The Horrors: The Big Chill

The Horrors get our writer Richard Davis unsettled, excited and creeped out as he tries to explain how the most unlikely band of recent years have triumphed when the music industry could have buried them before they even got to release a note.
Words: Richard Davis
Photos: Gavin Watson

The Horrors give me the horrors. Not because of their fight-night hairstyles and apparel, noise-attack first album or impossibly confident stage show. No, not because of any of these things. They give me the horrors, the willies, or whatever you want to call the creeping, unsettling torment that climbs one’s neck in the middle of the night, simply because they exist. They shouldn’t, you see. How can they? They do not appear to fit in with any current musical genre (more of which later); they seem to do whatever the hell they like and nevertheless reap rewards - other bands may find this unfair. What’s more, they are blissfully unaware – at least ostensibly – of what is going on around them. And still, they exist. They thrive.

Add to this the fact of their recent seismic shift in direction – from Damned-like screamo-trash to groovy psychedelia – and we appear to have ourselves a bit of a headfuck to deal with.

Cynics, of course, may – with that knowing smile cynics get that implies any other view is mere naivety – accuse The Horrors of deliberately adapting their sound to a more “user-friendly” one, in order to increase their audience. And pragmatic industry ‘experts’ may say that this is a perfectly acceptable thing to do – natural, even. (We should always bear in mind Hollywood writer William Goldman’s succinct final-word declaration on such matters, which applies equally well to the music industry: “Nobody knows anything.”

But to the actual members of The Horrors such thoughts are out of the question, and the people who have them, more challenges for the untameable multi-headed beast that is The Horrors. “Tell those people to come to my house, have a beer and look at my record collection,” challenges Tom Furse, The Horrors’ bassist. “They’ll soon change their minds.”
Rhys Webb, keyboards, is more exasperated. “I can’t even find the words to answer such an idea. It’s so ridiculous a point that it doesn’t make sense to me. It’s literally beyond my understanding. It’s so far away from what we’re doing – that’s why I can’t be bothered to explain.” He looks away in disgust.

There are others still – usually those in the know, in the right crowd, in Shoreditch – who state confidently that ‘Primary Colours’ is the album The Horrors were supposed to have made, the album that represents the band members’ real interests and characters.

Furse agrees with this last section of society: “People who know us won’t be surprised by the new record – they’re quite aware of who we are and why we do what we do. Most people don’t have that access though.”

“I think this record is a lot more personal,” says Webb, pulling himself together. “A lot more involved. We went off and got completely involved and lost in the music. So it feels really close – every tiny sound. This is our record and we’re completely in it.”

Furse: “But that’s because we’ve learned to express ourselves in a more effective way.”

Webb: “It’s not something that’s preconceived or calculated. You can’t explain it in rational terms.”

So, how does Faris Badwan, impossibly tall and impossibly slender frontman, feel about such matters? A man hounded by tabloids, now seemingly forgotten by them (a development he seems relieved about); a man who clearly feels his band’s time has come. “We haven’t ended up with a mainstream sounding record, and Geoff [Barrow, of Portishead, and producer of ‘Primary Colours’] is not a mainstream producer. But pop music is something we’re all into. Mainstream production is disgusting though. Cheap, throwaway and disposable. I genuinely can’t handle it.”

As he speaks, the edgy head Horror sketches manically on pieces of paper. The drawings are funny and impressive, little men with absurdity-filled speech bubbles. Badwan, like PJ Harvey before him, had his Illustration degree at St Martin’s interrupted by the onset of his band’s career. “Sixties production is generally amazing – really warm – it sounds real,” he continues. “Anyone who talks like that [cynically]… it’s just a knee-jerk reaction. The songs are ours. That argument doesn’t make sense on any level. Selling out implies a compromise of ideals, and we would never compromise sonically as a band at all.”
These expressions of feelings all ring true. As The Horrors speak, you can tell that it really is straight from the heart. There is no artifice, even from this most aesthetic of bands.

What cannot be denied, though, is the marked difference between the two albums. And this is something the band acknowledges. “Strange House was recorded more than two years ago,” explains Webb. “Initially we were never thinking about releasing an album – we were just concerned with being in a band. We got together and just played Sonics covers and ‘Jack the Ripper’, and suddenly we were in the position of being able to make an album. But we felt we were making great music. The band grew. We’re just a punk band, and the way it goes with punk bands is like that. Look at The Sex Pistols and Public Image – the difference is amazing.”

But they were two different bands – albeit with the same leading light. Which actually brings us to an interesting point: I don’t think I was the only reviewer to make remarks to the effect that ‘Primary Colours’ could have been made by a different band from the one that made ‘Strange House’. Do The Horrors feel like a different band?
“I think we move very quickly,” says Furse. “There are lots of bands that don’t want to get better – we do. We’re a much better band than we were when we made ‘Strange House’.”
Webb: “A lot of the ideas in the first album continue into the new one. Although it sounds different, many of the ideas are similar.”
“We feel like exactly the same band,” declares Furse, as if to draw a line under the matter.
But Webb has more to add: “There’s a lot of stuff we’ve recorded that people haven’t heard, from between the two albums. If people heard that stuff, they would hear the transition.”
Badwan concurs: “People forget that there were two years between the two albums. You don’t make a record and then not do anything for two years and then suddenly there’s loads of new songs. You’re doing stuff all the time. We ended up with about 40 songs. We’re about to record a new single which is not on the album, and that’s from those sessions. It’s really just a gradual progression, and a totally natural one as well.”

The thought of massive amounts of unreleased Horrors material seems too enticing to ignore. Will we (the punters) ever hear it?
“There’s about three albums’ worth of material [from the intervening period],” says Badwan. “But I don’t believe in bands showing every single stage of the process; because you don’t like bands for that reason. I don’t want total transparency from a band. I don’t want to know everything about them and their lives. I can see it’s interesting, but it sometimes detracts from the music.

“I think that the way everything is – the internet and the rest of it – everyone’s trying to pull as much mystery away as they can. We’re trying to keep as much as possible.
“The Horrors will never have a twitter.
“I don’t want to be aware of all these annoying aspects of people’s personalities. It’s thrust in my face how awful people are. People think every mundane aspect of their lives is worth broadcasting.”
So, there you have it – Faris has spoken: The Horrors will never twitter, tweet, or whatever it’s called. I believe he really means it. And I’m glad he means it (I don’t have a Twitter, and have no intention of getting one). Sticking to it, however, is another thing entirely. The Machine has a way of insisting, advising, bullying, coercing.
The Horrors though, as previously stated, do whatever the fuck they like, seemingly without even a nod to possible consequences. They can also, at times, seem blissfully, charmingly, beautifully unaware of what’s going on around them. For instance, how can a band much regarded as leaders of the ‘dark rock’ scene be oblivious to its existence?
“I wasn’t aware there was a scene,” says Badwan convincingly. “And if there is one, we’re definitely not in it. But I love some things, like HTRK. Great album. Many of those bands, though, just play the same venues around London again and again – it’s annoying.” Ah, some attentiveness then. “If something’s totally accessible then it’s like it’s disposable. Friends forming bands all the time sounds good at face value, but when it’s not very good, and you have no new ideas… and there’s a million bands doing that, saturating an area of London with rubbish. On the other hand that’s kind of how we started. I guess my main issue with it is that I don’t really feel that many of those bands have it in them to push to the next level and raise their game. That’s the problem really.”

So The Horrors are not the kings of darkrock, then?
Furse: [laughs] “Not at all!”
Webb: “No way! We don’t feel like we have anything to do musically with any of those bands, although I do really like some of them.”
“People have a natural tendency to form patterns,” adds Furse. “I’d rather have people invent their own genre.”
Although there is a dramatic difference between The Horrors’ two albums, we haven’t (yet) heard the transitional process. There is a theory that creative people work all their lives on what is essentially one project, which forms the series that makes up individual works. The artist just keeps trying to perfect, trying to get it right. Faris Badwan seems to agree with this, and that perhaps ‘Primary Colours’ in its groove-oriented elegance is one step closer to an imagined, eternally-elusive destination.
“Yeah, you can’t ever finish. You’re lucky if you create something as close to perfect as you can get it.”