WU LYF / LANEWAY Q&A

Thom Brown had a chat with Ellery James Roberts, lead vocalist and organist from Manchester-based WU LYF (World Unite / Lucifer Youth Foundation). The band’s self-branded style of ‘heavy pop’ is uncompromising, savage and beautiful - catch them at Auckland’s St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival on 30th January 2012.

Where are you right now?

Just got back from America and I’m extremely jetlagged.

How has the tour been going?

America has been sick. I think by the end of it every show was sold out, everyone knew all the words to the songs and we got a good reaction.

Is the Laneway Festival the first time you’ve played NZ?

Yeah. I’m excited; I don’t know much about New Zealand.

You chose to record your debut album Go Tell Fire To The Mountain yourselves in an abandoned church in Manchester. What was the reason behind that?

We all had a vision of what we wanted to do and we didn’t particularly enjoy working in studios. The record we wanted to make was a raw portrait without any frills, without unnecessary production. It sounds simple, like when we were 19 in a church, you know?

And in terms of the writing process for the album, were the songs fully formed when you took them into the church?

For the most part they were all there, although we had to learn to play some songs differently because of the church’s reverberation. We had to be a lot more simple and direct, so there were songs we wrote five minutes before we recorded them - for instance, that jam at the end of We Bros was just us having a good time, so we thought we’d carry it on.

Is this honest, no frills approach an important aspect of the band?

Definitely, it’s the mentality behind how we want to present ourselves, yeah. We do all the strategy and planning, there’s no sort of ‘middleman’. I think our ‘internet presence’ is kind of just a reflection of how we are. Also, I think people get bored with music when artists kind of create it with this instant gratification, when they just churn out these ‘club-banger’ songs - but I think music needs to have a purpose to it, rather than just a hot mp3 download on a blog. The quality of music has been reduced, as has the way people consume it.

The emotive quality of your voice is very unique; do you draw on any particular influences as a singer?

When all my friends were into hip hop or punk, my Mum took me to see Lou Reed when I was 13, he was the first real musician I got into. Then I got into Tom Waits when I was about 15 and he was another big inspiration. No one really directly…I’ve started to develop a little fascination with flamenco music, that kind of super emotive, powerful voice. I guess it’s like, a kind of, heightened emotion, almost theatrical.

Your lyrics are almost filmic, weaving a kind of strange narrative. Is that a fair examination?

Yes, films like Terrence Malick’s Badlands is always something I envisioned stylistically and poetically and even watching someone like John Cassavetes in The Killers, there’s a kind of real, ragged beauty embedded in it, which is similar to the approach I take.

What would you do if you weren’t playing music?

I would like to do something very real. I get a bit annoyed at music, the kind of whole song and dance of it, it’s very superficial - “how funny can I pretend to be on stage” – it just doesn’t really matter. I’d like to do something that had a real affect on people’s lives, like a filmmaker that makes documentaries about people and places. In the UK there’s this thing called ‘Unreported World’. I’d like to do something like that. Maybe I will, sometime in my life.

On a lighter note, who would you pick to play you in an autobiographical film? Someone badass…like Bill Murray. I’d need to show two sides of my ego tho, so I’d have someone insanely handsome and dashingly muscular like Ryan Gosling.

What’s been your proudest moment with Wu Lyf to date?

Releasing our record. Finally seeing it in a shop that you have to walk into to physically buy and hold it on your hands.

Do you have any pre-show rituals before you go onstage?

Yeah, I do a little boxing warm-up that I learnt, to get my heart pumping and to wake me up.

Perhaps we might get a chance to see it at Laneway next year?

Depends on how deranged we’ve got touring, we might get temperamental. Good things inspire good things, it’s gonna be a good little show.