News Fun Adults: ‘We Need To Have Complete Control’

are a band from Leeds, though they don’t particularly affiliate themselves with the city. They don’t feel they belong to any particular genre or scene, and have no great affinity with any other up and coming bands. Nor do they possess major label aspirations, or even the desire to work with any big shot producers. Why? Because they can do everything they want themselves. They’re true DIY-ers. And, for now, they like it that way.

Lead singer Dan Jacobs is incredibly honest about Fun Adults’ disconnect of sorts with the current music scene of their nearest city. But you get the feeling they don’t really mind. Because they’re are perfectly happy on their own. They’re like an isolated, but totally self-suficient island.



‘For Water’ sounds so perfectly-formed and well-crafted, you guys seem to have a clearly defined sound already. How did this come about and how long did it take to get to this point?
I think it’s always an evolving thing. We spent a long time working on our own sound and trying to craft a particular texture with the whole thing. I think recently what we’ve enjoyed doing in regards to the sound is getting back to our instruments. A lot of the newer stuff we’re writing is much more minimal, and now it’s just sort become a conglomeration of our four different styles. We’ve all got very different ways of approaching things, so it’s really just a combination of what happens when we write together. We’re all very conscious of what we want our sound to be, but at the same time we don’t just sit down and go ‘We’re gonna write an electronic song today.’

There’s a very delicate balance of complex, percussive arrangements that have obviously been painstakingly put together on your tracks, but also almost pop-like sensibilities melodically and structurally. Does that come from that mix of every band member’s individual style?
Yeah, I think you’re right on all accounts there. Literally, we spent such a long, long time getting all the arrangements right. Like, we might finish off a basic idea or structure for a song, but then we’ll probably spend the most time working on the arrangement. And we’re definitely all big into pop music. And we consider our music pop music as well, so that’s very important to us.

I read something about you converting a barn into a studio?
Yeah, it’s a pretty amazing place. We spent a lot of time up there building it, you know, standing on ladders and all that. And it’s not really 100% there, but it’s just an amazing place to be in the countryside, in a really beautiful location as well. It’s a really good space for us to work in because we can work at our own pace, but at the same time be really focused because we’re so far away from any distractions and so isolated. So it’s been quite important to us really.

Did those surroundings inspire any of the lyrical themes in your songs?
Well, ‘Peek and Punch’ is about animals, and the sort of lost look that occurs between human beings and animals, and the quite sad feeling that comes with that. If that makes any sort of sense?

Do you like to keep an air of mystery to your words, and maybe make the listener work a little harder to find what the words actually are?
I don’t want to be deliberately mysterious because if you spend time working on lyrics and you have ideas that you want to put into songs, I don’t think there’s any pleasure in being cryptic. But at the same time it’s a fine balance, because you don’t want to spell everything out in a really obvious way either. And there’s so many different ways that people can relate to specific lines. Using less complicated words is something I’ve been trying to focus on recently as well…

Do you guys have plans for an album at the moment, or are you just sort of releasing songs as you finish them for now? Is there a label involved?
We’re just doing it all ourselves at the moment, and we’re definitely working on an album. I think that’s the thing that we’re most excited about. It’s something that’s always on the way and that we’re always working on, and it’s just about getting the right tracks together, and giving each track the time it needs to develop in the right way. The tracks are going in a slightly more minimal, darker direction as well, and it’s definitely not going to be like a bubblegum pop album, and we’re still kind of finding out what it’s going to be about ourselves really…

You seem to have everything in place to be completely self-sufficient. Is that the way you’d like to continue doing things? Or do you have any particular record label aspirations?
It’s a funny one, because we have no desires to necessarily be on any particular label, although there are labels that we’d prefer, but it’s more about just finding the right deal that suits us. And I think the most important thing is getting the album right and being able to do it in the way that we want to do it. Because it’s such an important thing for us, we need to have complete control over how everything is going to be done and how it’s going to be presented, and I’m sure there’s many labels out there who would allow us to do that. So our main focus is simply going about the album in the right way, as opposed to thinking what label we might want to be on.

What’s it like being a new band from Leeds? Do you consider yourself part of a scene, or consider yourself to have any peers?
It’s a funny one really, because there’s a really healthy music scene in Leeds, but it’s not for the kind of music that we make. There’s nobody that we necessarily hang out with or anything like that. But Leeds has good venues like the Brudenell and stuff where you can go see live bands. But I don’t know, it sounds quite rubbish, but there’s really no bands that we’re shouting about right now…



Fun Adults’ ‘For Water’ single is out now on Handsome Dad Records.