News Reading 2011: Twin Atlantic

We caught up with the rowdy Scots backstage at Reading to discuss their latest video, the joys of festivals and what happens next.

How are you guys doing today?
Craig: Good! We’ve been in a van for most of it. We played Leeds yesterday and drove down today and then struggled to find our way into the festive so we’ve been walking about a lot.
Barry: We got here eventually, we figured out the maze.
C: This is the centre.

How was Leeds?
C: It was good. It was really, really good.
B: It was very wet but we were playing in a tent so that worked out really well for us. The tent was really busy and we played alright.
C: It was cool. We’ve been wanting to play Leeds festival for a while - and Reading as well, obviously - so to get invited for the first year is pretty cool. We just really enjoyed it.

You mentioned it was the first time you’ve played the festivals. How did you go about preparing yourselves?
C: I don’t know. I don’t think we’re really deep enough to think about it too much. We don’t have that level of deepness, we just turn up and play.
Barry: And cross our fingers and hope everything goes well.
C: I think if we did think about things that way, we’d probably get a bit scared because it’s something that we’ve not done before and a lot of people talk about it so I didn’t think about it.
B: I always find with festivals that they’re always a bit slap-dash. When you’re a band used to playing your own shows and getting as much time as you want to set up your equipment and soundcheck, whereas at festivals, it’s throw your stuff on and go for it so I think even if you were to really stringently prepare, it would all go out of the window. You would just have to get on with it and muck in.

You’ve played a lot of festivals this summer, including your third appearance at T In The Park, which is a bit like your hometown festival. How was that?
B: That one was amazing. That one was pretty scary. I take back what I said before because we were all quite scared before we did that one. It was amazing. Just to see that many people come and see us was really cool and obviously, it’s our home crowd so that’s a good advantage to have. It’s easier to win people over because we’re also Scottish. Our families were there as well so that was nice.
C: That’s definitely the nicest thing about it, having your friends and family there in the audience because for the most part, we’re away touring all over the place so they never get to see what we do but at a big hometown festival like that when everyone comes along, it’s kind of nice.

Obviously you’ve released your album ‘Free’ in February, now that you’ve had it out there a couple of months, how are the crowd reacting to it?
B: It’s starting to really pick up a lot. You can hear people singing along to most of the songs now and whenever you’re introducing a song from the album, people just get excited about it and know what it is, which is cool.
C: People definitely seem to be into the songs from ‘Free’ more than they are the songs off ‘Vivarium’ so that’s good. That’s a sign of progression.
B: Or maybe ‘Vivarium’ was really bad.
C: Or maybe that. But it’s just nice to have people like you and take a slight step or progression as a band and have people come with you.

You’ve just released the video to ‘Make A Beast Of Myself’ and it’s quite a strange concept. Is there anyway that you can enlighten us on what it is about?
C: It’s open to view interpretation.
B: That means we don’t know.
C: No, there is a concept behind it but even we didn’t understand it.
B: I think the concept seemed to change on the day, as we were doing it. We heard it was something and then when we did it, it seemed to become something else so I don’t know. My mum liked it and she’s never really liked our videos before so that was a good sign.
C: We were happy. As soon as it got the Mrs McNae seal of approval, we were sold, job done.

So what’s the plan for the rest of the year because you haven’t done any headline tours yet?
B: We’ll definitely, definitely do a headline show by the end of the year.

There’s a lot of people saying that it’ll be happening in December…
C: Those people might be right.
B: I guess there’s a distinct possibility that those shows may fall in December. We’re announcing what we’re doing very soon but we’re not allowed to say yet because we get in trouble.
C: That happens a lot.
B: If anyone’s interested, keep your ears to the ground and you’ll find out soon enough.