Perth Music

It’s been a long adventure for UK indie rockers The Subways since the trio emerged fresh-faced and exuberant with their 2005 debut album Young For Eternity. Now their second album All Or Nothing is scheduled for release on July 5. With their teenage days still relatively recently behind them, the band have already experienced more than most bands endure in an entire career. Four consecutive years at the Reading festival along with appearances at Glastonbury, Leeds and T in the Park cemented their reputation as festival favourites. They hit the international circuit with particularly memorable dates in Japan, America, France and here in Australia, while back home, the venues seemed to get larger with every tour with almost every date sold-out in advance. In amidst such a phenomenal rise vocalist/guitarist Billy Lunn was forced to undergo surgery to cure nodules on his vocals chords, caused by strenuous touring. Luckily he recovered to record All Or Nothing and a totally refreshed Billy Lunn caught up with Justin Middleton for this exclusive interview.

Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (17:32 - 2.0Mb)

With such a lengthy gap between albums I asked Billy how excited he was about the album finally being released and being  able to tour again. “It’s great, we are really anxious for everyone to hear all the new tracks that we have, we are really proud of the record. We just really want to tour again after so long not touring. It’s great to be back on the stage and seeing the audience and seeing them go crazy and just rockin’ out man.”

“We wrote a lot of the songs while we were on tour. We toured for about 2 years after we released Young For Eternity so some of the songs we have tested live back in 2006. A lot of the songs we’ve had under our belt for a good 3 years or so. All Right, which is the third track on the album was written 2 days after we finished the Young For Eternity sessions. We actually demo’d it in the same studio we recorded Young For Eternity in.”

The band had to cancel touring in 2006 due to Billy needing surgery on his throat which doctors diagnosed as nodules. i asked billy to describe what happened in this scary time. “We thought there were nodules at first. Towards the end of 2006, we’d play a show and I’d lose my voice for two days. And it got to the point where I couldn’t speak, let alone sing and we were cancelling shows left, right and center. For us that was the worst thing we could possibly do to our fans - pulling away on our tour bus and seeing the line round the corner at the venue, thinking these kids aren’t going to get their fix, and neither are we. It was just awful. We decided that going to a vocal specialist was the next big thing to do because there was no way we were going to cancel another show. The words I dreaded was nodules and the guy said ‘You have nodules but they can go in a couple of weeks if you exercise the voice and stretch the vocal chords out’. Which is what I was doing and then two weeks turned into two months and the nodules weren’t going and they weren’t getting any smaller at all. I just thought that either I’m not doing the exercises right or the doctor is terrible. So we got a second opinion and the doctor we saw said that they weren’t nodules, they’re polyps and the only way we could rid of polyps is by surgery.”

“Already we had wasted two months so we booked in surgery for January 2007, had the surgery done and then couldn’t speak for three weeks, couldn’t sing for about two months and the doctor said ‘You’ve really got to look after your voice, follow all the instructions, don’t speak, don’t clear your throat, don’t sneeze, don’t cough because if you don’t recover properly you might never speak again’. So that was a really scary time but we stayed positive through it, we went into the local rehearsal studio and played for six or seven hours a day perfecting all these new songs we had. I continued writing even though I couldn’t speak or sing, continued playing guitar and getting better at the guitar and writing in my journals. I think because I wasn’t speaking I became a very thoughtful person. I was listening to what was going on around me and became very analytical and opinionated. And I think that really reflected in the lyrics of the album. If you listen to the first record, we were 18 when we recorded it and now after everything we have seen on tour, all the different cultures and countries and cities and towns and all the people we’ve met and experiences we’ve had all went into the songs. When I could start singing again I had this compulsion to be honest…and you can hear that in the lyrics.”

I also asked Billy to describe how it was working with super producer Butch Vig who produced All Or Nothing. “That was pretty incredible. I can’t believe we even got Butch Vig to make our record, it’s mind blowing. I mean he made the first ever rock record I played to Charlotte (Cooper, bass player) in Nevermind. All Josh (Morgan, drummer) played for three years when he was 15 was Siamese Dream and Gish. It’s really strange because when we were thinking about producers we thought about Butch but we didn’t think he would ever want to work with us. Our manager basically said to listen to our all our favourite records and write down the producers who made those records and he’d set up meetings with those guys. Strangely enough Butch Vig wasn’t on that list because there was no way we thought Butch Vig would ever want to work with The Subways. He’s too legendary and we are three skinny, suburban English kids making indie rock so why would he want to work with us. We met up with all these producers and we just felt that we weren’t getting the connection that was necessary to make this record what we wanted to make. We got to the end of the list and thought ‘All right, let’s call Butch, let’s go for it, what have we got to lose’.”

“So we called Butch up and he had just finished making a record with Against Me and was looking for another project. We had met him a few times before doing the festival rounds and he’s a really, really charming man. He said ‘Yeah send over a CD, I’ll let you know what I think’ and I got an email back saying ‘The songs are fucking great, come over to New York and let’s talk’. We went over there and had a cup of coffee and five minutes into the conversation I just lent over the table, put my hand on his shoulder and went ‘Butch Vig, you have to make this album’.

All Or Nothing is out July 5th. For more info on The Subways visit www.thesubways.net

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 5th, 2008 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Album Releases, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.