awful.
Jude: Still five days of this trip to go…
Emily: I know, never say never (all laugh)
Catalina: What’s the backstory behind the name Spyres?
Keira: So me and Emily were like a duo, like an acoustic duo before we met Alex and Jude.
Emily: We just used to be called Keira and Emily/ Emily and Keira.
Keira: And then Emily’s mom was like, “You really need to get a name.” And we were like thinking for ages and ages…
Emily: I’m sure there’s like messages of such awful names. I don’t even want to remember what they were.
Keira: But we were on the motorway in Glasgow and there’s a lot of like old buildings in Glasgow so when you’re on the highway—
Emily: You can see like all of Glasgow
Keira: So there’s like lots of church steeples, and Emily’s mom was like, “Oh like what about ‘The Steeples’?” And we were like, “No” (all laugh) and then we were like “What about ‘The Spires’?” So then it used to be ‘The Spires’ and then we decided that it was just cooler as “Spires.”
Emily: Drop the “The.”
Jude: Rebrand (all laugh)
Emily: We also changed the ‘i’ to a ‘y’ as well, to make it more unique. The story’s not even that interesting, but it is quite of a unique name isn’t it?
Keira: I’ve never really thought about it.
Emily: I know you never really get that deep into any of it actually, “Spyres!!” (all laugh)
Keira: If I would’ve seen a band called “Spyres” would have been like—
Emily: I know you like have an out of body moment, you’re like does this actually like make sense?
Keira: When you’re like looking on your Instagram as like—
Emily: —as like someone else!!
Keira: As someone else’s perspective but like we don’t… I don’t know (laughs)
Emily: But it stuck (all laugh)
Catalina: Alex, you’re a little quiet. How you doing? (laughs)
Alex: Yeah, I’m good. (all laugh)
Catalina: How did you craft the sound that you have for your music?
Emily: I think because we’ve been doing this for so long we were obviously the kind of acoustic like indie kind of genre back then.
Keira: We did a lot of covers and I think me and Emily used to send back and forth music that we’re listening to. So if I heard a song I liked, I’d send it to Emily and vice versa, and we kind of found what we liked to listen to and we started writing. We kind of had a lot of songs that we brought to Jude and Alex when we became a four-piece but a lot of them we dropped quite quickly except “Otherside.”
Emily: I know I think what happens is you grow up a bit as well so influences and then like your music tastes obviously it’s going to change or evolve and like bands that you probably wouldn’t listen to them like years ago—
Emily: We were talking about this earlier saying that how “Otherside” like, our first song, probably has like the least thought to it. It’s actually two guitars, a bass and drums, that’s all really and umm, that’s the one that’s done the most—
Emily: Yeah, it’s just quite straight to the point.
Keira: But like know that we’re a bit older and our influences have changed and we like more bands and our minds have been opened now that we know what you can produce in the studio.
Emily: Also seeing bands as well live or like getting like sounds, we’ve got like an SPD sample pad now for like loading percussion. Which like there’s nothing that even plays on the “Otherside” one [song] apart from just a couple of guitar things to boost the sound. And it’s like just so different—cause you’re more knowledgeable —but I think because like you’re progressing and you’re growing and your music taste changes, we’ve developed over time. So that was a really long answer (laughs).
Catalina: So you all just released “Karaoke Sellouts,” your new EP, in November. How does it differ from your first EP, “Dear Diary,” if any?
Emily: I think “Dear Diary” was like, it was like a quite a long time coming for us so obviously that was kind of like our first like, body of work. So I think we were just like, “Let’s kind of close this chapter of like—”
Keira: We were literally teenagers—we were teenagers when we wrote that.
Emily: A couple of the songs we also had like for quite a while as well so we kind of took them with us from like, the kind of early years of the band— I mean, there are some like new ones in it as well—but they all kind of fit into like this kind of nostalgic, kind of coming of age, like teenage…
Keira: So I think like that was a good opportunity for us to use that as like a kind of like rounding off of the years, and also, it gives us like now the opportunity to like —cause that’s closed off—to just experiment and do whatever we want and the next EP that we’ve done hasn’t really got like a clear thread of like thought to it, it’s just like songs that we’ve got recorded.
Emily: I know they are all quite different from each other but yet they still can all kind of weave into each other. But yeah, this EP was a lot more kind of like off the cuff.
Keira: Yeah like let’s just write whatever and whatever we come up with let’s just stick it on an EP and see how it goes. Maybe the next one will be more calculated, I don’t know (all laugh).
Emily: I know I feel like you can’t really kind of plan these things as much as you want to, it kind of just happens, or it will just come out naturally or whatever.
Keira: At the time of Dear Diary, our brand was very much, “They’re teenagers!! And they’re so young, and like other stuff.”
Emily: Like y2k and all of that. But now, I think we kind of have seen like a kind of more mature side of ourselves. And obviously [we’re] just experimenting a lot more with different kinds of sounds. And things that we never would have even like thought of for the first EP. We were just like, you know, a bit younger and just wanted to just write catchy songs.
Catalina: What song on the EP did you have the most fun writing?
Emily & Keira: Oooh, “The Thing.”
Keira: Yeah. Even though it’s like just a jumble of words…
Emily: I think that’s why it’s probably our favorite though.
Keira: We were literally like looking through like our camera rolls to just try and find the most random photos…
Emily: Cause for the thing it’s got like, a really long like, wordy chorus and in the bridge as well it’s also just a lot of like—
Emily & Keira: —words (all laugh).
Emily: That don’t even make sense.
Keira: I love the concept of the thing as well, because it’s like we’re talking about, like, it’s a ‘thing.’ Like, this is a ‘thing.’ And it’s like, what is the ‘thing?’ Like? You’re just singing like… what are the words? What are the words again? (looks at Emily) I’m trying to think like, “Karaoke sellout, crippling with self-doubt” What else? (Jude laughs) “Fortune cookie, apple pie, tell me what’s your star sign.”
Emily & Keira: “That’ll never work with mine.”
Emily: It’s just jumbled.
Keira: That’s why it was fun.
Emily: But yeah, we got a lot of inspiration, just from like looking through our camera roll and just like, “Let’s just use that, or let’s just take this.” Yeah, but that one was really funny; we had a laugh throughout that one.
Keira: The last song as well; the last one on the EP— the acoustic one. Like me and Emily kind of wrote that about our journey in the band and our friendship together.
Emily: It’s also just so different from anything that we’ve ever written before.
Keira: It’s funny because it’s an acoustic song, which is what we always been doing. And it was like, nice to finally share that aspect of like our past in the new like Spyres you know. So yeah, that was a good one. And like a bit of an emotional one (Keira and Emily laugh).
Catalina: So I know you just released the EP but do you have any new songs in the works?
Keira: Me and Emily are both students and Alex and Jude work, so in the mix of like working and studying and like getting prepped for coming to South By, we’ve been like really, really busy. And we’ve just had like, a lot going on, and so when we come back– and uni is finishing up soon—we can actually after this week of craziness and hopefully now with a lot more inspiration from being here, we’ll for sure be able to get some new— we’re like so excited to write. We keep being like “Okay, let’s meet up to write, when are your free?” [But it’ll like] “Oh sorry we have uni” [or] “Oh sorry, I’m working.” And I’m like “ugh c’mon man.”
Emily: I know because a lot of times, I guess bands will write like by themselves, but there’s something about just like being together—it’s just different. It just feels…
Jude: It clearly works.
Emily: Yeah, it works a lot better just being in the same room as each other.
Keira: And like four heads put together instead of just one is obviously going to be better. But yeah, so we’re gonna have some new songs soon, hopefully.
Emily: I mean, we do also work quite well under pressure as well.
Emily, Keira, Jude & Alex: Yeah very last minute.
Keira: Yes we work very well under pressure (all laugh).
Catalina: Do you have any plans to keep your music career in focus? Or is it just a fun way to express yourself like amidst your work and your personal life?
Emily: I think at the start, that was kind of the intention, just like do it for fun. Like that was kind of it but obviously…
Jude: We’re in Texas (all laugh)
Emily: Now we’re here, so you never know (laughs)
Keira: When you’re here and you can kind of see like the opportunities in front of you, it’s like hard not to think, “Oh like, I wish we could do this for like a job and hopefully we can keep doing this” like when it’s right underneath your nose.
Emily: We were so young when we started the band as well, like we were literally like 15, so there was no like, aspirations of like— I mean obviously it’s like the big goal is like “Oh my god, I want to be like in a big band” —but you just like assume that that’s probably just not gonna happen; it’s just for fun. But we’ve seen like the respect and the comments that we get from like people that are like common tags that we don’t even know like, it used to just be our friends or our family and now we’re like selling out venues of like 600 people in it that we don’t even know.
Keira: We’re playing shows in Glasgow and people are driving up from like Manchester and stuff like that—
Emily: —and people here like singing the words to our songs.
Jude: —and we’re playing front of Paul Dano in New York (all laugh)
Emily: Like what’s going on here? (laughs)
Keira: Who are you and why are you here? (all laugh)
Jude: Why us? (laughs)
Keira: Well for me, this is what I’d love to do for the rest of my life. So yeah, that’s just what the goal will be, obviously we’re still uni students and we’ve still got part time jobs but hopefully not for long.
Catalina: So how does it feel sort of going back to a “normal life” after this?
Alex: Absolutely terrible.
Keira: He’s taken a week off work, I don’t know what he’s saying (laughs).
Alex: Even playing in Glasgow and going back to geck on the Monday after a gig is horrible.
Keira: Work, yeah going back work… Going back to geck (laughs)
Alex: It’s terrible man, I hate it.
Emily: I know I think we’re just we don’t even want to think about it.
Keira: I’m fearing the amount of uni work that I’m gonna have to catch up with to be honest.
Emily: I know we like brought our laptops here. I’m like, “I’m gonna get so much done I’m gonna be productive on the plane like in the room I’ve got a day off” and I’m just like [I] can’t be bothered.
Keira: We just sat and looked at our camera rolls (laughs) on the plane for like four hours.
Emily: But I think we are excited to go home and kind of see what opportunities obviously are on the horizon. Obviously being here, we’re meeting so many new people and getting contacts with people as well, so it’ll be good to kind of see what the future will hold once we come home.
Keira: And then we can come back!! (all laugh).
Catalina: On that note, what’s next for Spyres?
Emily: We do have like a few festivals back in the UK during summer so that will be fun because we really love like going like down south in England and play in the festivals when there’s maybe like one day of sun.
Keira: Yeah or like just that festival set up for like any band is like ideal because you’re going to play then you get to like go and watch—
Emily: —go and watch everyone else and relax.
Keira: So yeah, that’s like ideal.
Emily: As well just like what we said earlier, just write and record and bring out music because that’s what we love to do. As well as obviously play more shows, that’s kind of why we do it’s for for the people.
Keira: Writing means like growing though so like hopefully new songs… that benefits everyone (laughs).
Catalina: Thank you guys for stopping by!
Emily, Keira, Jude & Alex: Thank you so much! Cheers!
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