It’s Sweetpool Week in OUTSIDELEFT, and to celebrate the release of Sweetpool’s brilliant third album 3am, A Head Of Snakes, vocalist and guitarist Nic Beales was kind enough to speak to Jonathan Thornton via email.
OUTSIDELEFT: Sweetpool’s new album 3AM, A Head Of Snakes is out now. Can you tell us a bit about it?
Nic: A combination of white wine and that new song whirring round my head, tends to wake me up in the middle of the night – in fact I’m doing this interview at twenty to 4 having been awake for the last 40 minutes the since the magic 3AM... I mean, I hate it, especially as the ideas are usually abandoned come the morning or sound terrible when I pick my guitar up to try them – or even if I get to record the song and send it to Ant the drummer for his opinion (let’s call him the bellwether of the band) — he trashes it, I feel crushed and it’s back to the drawing board — and I’m tired all the time! Yes, it’s a strange process!
This album took a forever to record—it took about a year and a half which seemed like an eternity to me. I like to do something then move on to the next thing, then move onto the next thing but there were months and months of constant tinkering, it was a horrible — it was like a battle of wills. Fortunately after about 14 of those months, we brought in Si Reeves from Blotto to produce the thing and he turned it into the sparkling beauty that you see today! Wish he’d been involved from the beginning, we’d have done it in half the time!
The big difference with this album over the previous two is that, with this one, we got loads of musicians to come into to help build on the basic Sweetpool three-piece sound. We’ve added violin, flute, sax and synth along with Rachel Mayfield doing vocals on a couple of tracks. There was one day when we were doing the recording when hordes of people turned up to play who I’d never met and had no idea who they were – it was very weird but they were all brilliant and I think it takes it to another level. Translating songs like ‘Train’ or ‘Moon’ to a live experience without all those extra musicians might be something of a challenge – but I guess just we’ll just need to hire the choir and orchestra for the night!!
OL: Sweetpool play psychedelic rock, but beyond that it’s difficult to categorize you – I hear Hawkind, punk, krautrock, among other influences. Is the only real point of genres the smashing sound when you break them?
Nic: As Mark E Smith probably said ‘we’re eternally grateful to our past influences’ – we’re a collection of the shards of things that we’ve loved – although probably nothing from the last thirty years! I guess we’re mashing up psych and post punk with Krautrock. It’s funny because people come up to us at gigs and say ‘that was good- you sounded like’ then reel off 5 bands that we obviously love, just for the next person to come up and reel off 5 completely different bands! Is it synthesis where chemicals combine with surprising results? Perhaps the combination of wildly different elements has created something new?
OL: Conversely, does this creative freedom make it more difficult for the band to break out?
Nic: Ok, conceded it’s a very long time since I listened to the dirge of Radio 1 but I think, in my world of reference that we’re really commercial – ok, many people would disagree but I love my definition of a pop song—we don’t do noise for noise’s sake. We want people to sing along!
OL: Sweetpool write songs, which involve structure, but at the same time there’s an embrace of the noise and chaos of crazy psychedelic jams. How do you balance these two?
Nic Beales: Well, I still think it’s a pop song, they have verses, they have choruses — ok there’s room to breathe so you can go off on that 20 minutes psychedelic jam but we’ll always get back to chorus eventually — because it’s a pop song. We do songs that we’ve played hundreds of times that have never been played the same twice! I think that makes us different to other groups who might think we’re a noise band — I mean yes there’s elements of noise in there but these are always structured pop songs.
OL: Your lyrics involve a lot of dark observational humour. Are you inspired by things that annoy you?
Nic: Obviously there’s a lot to go on with the craziness in the world at the moment and you’ve got the stupidity of the human condition and the fluidity of truth within social media. There’s the obvious spiral back to pre-Second World War politics and their ongoing blame game and flag waving. Add to all that the battle of egos within the band and suddenly you have a lot to talk about. There’s absurdity in there as well-you know, like in ‘Superunnatural’ where a chap buys a gun because he thinks it makes him look cool. He ends up shooting the gun whilst posing in front of a mirror, well, it made me laugh! Certainly most of my best lyrics come along when really I’m quite pissed off and the battle of egos is always very inspirational – it’s quite a torrid but inspirational! People often say ‘is your relation with your wife terrible? – I say, no, it’s fantastic - but your lyrics? I say it’s not about her!!
OL: The live shows look exciting, with lots of stage lights an face paint. Is being visually striking as important as being sonically striking?
Nic: We’ve always been a very good live band because we can lock into each other’s groove but as an image It just started off with everybody doing their own thing in a dress sense. To be honest, I started with the face paint because we were playing live and I had a terrible rash on my face which I wanted to cover it up – then it just carried on. It’s a bit like clown make up – I’m hiding behind it but I find it quite empowering. Put your face paint on and you can be suddenly somebody else, suddenly you feel a bit of a you’re a star. I love a band to look like a band not just people who’ve wandered off the street – I think about those 70s rock and roll bands – I mean the Ramones what an image that was, Bowie, Bolan – so recently it’s all started to gel with a lot of black clothing and face paint – we finally look like a band.
OL: You released debut album Triple Earth Star and a live album Space Bar in the same year. What led to this decision?
Nic: Triple Earth Star also took a long time to record – it came from my rather weird decision to tell anybody who’d listen that I was writing a death country album – this was years ago, pre-covid and then I obviously, eventually I realised that that Death country wasn’t a genre , it didn’t exist but a lot of the songs came from that. On the night that we had a launch gig for the album we recorded the concert and it became a live album. Funny really, Triple Earth Star probably costs thousands to record – the live album cost 135 quid -boom! We might well do another one!
OL: You already had an event in Knowle for the launch of the new record. Will the band then be going on tour? (And selfishly, will you be playing Liverpool?)
Nic: So yep we want to get round the country and play bigger gigs. When we started three years ago we basically only played in Birmingham – this year I think we’ve only got one Birmingham gig (June 11th, Hare and Hounds, Kings Heath) with all the other gigs being in far flung places. It is really nice to turn up, not knowing anybody in the crowd – but the audience sort of knowing you! Sadly no Liverpool gigs yet.
OL: What’s next for Sweetpool?
Nic: Because 3am took so long to record, there’s a multitude of songs written that didn’t get on the album – so I think it’s an EP next then another album? Progress always seems so slow but we really want to be pop stars – Middle age pop stars – do you get those things? – I guess we’ll find out!
Thank you Nic Beales for speaking with OUTSIDELEFT.
SWEETPOOL WEEK IN OUTSIDELEFT
MON: It's Sweetpool Week All Week in Outsideleft → | Record Release In-Store at Slow Century →
TUES: Happy Shopper with Jase →
WEDS: Happy Shopper Ant → | Interview with Nic →
THU: 3AM. LP review by Jonathan Thornton → | Happy Shopper with Nic →
FRI: Some Songs Sweetpool really need you to know about...
essential information
Sweetpool main image live photo by Betty P, studio photo by Louise Holgate
Sweetpool's website is here →
