Interview - Athlete

I think this is one of those times where they say 'You're speaking to Athlete today,' then you turn up to find one solitary person from the whole band twiddling their fingers. That's fine though as Tim Wanstall is very talkative and easy-going. The Lily Allen cutout was from The Simpsons film premiere and I'd remembered seeing it on the BBC website. Wish I'd had my picture taken with it.

Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in August 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd

TIM WANSTALL - ATHLETE

“I’m glad you’re here,” I say as Tim Wanstall from Athlete walks into the interview room at the record label's HQ. “I’ve been trying to talk to Lily Allen but she won't speak to me.”

“Are you trying to get an interview with Lily Allen?” Tim asks with interest, then laughs as he notices I’m sat next to a large Simpsons-style cut-out of the singer. I've checked, and disappointingly they haven't made any Athlete ones. Let’s begin…

“I’m Tim from Athlete, and I play things with the keys.”

We establish that if Tim was in a film he’d choose Geoffrey Rush’s Shine because of the piano skills (“but I wouldn’t want to go mad”), he thinks TV talent shows are ‘shit’ (“what makes good TV doesn’t necessarily make for good music I suppose. I don’t think they’re doing as much harm as everyone thinks”) and that he’s campaigning to get the band covering Robyn ‘With Every Heartbeat’ on Radio 1’s Live Lounge. He’s very cheerful and talkative.

The band also comprises singer/guitarist Joel Pott, bassist Carey Willetts and drummer Stephen Roberts, but they’re not here today.It’s all been a bit quiet on the Athlete front for a while. Debut album ‘Vehicles & Animals’ came out some four years ago and 'Tourist' plus mega single ‘Wires’ exploded onto the scene in early 2005. Since then we haven’t heard that much from the indie rockers; their singles haven’t had the chart recognition many thought they deserved, and they weren’t at any festivals this year.

“The kind of time the festivals are booked we were still kind of finishing off in the studio. Which turned out to be a good move ‘cause we didn’t finish [the record] in time to put it out before the summer, and I think coming back after a year or two off and playing a bunch of festivals without a new record would be a bit weird.”

You don’t want to play all the songs no-one knows. “Exactly. That’s not really what festivals are about are they, they’re kind of about singing along with your favourites, so yeah we saved them all for next summer and we’ll definitely do all the ones we can get our hands on. It almost seems like every other weekend if you wanted to go to one there are some pretty decent ones.“I’m really looking forward to that thing where you maybe play somewhere here, then you head on a bus and go and play a festival in Italy, doing a couple every weekend for the whole summer, it’s brilliant.”

Are you going to any festivals to watch this year? “I’m not, no. The only two which we’ve sort of been free for are V and Carling Reading, the whole malarkey, but just listening to the weather reports come in, it’s putting me off!” From Parlophone HQ we can see the rooftops of London. The sky is currently in a few shades of cool grey, apart from the bits which are depressing clouds. Tim’s phone bleeps.

“The first time we played at Glastonbury we camped for the whole weekend. I feel like my camping days are behind me at the moment. I definitely can’t cope with all that mud. So no, I won’t be there [Carling].”

Got any festival tips? “For punters, you can’t beat the dustbin sacks. And then on top of that I think my tip would be get a decent little hip flask and fill it up with some good single malt whisky, maybe some cognac or something. If you’re drinking beer, you find yourself a good spot and then you need to nip off to the loo – it’s always a real downer. Whereas with a little hip flask, you don’t drink so much liquid, you stay warm once the sun goes down, and you don’t need to go nip off the loo so often so you get to keep your good spot once you muscle your way in.”

And for another thing, they’ve been busy creating their own studio. “Didn’t literally put the bricks in ourselves, no. We’re in a sort of car mechanics warehouse - breezeblock, corrugated iron roof - so we had to build a shell within it so it would sound good but we did pay builders to do that. We did assemble the gear ourselves. It’s definitely a big part of the story of this record, certainly taking the step of recording it ourselves rather than being in a flashy, grand-a-day kind of studio.”

Is that why you got your own studio, you wanted more input into the production side? “I think so yeah. Often when writing the songs we make demos as part of the process, so on both records by the time of going into the studio we kind of normally had a fairly clear picture of how things were going to sound like. We’ve kind of done our own production but the engineering side, capturing the performance and knowing which special box in the studio the drums need to go through to make it sound wicked, they were the things we were a bit nervous about this time.

"Victor Van Vugt - who worked on most of the last record as well as the first one - he was always encouraging us from the beginning to consider that one day we’d get our own place and we’d record our music ourselves. I guess that’s definitely lent something to the change of sound on the record.”

That record would be new album ‘Beyond The Neighbourhood’. “It’s brilliant. You should go and buy it!” he laughs, and then explains a bit about the title. “Someone summed it up quite neatly the other day saying like the first record was written a lot about our little corner of London, the excitement of getting a record deal, you know, full of the joys of life really.

"And then ‘Tourist’ was a darker and moodier record, and I think a big part of that was just getting used to quite a change in lifestyles, and spending a lot of time on the road, and being away from family and friends and learning to deal with keeping relationships going while being away on a bus for seven or eight months of the year. But now we’ve kind of got used to the fact that that’s how life is for us. So we’ve done that touring band record, that’s out of our system, and I think this is the first time that some of the lyrical content has got a bit outside of Athlete’s own little world.

”So like with ‘Hurricane’ you have those little references to that sort of whole environmental thing that is kind of taking up people’s thinking at the moment. It’s not a record with a message to preach, I think it’s just full of a lot of questions. For a lot of us it feels like life is more uncertain than it was even five years ago, you know?”

Any particular tracks that stand out for you? “Definitely check out ‘The Outsiders’, I think that might be our next single. If you come to see us live definitely learn the words to ‘Second Hand Stores’, that feels like it’s going to be a big singalong live tune. They’re my top two.”

I like the sound of ‘Airport Disco’. “It’s a great title. It’s quite sort of atmospheric beginning, there’s some really nice sounds in it. The guitar line that comes in is brilliant.”

What are the keyboards like? “They’re great too. That’s not for me to say!”

But will they be able to live up to the tearjerker that is ‘Wires’? It was a major song, and didn't Athlete win awards for it? “It was a very big song. We won an Ivor Novello award for it which was brilliant. It did well and it got played lots on the radio. I think it’s just one of those tunes that just had a certain something.” It is quite powerful.

“I was reading in the paper about these people that have designed this computer program which tests whether a song’s going to be a hit or not. Apparently record companies, I guess it’s more – I hope it’s more - in the territory of pop artists, they run the tunes through and the computer comes back and says ‘You’ve got an 82% chance of this song.’ And I’m like that’s rubbish, surely it’s not a science! For us [Wires] was a risky single to come back with and no-one would say that it was a surefire radio hit. I don’t think it would tick all the boxes, but it’s definitely got something.”

It doesn’t have to be a radio hit to be a good song though. “Exactly, and that’s really encouraging when a song like that comes through. As an artist having an experience like that, it inspires you to keep searching for those special things.”

I saw a few people started a thread on the forum about should ‘Wires’ should be dropped from the live set. “Absolutely not. I saw that, there was some kind of comparison to Radiohead not playing ‘Creep’ or something like that. I think the thing that was fortunate for us is that that tune happened on our second record, it happened after our first album had eventually gone platinum, which is quite a big deal, but for us we grew and got our foundations as a band just by touring the toilet venues and doing it for ages. I think if that had been our first ever single it would have been quite a frightening experience for us.”

I pause the interview for a second while I try and lower my chair. I’m sat opposite Tim but about two feet higher. He laughs as I battle with the lever.The first release off ‘Beyond The Neighbourhood’ is ‘Hurricane.’ “Ooh, topical,” says Tim. I was going to talk about the single, but we can talk about weather systems if you like. “It didn’t actually begin as a song about hurricanes. The way we write songs, we tend to spend a bit of time at home on our own, kind of coming up with ideas, and Joel had a guitar riff that’s similar to the one that made it to the final tune.

"Joel subscribes to the National Geographic magazine and he was reading an article about hurricanes on the east coast of America; they’re getting more frequent, they’re pushing further up the coast. The opening paragraph, they consulted this scientist they or meteorologist, and he said ‘Oh well, it’s just something we’ve got to get used to.’ And I think it just kind of triggered that thing in Joel’s head.” It’s quite upbeat isn’t it? “It’s definitely upbeat for us I think, the last record was kind of dark and moody. But the first single being ‘Wires’, it was a different kind of first single and this is a very different kind of first single, I guess it’s probably a bit more uptempo, a bit rockier than people might expect from us.”

You haven’t had anyone saying it should be banned because of events like Hurricane Dean? “I heard that someone on our forum suggested that because it was coming out at the same time as a hurricane actually occurring that maybe we should consider donating half the money from the single to the relief efforts, but someone else commented that there probably wouldn’t be very much money at all!”

Tim’s looking forward to Athlete’s October tour. “For us venues are about 2,000 a night, a bit smaller than where we were playing at the end of the last record, which is going to be nice; big gigs but a bit more intimate. We’re going to certainly make sure that people get their money’s worth.”

And you said you’ve taken on Jonny Pilcher? “Yeah, as a live guitarist. When we got to the point of actually recording our songs in the studio we’d often get him to come in for a day or two in the week. It was nice just having someone round occasionally, someone who could just kind of go ‘yeah, I like the vibe of that’ or ‘you should try giving this a go.’ It was always the idea that he’d come on the road with us live because it just frees us up a little bit and gives it a different dynamic.”

At least the road journeys aren’t as long as in the States. “Last year we kind of got into playing poker quite a lot on the bus.” For hard cash? “For small amounts of cash, yeah. Five or ten pounds a night, that’ll be it. And our games usually go on for hours, so that’s quite good value for money really. And then towards the end of touring, we’re all kind of huddled on our laptops beginning to come up with new ideas for tunes as well.”

What merchandise plans have you got? “We’ve talked about trying lots of things. We’ve done quite a lot actually, we’ve had baseball caps, belts, sweatbands, t shirts, we’ve even had French knicker and vest set, bottle openers. This next tour, we’re thinking of doing those sort of shopping/beach bags, you slip it over your shoulder – just like one of them!” Tim says, noticing my bag on the floor. Some people in [Jonny’s] lady’s family work in India with this project where they make bags, so we’re thinking of giving them a go, maybe pressing an ‘A’ for Athlete on them.

“I’m guessing that when you’re a big fan of a band it’s the little quirky extras that get you excited.” I went to see Keane and they had Keane shower curtains. Paul McCartney had incense. “Deary me… The album cover first started life as a poster advertising a run of gigs we did at KOKO, and then some proper screenprints. Not like posters you buy for two quid, they’re amazing, and there’s only a couple of hundred so that’s the one people should look out for because they’ll be worth a fortune in a few years.”

Time for a final bit of musing. “Now we’ve stopped making the record and started putting the radio back on in the last few days while we’ve been decorating, there seem to be about a hundred bands that I’ve never heard of. Life seems to be good for people in bands.” We’re glad about that.

Athlete