Messed!Up
The Sherlocks are a British indie band following the path of the early Arctic Monkeys or the Courteneers; a classic four-piece serving their fans anthemic songs with lots of energy and festival-compatible drive. I saw them live for the first time when they opened up for Keane last year in Hamburg, and was surprised how tight and experienced they were for being a support band. Well, I soon found out that they were far from the inexperienced band that support acts usually are; they had already released four albums and were also well on the way to becoming a household name on home turf in the UK.
Messed Up’s journalist Ralf took the opportunity to sit down with the band on their return to Hamburg, this time playing a headline tour to launch their new album Everything Must Make Sense. And we got to chat with all four of them at the same time; brothers Kiaran (vocals & guitar) and Brandon Crook (drums), Alex Procter (lead guitar), and Trent Jackson (bass). And they come across as a close-knit team, often finishing off each other’s sentences and lots of friendly banter – and lots of laughter.
Down the history lane: How it started
Thanks for taking the time to sit down with us. Let’s start with your background and your journey so far. I mean, you’re about to release your fifth album. Most bands are in their early sixties by the time they release their fifth album, but you guys, if I’m not mistaken, have been doing this for fifteen years already, at least you, Kiaran, and Trent. And you’re only like in your early thirties, right?
(laughs)
Kiaran: ”29!”
Brandon: ”Yeah, 32!”
And Alex and Trent, the ‘new guys’, have been part of the band for about five years now?
Alex: ”Yeah! It’s probably round about exactly five years ago”.
Trent: ”March 2020!”
How did you find them? On Tinder?
(laughs)
Kiaran: ”We got recommended. Alex used to be in a band; our old sound guy Nick used to be in a band with him, and it was called Urban Empire. He recommended Alex, and he also recommended Trent, and used to be Trent’s teacher”.
Trent: ”Yeah, he was my college tutor”.
Kiaran: ”And taught him everything he knows”. (laughs)
Trent: ”But then I worked for you (for The Sherlocks) and was doing backline tech before I joined”.
I read somewhere that you had, like, just a couple of days to prepare before going into the studio to record your third album?
Alex: ”Yeah, not long because of Covid-19. We couldn’t really see each other, just met twice, I think”.
You are from a place I’ve never heard of, close to Sheffield, right?
Kiaran: ”Bolton upon Dearne, it’s a little village. That’s where we grew up, that’s where we started the band. But we’re a bit more separate now – don’t practice that often really, do we?”
Alex: ”Not as much as we should do”.
Kiaran: ”We don’t normally practice that much because we normally gig that heavy, that we have lots of soundchecks and don’t need to rehearse as much. We only really rehearse when we do learn, like, new tunes”.
Crafting a record for big stadiums
A couple of weeks ago, The Sherlocks released their fifth album, Everything Must Make Sense!, and of course, we were curious about how it came about, especially production-wise, and how they picked songs for the album and as singles. The band’s anthem-like songwriting skills often end up in larger-than-life indie rock anthems, especially on Everything Must Make Sense!, which is brimming with stadium-sized ambition.
And we also took the chance to let Chat GPT write a song and album titles for their next album – just to help the boys speed up the process to album number six.
Let’s talk a little bit about your new album coming out soon. How did it come about? I mean, in 2024, you were on tour for quite a bit?
Kiaran: ”How did it come about? I just had a bunch of songs, not anything finished, but ideas. Since Alex and Trent joined, we’ve been moving a lot faster getting albums out just because we enjoy doing it. We’re independent, so we can bring records out whenever we want, which is nice”.
”So, it just felt right. It was the right time to get back in a studio in Manchester and record these songs”.
Kiaran, you start the songs off and then you take them to the band and you flesh them out together – or how does it work?
Kiaran: ”Exactly, I start them on an acoustic guitar, normally. I might make a little demo, send it to these guys, and then we get in the practice room and just fresh it up”.
“But I haven’t written in a while. When we finish an album, or we’re just releasing an album, I tend not to write a song for ages or pick a guitar up just because we’re busy doing other stuff. I suppose I’m probably thinking ’This song no one’s going to hear for another year at least’, because we are so busy doing this album. So, I just tend to write when I need to. Once we plan to go on tour to promote an album, I’ll start thinking, like, ’Start writing some more’. It’s a bit of a chore, really”.
I can relate to that. I mean, writing is a completely different mindset compared to production or touring, and then motivating yourself again to go back into writing.
Kiaran: ”Yeah, I mean, some people write loads of songs. In fact, the band who’s supporting us tonight, Cusp – we’re good friends – their singer, Dan in particular, would write fifty songs minimum for a record. That’s crazy to me, right? I don’t think I could even write that many if I tried”.
I mean, what’s the point if you throw forty songs away?
Kiaran: ”Well, that’s it, right? We tend to make ten-track albums these days. So if I’d written fifty songs per album, and I did that every album, after this record, there would only be fifty songs, except I would have written 250 (laughs), so there’d be 200 songs that have not even been heard, because I wrote so many. I’d rather write less songs and just get them all out!”
Did you work with the same producer again, with Dave Eringa?
Kiaran: ”No, for this album, we went with a guy called David Radahd Jones. He’s from Essex, but I think he lives near Manchester and has his studio in Manchester. But yeah, different producer again. Every album now we’ve been with a different producer to mix it up”.
”He recorded a song called “Remember All the Girls” on the last album. That’s when we tried him, but we ended up going with somebody else. But we always knew we’d use Dave”.
Brandon: ”His background’s mainly doing like heavier bands like metal bands and that kind of thing. I don’t know if he’s done many indie kinds of bands. But maybe that kind of helps to better the sound a bit”.
Alex: ”He played in a band himself and was the songwriter and guitarist. But that’s what he’s really good at, isn’t he? When we work with him, we got on really well with him and it turned out right, didn’t it”?
And it’s probably easier to get to Manchester than to get to Monmouth, where you recorded before, right?
Alex: ”A little bit. Well, it’s quite a way, but it’s a great place, Rockfield”.
You recorded two albums there?
Kiaran: ”Yeah, the first album and the third album. Brilliant studio. That’s where Queen have recorded.”
Well, and Simple Minds, Coldplay, Oasis, and Charlatans, basically any band that had to get away from party life.
Kiaran: ”It’s a good studio”. (laughs)
I noticed that you’re ‘cranking out’ singles on a pretty regular basis, leading into the next album. Do you have the whole album done, like, a year ahead of time, and then start releasing the singles – and then you finish off with the album?
Kiaran: ”I want it to be done a bit before we drop the first one from the album – six months maybe – before it being finished and mixed”.
Brandon: ”It’s weird because with this album, we basically didn’t go in as a ‘big block’. We’d go in, like, in different blocks. So, we’d do one song, that’d be ready, then we’d go ahead and do another song”.
Oh, so you didn’t do it “en bloc”?
Brandon: ”It depends on each album. We’ve done it a lot of different ways, like we’ve had the album complete, then release a single. But a couple of times we’ve had half an album, but we’ve got the singles ready, so we’ll put one out knowing the album is going to be finished”.
Trent: ”One of the songs we recorded two years ago or something. And for this album, we recorded another song that’s called ”Bedlam Town”, and I think it was two years ago”.
And that leads me to the next question. What does an album mean to you? Is it just a collection of the songs that you have completed, or do you see it more as a consistent piece of work?
Kiaran: ”Probably the first option. I got a bunch of songs and then I get them out”! (laughs)
Brandon: ”Well, a lot of bands and artists, they just release singles now and not albums, whereas I like the idea of an album because it captures that moment in time for us. So yeah, I just see them as ‘blocks of time’ rather than putting singles out”.
”I don’t think we will ever be a band to just put single-after-single-after-single out and not put it as a block”.
Come on, your songs on the album sound like single after single, don’t they? Isn’t that a lot of pressure? My impression is, as a listener, that your goal is to always write a single? It seems that you’re not happy with just ’album tracks’, are you?
Kiaran: (laughs) “I don’t know. Maybe! I don’t know, I don’t do it intentionally. There are certain songs where, when I’m writing, I know it’s not going to be a single, and I’m not trying to make it longer or whatever. Like the final tune on this new album, ”Here Comes the Rain”. That’s one of my favorite tunes on the album, but I always knew it wouldn’t be a single. The chorus is not really a single kind of chorus”.
Actually, in the preparation of this interview, I just couldn’t resist but ask Chat GPT if it could write me a typical Sherlocks song. So I wanted to run this by you.
Brandon: ”Chat GPT!” (laughs)
Kiaran: ”Next single!”
Alex: ”Oh, cool!”
If this would be a lyric you would be writing. The scary thing is, I just put in a two-line prompt, ‘Can you write me a lyric of a typical Sherlocks song?’ and then it even offered me style choices, and I said ‘Oh, please make it a bit darker and with humor, please’. Then came (drum roll), ‘Fun at the Funeral’.
(everyone laughs)
Trent: ”That’s it!”
Kiaran: (starts reading from the lyric) “’Woke up late, dressed in black. Tied my tie like a heart attack.” (laughs). Can I steal these?”
Oh please! Have them! What irritated me was that it wrote back to me all mate-y in Gen Z style, meaning lots of English words in the German replies. It offered me, without any prompting, a modular songwriting structure for The Sherlock songs, where the first half of each line was already filled in, and the second half for me to fill in. It’s just scary. Then I took it further!
I asked, ’What should they call their next album?’ and ChatGPT replied, ’I love this question. If we’re thinking in the style of The Sherlocks – edgy, youthful, a bit cynical but still hopeful, grounded in everyday grit with a nod to escapism…’ – and boom! Out came a list of ten album titles. So here’s your next ten album titles. (hands over list)
Then this morning, I went back and it wrote me this song complete with chords. It is called “Backseat Saints.”
Kiaran: ”Jesus!”
What I found most scary is that it asked me, ’Should you ever want to write a mock Sherlocks album, I’ll help you! Just let me know. So I wonder, how does ChatGPT know all your songs – it’s weird.
Alex: ”It’s scary!”
Brandon: ”It’s strange, innit?”
Trent: ”Next album – it’s gonna be one of them titles!” (laughter)
But how do you determine if a song is good as a potential single? When you want to raise your fists for the chorus? When you start singing it?
Kiaran: ”Yeah, sometimes, but I don’t really know. You just get a vibe, I think”.
Brandon: ”I mean, you just know! It’s like, ’Yeah! This one feels like it’s going to resonate with fans. This one’s a good showpiece of the album’ and so on”.
In the old music industry, not everything was great, but at least you had an A&R Manager. If you had a good A&R, he could be really helpful. And now, if you’re left to your own devices, isn’t it much harder to keep the distance to your own work to pick songs for the album?
Brandon: ”We all just get a vibe. I think it becomes very obvious that there’s two or three very obvious ones, and then we’ll all go, ’Either that one, that one, or that one’”.
Kiaran: ”It could be a bit like that. But I think it’s probably easier because it’s our work, so we didn’t have to ask anybody or even listen to anyone’s opinion. You know, like an A&R guy; he didn’t write them tunes – it’s just his opinion. There’s us four and the manager”.
”When we pick a single, we all just seem to said the same one. Like for this album, ‘So what should be the first single?’, and we all were just thinking ”Death Of Me” or ”Man On The Loose”. So we went with that, and then we knew ”Man On The Loose” would be a single – that was the second one wasn’t it? And then ”Bones”. (all say the song name at the same time in unison)
”It sounded a little bit different for us, so we wanted to put that up as a single. And then it just seemed to happen”.
Has streaming and Spotify had an impact on the way you write songs? I mean, do you kind of like keep an eye on what’s going on and try to adapt your music to the general trends, or do you just ignore them?
Kiaran: ”No, just write the songs, and then they tend to change a little bit when you’re in the studio anyway. Once you pick your single, we always try and make each song the best that song can be. We never try and make a theme for the album and change songs so it sounds like it belongs on the album. We just record each song, get the best out, right? And then, once we’ve decided on singles, we might get the scissors up and chop the intro and so on”.
What’s the role of your producer in that context? Do you use him as someone to bounce your ideas off?
Kiaran: ”Yeah, he came up with hell of a lot”.
Brandon: ”Probably more so than any other producer. He really pushed us, with drums as well. What was it? “Man on the Loose”, I think. He was like, ‘Add this fill in here and here’ – spent ages! It literally took a whole day doing drums because he was coming up with all these different ideas, but it made it sound really good”.
And the synthesizer stuff; do you always run it as backing tracks live?
Kiaran: ”No! Well, that’s like a recent thing. We’re not one of them bands playing to a click. Sometimes we play ”Sirens” faster, or we might end up playing it slower. So we never play to a click. Any new sounds Alex has started triggering stuff”.
Have you got a looper device, Alex?
Alex: ”I’ve got a looper for one thing, so I could play a phrase and then repeat it. And then I’ve got a sampler so I can kick a sample, because obviously we don’t play to click, it’s completely live”.
I mean, with songs like ”Death of Me” with all that synth brass that you’re kicking in there, things could go horribly wrong, couldn’t they?
Alex: ”Yeah! (laughs) So that’s part of the fun of it because we’re not like robots”.
Brandon, I noticed during the soundcheck earlier that you’re playing drum machine samples from a pad controller?
Brandon: ”Yeah! So yesterday, I messed up with my pad thing, and it started doing a kick drum out of nowhere, so I had to just turn it off in the middle of a song. Everyone knows we are playing live, so it’s good”.
Trent: ”Especially when the guitar’s killed (laughs), that’s happened twice now”.
Alex: ”Two gigs – guitar cables come out”.
That actually answers my next question about how you bring the album sound onto the stage. So, basically, you’re just using loopers, samplers, and then triggering everything?
Alex: ”Yeah, we’re triggering everything”.
Trent: ”Massive FX pedal boards”!
And the backing vocals, and so on? Are those also sampled?
Alex: ”No, they are all live”.
Kiaran: ”It’s these two angels”. (Pointing at Alex and Trent)
Living off music while running a pub
With Everything Must Make Sense!, The Sherlocks got their fourth top ten album on the UK Album Chart, and the band’s success just seems to continue. And it made an impact on their lives – they live, breathe, and write music full-time. But they still do other things on the side – like opening their own pub/venue, spending a lot of time organizing events there.
I’m also curious about how it is to start a band these days; it’s probably not the easiest thing to do, especially leaving the ‘mapped out life’ behind, with education and stuff, and then be a musician full-time rather than doing a “real” job. What did your parents think? I know your dad is also your manager.
Kiaran: ”They’ve always encouraged it! We always just put the band first. But we never ‘started’ the band. We never said, ‘Do you want to be in a band?’, ‘Yeah, let’s be in a band’, right? The band just started!”
Brandon: ”Did it the right way, I think”.
Kiaran: ”We just ended up in a garage, just playing. Just for something to do, just out of boredom, and we found it entertaining. So we just did it. And then we started learning a couple of covers because that was fun, and once we had so many covers, we said, ‘Oh, let’s book a gig!’ and then we booked a gig and we enjoyed it. So we were like, ‘Yeah, let’s book another’”.
So can you afford to live off the project, or do you have to do something else as well, like a day job?
Kiaran: ”It’s a full-time job, and then we do bits and bobs, like Alex repairs amplifiers and stuff like that”.
Trent: ”Good at fixing radios as well”.
Kiaran: ”It’s a specialty!”
Trent: ” You’ve got to fix it – radios, systems”. (laugh)
Alex: ”It’s good! Trent does a bit of live sound”.
Trent: ”Mainly studio stuff. I don’t do that much live sound. That’s what I was doing in college, like music tech. So, that’s what I was planning on doing in life, but I got this opportunity”. (laughs)
Alex: ”‘Unfortunately’, got dragged in”.
Trent: ”It’s so ‘unfortunate’”.
Kiaran: ”It’s your whole life planned out”. (laughs)
I also saw that you invested in a club, or reopened a club, in your area?
Brandon: ”Yeah, a pub, or a venue. Yeah, it’s good, for a pub”.
So it’s like the Brit pop version of the Haçienda?
Brandon: ”It’s more like Phoenix Club, to be honest”. (laughs)
Brandon: ”No, it’s good fun. It’s hard work, probably as hard as being in a band”.
But you’re also involved in running that?
Brandon: ”Oh, yeah, majorly. Literally every event!” (laughs)
How did that come about?
Kiaran: ”It’s been opened a few times, but it just kept on closing. I think the people who were opening it in the past had never nailed it”.
Brandon: ”They turned it into a karaoke bar, I think”.
Kiaran: ”Yeah, and then a fish and chips shop. A bit sad”.
Brandon: ”But it’s rocking now, though!” (laughs)
What kind of bands are playing there now, apart from you?
Brandon: ”It’s quite a wide range. We’ve started doing jam nights every Wednesday, like, upcoming bands come and play. Then we’ll have a battle of the bands once a month, so everyone can come down and play, and just be seen. Then we started having a few cover and tribute bands, and stuff. Then there’s deejay nights, rave nights – I mean, literally everything. Do you know a band called The View? They are from Scotland. The singer of that band is coming down to do a spot later this year. What else? We’ve got loads of events. We’re doing literally everything!”
Going back to your tour; how long is this tour continuing now? Into May?
Kiaran: ”Yeah, the end of May. Cologne after this on Sunday – we’ve got a day off tomorrow. Then we’re in Paris on Monday and Amsterdam on Tuesday”.
Trent: ” It’s the other way around”. (laughs)
Kiaran: ”And then we’ve got one or two days off, and then UK tour. That tour is like Friday, Saturday, and then back home – weekend! ”
And the signings that you’re going to do next month? Is that, like, in record shops?
Kiaran: ”I think a lot of them are”.
Brandon: ”Yeah, we do it quite a few. It’s just an album week. We just, basically, sell as many albums as we possibly can to push it up the charts and see where we land.”
About the charts; I saw that your last album was number four in the British charts. What does that mean in terms of physical sales these days?
Kiaran: ”Numbers-wise? I think we sold over 12 000, from the last one. Which is mad, because just last week we were at 13 000. It just depends on what week you drop on. It depends if there’s a big streaming artist”.
Alex: ”Yeah, I mean sometimes they drop it last minute, don’t they?”
So you’re checking Taylor Swift’s itinerary, so there’s no conflict?
Trent: (laughs) ”Well, it’s random though. She could drop it on the Monday of that week, and…”
Brandon: ”…she could drop it on bloody Thursday. Thursday afternoon – and still got 50.000!” (laughs)
So, on this high note, thank you for your time!
All: ”Thanks!” (Laughter)
*****
Photographer: Niko Schmuck
*****
The Sherlocks pages
