Eleanor Conway Presents: White Lies
- Oct 10, 2008
The musical bastard sons of stunted band 'Fear of Flying' are off to the Iceland Airwaves festival next week with deeply lauded and newly formed band 'White Lies'. They'll be playing on the same bill as Vampire Weekend, CSS and Simian Mobile Disco.
Eleanor Conway chats to Harry McVeigh, lead singer of White Lies.
EC: What are you guys up to at the moment?
HM: We've just been touring around the UK, finished now a couple days ago.
EC: What was the highlight?
HM: Definitely the London show, we all live in West London so we got all of our friends and family down, it was quite a big deal.
EC: Is it true that it's more nerve wracking performing to people that you know?
HM: In some ways yeah, the only time my parents had seen me perform was at our first show in February and that was shit scary like terrified, this all paled in comparison.
EC: For people that don't know too much about White Lies, what should they know do you think?
HM: Our music is very epic, ambitious, we try and incorporate different sounds and take our songs into different directions yet they're all of a very similar subject matter lyrically and sometimes structurally.
EC: You talk of ambition, what would be your ultimate ambition with White Lies?
HM: We've already achieved a lot of ambitions as musicians, we've made an album we're really, really proud of, we've just finished our first headline tour, and that was a big ambition of mine. It was an amazing feeling to be able to play to people every night that have paid to see you play. So, I think we've realized our ambitions already I hope that we can carry on doing it for a number of years and hopefully get out to a wider audience.
EC: White Lies is the musical bastard son of your previous band 'Fear of Flying'. What happened, why the change?
HM: We started Fear of Flying when we were very young, we were probably 16 or 17 years old, and obviously we had a lot to learn, and we learnt that in Fear of Flying. If you listen to the songs at the beginning to when we started that band and towards the end, there was a huge learning curve, I think we struck upon something unique in White Lies, and we definitely deserved to change the name.
EC: The sound of White Lies is very grandiose and genuinely very cinematic and you've been compared to some really amazing people. Does that scare you in the sense that it's a lot to live up to or does it spur you on?
HM: No it's a compliment, bands like Echo and The Bunnymen and Interpol we've been compared to a lot, are bands that we listen to a lot. I think it's a really big compliment I'm glad people are making those comparisons it's a really good thing.
EC: If you could assemble a fantasy band living or dead, who would you put on vocals, on guitar, on drums, on bass?
HM: Oh god that's a really tough question. Jimi Hendrix has always been our favourite guitarist although you would never hear that in our music, he's the person that inspired me to pick up the guitar, he was an incredibly talented musician and well ahead of his time so I'd have him on guitar. On drums I'd have Dave Grohl, because one of my favourite bands growing up was Queens of the Stone Age and he made an album with them called 'Songs for the Deaf' and his drumming on that is amazing, obviously his drumming in Nirvana was incredible. So Dave Grohl on drums. On bass I'd have..... god it's a really hard question actually, erm, the Interpol bassist is absolutely amazing he writes very good basslines, I think his name is Carlos Dengler. And on vocals I'd have someone like Bjork, I think she's an amazing singer.
EC: Ah I love you, I love Bjork...... That brings us to my next question, you're playing the Iceland Airwaves festival next week, who are you looking forward to seeing?
HM: Oh I timed that in very well....
EC: Yeah good job.
HM: I haven't seen the lineup, it's a very mysterious place and festival for me, I've never really heard anything about it, I'm really excited to go over, I'm excited to see the country itself....
EC: Well I've got the lineup in front of me, CSS, Vampire Weekend, The Young Knives, Robots in Disguise, Simian Mobile Disco, any of those take your fancy?
HM: I'm a fan of Vampire Weekend, Jack our drummer runs a club night and label and introduced them to me early on, I think they are a great band. I think their album is very interesting, they are very clever people. I'll definitely try and get out and see them.
EC: I think anyone that can write a song about an element of punctuation is definitely good, I didn't know what an Oxford Comma was before.
HM: I know!
EC: You're called 'White Lies' but what's the most saintly thing you have done recently?
HM: Oooh that's a hard question, I'm sure I have done some nice things in the past, I'm not a complete arsehole.
EC: Perhaps expelling your music upon the ears of the youth that's the nicest thing you have done recently.
HM: (laughs) Yeah, perhaps.
White Lies appear at the Iceland Airwaves Festival on the 18th October 2008.
http://www.icelandairwaves.com/
White Lies site
http://www.whitelies.com/
Words: Eleanor Conway
http://www.elle-online.com
