Cover Feature Bombay Bicycle Club: A Different Kind Of Fix

Sitting in their central London flat surrounded by recording equipment, ladders and discarded items of footwear, you’d be forgiven for wondering if you haven’t found yourself in typical student digs. In fact, none of Bombay Bicycle Club have been to university, instead choosing to further their education through life in the band. Not the standard choice for former pupils of the prestigious University College School in Hampstead.

“I think it might have matured us a bit. Maybe not,” frontman Jack Stead shrugs. “There are two sides to it. On the one side, you’re completely independent. You have a job. You’re in the real world. On the other hand, when you’re in a band and you’re on tour, you’re just a baby. Someone is there to do everything for you. I felt like I’d grown up quite a lot even before we’d started doing this thing.”

And what a thing it is. Preparing for the release of their third album in three years, the band doesn’t sport a single member over 21. “We were worried about releasing [new single] ‘Shuffle’ at first because it is a bit of a departure from what people will be used to,” Jack says earnestly, when quizzed about their new record. “We took a risk but it paid off, which is better than not taking a risk and it failing. At least if it fails but you took the risk, you can be happy because you did it. So it’s the best outcome. It was a huge relief.”

From the outside, it might appear that Bombay Bicycle Club have a habit of taking risks with their releases. Moving from their gold-certified debut to the acoustic release of ‘Flaws’ took some nerve, or so you might assume. “We just did it for ourselves as opposed to doing it for the sake of it,” bassist Ed Nash pipes in. “The acoustic album was meant to be a thing on the side,’ Jack continues. ‘We were surprised that it got perceived as more than that. A lot of people call it our second album, which is fair enough, but for us it was a side project.” It seems their past releases are not the band’s desired topic of conversation.

‘Flaws’ won the North London band a plethora of new fans, propelling them into the public consciousness with a Top Ten chart position and gaining them an Ivor Novello nod, but despite all the attention, didn’t achieve the same sales as their previous effort. “We’ve never really thought about that. We don’t think too much about what makes sense or what should happen. We just make the music that we want to be making, and that’s why each album is a bit different, because we’re just doing what we feel at the moment,” Jack stresses, shunning the idea that sales might have influenced the direction of new LP ‘A Different Kind Of Fix’.

The album sees the band revert back to something closer to the sound of their first full length, with familiar face and long time collaborator of the band, Jim Abbiss back on production duties for over half of the album’s tracks. “We’d built up a really good relationship with him so we think it works well,” explains Jack. “For the more electronic tracks, we wanted to try someone else out and that’s why we went to Ben Allen. Because we liked what he had done with Ani- mal Collective and he liked our stuff; we got on really well. In terms of why we went back to electric, I think that was always the idea.”

And what of targets for the album? “Get a Mercury nomination. That’d be nice, that’s a goal,” Jack declares brazenly. “Just for everyone to like it,’ smiles Ed, his initial targets slightly more humble than his bandmate’s. ‘We got a lot of new fans due to the acoustic album that weren’t really into the stuff at the beginning. It will be nice to see if all of those people like it.’

“Sexiest male at the NME Awards?” “A Grammy,’ Ed continues, suddenly ani- mated. ‘It would be good to have a Grammy on your shelf. Like at your mum’s house. I think the Mercury Award is probably up there with the Ivor Novello; they’re well respected, both of them.”

Bombay Bicycle Club’s third album ‘A Different Kind Of Fix’ is out now via Island Records.

Extract taken from the Autumn 2011 issue of DIY, available now. For more details, and to read the full interview, click here.