The Xcerts on longevity, resilience, and the making of their as-yet-unannounced new album • Interview • DIY Magazine

“I’m gonna give you one of these,” Murray Macleod says, offering a fist-bump, in order to keep germs from a recent illness to himself. Explaining that drummer Tom Heron is currently struck down by a bug himself, we head into tucked-away pub The Foundry to find the last Xcert member (metaphorically) standing; bassist Jordan Smith is sat, accompanied by a pint of Guinness and a Flann O’Brien book.

Since relocating to the South Coast for university, the Aberdeen pop-rock trio fully made Brighton their home, now scattered between the city centre, Hove and Saltdean. Calling arena giants like Architects and Royal Blood some of their best mates, the band have become an integral part of the city’s furniture.

“Our finger isn’t quite as on the pulse as it used to be, but I’m aware that the scene in Brighton is booming,” admits Murray, acknowledging that The Xcerts might now be the elder statesmen of their world, as we perch on stools inside this “old-man pub”. Currently busy promoting January’s comeback track ‘do it to myself’ in the confusing world of social media, the band are quick to remind us that they’ve seen it all.

“We’re the generation who have one foot in the internet, one foot out,” muses Murray. “I feel so sorry for younger generations at the moment, because it’s so loud out there, to cut through… there’s a lot of artists not playing that game, though, that have completely blown up purely because of the music. Cameron Winter and Geese, Dijon, Mk.gee. Even on a more mainstream level, Fontaines DC or Phoebe Bridgers. They really do let the music do the talking.”

“We approached [this record] with a more determined sense. It’s not random playtime. It had a direction and a goal, and it came from the three of us in the room.”

— Jordan Smith

That principle is a driving force behind the next chapter of The Xcerts. Having switched both management and record labels, they found themselves with no push-back or pressure against the fundamentals of the songs. When their new label home FLG heard ‘do it to myself’ and two others, they were instantly on board, offering the band a record deal within a matter of days - like “something out of the ’90s”.

After a series of interactions over recent years with producer and Hundred Reasons guitarist Larry Hibbitt - who was a fan of 2023 single ‘GIMME’ and saw the band at 2000trees - the trio made it their mission to sign him up. Testing the waters at his own Beehive studio in Hertfordshire, the simplicity of his wish “to capture the essence of the band” made for an instant match.

When speaking to DIY back in 2023, Murray described fifth album ‘Learning How To Live and Let Go’ as the “purest” version of The Xcerts, encapsulating elements from all of their previous four. That essence of the band, surely, was more apparent than ever. Perhaps even a blueprint for what would come next. Or not.

“Yeah, I completely lied…” the frontman grins, when we put his own words back in front of him. “I mistook freedom for purity, and there is a big difference there. The whole point of the last record was to utilise the studio as an instrument, rather than focusing on the true essence of our band and our chemistry. That was freedom, because we had the run of the playground. There were no teachers or adults.”

“Whereas this record, we approached it with a more determined sense,” Jordan continues. “It’s not random playtime. It had a direction and a goal, and it came from the three of us in the room. When we were 18, [we’d go] into the cheapest rehearsal room, your amp is broken, it sounds terrible, and you leave with the biggest smile on your face, [thinking] ‘we’re in the best band in the world.’”

The upcoming sixth LP from The Xcerts, set to be announced in due course, juggles the spirit of their younger selves with the present day. Ensuring it remains “age-appropriate”, that balancing act ties together an understanding of where they are with the urgency of what came before. An urgency, truthfully, that has never left them.

“We started this band when we were 15, getting snuck into venues in Aberdeen to play shows with adults, and it felt like we had to go 10 times harder to be heard, seen and taken seriously,” remembers Murray. “We never really lost that thing.

“We never sat down [and discussed], ‘what is our band?’ Unspoken, we wanted to bring back the urgency of the three of us playing. The desperate noise that we make, that is our band. One of Jordan’s friends made a comment: ‘The Xcerts, to me, is the three of you, as soon as the distortion kicks in, banging your head.’”

“We never sat down [and discussed], ‘what is our band?’ Unspoken, we wanted to bring back the urgency of the three of us playing.”

— Murray Macleod

January’s ‘do it to myself’ is an unmistakable indication of that assessment. Channelling the hard-and-fast momentum of 2014’s ‘There Is Only You’, The Xcerts’ first single of 2026 rightfully opens their new album. It was the springboard for everything that followed at Beehive, as images of its Moccamaster coffee maker and the back of Larry’s head flood back to the band.

“We wanted to merge the worlds of early post-hardcore with a New York [element],” says Murray, before Jordan jumps in to specify The Walkmen. “It really re-affirmed that feeling of us bleeding it all out,” the frontman continues. “Everything we wrote after that was [self-assured]… I definitely had a bit of ego after that. It was a healthy arrogance: ‘This is what the fucking Xcerts do.’”

Euphoric as the chorus may feel, the track is an “uncomfortable” admission of Murray’s tendency to self-sabotage and subsequently hurt those close to him. As ever, the frontman wears his heart on his sleeve with brutal honesty.

“My dad was diagnosed with cancer in December 2023,” explains Murray. “I lived with a lot of fear that year, and [thought] it’s fine to dabble in a bit of escapism. But that escapism was relentless, and my partner at the time intervened in a very healthy way. I established that even when things aren’t good, I will make that 10 times worse for myself, and obviously that has a knock-on effect if you live with your loved one.

“The first verse is about childlike terror, this fearful plea to my partner that I want them to take me in and fix everything. It’s a funny juxtaposition, because my dad is the one who had cancer, yet he was the strongest out of anybody. Honestly, it was a graze on the knee to my dad. I took stock after that and was like, ‘I can’t be acting like a victim.’”

“We’re gonna do everything to make this one loud, crying moment for our band.”

— Murray Macleod

Its refrain of “Will it always be like this?” is a question Murray asks more than once across the record. Rather than dressing up discomfort and pain with a happily ever after as they’ve actively sought out in previous records, The Xcerts allow this one to end in flames.

Murray even suggests that closing track, ‘in your eyes’, “was a bit too emo, which is saying something for me”. As it unexpectedly erupts into a wall of stadium rock, the sentiment comes from a saying that is often heard in the professional sporting world: treat every game like it’s your last.

“‘If this is our swansong, then we’re going out fucking loud’ - it’s good to sometimes have that mentality,” says Murray. “I guess I did have that Michael Jordan feel of the last quarter. We’re gonna do everything to make this one loud, crying moment for our band.”

Then there’s ‘pretty ugly’, a rampant curveball on which Murray screams like never before. Written in part about criticism the band faced when they dropped ‘GIMME’, the song showcases the frontman at his most bulletproof, his voice distorting not unlike ‘The Colour And The Shape’-era Dave Grohl.

“I haven’t felt the need to put anger in our music for a long time,” he says. “It shakes hands with [2010 album] ‘Scatterbrain’ for sure, that song, but takes it to a whole new level… it stemmed from something as human as feeling really fucking angry. The lyrics are comically brutal.” “Because they’re so indiscernible and covered in distortion, you feel this freedom to say some really personal shit,” adds Jordan. “Once in our career, there’s actually a point where you could say, ‘Open this shit up.’ We never got to tick that box…”

“Learning to sit in [discomfort], that’s the main thing. You can’t let it consume your life, but you can’t run away from it.”

— Jordan Smith

It’s a fitting mid-point for an album rooted in the discomfort, loss and pain that The Xcerts experienced in real time. Instead of an act of catharsis, this album serves as more of a mirror image to their lives, with plenty of the incidents discussed in the record still unresolved or ongoing. Importantly, they have learned to live through such hardship.

“Learning to sit in it, that’s the main thing,” says Jordan. “Not pushing away from it or trying to get away from discomfort. You can’t let it consume your life, but you can’t run away from it. You have to just sit with it, like a horrible hot tub. You don’t want to be in it, but you paid for the hour…”

Whether it’s youthful exuberance or the familiarity of the types of struggles they faced around their debut, there’s a comfort in this sixth record that The Xcerts are set up to cope with whatever challenges life will throw in the way. With that logic, their future stands in good stead.

“The joy of three people in a room with broken speakers hammering out songs, and the circumstances that surrounded making the record, those things happened again,” rounds off Jordan. “There’s this weird full-circle thing where you’re like, ‘oh, I know what this is. We’ve done this before.’

“You realise how strong you are. Bad things happen, they will happen again, and we’ll still be here. We’re not going anywhere.”

#AD