Top MODEL’S OWN, jeans LEVI’S at FILTH MART

Jacket STYLIST’S OWN, bra MOSCHINO. shorts FILTH MART

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Yellow and white collar knit top by TORY BURCH

Multicoloured knit top by MISSONI and denim jeans by GUCCI

Orange denim jacket by MARYAM NASSIR ZADEH, black and white stripe bikini top by TORY BURCH, cream twill cuffed trousers by MARY PING and brown leather sandals by ANDREW MARC

Orange jacket and mustard yellow cotton top both by TRADEMARK

Green tie bandeau top by ELECTRIC FEATHERS and green suede trousers by CHANEL

White and blue silk floral shirt by DIANE VON FURSTENBURG and blue and white bandeau swimsuit by LISA MARIE FERNANDEZ

Photographer: Ben Rayner

Fashion Editor: Dianna Lunt

Make Up: Erin Green at Art Dept

Hair: Tamaz Tuzes at L’atelier NYC

Photographers Assistant: Adam Levett

Casting: Bella Robinson at Star & Co

Model: Charlotte Lindvig at Ford

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Even more if the said star has a widely publicised relationship with former High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens. But whatever that image might be, it doesn’t seem to apply to Austin Butler, the 22-year-old actor playing the role of Sebastian Kydd, Carrie Bradshaw’s brooding on-again-off-again boyfriend in the Sex and the City prequel television series set in the ’80s, The Carrie Diaries.

I meet Austin Butler in one of those ubiquitous cafes in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with a chalkboard menu and bored, tattooed baristas. He’s living there as he films the second season of The Carrie Diaries. Six feet tall and thin, he wears well-fitted dark jeans and a slim black pea coat. Perfectly side swept blonde hair? Check. Piercing blue eyes? Absolutely. In looks, he is the quintessential Disney Channel commodity, carefully designed to get teenage hearts racing. But Butler doesn’t seem motivated much by attention or fame.

“I just want to follow whatever I love to do,” he answers when asked about his future career. “And I’ve thought about, what if I just move to Costa Rica and played [music] in tiny dive bars? And that sounds awesome. I think I could be happy doing that. I think I could find happiness no matter what I’m doing.” His happy-go-lucky outlook is the opposite of the bad boy character he plays on-screen, an angsty rich high-schooler with Porsche-sized family issues and a record of boarding school expulsions. It also lacks the jadedness that comes with growing up in Hollywood. At one point of the interview, he told me without a hint of irony that one of his favourite things to do was to watch magic shows–“It feels like believing in Santa Claus!”

Raised in California, Butler first got screen time as a background actor at the age of 13 on shows like Ned’s Declassified Survival Guide, before landing brief story arcs in Hannah Montana and Zoey 101. He then went on to star in the children’s adventure film Aliens in the Attic and the High School Musical spin-off television movie, Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure. Now, as a lead on The CW’s The Carrie Diaries and boyfriend of oft-covergirl Vanessa Hudgens, he’s getting more screen time and paparazzi shots than ever.

But despite the fame that comes with being part of H-wood’s post-Disney Kid generation, the most striking thing about Butler – in conversation at least, and minus the lips – is his introversion. Not so long ago, he was so shy he “could barely order food for myself at a restaurant,” he says. “I don’t know how it shattered, but acting kind of started chipping away at it. The more hours I spent on stage, I realised, I’m not going to get hurt. It might be embarrassing, but nobody’s going to hurt me.”

On a day-to-day basis, it’s still a bit of problem – nightclubs are his idea of hell, he says. Big groups? They terrify him. “I get anxiety – events or award shows, you have to drag me out of the house to attend.” So how does a 22-year-old star enjoy his success without popping bottles at clubs?  While most people his age – and in the small screen game – are busy wading through their social lives, he’s a certified spiritual type. “I love walking around the city just playing music. It’s like you’re in your own movie”. I laugh because, well, he has his own television show with a soundtrack, so that’s a strange thing to get excited about.

And life after The Carrie Diaries? “I want to try doing a play because it scares me so much. Lately, I’ve been trying to use fear as a compass toward where to go. Wherever you feel resistance, you almost have to force yourself to walk into.”

Words: Koun Bae

Fashion Editor: Lauren Blane

Photographer: Ben Rayner

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FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE by Ben Rayner from Wonderland Magazine on Vimeo.

In 2009, Wonderland released the British Talent Special issue featuring cover stars Alexandra Burke and DIzzie Rascal. We also created a shoot and interview with the incredible Florence Welch where she discussed witchcraft, family life and (of course) music. A behind-the-scenes video from our shoot was also created from this feature and both were shot by Ben Rayner. To commemorate the release of the new Florence + The Machine album, Ceremonials, we share this video with you once more.

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Lazy entertainers are not something The Maccabees can be guilty of being slandered of – but fans of poi and juggling had better look away now…

In May this year, with the release of their second album, Wall of Arms, the Maccabees transcended their epithet of just a good-time band with jaunty guitar riffs and some nice songs. Working with producer Markus Dravs, who has helped steer the sound of acts like Bjork, Arcade Fire and Brian Eno, they made a much more melodic album, full of mellifluously epic songs suffused with emotion.

I met the south London five-piece in an east London pub and had a relaxed chat with them while most of the band air-drummed and air-riffed to the Strokes’ debut that was playing in the background on the jukebox.

John McDonnell: What did you listen to when you were growing up?
Orlando Weeks: I didn’t really listen to music when I was growing up. I first got into music when I was 18. The Fugees is the only CD I can remember buying growing up, really. Then I probably bought Pras because it followed on, it made chronological sense. The only Beatles I’d ever heard was one BBC recording tape that we had on long school journeys.

JM: Wow. So you’ve had to take in a lot in a very short time?
OW: It’s felt like I’ve been doing a course on it, a refresher course – but I didn’t know about it in the first place.

JM: There is quite a difference between the sound of your first and second album. Do you still enjoy playing the older stuff?
Felix White: We’re in a position now we’ve got new songs to play we can only really play a few songs off the first record that will still stand up, you know, and they still work within what we are doing now.

JM: What if you play a gig and you’ve got people shouting for songs off the first album?
FW: You’ve gotta force what you want to do upon it otherwise you’re doing it for completely the wrong reasons. If you’re not proud of what you’re doing and you don’t feel inside that you’re being the best you can be it’s not worth it because then it becomes the lowest form of entertainment – like juggling or whatever.
OW: I don’t think juggling’s the lowest form of entertainment. Either hacky sack or poi is the worst form of entertainment ever. Entire generations have been lost to fire poi.
Hugo White: I watched a guy doing poi at Kings of Leon at T in the Park, not even watching the band, just doing it the whole time.
OW: It’s one step away from setting yourself on fire.

JM: Do you think the influence of Arcade Fire on the second album has been overblown?
FW: It’s a compliment. It’s slightly lazy journalism but at the same time it’s not something we’re gonna get offended about.
OW: I think they’re one of the best bands in the world and they nail the whole idea of everything working for each other and not requiring there to be solos. The band is a unit and it sounds like a unit.

JM: Why is Mat Horne in the “No Kind Words” video? I’m presuming he’s a fan of the band?
OW: We’ve known him for three or four years. We met him the first time we played with Interpol and we’ve been mates ever since. We needed someone in the video who could have camera presence, and he’s definitely got that.

JM: Did he cut his fringe totally straight especially for the video?
OW: I think he had it done for Gavin & Stacey.

JM: I thought he’d done it especially to tie in with the symmetrical theme of the video.
Sam Doyle: Let’s say he did.
HW: The director in Gavin & Stacey was like, “Why have you got that haircut?” And he was like, “I’ve got to, man. It’s for the Maccabees.”

JM: I love the story about your great-grandparents on Seventeen Hands, Orlando. Is your family life and your past something you enjoy writing about?
OW: It’s something that I’m more informed on than anyone else. No one can call me out on it. Also, every family has good family stories, so why not tell mine? I had this Cornish guy, 200 years ago, who sold all his farming equipment and went to South Africa to mine for diamonds so that when he’d made enough money he could buy himself a merry-go-round and then bring it back and be part of a travelling circus. The day before he came back – I have the letter in my room – he started saying goodbye because he’s dying of malaria and he’s signing away the rights to the diamonds he’s collected. People have these stories in their lives and they never get used. They’re amazing things.

Photography: Ben Rayner
WORDS John McDonnell

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #19, Sep/Oct 2009

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Soulful and somewhat somber, The XX talk to Sam Richards about keeping things dark and intimate.

When we meet, The XX are still buzzing from their show the previous night at Amsterdam’s Paradiso Club. They didn’t even play the famous, cathedral-esque main room – that was given over to a Michael Jackson tribute concert – but a tiny basement cell with a capacity of about 30. Intimate and attentive: that’s how The XX prefer their audiences.

“We’ve done our fair share of club nights around London and it never seems to work,” says bassist and vocalist Oliver Sim, who speaks as softly as he sings.

“If I went out on a Friday night and a band came on at midnight, I probably wouldn’t give them my full attention either,” reasons his fellow frontperson Romy Madley Croft.
So when is the best time to encounter The XX? “Maybe after the night out,” Oliver decides.

The XX are a rarity among hotly-tipped British bands in that their music doesn’t force itself clumsily upon you. They don’t write songs that will sound good on the radio. Their music is slow, stark, skeletal. But give it a chance and it will utterly envelop you.

Romy and Oliver have known each other since the age of two. They learned to talk at the same time, and fourteen years later, they learned to sing at the same time too. Baria Qureshi (guitar/keyboards) and Jamie Smith (beats/samples) were friends from school – the same Putney comprehensive, incidentally, that Burial, Hot Chip and Four Tet attended a decade previously.

The foursome have spent most of the last 18 months squeezed together into a studio the size of a small garden shed, gradually honing the sound of their debut album XX. The intensity of the situation didn’t faze them – they say they would have been hanging out together anyway. The XX certainly have the look of a tight-knit gang in which any colour of clothing is OK, as long as it’s black.

“It’s not like if Jamie turned up wearing an orange T-shirt we’d make him take it off,” says Romy, unconvincingly. “He started off more colourful but he’s slowly descended to the dark side,” cackles Oliver. The look complements the music: defiantly not goth, it’s more early-’80s punk meets glamorous hoodie.

Their label Young Turks initially tried to matchmake them with a series of hip producers, Diplo included, but it didn’t work out. “We learnt a lot, but it always ended up sounding more like them than us,” says Oliver. “I suppose there’s a lot of space in our music, and they saw that as an opportunity to fill it with their trademark noises.”

The space between the notes is very important to The XX, even if it appeared there almost by accident. “When we started recording, we couldn’t really play,” admits Romy. To mask their deficiencies, they whacked up the distortion. “Then one day, someone turned it off,” says Oliver. “Good move.”

Romy only strums one full chord on the entire album, which is characterised by simple, crystalline guitar lines, quivered vocals and Jamie’s vaporous production. The fragile atmosphere recalls Young Marble Giants, The Chills or early Cure but with a soulful edge and a steely urban glare.

At first the music seems cautious; guarded even. But listen carefully and the lyrics are full of frank, vulnerable declarations of love and longing. “I still want to drown whenever you leave/ Please teach me gently how to breathe,” pleads Romy on the devastating Shelter.

If you’re trying to discern some sexual tension between the two singers, however, you’re barking up the wrong tree: both Oliver and Romy are gay. “We’re never singing to each other,” laughs Romy. “We’re not Sonny and Cher.” Sometimes, as on “Crystallised,” their verses graze abrasively against each other. Yet even though they both write their lyrics in isolation, they’ll often discover that they’ve subconsciously articulated what the other was feeling.

The XX are voracious music listeners. Signed to a subsidiary of XL, they’ve been allowed to raid the vaults of Beggars group, recently discovering the Cocteau Twins and Arthur Russell. Their vocal lines betray a love of R&B – they do their own, ghostly version of Aaliyah’s “Hot Like Fire” – while the occasional breathtaking bass drop suggests an intimacy with London bass culture.

“We were recording at the XL offices in Notting Hill during the carnival,” reveals Romy. “We took a break to listen to some of the sound systems and you could feel the sub-bass resonating in your chest. That kind of music is emotive but it’s physical as well.”

Oliver continues: “We walked back into the studio and we were like, ‘Sub bass on all the tracks!’ We had to tone it down in the end.”

“Emotive but physical” is a good way to describe what The XX do too: songs that lure you in gently before punching you in the gut.

Photography: Ben Rayner
Words: Sam Richards

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #19, Sep/Oct 2009

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Plucked from their first year of drama school to star in a haunting mockumentary about conjoined punk-rockers, Luke and Harry Treadaway became overnight indie stars. Any young actor would kill for such a launchpad, and the twins, now 24, got stuck into Brothers Of The Head with relish, spending the entire shoot sewn together in a wetsuit and even sharing a bed.

“Since then, though, we’ve been off doing our own things,” chirps Harry, the younger by twenty minutes, at London’s Holborn Studios. Harry has boosted his film CV with the likes of Joy Division biopic Control and Tim Robbins-starrer City Of Ember. Luke, meanwhile, has made a name for himself as one of the Bright Young Things of British theatre, with star turns in the National Theatre’s War Horse and Philip Ridley’s Piranha at the Soho.

Spend five minutes in their company and it’s clear that Harry, eerily reminiscent of a cocky young Malcolm McDowell, is the more confident of the two. He’s also more restless, eternally making roll-ups or fiddling with his new iPhone. By contrast, Luke seems softer-edged, sweeter, perhaps – and happy to let his brother take the lead.

Four years since their startling debut, the Treadaways are coming together for their second joint professional outing, this time on stage. Mark Shopping and Fucking Ravenhill’s two-hander Over There is part of the Royal Court’s new season Off The Wall, marking twenty years since the Berlin Wall was smashed into tiny, tourist-pocket-sized chunks. Luke and Harry play Franz and Karl, identical twins separated as infants when their mother escapes to the West, taking one son with her and leaving the other behind. “It’s a great idea, I can’t wait to get stuck in,” Harry grins.

But while Ravenhill’s piece probes at the nature of twinhood and the brothers have consented to being interviewed together, their genetic relationship turns out to be a topic neither Luke nor Harry seem keen to discuss…

Wonderland: I see you’ve succumbed to the lure of the iPhone, Harry.

HARRY: I just got it a couple of weeks ago.

LUKE: I’ve hardly spoken to him since. I’m very jealous.

HARRY: I’ve realised that it’s like the temptation of man – it’s like taking a bite of the apple in the Garden of Eden. It’s as close to an identity card as we can have because it’s saying exactly what I’m doing on the internet, what music I’m listening to, and in the Book of Revelations there’s a bit that says when there’s a chip in the eye of man, mankind will fall. This is a chip – a computer chip – and it’s got the apple with a bite mark.

LUKE: It’s weird how you were saying that you can type in where you want to go and it will direct you there.

HARRY: Yeah, it makes you lazy. If you lose a signal, it’s like, ‘What the hell do I do now?’

Wonderland: Are you looking forward to the Royal Court play?

HARRY: Yeah, we haven’t done a play together since college. /I/ haven’t done a play since coming out of college. You’ll have to teach me the ropes.

LUKE: I’ll show you how it’s done. It’s funny how it can go from us having not worked together for three years to suddenly something cropping up on the Wednesday and by Friday we’re doing it together… although we know that we won’t do many things together in our lives. We’re not going to make a habit of it. But I’m deeply excited about this.

HARRY: It’s like a complete extension into the adult world of playing in your living room with your brother.

LUKE: Which is what you do anyway on any job with other, non-genetically similar people.

Wonderland: Who’s playing which role?

HARRY: We might just decide before we go on every night. Alternate.

LUKE: It would keep it fresh.

HARRY: We haven’t decided yet. I’ve been saying to people that we’re doing it and people go, ‘Did Mark write it for you?’ And what’s weird is that he didn’t at all. It says on the first page that it’s up to every production whether they do it with real twins or not.

Wonderland: Did you avoid working together again after Brothers Of The Head?

LUKE: Yes, there were some things which were proffered but we just felt…

HARRY: …It would have been stupid if we’d gone and done another brother thing straight after drama school.

LUKE: But we haven’t consciously tried to do anything ever. There’s no weird planning. We’ve just gone up for things and either got them or not.

HARRY: We go up for the same stuff sometimes. Sometimes one gets them, sometimes the other one gets them, sometimes neither of us get them. But we never both get them – that’s impossible. So there’s no conscious plan.

Wonderland: Is it awkward when you know you’re going up for the same role?

HARRY: Don’t think about it. Because you have mates who are going up for the same stuff as well. If you start thinking about who else is going up for something, your head is in the wrong place. Whether it’s your twin brother or not.

LUKE: It’s quite funny though when you’re the next one in as you walk out the door. Sometimes they’ll say something: ‘Coming back in for a second go?’

HARRY: Then you have to laugh, as if it’s funny and you’ve never heard it before.

Wonderland: How did you find drama school?

HARRY: It’s good training for theatre but you have to forget a lot of what you learnt to do any film. It’s hard to take on all this shit about identity and the psychologies of other characters when you’re still 18. You’re going, ‘What the fuck, I don’t even know what the Tube does yet.’ I found that quite hard. But I’m getting happier the more time that I’m away from it.

LUKE: I don’t regret having gone through it but I’m glad I’m not going through it now.

Wonderland: What was it like growing up as twins in a tiny village in Devon?

HARRY: I have nothing to compare it to, not having grown up anywhere else as a twin…

LUKE: It was very good for me, I enjoyed it.

HARRY: I loved the countryside. I can’t imagine not having had that. People are happy who grew up in cities and that’s cool but for me I need occasionally to go and walk by the sea or be in the countryside. It keeps me happy; it keeps me sane, I think.

Wonderland: Did your parents encourage you to be individuals?

LUKE: As with any siblings, I think. We were never dressed in the same way.

Wonderland: Some twins are…

HARRY: Some sisters are.

LUKE: I think that’s akin to child abuse, when parents dress their kids identically…

HARRY: They do it because they think it’s cute… and child abuse is never cute.

LUKE: No, but I just think it’s so sad because you think, ‘They’re obviously going to have a harder time than other siblings having an identity anyway. Why the /fuck/ would you want to put them in matching jumpers?’

Wonderland: How close are you now?

LUKE: I’d challenge anyone to spend 98 percent of their life with someone, pretty much in proximity…

HARRY: Well, up to 18.

LUKE: Up to 18… The first few years of our life we probably weren’t apart for more than a day. That’s a lot of days to spend with someone so you’re either going to feel pretty close, or hate or kill that person. It’s hard for there to be a middle ground in that and luckily we haven’t murdered each other and we don’t hate each other so I guess that’s a sign of being close.

HARRY: But the last two and a half years, we’ve seen each other maybe half a year because we’ve both been working so much.

LUKE: Like now, you’ve just come back to London –

HARRY: I’ve been in Nottingham doing a film.

LUKE: And it’s quite nice. It’s kind of like, ‘Yeah, this is fun.’ We’re living together at the moment. We went to the theatre last night together for the first time in years.

Wonderland: In what ways are you different?

LUKE: [sighs] I’m trying to think of the equivalent question if we weren’t twins, which would be, ‘How do you think you’re different from everyone else in the world?’ Which I guess would be highly impossible to answer. I can’t even think of anything specific at all, only inasmuch as we’re as different as…

HARRY: …any brothers are different.

LUKE: Yeah. [gets a text message alert]

Wonderland: You used to have a band – do you still play music together?

HARRY: We just play with mates. We had a great jam the other night with our mate. One of us was on the guitar, one was on the violin and one was on the xylophone. What a blend. We just get drunk and play with musical instruments that we’ve procured throughout the world.

LUKE: My friend just texted me saying, ‘I’m gonna give you a hot, oil-filled body massage tonight.’

HARRY: [unimpressed] That’s bizarre…

LUKE: That’s bizarre, isn’t it. Sorry.

Wonderland: How do you look back on Brothers Of The Head now?

HARRY: It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. But since then, there’s been a lot of stuff so… we could talk about that if you want.
Wonderland: Not keen to talk about Brothers?

HARRY: Think about it: it was our first audition, we went in there with no idea about anything. We went in there smoking and drinking Stella, not in a self-conscious, isn’t-this-clever way, just thinking, ‘They’re punks so they smoke and drink Stella.’ There was such a naïve quality about it. And it was an amazing psychological experiment being strapped to someone – we didn’t want to fake any physicality or work with some choreographer. Why give up the opportunity to actually see what it would be like? For me it’s going to make my career far more interesting if I don’t try and fake it each time. I got into birdwatching for a film I’ve just done called Pelican Blood, in the same way that I learned to take drugs for Control. It’s more interesting if you actually do it.

LUKE: I’d say exactly the same.

Wonderland: Did you learn anything about each other that you didn’t already know?

LUKE: I gained only more respect and more love for you through doing that.

HARRY: Jesus. Right, okay.

LUKE: No. Fuck it. Nothing.

HARRY: Right. Not really.

Wonderland: So, Luke, you starred in your second film, Dogging: A Love Story, recently…

LUKE: Not recently. It seems a while ago. It seemed to be delayed and delayed and I hear now that it’s being released. So, yeah, we’ll see… I’m still yet to see it so I can’t really give it a good mention apart from, ‘Newcastle is very cold in December.’ That’s really all I have to offer on that one.

Wonderland: Doesn’t seem like it’s going to factor in your all-time great experiences…

LUKE: Uh, no… I did kind of enjoy it. Sometimes.

HARRY: [sharply] Leave it there, Luke, just leave it there.

LUKE: Yeah, I know, I’ve left it there.

Wonderland: What are the differences for you between doing film and theatre?

HARRY: Film’s like making an album and theatre’s like doing a live gig. I can’t wait to do a live gig.

LUKE: Are you going to be my roadie?

HARRY: I’m not going to be your roadie, mate, I’m going to be the frontman. And the Royal Court – what an amazing theatre. It’s done so much amazing work over the last fifty years: Never Look Back In Anger…

LUKE: Look Back In Anger.

HARRY: Look Back In Anger, yeah.

LUKE: Never Look Back In Anger – never less than a companion piece.

HARRY: [sarcastically] Thank you. I’m glad you’re here mate.

Wonderland: Do you ever envy the other’s career?

HARRY: I want all of it. In abundance. I’d be unhappy if it was one or the other. Wouldn’t you?

LUKE: Yeah, man. I’ve only just dipped my toe in what this game is, and there’s just plenty more to come of both hopefully.

Wonderland: Together and apart…

LUKE: Working together every five years would be enough. That would be a few things in our lifetime.

Leaving the studio and walking to the Tube, the Treadaways are visibly more relaxed and bantery. As Harry mock-swoons over a buxom fake-blonde taking a fag break from her own photo shoot, Luke admonishes him: “Get real. Going out with someone like that in real life must be an absolute nightmare. It would be like going out with a doll.” “No, the thing is, Luke,” Harry retorts, “it’s no worse than if your girlfriend was an actress or a dancer.”

Harry’s off to finish his Christmas shopping before flying to St. Lucia for two weeks. Luke’s on his way to audition for the big-budget remake of 70s campfest Clash Of The Titans. Little brother gives him some advice: “Be passionate – don’t do that arched-eyebrow thing. Just go for it…” The bristly reactions have vanished, although when I tell them I’m heading straight off to interview Rupert Friend – who happens to be Keira Knightley’s boyfriend but, I’ve been told, doesn’t take kindly to questions about their relationship – Harry play-slaps me on the shoulder: “See? We could have said we didn’t want to talk about being twins.”

“There’s nothing I have less to say about in the world than being a twin,” chimes in Luke. “In a few years time, I think we’re just going to stop talking about it…”

Photographer: Ben Rayner
Fashion: Lauren Blane
Words: Matt Mueller

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #17, Feb/Mar 2009

The post Treadaway Twins appeared first on Wonderland.

Aged 14, St Albans school friends Ed Macfarlane, Edd Gibson and Jack Savidge formed First Day Break. “It was all guitars, no vocals… far too serious,” says Gibson. University changed all that. Thanks to a student diet of German techno and Prince, in came romantic melodies, propulsive drumming and rib-rattling bass. In 2006, three months before graduating, the trio met in The Beehive – “St. Albans’ most depressing pub” – and reinvented themselves as Friendly Fires. Their self-titled debut album – recorded in the garage of Macfarlane’s parents using “a laptop and a crappy mic gaffer-taped to a stand” – is out now on XL Recordings.

Do you have a post-show routine?

Ed Macfarlane: Champagne and forget all the mobile phones, jackets and things that we’ve left on stage.

Edd Gibson: Maybe a short informal debrief. ‘How was that?’… ‘Yeah, it was alright’… ‘Good, see you later.’

Jack Savidge: I was backstage straight after an Iron Maiden concert and the singer and drummer were hanging around in dressing gowns two minutes after they’d walked off stage. I saw Nicko McBrain putting his robe on as he was walking out of his dressing room and there was the faintest glimmer of a penis. He was decently hung.

Who is your musical nemesis?

JS: We need to get one of those!

EM: I’m trying to think of a shit Indie band… Someone like Pigeon Detectives. Pretty bollocks.

EG: If we’re going to start a proper Blur/Oasis rivalry with someone then it might as well be Pigeon Detectives.

JS: Who’s No. 1 at the moment?

EM: Actually someone like Late of the Pier because we play gigs a lot with them. They copy our every move. Their synth player Sam Potter said, ‘I don’t like Friendly Fires… I see them as competition.’

What’s the worst show you’ve ever played?

EM: Barcelona. We were playing at the Razzmatazz event and there were only about ten people in the room. After about five minutes they just turned around and looked the opposite way towards the bar. We played our set to their backs and then after we’d finished they put the Spice Girls on the sound system and everyone went crazy!

EG: If we’d have known that was the magic formula beforehand we’d have just got up and played “Wannabe” and cashed in.

If you had to kill one of the Spice Girls, which one would get it first?

JS: There’s something about Sporty Spice…

EG: No, she’s my favourite. And Baby.

EM: I’d put a cap in Posh.

Funeral song?

EG: “Ed Is Dead” by The Pixies.

EM: Yeah, has to be.

JS: I can’t have that one.

EG: You’d play “Sparklehorse,” wouldn’t you?

JS: No. The last two minutes of “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. It’s really cheesy but it sounds like you’re going into another world.

EM: Played on an organ would be good.

Which song do you wish you’d written?

EM: “Happy Birthday.” We could do with the royalty money!

Photography: Ben Rayner
Words: Ben Cobb

A full version of this article first appeared in Wonderland #15, Oct/Nov 2008

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