Max Lilley and Morgan Lindley of Leeds based shoe-gaze grunge trio Slow Team sit down with Archie Jackson to discuss their new single ‘Snake Melons’, as well as latest tour and performing live.
What can we expect then from the new single?
Max Lilley – ‘It’s the first track that we’ve actively replaced instruments with keyboards. I remember when I was demoing this track, I had this little 70s Italian drum machine, and I just wanted to try writing in a different style. Instead of just writing to a click, I tried to put in a loop on this drum machine, and then the drum machine just stayed in the track.
We’re actively replacing instruments with electronic elements in this song. Even just the little things, especially on the last track as well, A Lover’s Mind, I was introducing a lot of finger-picking in my guitar-playing style and it’s the same for this track. There’s a lot of using the guitar as more of a texture rather than a prominent instrument which puts the focus more on the bass and the vocals. It is quite different when I think about it.’
How did the name ‘Snake Melons’ come about? Can you give some insight of where that name’s come from?
Max – ‘That’s Morgan’s fault.’
Morgan Lindley – ‘When I heard Max doing the vocals, I could swear that all he was screaming was ‘snake melons’, with loads of distortion on. I was like, ‘dude, what the fuck are you shouting?’, but ever since then, it became the demo name. I didn’t know this song was going to be called this until yesterday. Two days ago, I asked Max, ‘oh, what did we call Snake Melons in the end?’ And he went, yeah, dude, it’s called Snake Melons.
How’s it been adding this song into the setlist? Have people been enjoying it?
Morgan – ‘It’s been in our live set for quite a while now. There were maybe four to six new songs that started breaking through the set last year and this was one of them that we started bringing in. There was an opportunity to record it and we’ve been road testing it live for quite a while. It’s a track that’s quite different for us and maybe a slightly different direction but it’s always been one that people have picked out as being a bit of a favourite. It feels nice to finally get it out in the world, because we’ve had it on the road for quite a while now.
You’ve expanded out on your sound a bit; how do you feel they’re translating onto the stage from the studio?
Max – ‘It’s been really fun to try and think about how to incorporate certain bits in because we’ve been a lot more adventurous in the studio. We used to go in and just be like ‘we can’t put this bit down on the track, because how are we going to do that live?’ but now we just go into the studio and just put whatever we want on the track and then figure it out later, so it’s been really fun to try and figure out how to incorporate new instruments and stuff and it makes the show a little bit more stressful to run, but it’s good fun.’
Morgan – ‘I think the way that we’ve always run the band is kind of with like an element of positive arrogance. We were a live band for ages and we suddenly started getting sucked in the studio more and more and it’s like keeping those live elements that we have of an explosive show and this kind of wall of noise, drive and feeling, but then also getting all those studio textures built in so there’s an element of trying things every night.’
Do you feel that gives you an element of freedom when you’re playing live?
Max – There’s definitely parts that we change every night. We just kind of like have fun. Like sometimes I’ll try something, and it doesn’t work. There are definitely elements of like the songs where like I’ve, we have different setups for in the studio and live. There’s definitely stuff that I don’t use in the studio that I use live and vice versa so it’s quite fun to just kind of fuck around and make the live show something that doesn’t just copy the record.
Morgan – ‘if you want to hear the record, we have a fantastic Spotify profile, but if you want to see what it’s really about and kind of get the feeling that we’re really trying to portray, like come to a show and come do it with us.’
How is the tour going for you?
Max – It’s been really fun. I don’t know if we’ve ever done a tour before. Everything’s always so sporadic, it’s like all the dates are just spread out over a month or a few months.
This is the first time we’ve actually managed to get a load of shows in the same week, so it’s been really fun. The first night in Bristol was really good, it was the first time we’d ever played there so it was nice that people actually showed up which is always a positive, I suppose, isn’t it?
With you both working in job’s within the live music scene, how do you feel that affects you with your own band?
Morgan – From my side, I work at a very like high level of touring and I think coming back and doing these like 150, 200 cap shows and being in these small rooms where you’re not round season pros all the time, you’re with local people who maybe music isn’t their main job and it maybe isn’t super profitable for them, but they fucking love it, man. I think, it’s easy to get complacent being sat on a tour bus, going from arena to arena on a decent wage and eating nice food, but I think it’s like when you see the people in these venues that we grew up playing and have played hundreds of shows in it’s really grounding and nice to realise that.
Max – ‘It’s nice to restring a guitar and actually put it on and play it ourselves!’
