The Brute Chorus are uncategorisable. They've risen quickly from their Hawley Arms origins to become a solid band of ne'er do wells who sing of biblical figures, storms and floods and fairytales. They're disarmingly nice chaps despite the undercurrent of dark love and doom in their songs. BCR feeds them, beers them and tries to get under the skins and moustache of The brute Chorus
BCR: So you guys have been together since last march?
Matt Day: March 2007
BCR: That doesn't seem like a very long time considering how much praise and acclaim you've received.
James Steel: Matt, Nick and I played together before. We were called Low Sparks. But it was dying on its arse and we'd done it since we'd left college so we decided to start again, all new songs. Got a residency at the Hawley, tried a new patch. We'd been playing quite a lot of south London and transplanted ourselves up into Camden. Our first gig was in March at Catch. From Camden Crawl, we did an acoustic set at the Hawley which turned into a monthly residency right through to November.
Dave Ferret: And it's been a full on roller coaster since then...
James Steel: Matt and Nick used to play in a school band together when they were about ten.
Matt Day: We did EMF covers, we were amazing.
Dave Ferret: Unbelievable...
BCR: So how have you responded to the audience, to fans?
James Steel: It's interesting. We've been playing all these festivals where our names on the bill alongside all these bands that we've heard of. You go on stage and you start playing and suddenly your tent's full. People singing along to songs.
Matt Day: We're quite used to our friends singing along to our songs but now it's not people we know singing along.
Dave Ferret: That's because our friends don't come to the gigs anymore.
Matt Day: They're sick of us, can't stand it anymore.
James Steel: We don't really get over excited, we don't really listen to the radio, it's when we actually play.
BCR: Have you stopped reading your reviews yet?
James Steel: I've stopped reading them... I got a bit too into them. When the single came out we'd never had reviews before and they were all good. I just realised that it's not always gonna be good. And a lot of it you realise how much they just transcribe the press release.
Dave Ferret: Also, if we were to please everyone and only get good reviews I'd be a bit worried that we were homogenised.
James Steel: We just had a bad review but it wasn't because we were bad.
BCR: You can't say the only bad review you've had wasn't because you were bad.
James Steel: He didn't review us, he reviewed how drunk he was at this night in Bethnal Green and how he had six tequilas and suddenly my moustache looked alright. We don't really read them anymore or at least we try not to care about them. It's as counter productive to get carried away by the nice things people have said or to get bothered by the nasty things people have said. Especially as we've done all these gigs and we're trying to write again and not concentrate on what's going on around us.
BCR: So you've released one double A side single and now Grow Fins as a single..
James Steel: It's a re-recording because we demo'd it last summer and it was in the set for a while. But then when Dave joined the band we changed it about a bit. Then the girl who recorded it for us had some ideas so she came in on a producer level.
BCR: Was that at Air?
James Steel: That was at the Bedroom we recorded it. We'd been at Air a couple of weeks before because Nick was a sound engineer there and had got to know some of the engineers there and they'd got chatting and he'd said that we'd got some new songs that need demos and they just said why don't you come and record on the down time.
BCR: You do seem to have had some very good luck with studios.
Dave Ferret: Ridiculous luck
Matt Day: We're just really nice guys.
James Steel: But Catherine who recorded Grow Fins, she's a friend of Tigs, who sang on our first single. She came down to a gig and thought we were really good. So she offered up her studio for what was a pittance, not free but... So we spent a couple of days down there and we recorded Grow Fins.
BCR: How does it feel being in the studio now? Is it quite organic or have you got some kind of formula now?
James Steel: It's different every time. The one we put out ourselves, the single in the autumn, Catherine had just taken over this studio in North West London called The Battery. They were basically moving all the Bedroom equipment into The Battery and they needed a dummy band to try it all out and that was us.
Matt Day: We're using all these studios that would normally cost far, far out of our league so it's quite nice.
James Steel: We are lucky. Ideally we’d like to just go in there and bang it out because we're quite a live band.
Dave Ferret: minimal over-dubbage...
