Interview Thumpers: “There’s A Deeper Side To Us”

‘Seriously, have you ever heard of a band asking their label not to release their record?!” Thumpers’ John Hamson, Jr. has a point. The band – completed by vocalist / guitarist Marcus Pepperell – are in the curious position of being a British band, one based in the UK at that, whose album is already out in the States – released back in February via Sub Pop - but not yet here.

“They wanted to do it last summer,” he laughs, “and we were like, please, just wait for those UK kids to catch up!” Marcus chips in, giggling. “We felt bad for them! We were like, don’t get bored of us, but we wanna do this.”



“It’s not that bad,” John muses on the fact things aren’t quite going as seamlessly as they could be for the pair, “if you over think it… when we over think it, in a cold, dark, night, then yeah, it’s scary. But just coming back from America, where it’s out, the difference in reaction… it’s easier, it’s like, OK, this feels good.”



“Whereas when it’s out and you haven’t even been to the place yet,” Marcus continues, “that feels unreal and out of control. It makes for a different kind of post-gig chat, when the album’s out. In America we were asked some detailed questions about things, and that was really good.”



The duo have recently returned from a trip Stateside, where they performed at SXSW festival, and, more importantly, met their Sub Pop family. “It was the first time we’d had to meet the massive majority of the label,” Marcus explains. “Only two people had seen us play.”



“That was fucking scary,” admits John. “A lot of the main people, like the press guy, hadn’t seen us play, so they could just fucking hate it, and be like, what have we done? We’re off the project! But they did the exact opposite, and they’re now ramping up their expectations. Especially radio.” He laughs, remembering a conversation.



“The radio guy was just like…” he trails off. “The thing I love about them, they’re straight up. The radio plugger there was like, I wasn’t going to start working on your record until I’d seen you play, and I knew you were gonna come back and that there’s commitment. Because I’m not going to waste my time. Normally, people like that just blow smoke up your arse! It was refreshing.”

It wasn’t ‘We’re not just a singles band.’ only the industry that warmed to Thumpers’ sound - the gigs they played in the States, excluding maybe their appearance at SXSW, were “wild”. “This was the thing,” Marcus continues, “the least busy show in America was in Phoenix, a headline show with four other bands who were on their way to LA. It was a kind of stop-off gig, even at that show people went for it. It wasn’t like oh, there’s nobody else here, I’m too embarrassed to do anything. Be it a Thumpers attitude, or an American attitude… whatever it was, it was great!”



Back to the UK. Marcus and John recorded ‘Galore’ in “segments”, and – as they’re keen to point out – it means it doesn’t feel as old now as it might. “It’s weird,” John says, “it doesn’t feel like that long ago, which is great.”



“In previous bands,” Marcus adds, “you end up demoing the same song like, twenty times, trying out producers, but here we were the producers, we recorded it, tracked it, over a period of a year finishing it. ‘Galore’, the last single, that was only finished in January.”



And when starting, they weren’t even sure if they wanted to be a ‘band’ at all. “For the longest time,” Marcus explains, “all the recording we did was experimenting on how to be new again. How to excite ourselves. It was about getting to a place where we didn’t know what we were doing again.”



His band-mate agrees. “When we started the process, we were very much on auto-pilot, in a way. To get to somewhere musically exciting, we had to change the way we worked. We had to find the reasons to actually go through all this again, because we kind of didn’t want to.”



“Yeah,” Marcus affirms. “We felt pretty chewed-up. But, listening back to the album, it does still feel fresh, because we staggered it. It feels like a progression rather than one moment in time which we can distance ourselves from. It still feels… I dunno, new.”



Which is, they laugh, just as well. “We tried really hard to make sure the record came out as soon as possible,” John is still keen to apologise for the band’s apparent tardiness this side of the Atlantic, “but it’s just the way shit goes. That’s the other thing we were worried about, we had so much support and I didn’t want it to seem like a fuck you, because obviously it wasn’t, we did everything we could to try and… At least we have one now.”

‘We’re still such a new band. We’re unknown. We still need to prove ourselves at a lot of these big festivals. We’re not a massively hyped band - out of choice,’ he explains. ‘Over the last eighteen months from when we first started putting something out, we were very careful about that. It might have been easier, doing all the things to make yourselves a hype band.’



“Having an album will be a milestone for us,’ Marcus continues. ‘There’s a lot of assumption on our part from people - and that was something that paid off in America. They knew the songs. They knew how to move to this. There were people coming to our gigs with a pre-formed, correct expectation of the kind of thing to give back.’



They’re keen - obviously - to play the record to Brits post-release. “We did a short run of dates in February,” John explains, “and we hadn’t really toured properly, it was super encouraging, all the rooms were full, and the sort of atmosphere we always dreamt that we wanted. Every show was like that.”



Marcus continues. “When people turned up, like, with ideas of how they wanted to act at a show. I went to see Metronomy at Brixton the other day; the people have heard the songs before, the audience were just there for a Metronomy gig. It felt like on this tour people were coming out with an idea of what it would be like, with their fucking game head on.”



As for their hopes for the album, they’re pretty simple, according to John. “I hope it develops people’s idea of us,” he says, “because we’ve released quite a few singles so far, and – surely every band says this – there’s a deeper side to us. We’re not just a singles band.”



Marcus’ is even easier than that.



“What I hope people do with the album, is listen to it really loudly. You need to turn your stereo up. There are so many layers, as well, the way we recorded things, it was like throwing stuff on, different sounds, different things, different percussion – really stacking. It’s a stacked album, and I think it benefits a lot from being played really loud.”

Thumpers’ debut album ‘Galore’ is out now via True Say Recordings.



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