Interview Striking silver: Crows

Patience, as they say, is a virtue and you’d imagine no-one understands this quite like Crows. Releasing their debut single back in 2015, and heading out on tour after tour in support of pals Wolf Alice, Slaves, METZ and more, it’s been a long old ride to forthcoming LP ‘Silver Tongues’, but one that’s now paid off in satisfyingly serendipitous fashion.

The noisy London quartet – helmed by magnetic frontman James Cox – eventually began work on the album at the end of 2017. Fuelled by intense recording sessions in pitch black (“It’s a personal record for all of us, so being in the dark, being completely alienated and not able to see anyone else makes you play a certain way,” notes James) and vocal takes done on the stage of London’s gold glitter-clad MOTH Club venue to enable the singer to really perform, the idea was always to create an album that matched the potency of their acclaimed live show. “Some of Steve’s [Goddard, guitarist] takes were done through six different amps at the same time. When you opened the door you’d just get hit by a wall of noise. I don’t know how he did it; he was in there for a good four hours at a time…” recalls the singer.

Lyrically, the record found James going deep, drawing on themes of religion and “how people use it as a crutch” and extrapolating them out into big, far-reaching missives. “The way I write lyrics is quite obsessive,” he admits. “I finished reading Dante’s Divine Comedy, got super obsessed and started reading loads of random shit around it. I get into these research wormholes and I’ll just write, write, write and then come out of this hole with a load of lyrics and words that’ll then into a song.”