Coach Party: "London Calling? It's such a treat"

Hi! Bedankt voor jullie tijd en gefeliciteerd met het nieuwe album. Hoe gaat het?
Dankjewel! Met ons gaat het goed, we zijn nog steeds hyped over de release van het album en hebben echt een fantastische tijd met touren.

We kijken ernaar uit om jullie terug te zien bij London Calling Festival in Paradiso. Wat mogen we deze keer verwachten van jullie show?
We hebben een paar jaar geleden zo'n geweldige tijd gehad bij London Calling. Paradiso is net zo mooi als de rest van Amsterdam en een van onze favoriete plekken weg van huis. We hebben sindsdien zoveel getourd dat we er wel van overtuigd zijn dat je een grotere en meer zelfverzekerde show van ons kunt verwachten. We hebben een aantal geweldige vrienden gemaakt in Nederland en we kunnen niet wachten om jullie allemaal weer te zien!

Jullie hebben nu jullie officiële debuutalbum uitgebracht na het uitbrengen van drie EP's. Waarom voelde dit als het juiste moment om het debuutalbum uit te brengen?
Toen we aan de plaat begonnen te werken, wisten we niet of het een album of een nieuwe EP zou worden. Toen we eenmaal aardig ver in het proces waren, vonden we dat de nummers waaraan we werkten dieper aanvoelden dan voorheen, en meer tijd nodig zouden hebben dan een EP om het goed op je te laten inwerken. Het was fantastisch om eindelijk een album uit te brengen, en het heeft een geheel nieuwe dynamiek in de live set gebracht. Het is geweldig om 8-10 nieuwe nummers in de set te spelen, in plaats van 4-5, zoals we in het verleden met EP's hebben getourd.

Hoe is het album KILLJOY tot dusver ontvangen? Wat zijn de reacties?
De reacties zijn geweldig. Zoveel lieve woorden van over de hele wereld, of het nu de pers is, vrienden van ons, recensies, totale vreemden: het was echt overweldigend en we zijn zo blij dat we iets geproduceerd hebben waarmee mensen zich echt verbonden lijken te voelen.

Can you tell us a bit more about the album title, where does the name Killjoy come from?
The process of naming the album was HARD. Even more difficult than naming the band. 'Killjoy' was taken from Joe's list of ideas, and for us it sums up the common themes throughout the record: chances of happiness/ achievement often followed by crippling setbacks and disappointment. Life has been full of extremes for pretty much everyone recently, it seems.

What are important themes for you that occur on the album?
'What's The Point In Life' is really about living by your own morals, picking your own battles and leaving enough time to have fun before you die. That one is super important to us. The intention, as with most of what we write, is to bring people together with some common ground.

What’s everyone’s personal favourite song from the new album to play live and why?
We'd collectively go with 'Parasite', 'Always Been You' and 'Micro Aggression' as our top 3 at the moment. 'Parasite' is a mosh-pit guarantee. 'Always Been You' is one of the newest additions to the live set, and very pretty. 'Micro Aggression' is great as a hype song: it feels like the gig really takes off when we play that one.

I’ve read in another interview that -at the beginning of the band- Jes and Steph wrote some songs together out of boredom and Joe and Guy were so excited about the demos that they wanted to join the band. How’s the songwriting process now? Is it still Jess and Steph that write the base for the songs or have those dynamics changed since then?
Once we started playing together, the writing dynamic quickly became a four way collaborative thing. A lot of our songs are written spontaneously in the rehearsal room, sparked from anything from a stupid jam, or someone making a mistake which sounded cool at the time. There's also the songs which any one of us might have been working on in their own time before showing the rest of us, and even then it never feels complete until all four of us have brought our ideas to the table.

It’s impressive that all your music is produced by your band’s drummer Guy. Can you name an advantage and a disadvantage of producing your music 100% within the band?
An advantage of having the producer in the band, is that they'll have a connection with the band which is as deep as every other member, so they'll instinctively know what ideas are and aren't worth pursuing or suggesting if the record is going to speak for all of the personalities involved. It's difficult to name a disadvantage, but there is a lot of pressure involved. As a band member and producer, it's kind of like you need to be doubly proud at every stage of the process, which isn't always an easy energy to keep up.

You’ve played a lot of gigs in the Netherlands before, what’s your favourite memory of the country thus far?
Our first headline show in the Netherlands was at V11 in Rotterdam, and even though we live on an island, it took us until that day to play a gig on a boat. Aside from being an amazing gig, it marked the beginning of a week-long tour of the Netherlands which we were so lucky to be in a position to do at the time, which felt like a big step towards becoming what we would consider a serious band. So that day, and that show hold really fond memories for us and was a super important trip. We had a crazy amount of coffee from Harvest Cafe that day. Very good coffee.

Any artists from the London Calling line-up that you want to see?
It's an incredible line-up and we're particularly big fans of Wednesday, so we can't wait for their set. Just wanna see as much as possible. It's such a treat!

Text: Charlotte Rombach & Laurie Zantinge