News Arthur Beatrice: ‘Maybe We Should’ve Been A Guitar Band’

Take yourself back to a crammed Lexington in London, in April 2012. It’s an Open Assembly night, one of many Arthur Beatrice have curated, in turn acting as headliners. They’re playing off the back of their ‘Midland’ single from the same year, so there’s a big sense of occasion. But instead of throwing themselves straight into the set, all members look panicked. They’re apologising, seemingly dithering with wires and equipment.

Turns out the stage piano - the central focus of their show - has gone kaputt. The band’s response is spontaneously put together, piano lines traded for guitar parts. And it works. “A lot of people were saying that was the best they’ve seen us,” says singer Orlando from the band’s East London studio one year on. “I actually thought ‘ah, maybe we should’ve been a guitar band!”

But Arthur Beatrice were never quite cut out to be a conventional guitar-wielding type. They met at school - “normal school,” that is, not music school - and practice sessions between Orlando, Ella Girardot and Elliot Barnes started six years ago. Hamish - Elliot’s brother - soon joined. “And then we found a uniform sound,” as the story goes.

Even six years back everything was meticulously crafted, with a self-professed perfectionism that has led to their soon-to-be-released debut album being recorded, re-mastered, over and over again. “It’s a big vice for us,” explains Elliot. “But I think it’s worked, in that we don’t let anything go out unless it’s 100% right. That’ll stand us in good stead in the future - it makes things less throwaway.”

The band seem rooted to their own space. It’s not isolationism, necessarily that leaves them peerless. Our first online write-up compared the group to Warpaint and Wild Beasts. But Elliot stresses that they’ve “never found natural partners,” as a force. “I think a lot of other bands find scenes with other bands who play similarly… We don’t really have that community.”

These Open Assembly nights weren’t by any means revolutionary, but they helped cultivate a sense of belonging. Each gig would be headlined by Arthur Beatrice themselves, but down the bill there’d be a tight fusion of electronic acts, standalone producers and a fair few DJ sets. “We always seem to do a lot more electronic stuff,” says Orlando. “It’s one of the ways that we can show our interest in that kind of music without making it ourselves.”

Some might lump the tag “electronic” into previous singles ‘Midland’ and ‘Charity’; it’s one of many terms that have chased the four-piece since they first emerged. “Anonymous”, “mysterious”, “secretive”. But a scarce amount of information was again a by-product of their refusal to let anything out into the open before it was 100% to their taste. Their website URL is titled, jokingly, as Ella confirms - online-presence.info. It’s a tongue-and-cheek dig.

They’re against confessional Twitter posts, anti-detailed biographies about each member’s past. “I think we all hate it, to be honest,” Orlando states. “When you look at 80s and 90s bands and way before that when people obsessed over printed material, there was a lot more to grip onto.” Elliot follows: “When you have access to everything it all becomes throwaway.”

But when this debut full-length eventually arrives everything will be out in the open: the singles they just about avoided releasing in 2012 as a means of “riding that hype”; the focus of their sombre, piano-led songwriting, and the very reason why perfectionism pays off in the end.

Taken from the June 2013 issue of DIY, available now. For more details click here.