When Soundsphere spoke with Bull in July 2020, York’s indie stalwarts were still celebrating their most professional milestone since forming in 2011. Having signed to EMI North, with a new studio album in the works, the band were well and truly on their way to Discover(ing) Effortless Living. Since 2020, however, the music industry has undergone a seismic change. In the current landscape of streaming, independent artists are increasingly unable to live off their work. Meanwhile, independent venues struggle to cope with rent and running costs, therefore threatening their existence. In turn, the current streaming model has brought veritable levels of exposure that can “make” a band, but won’t necessarily pay them. Bull are no exception to this rule, and, in turn, Effortless Living has become the cost-of-living.
In a drafty room above The Crescent, Bull carve out some time in an otherwise hectic schedule to reveal all. Downstairs, where it’s warmer, they’ve organised a Jamboree; there’s independent pop-up stalls, art displays, a Memorabullia comprising old shirts and posters, and Kai West (bass) is cooking a curry. Someone had to hold the fort during our interview, and curries don’t cook themselves, so Kai very kindly found himself in an Overcooked situation juggling the rice, displays, and conversing with the familiar faces that have come to support the band once again.
Sandwiched between two sold-out York shows promoting their new album, Engines of Honey, the Jambore ultimately speaks to a band whose institutional status within the local scene is well-deserved. As well as mastering an inspired brand of slacker rock – somewhere between Pavement sprechgesang and Kinks-esque melodies – the five-piece have maintained a strong relationship with their hometown. In keeping with this humble reputation, and despite the happenings downstairs (poor Kai!), they made good on their promise – “we’re a phone call away anytime” – and freed up some time to speak with Soundsphere.
Picking up where Dom’s interview left off, I asked 4/5 of the band – Tom Beer (vocals, guitar), Holly Beer (keyboard), Dan-Dexter Lucas (lead guitar), and Tom Gabattiss (percussion) – how life’s been treating them since July 2020. “Oh yeah”, Tom B replies, “lots of champagne and jets.” With a broad Yorkshire accent, Tom G downplays the life of luxury, “it gets boring!!”. When the conversation turns to their status as a band, however, matters are less jubilant. “Okay, so, EMI. We were fully professional, if you can call being really skint but only doing music fully professional.” Tom B goes on to paint a (vulgar) picture:
“We tried for a good five years of full pelt trying to do only music but we were not able to do the same things that people our age could do who had other kinds of jobs, like try and think about buying a house, or try and think about buying a sandwich.”
In turn, the band put the suits away and took the independent route for Engines of Honey. “We’ve still got links to various parts of the music industry through ten or so years of building personal relationships”. Meanwhile, Bull have not entirely burned the EMI bridge, acknowledging the plethora of opportunities it provided. An LP and EP, Live on EMI Rooftop, posters and shirts exhibited downstairs, and more, were facilitated by a team of supportive and professional music-lovers. Dan gives a glass half-full verdict on the situation:
“They definitely weren’t the villains that people make out major labels to be, they were really nice to work with, but then there’s also a myth that if you sign to a major label, you’ve made it or something. So yes, it helped us a lot, but it doesn’t make you overnight..”
The conversation, of course, turns to what does make you overnight in 2024.
One (onomatopoeic) word: starting with T, ending with K.
For Tom B, the dream was “to be on NME and be like a band from the ‘90s, you know?” Tom G subscribes to a similar vision, where the band would gig and release music “in the traditional way, rather than through reels and streams online.” Accepting the romanticism of this pursuit, the band are happy with their current independent status, preferring to curate a discography they can one day look back on and be proud of. And who knows? Perhaps their musical heroes in the form of Pavement will provide another model for success, with their 1997 B-Side – ‘Harness Your Hopes’ – standing at 134M Spotify streams after going viral. The best of both worlds.
If the new album is anything to go by, Bull are harnessing this hope in an equally authentic manner. Leaning into the band’s melodic side, Engines of Honey embraces a sonic whimsicality that perfectly compliments lyrical themes of maturing, escaping, and appreciating the smaller things in life. As Bullheads will know, 2021’s Discover Effortless Living saw classics such as ‘Green’ and ‘Eugene’ revived with a fresh lick of studio paint thanks to Amsterdam producer, Remko Schouten. When reworking the material, the band stumbled upon enough songs to form an album, in what would become their self-described “greatest hits.” Engines of Honey, however, “felt like an album” from the very get-go, according to Tom G. “It was like ‘okay, let’s write and record it knowing that it’s gonna be an album.’”
This dynamic plays into an old discourse surrounding sophomore albums. Debut albums typically comprise a lifetime’s worth of writing, tweaking, and performing the material. Whilst She Looks Like Kim (2014) slightly complicates this dynamic, it remains the case that Discover Effortless Living had, in a sense, written itself over the years. With the follow-up, however, there’s not only a greater level of expectation, but there’s the issue of completely starting anew. Hence, I was curious whether the same dynamic applied to Engines of Honey.
Holly: “The recording was slightly more difficult, I guess, because Remco went on tour with Pavement. So we recorded most of the tracks with him in Amsterdam, and then he lent us this mic. We did so many overdubs in York”
Tom B: “Yeah, we made it hard for ourselves..”
Holly: “We did a good job, though.”
In the end, these overdubs would thread the album’s sonic tapestry. Remko was particularly important in this respect, often encouraging the band to get wacky. “A lot of the time it’s the magic, or the shine of the song”, but on the other hand, Tom B adds, “Remko’s other skill is not overdoing it.” Tracks such as ‘Red Rooves’ and ‘Jan Fin’ best encapsulate this dynamic, deploying a colourful weaponry of synthesisers, flutes, and emphatic ad-libs, whilst retaining their melodic essence. “WE’RE MAXIMALISTS”, Tom G proudly declares, before Tom B elaborates:
“That’s the thing people say to us a lot – they like listening to it on headphones and every time they listen to it, they hear something different. And when they see us play live, they like that we take it in different directions.”
Their sold-out shows at The Crescent offered a stellar example. On top of their usual whimsicality, the quintet were sporadically joined by an additional four playing trumpets and sax, pulling from The Crescent’s very own bar staff. “We’re semi musos”, Tom B admits, before going on to suggest they’re neither “twee” nor “pure rockers.” Dan phrases their approach slightly differently. “A lot of the music we like comes from a more naive style of playing (…) which I think makes for more interesting melodies.” Thinking about some of the band’s primary influences – Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Pixies – it’s hard to argue otherwise. In the vein of these bands, Engines of Honey develops the band’s sonic palette whilst avoiding needless convolution.
As to lyrical content, I posit Engines of Honey as an album of escapist qualities. “It was all written in lockdown”, Tom B confirms. “I’ve not thought about that before, but you’re probably right.” From their early days busking in Thai bars to their cross-channel excursions to Remko’s Amsterdam studio, the band’s love for travel is the natural result of York’s small size. In true Bull fashion, however, this desire to escape is played out more lightheartedly than cynically.
Which brings us to the Honey element. If Engines speaks to a band always “on the move”, then Honey refers to “sweetness, happiness, just things working well.” With time, Tom B has come to find happiness in the smaller acts. Travelling is one big act, of course, but the “best thing is when you’re all mucking in, figuring everything out together, rather than the thing it is you’re meant to be doing”. In other words, the quotidian acts of communal living – such as washing dishes, or filling the car with petrol – have become the most savouring moments of all.
The same philosophy has informed the band’s current status as, well, a band. Indeed, the hunger foe NME front-covers is not quite there nowadays, but for good reason. “When I started writing songs”, explains Tom B, “I was writing in the style of Stephen Malkmus”. Through Remko – who also engineers Pavement’s live sound – the York quintet not only met their alt-rock heroes, but supported them at their 2022 Leeds show. “It felt like the coffin in the band. It was like, ‘I’m happy to put out some albums, play some gigs’, but we’re never gonna beat that.”
With Engines of Honey, Bull remain vigorous; not just musically, but as a collective. Reflecting on the “fork in the road”, Dan suggests that for a “lot of bands, they might call it a day, start a new band under a new name, and give it another go.” True to their name, however, Bull will continue charging ahead. In the half-poignant, half-sardonic words of Tom B, “Bull’s been going for all this time because I like the washing up.” And in the process of separating music and livelihood, the band have discovered a new lease of life, one that ensures Effortless Living on their own terms.
