Four years on from their triumphant headline performance at Glasgowbury ’09, North Coast quartet And So I Watch You From Afar are widely held as one of the most forward-thinking rock bands in the world today. Returning as one of our three headliners up the mountain this year – alongside Downpatrick rockers The Answer and electronic duo The Japanese Popstars – they have seen considerable changes in terms of sound, line-up and popularity in their meteoric rise since their formation back in 2005. We catch up with the band’s founding guitarist Rory Friers to get his thoughts on eight years of ASIWYFA and all things Glasgowbury-related.
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Your new album, All Hail Bright Futures, is evidently the distillation of many, many hours practicing, touring and songwriting. What do you think contributes to the energy so marked in the recording?
I think we were just in a good place in terms of how the three of us were working together, there was an absolute collective forward motion to make something new and progressive, which in turn made for a really open forum of ideas and sounds, the soul of the album really developed in the studio,the songs were skeletal fragmented pieces of music that we sort of crafted and decorated in there, it was like we’d arrived with a weeks worth of shopping and then had make this incredible banquet but there was no recipe book, it was a great feeling to be so engrossed an immersed in making music with out worrying about anything else really, thats such a big part of the band when we get into that time of making songs, I love it and it served as a sort of catharsis for any stresses going on outside of the recording process.
I think there was a gradual shift into becoming a bit more fearless in terms of stepping into uncharted territory musically for the band, that was of absolute significance in terms of not worrying what people would think of our music and not having to fit into a certain peg hole, that was a great shackle to loose, it meant a great sense of openness toward making music. The result of that made the dynamic of the band even more intense and together, it’s like when you make the transition into being able to fart in front of your girl friend, haha. We’ve reached a whole new level of comfort in our relationship with each other.
You’ve travelled the world gigging, winning man fans over in the process. How important is it to tour with a local support?
A local support band is always cool, we usually bring one band we love out with us and one local band to open which we pick ourselves from the local promoters suggestions, it’s important to us that we are into all the bands playing on our bill, it needs to feel like there’s cohesion to a night. Having a new band to watch every day is nice, sometimes you find something you love, sometimes you find new friends, but you always find relief in seeing that’s there’s lots of people just like us living this weird music obsessed life just all over the world, its cool, it makes the world seem a bit more together
Headlining the main stage will always be a real moment in time that will stick with me forever, the significance for us of playing in front of that many people and during the peak of that wonderfully rich time for local music, there was a sort of fever pitch to it. In my mind’s eye the crowd stretched to beyond Draperstown. As Graham Smith would say it was a tattoo worthy moment.
What’s the feeling in the camp about returning as one of our three headliners this year?
It’s a total privilege to get to come back and play again, when your away and you know that the festival is happening up the mountain it always makes us feel really home sick, I’m just so glad it worked out this year, and it makes for an interesting weekend of festivals, Benicassim in Barcelona the night before and Truck and Dour the next two days, so we’ll be tired boys by the end of that weekend. But it might be a blessing in disguise leaving after we play as it tends to get a little messy when we’re camping over as I’m sure it does for everyone.
It’s huge. It’s a proper festival that bands have a real chance of playing, its an attainable thing that we looked to and thought “we could actually play this”, it was an aspiration of ours from day one and for all our friends who played in bands. Glasgowbury is one of those things that makes you stick your chest out that little bit more and make you proud of your home.
Fighting With Wire in 2007 was just amazing, it was the first year we’d been and the vibe was insane. Fighting With Wire were unstoppable and everyone new every word, it was so good. Also seeing my little bro (Ewan, Axis Of) play the main stage for the first time was incredible, they killed it, I got all big brother and teary.
There’s been so many, a lot of shows blend into this one huge ball of memories and flickers of places and people, but some shows stand out as significant or special every now and again, we recently sold out a few big shows in the UK a couple of months in advance for the first time, it was the first time we played to a bigger crowd than we would at home,that was a crazy feeling to feel that we had accomplished that.
But some of my favourite shows have been when we play some ones house party after a show, one that stands out was when we played this old shack in Kansas after asking on college radio if anyone wanted us to play there house. We got there, helped move all the furniture into the garden and at 9pm the house was full,people were standing up the stairs, behind the amps, crowd surfing, it was so much fun, though my guitar hit into the roof fan at one point and gave me and all the people underneath me a really hectic electric shock, but all in all it was such a collective vibe, everyone pitched in and made this amazing thing out of nothing.
Which acts – established or otherwise – are you excited about catching at this year’s festival?
Unfortunately we’re only gonna be on site for a really short time but I’m super excited to see Jetplane Landing again and hopefully hear some of the new album live, I love that band so much. Anyone staying the weekend has to catch Ryan Vail, he has an incredible sound.
Finally, Glasgowbury aside, what are the plans for the band over the next months?
We actually do our first shows in Africa this week which is really exciting and then we get into festival season which is great as we were recording last summer so we didn’t get to play any last time, we play some really cool independent festivals over UK and Europe as well as some of the bigger ones like Benicassim, Dour, Reading and Leeds etc, it’s looking like a fun summer. After that we do some more European dates in sept until heading to the states for a couple of months on a co headline your along side TTNG with support from the amazing Mylets.
We’re gonna stay on in LA for a while I think and do some writing at our labels new recording studio they built out in the dessert,that’s going to be cool. It’s going to be a good year I think. We really struggled for the passed 18 to 24 months trying to stabilise the band again, we had a lot of bumps in the road and bad luck, it took a lot of determination and work to keep pushing it all forward and we had to ask for some help from others too, so this year feels like a bit of a pay off in some ways, after all that stress we get to go out and enjoy this time.
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