George Mitchell, lead singer of Leeds post-punks Eagulls, is a busy guy. After releasing their debut album, touring America and doing a summer of Festivals, you’d forgive the band for wanting to take a break. Yet just a month before they head off on another tour of the UK, he’s had a chat with In The Middle amid writing a follow-up.
For Mitchell the hardest part of being in a band is the relentless travelling. While some might see this as one of the more glamorous aspects, the truth is that even for moderately successful bands like Eagulls, travelling is little more than hours spent driving to play a show, only to get straight back in the van once the show’s finished. Rarely do they actually get to see the towns and cities they play.
Mitchell also has issues with the nature of the music industry at large. Unfortunately we live in a reality where the major record companies exert a disproportionate amount of influence on the rest of the music industry effectively creating a narrative where if you start small you stay small effectively diminishing the value of music.
The best part of being in a band however, for Mitchell, is being able to release your music, and to have creative freedom. Having come from a more visual art background it’s unsurprising that this is the part he enjoys most. Indeed being in a band means more than being able to be creative sonically and Mitchell is responsible for much of the band’s artistic direction, having designed their logo along with Goldy from the band and come up with the wonderfully bizarre video for Nerve Ending, which features a brain slowly decaying. The video was inspired by the song’s lyrics, dealing with nerves and anxiety, which naturally lend themselves to an image of the organ responsible for those things, the brain. Once they had this initial concept locked down they “thought more about it, and with the decay came the maggots which end up in a life-cycle which the song was about, the feeling that anxiety is never ending.” On whether he gets nervous before performances, Mitchell says that he gets a sense of anticipation rather than nerves but the same couldn’t be said for the rest of the band.
Though Mitchell himself is from Derby the band met in Leeds, and was so reliant on the city’s architecture that Leeds is undeniably part of the band’s constitution. In fact, Mitchell believes that the architecture of the city is integral to the music scene in the city, that most of the houses around Burley have basements means that practice space is ample, lending itself to more guitar focused bands as opposed to London, whose deficit of space Mitchell believes to be responsible for the more bedroom-y digital bands. The city has also left its mark on the band’s lyrics as Mitchell is influenced by his surroundings, particularly the contrast in between his lifestyle and the sort of people who drive “stupid, fancy, cars”, which he blames Leeds for.
Mitchell is also a big fan of playing gigs in Leeds, the band’s hometown, however with their new found success they’ve found that they’ve have to save Leeds shows for special occasions, like the upcoming show for Halloween which the band are exerting complete control over to create a much better atmosphere. This is in stark contrast to the other sorts of shows that the band plays, support slots and festival slots. Eagulls have recently toured with post-punk revival stalwarts Franz Ferdinand that Mitchell feels are distinctly not Eagulls shows. “There was like twenty people who came to the gig who knew about us so they were hard shows to play. But at the same time you could tell that people enjoyed it […], it was quite an accomplishment to be honest, playing in front of like a thousand people and winning them over knowing they didn’t like you at the start”. Festival shows also have their own pitfalls but for Mitchell, these are issues that vary from festival to festival. Some treat you well, with enough time to get set up and sound checked whilst others treat you like “human cattle” shuttling them around without enough time to do anything, which in the end help no one and gives the crowds a less than ideal experience.
The band is currently working on their second album and Mitchell hopes that they’ll be in a state that they can play them on their October tour. However even recording has proved a challenge in the past. As a band so renowned for their live sound it was important to them that this translate on to record. Initially the producer they worked with on their first album had never seen them live and the initial demos proved to be lacking something, it was only after the producer had seen the band that both parties were content with the result.
Eagulls play the Brudenell Social Club on 31st October.
Alex Fowler
photo 1: amazingradio.com
photo 2: gettyimages
photo 3: bodeganottingham.com