We sat down for a chat with Tom and Denis, the pair who make up electro-pop outfit Seattle Yacht Club.
Seattle Yacht Club are an inventive duo from Southport who are dishing out energetic vocals and jaunty art-pop melodies. The band are quickly becoming a firm favourite on the current live circuit, so we caught up with the boys ahead of their show at The Garage, London, to talk about breaking America and being avid fans of David Guetta.
We are excited to know how this band came together?
We’ve lived next door to each other since we were toddlers and have always been great friends, part of that was sharing a love of music – and that’s how we started and became a duo at the age of seven! Moving forward a few years we developed that into creating music of our own. We played in a string of bands over the years but it never really felt right, it clicked for us when we decided to be a duo again so we could selfishly write songs that we loved and get excited about – so SYC was born.
You guys seem to be racking up fans all over the globe, but especially the US why do you think that is?
It’s a great feeling when we check the stats and see the global diversity of the listeners. Using Soundcloud and all the other social media platforms and blog sites has worked well spreading our music everywhere and we’re thrilled that the responses are so positive. We actively sent tracks to US radio stations and tastemakers as we just felt the US market was right for our sound with it’s positive and upbeat feel, and we’ve received immediate responses and great reactions from them – that coupled with directing our social media to the US has helped, focusing on gaining fans and support from blogs out there.
What’s the inspiration behind your song writing?
We spend a lot of time analysing a variety of music, lyrics, structures, arrangements and the power of a great melody – massive inspiration comes from seeing bands live and the delivery of their great songs – when we hear something in a song that gets us excited, we like to work out what that band / songwriting team / producer did and how they did it. All these new ideas and clever techniques we’re constantly learning from all contribute to our own ideas and sound, and we also get really inspired by each other in the studio with ideas we come up with, it’s great taking in these deep breaths of inspiration before we exhale our own songs.
Your tracks are beautifully produced; do you enjoy the whole studio recording process?
Absolutely, we love the studio environment, the studio is our engine room it’s the centre of our universe, spending our time there exploring, experimenting and ultimately creating. We discuss everything between us, from topics of our songs to every sound we want to use and how to use it, albeit agreeing and occasionally disagreeing…that’s the enjoyable part of the process! But without these open discussions it’d be impossible for us to create the feel and mood of the songs in the way we do, and when a production comes together it’s such a brilliant almost euphoric feeling.
Which bands are you championing right now?
We’re really enjoying a vast range of song styles at the moment and totally digging David Guetta, he’s an incredible talent and loving that he’s totally off his head! Elton John has captured us along with 10cc and Hall & Oats who have inspired our writing and we always go back to Michael Jackson and Godley and Crème, they’re main stays in our influence book! We’ve always liked to get lost in the music we listen to, whether its bearing witness to the sounds of LCD Soundsystem and living the American dream or bopping away to movers and shakers like Hot Chip and Wax.
Have you been to Seattle?
Neither of us have ever been to Seattle yet, though we certainly hope we’ll be able to get out there soon, in fact we’ve been invited out there to play there…inc Seattle Yacht Club
What’s the rest of 2015 got in store for you both?
2015 has started really well for us, we’re writing strong material, being productive and getting fantastic reactions to the songs from fans and media both here and abroad. We have plans for an EP out soon and will be returning to Sweden for more recordings, along with shows and touring being a priority. We’ve also been invited out to the US for some shows and hopefully playing at CMJ so all being well this will happen. However we want to progress as far as we possibly can, who says the sky is the limit, we want to be in another universe, figuratively speaking! Ultimately, we want to be in a position where we are still writing music, earning a living and still offering people enjoyment through listening to our creations.
If you weren’t in the band, what would you be doing instead?
Well the other melody that captured us both in our youth was the captivating, heart pounding sound of the ice cream van coming around the corner. Our childhood dream was to own one together, we could drive around all day, listening to our own ice cream van and eating as much ice cream as we wanted while maybe serving some customers. We even discussed one day expanding into a fleet of vans, so all our friends could join us, where we would dominate the ice cream market of Southport on those long sunny days.