Boston Manor jumped into a whole new genre with their latest album Welcome To The Neighbourhood, taking a more chilled out step back from their pop punk roots to write just as catch songs, but with a lot more depth. I managed to chat to Henry Cox (singer) and Mike Cunniff (guitar) at their first gig of their September UK tour at the Thekla, Bristol.
What helped inspire you when writing Welcome To The Neighbourhood musically and lyrically?
Henry: Musically we are into a lot of 90’s alternative band like Deftones, Korn and Nine Inch Nails, so we borrowed a lot of influence sonically from that. Lyrically, it's hard to pin it down. It was a lot of what we were thinking and feeling. There's lyricists like Keith Buckley who I look up to as we’s wicked, I love the way he’s very visual in the way he rights. However, it’s not like we can borrow a sound that we can borrow sonically, we just have to sit down with pen and paper and work on it honestly.
How did you guys write the songs from this album?
Henry: All 5 of us write together but every song was different. Some of them we started with a vocal hook or a chorus and we built out from there. Some songs started off with a riff or a really basic structure and we just built it up from there.
Mike: We demoed the songs and then we took them to the studio with our friend Marcus Pone and we did pre-production for about 2 weeks in New Jersey. Then we just kept building and building on the songs and rearranging them until we were happy with them and then went back there and recorded it. So I guess from right at the start to when we were demoing to right at the end product it was just a constant evolving process.
What's your favourite songs of Welcome To The Neighbourhood in general and to play?
Henry: It's hard to pick one song. I definitely like the second track, Flowers In Your Dustbin and also England Dreaming’s.
Mike: I think it changes every day for me, I really like the title track because it is a stark difference to the stuff we’ve put out before and it definitely sets the tone for the whole record. It’ll probable change again when we start playing the songs as some songs translate better live
There's been a definite change between your first two albums and Welcome To The Neighbourhood, have you been influenced by what you are currently listening to compared to what you used to listened to? Or has it not changed?
Mike: I wouldn't say its change. We’ve be listening to the same stuff constantly. I think we’ve just been trying to figure out how to create our own sound. I was watching an interview with Chino from Deftones and they initially got lumped in with a lot of other Nu Metal bands when they were trying to make their own sounds and we’re trying to do the same thing. I think when we recorded Welcome To The Neighbourhood we felt like we were most comfortable in our skin and it just took us a little bit to get there. Not to disregard our old tracks, but it's been a process and a journey to get to where we are now and it will carry on going. We may not stay doing this sound as we always want to challenge ourselves
You do have a lot of synthesizers on the new album, is this something you want to develop and possibly work with other artists with in the future?
Henry: We are definitely going to go down the rabbit hole with synths, we were learning quite a lot about it while making the record. For Pone, the producer, it’s his world. He has analogue synths and samplers so we got to fart around with that we taught us how to work with them. I think moving forward we’re definitely doing more synth stuff, but what that entails we don't know. As far as other artists, we haven't really collabed with anyone but there's kind of no rule to this point so maybe, yeah!
The artwork was done by Joshua Halling, what’s the story behind the scene?
Henry: Ah you can’t tell! There’s loads of little things in it that you may not notice for the first or second times you look at it. It was inspired by the work of Gregory Crewdson
Mike: It’s open to interpretation to be honest. We kinda want people to just look at it and spot something new every time or just wonder what is happening in it.
Is the artwork linked to the Bad Machine video at all?
Henry: Kind of, I initially came up with the idea for the album cover and then we all sat down and started pitching in ideas to develop it collectively. I also directed the bad machine video so they’re both black and white and operate in the same creative world. They’re not directly linked but it all goes down to the vibe of what the five of us wanted to do aesthetically for the album. That photoshoot for the cover was all five of us, at 4am in Reading, same with the Bad Machine video, we all worked together on it. It was just really fun, I’ve never enjoyed shooting a video that much ever I think. It was a bit stressful at times.
Henry, you’ve said when touring, new places are new starts, where do you want to start next?
Henry: We got to go to Japan and Australia this year, we’ve never been there before, but there’s a bunch of places around South-East Asia and South America. But to be honest, anywhere anyone will have us. There’s nowhere we haven't toured because we didn’t want to, it’s just being able to make it work. So if you're reading this and from a county we’ve never been to, tell us.
Interview & Photography by Murry Deaves
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