Best of 2014 The DIY List 2014: Bombay Bicycle Club have their finest year yet

Bombay Bicycle Club feature at #15 in The DIY List 2014, a look back at the year’s best albums, one-off shows, festival performances and achievements outside of the norm. This interview was originally published on DIY back in February 2014.

Bombay Bicycle Club put out three albums in as many years, but their fourth record has taken longer as frontman Jack Steadman travelled through Europe, Japan and India to source the sounds that feature on ‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’. Back in his hometown London, it’s a drizzly Monday morning and he’s sat sleepily on a leather armchair in Hackney’s The Hunter. S. The pub has a real 1930s feel, with decoratively patterned chairs and taxidermy animal heads adorning the walls, its current empty state giving it both a beauty and an eeriness. It’s named after writer Hunter S. Thompson, whose work Steadman enjoys. “I went through a phase like everyone else. I love his style of writing. I always read it really fast and it’s like he’s talking to you. I’m the type of person that when you’re at a pub, when people are just talking at you that’s great. I would much rather listen than have to express myself.”

For someone so confident with his music, Steadman admits he’s never been as forthright talking about it. While he says he’s “learning, getting better” and has become more confident with talking about his music, he still doesn’t feel completely comfortable with it as he’s a lot more animated when we’re having a conversation about his love for crate digging and how annoying alarm clocks are, than the meaning behind his music. “I feel like I started making music because it was a way of communication and I was always hopeless at doing it the normal way. Then you join a band and realise you have to talk about your music a lot, you’re like ‘You don’t understand! That was the whole reason I did this was so I don’t have to that!” It’s fair to say that in the beginning, it didn’t come so easily to Steadman. “People are asking you very provocative questions and your manager’s behind you poking you in the back, saying ‘Say something controversial!’ It’s a disaster you know. Maybe it’s almost good that we were very quiet when we started. People need these headlines that can be written in capital letters – I never talk in capital letters, I’m the smallest font you can find.”