Liverpool band Courting have just come off the back of their UK tour in celebration of their second album ‘New Last Name’ which was released earlier this year. Gearing up for the European leg of the tour, I sat with frontman Sean Murphy-O’Neill to talk about the creation of the album, the UK tour as a whole and how important it is to have fun when songwriting.
Credit: Charlie Barclay Harris
With the album being almost two months old and having had the chance to play it live to sold out audiences all across the UK, on the topic of whether or not his relationship with the album had changed since over this time period, Sean says, “I think it’s quite interesting to get that classic new perspective on songs that are more born out of studio writing, and then seeing how people react to them in a live setting. Something I always think about is a long time ago, in music, you could be a band who could pre gage what people would think of your songs by playing them live, because people were more reactive to that. But now, I feel if you play songs that people do not know or people do not know the words to, regardless of how good they are, people just remain uninterested. I feel like every time we’ve tried to road test an album or try and get advanced thoughts from a crowd on what like they think of the new songs, it just doesn’t work, I think it’s impossible. I think the best thing to do and the most enjoyable part about it, is to just release the songs and see how people actually react in that setting, and it’s kind of mad, it reminds you how little streaming metrics and things like that matter when you see a song that maybe people would have thought wouldn’t have done as well on streaming and performs really well live, and everyone knows the song and loves it. It’s quite interesting.”
Going further into how the songs translated on tour, Sean details how album single ‘Throw’ surpassed expectations in a live setting, he says ” I think when we released ‘Throw’, a lot of people were slightly confused by what we were trying to do with it, but in a live setting, people just really seem to love it. At first, we left it as an extra song even though it was a single and took it out the main bulk of the setlist because it’s incredibly difficult to sing, and because we thought it’s not had the biggest reception. Every night people were begging for it, so it’s quite interesting to see how little what people say on the internet actually coincides with what people want from you as a band.
Expanding on the tour as a whole and regarding the setlist, Sean answered whether it was a challenge to choose what songs to play due to the distinctive nature of each of Courting’s releases thus far. The frontman says, “We are always thinking about how to keep it cohesive. I think one thing that is displayed in a live show compared to an album is that without some of the theatrics from the studio, I think a lot of our songs are very similar. I think people have spoken as if the leap between the last few records is gigantic, but when I play the songs, I don’t feel like they’re too far apart. I feel like I’m writing similar style stuff, so when we put it in the set together, it feels good to just actually have a wealth of songs to choose from. In the past we were kind of stuck playing our EP and early singles, and then we were just playing our album. It’s nice that we can now go, “Oh, we’ll drop this one for tonight, we’ll put this in, we’ll add this in”, and I liked the ability to decide when we could play some of the deep cuts and when to leave it.
On recent single ‘We Look Good Together (Big Words)’, Courting collaborated with Dj Sabrina The Teenage DJ. In regard to who in the future Sean would like Courting to collaborate with, he says, “I’d love to work with someone like Danny L Harle, someone centred in that scene to make some really interesting and strange Pop music.”
In interviews leading up to the release of ‘New Last Name’, Courting cited Fall Out Boy as a reference point for some of the material on the album. When asked whether this Pop Punk influence also applied to some of the UK bands who were around at similar times as Fall Out Boy such as Busted, Sean says, “Not really you know. I’ve seen a few people make like the Pop Punk comparisons because we mentioned Fall Out Boy, but realistically, it’s not a huge influence on the album. Really only on ‘Throw’ were we very deliberately trying to take all of those old Pop Punk, 2000s Nu Metal cliches, that very much is an exercise in doing the funniest thing you can do in a song at a given time. Like, “Oh yeah, of course we need to bring in this ridiculous riff that like doubles the volume, of course it needs to go halftime, of course it needs to go double time”, because I think what we were discussing a lot when we were writing songs, is how much people are ashamed to say that they like stupidity in songs. I don’t necessarily mean stupidity in a bad way, but like cliches that are viscerally enjoyable, but people tend to dislike to be cool. I think the early Fall Out Boy Records do that really well. Like every song has like a slowdown, and then everyone’s chanting. I think deep inside everyone, there is a part of your 14-year-old brain that really secretly still enjoys that. I think it’s the reason that like bands like 100 Gecs are so great, because they are essentially using what people secretly enjoy in an ironic way to make music that is really fun and playful, and that is what we were trying to do, maybe to a slightly lesser extent. Pop Punk is just a really good example of a genre that exercises in guilty pleasure. If you listen to an early Fall Out Boy record, there’s no one going “Is this a little bit too cheesy?” No, because it’s fun.
Courting have almost become infamous for their covers with them playing ‘We Are Young’ by Fun. on their most recent tour as well as performing Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Bad Idea, Right?’ for BBC Radio 1 earlier this year. Speaking on what criteria a song has to have for them to cover it, Sean says, “To be honest, it’s probably the hardest thing we do. We spend a lot of time mulling over like 50 choices of what is going to fit in that little slot. It’s trying to find something that is just ridiculous enough that it will get a laugh out of people, but to not seem ironic, or too silly. What we do is we sit in a room, and we just suggest off-kilter things and whatever gets the biggest laugh, whatever seems strange, wins.”
Regarding the ‘New Last Name’ UK tour and how he felt it went as a whole, the frontman says, “I can say confidently say that there genuinely wasn’t a show that wasn’t a highlight. Every night, everyone seemed up for it, and I feel like what we’ve got that maybe some other artists will be quite enviable of, is just really dedicated people who like us, and I really appreciate it. Like people just seem to be into what we’re doing, and I think those people are the ones who are coming to shows and enjoying it. So, it felt good every night, there was no show we played where we thought, “God, these people don’t get it.”
The band are set to go on a European leg of the tour staring towards the back end of this month. On the topic of whether the show will change for the European audiences, Sean says, “We’re going to keep it similar; we’re going to put in maybe some album three songs to start testing them out, and maybe some of the things that we haven’t really shared, a few little surprises.” Expanding on the existence of a third album in the works, Sean says, “We’ve been working on album three since last September.” Regarding the sonic direction the album could go in, he says, “It’s probably going to be completely different again, we’re just going to keep doing it. I think I think our game is, we don’t really think about it too hard. We write the songs that we want to write, and I guess, we’re just encroaching on the territory of having a song for every circumstance now. Like, I feel like we’re the only band who could probably do a set at Wireless, and then go and do a set up Download. We’re trying to have a song for every type of advert.”
Once the European dates come to an end, the tour culminates in a massive hometown show in Liverpool. In regard to what fans can expect from the gig, he says, “There will be some special things that I cannot say. It’ll be very good, as will our Reading and Leeds shows later this year.” Finishing off, Sean details what the rest of 2024 has in stock for Courting, “We’re just going to keep doing little secret things, and then that Reading and Leeds show is going to be mental. The plan is to be headlining by 2025!”
Courting’s remaining ‘New Last Name’ tour dates are as follows:
27/3 – Paradiso – Amsterdam, NL
28/3 – Botanique – Rotonde – Brussels, BE
1/4 – Point Ephemere – Paris, FR
2/4 – L’Aeronef – Lille, FR
3/4 – L’Ubu – Rennes, FR
5/4 – Rock School Barbey – Bordeaux, FR
7/4 – Auditorio CCOP – Porto, PT
8/4 – Musicbox – Lisbon, PT
9/4 – Maravillas – Madrid, ES
10/4 – Heliogabal – Barcelona, ES
11/4 – Paloma – Nimes, FR
15/4 – Schokoladen – Berlin, DE
16/4 – Molotow – Hamburg, DE
17/4 – Bumann & Sohn – Cologne, DE
4/4 – La Roche Sur Yon, Quai M
13/4 – Zurich, Bogen F
19/4 – Osnabruck, Popsalon Festival
20/4 – Dresden, Polimagie Festival
24/05 – Liverpool, The Hanger
