Interview The Xcerts: Let it Go

It will come as little surprise to learn that the album’s weighty title is indicative of a record loaded with stories tangled up in life’s more complex moments. Written largely ahead of the pandemic, it wasn’t isolation that was fuelling Murray’s thoughts but a time before - one that was far more chaotic, but just as unstable. “Life just got really, really messy,” Murray begins. “I can’t lie; [being that messy] was so much fun, I had a riot, but everything became a volume thing; even when it was quiet, the room was always too loud, and I needed to deafen it out by being out and preoccupied.

“It seemed like a lot of my friends were going through a hard time, and everyone was a bit…” He pauses. “I don’t know why, but a lot of my friends were having [moments of] quiet self-sabotage, and I had it with them.” Stemming from a “really awful toxic relationship I’d entered into - and I take full accountability for it as well”, the tumultuous period soon found the singer struggling, trying to reconcile himself with his strengths and flaws, successes and failings.

“A lot of [the album], in a very twisted way, is an ode to a lot of my loved ones - including the guys - who were there and saw it in real time,” he explains. “If it sounds like the narrator on the record is struggling, there’s always someone else there who is leaning on them with love.” These ideas burst through on ‘Ache’, with its lyrics on the “beauty in the darkness waving”, or the mates we’re told to cherish in ‘My Friends Forever’.

“Then, a lot of what I’m talking about is also just rooted in ego,” Murray admits. “We’d had some problems in the band in the past as well because of, more often than not, my behaviour, which was just pure ego and pride. And it just had to go, all of it: fear, ego, pride, it all just had to go and be shed because it was just this fucking horrible waltz between the three of [those ideas] that wouldn’t end.

“It’s about shedding that and realising that you’re enough, and the people that you love so much love you for a reason, and it’s not this bravado, it’s not because you play music,” he continues. “It’s because they think you have a good heart and are a good person, fundamentally. And I had fucked that up numerous times by acting like a fucking asshole. It was shit, we had some awful times.” “But the fact that we’re all still here is testament to that,” Tom adds, in support. “Shout out for being vulnerable,” Jordan nods. “We’ve never wanted to be vulnerable before, we didn’t think it was cool,” Murray laughs, “but actually being vulnerable is the most fucking punk rock thing.”

In line with the band’s newfound open-book policy came a shift in their sonic outlook. Having always managed to dwell on the peripheries, but with a fiercely loyal fanbase, The Xcerts’ knack for creating intriguing but ambitious pop-imbued alt-rock had seen them support the likes of Manchester Orchestra, Biffy Clyro, The Get Up Kids and more, all while maintaining their status as fan and peer favourites. Now, it was time for a drastic change. “Steve said that he wanted people to hate us!” laughs Jordan of their producer’s unusual input. “He said, ‘You’ve been loved for too long, I want people to hate this’.”

On first listen, the endorphin rush of opening track ‘GIMME’ is a shock to the system. After the soaring, classic songwriting of 2018 LP ‘Hold On To Your Heart’, their new album’s scuzzy, breakneck first offering - one that packs in vocal effects, sirens, and hyperpop sounds into its 100-second playing time - marks a total change of pace.

“We all agreed we had to shake things up,” Murray begins. “I had a conversation with the guys, as I had presented them with a couple of songs and they were awful. I was taking too much of the influence of other people; it wasn’t us. Very quickly, the guys were really good and said, ‘This ain’t it’. We’re close enough to say that, and so we completely restarted.

“I remember having this idea of where I thought I could take our sound, this space that we wanted to fill in alternative music, which drew sonically from hip hop but had really noisy and shoegazey guitars, but still mad pop sensibilities, and incorporate more of our punk and emo leanings, but also our love of glitchy stuff,” he continues. “Because we had all this time, we finally felt free, completely free. It’s the most freeing record we’ve made because there was no pressure.”

Instead of a more traditional writing set-up (“Usually in the past, we’ve been a band who writes songs in a room together with instruments,” Tom explains), they began to mess with the format and, as the drummer puts it, “do whatever we wanted”. “You don’t realise at the time, but it’s actually very easy to paint yourself into a corner,” Jordan agrees. “We realised, ‘Oh, we’ve actually just put up all these walls and constraints about who has to be on bass, and who has to be on guitar, because we had been doing it for so long. We just shed all of those.”

Less of a reinvention, and more a “rejuvenation”, as Murray puts it, their new record paints a more multifaceted picture of The Xcerts. Granted, some of their past rules may have been put to bed, but the fingerprints of their discography so far are all over the record. “It’s not like with ‘Hold On To Your Heart’, ‘There Is Only You’, ‘Scatterbrain’ and ‘Cold Wind’…”, Murray starts, “we’re not embarrassed of those records or [acting] like they’re not our DNA. Personally, I feel like on this record, you can hear every album.” “You can hear all those records distilled into one,” agrees Jordan. “On ‘GIMME’, you can see the thread from ‘Scatterbrain’,” Murray adds. “‘Drag Me Out’ has got a bit of a ‘Hold On To Your Heart’ thing; ‘Blame’’s quintessentially us. That’s why I keep saying it’s the purest Xcerts album we’ve ever made because you can hear all of it.”

Even after being dealt a series of tough blows, the sense that The Xcerts are in their best state so far is palpable. Whether that be down to growth, uncertainty or just the fact that all bets were firmly off for a while, their fifth album sees the band entirely content with themselves. “Maybe at times, we were like, ‘This is the first time the band has stopped since we were 14’ and at one point I did think, ‘This is awful, I’ve lost a limb’,” Murray ponders. “But I realised, ‘I am still here, I’m still breathing and smiling’ so it was like, ‘OK, if this was to go, I’m OK…’ That was maybe in the back of our heads, where we were like, ‘Fuck it, if this is our swan song, this is our swan song…” before he grins: “But it’s fucking not.”

‘Learning How To Live and Let Go’ is out 18th August via UNFD.

Tags: The Xcerts, Features, Interviews