INTERVIEW: POP WILL EAT ITSELF

Virtuosos of eating pop and crunching beats, forever un-genreable, sometimes indefinable, but always extremely enjoyable, Pop Will Eat Itself, are a very special kind of band. Known for their frenzied, energetic live shows, albums packed with expressive, electro punk bangers ft hypnotic, trance-like rhythms, and pure sampling chaos which makes it so easy to fall in love with the Poppies over and over again. 

The unique duality of the two frontmen’s vocals, Graham Crabb and Mary Byker, meld together into two unstoppable forces of the punk dance rebellion, fortified by fellow masters of their craft; Cliff Hewitt (drums), Davey Bennett (bass) and Adam Mole (guitar and keyboard – more about that later). 

They’re back with their electric eighth installment, Delete Everything; an album packed with loads of fun, whilst also embracing new sounds and experimentation. It’s skillfully mastered and mixed, tackling interesting, fresh ideas through sick beats and electronic bops. (You can read the full review here.)

Here, I catch up with Graham and Adam to learn more about what’s in store for the Poppies… 

Mack: Could you please introduce yourself and your practice?

Graham: I am Graham, or Crabbi as I sometimes go by. I am co-vocalist and I’ll be hitting a few things on this tour as well.

Adam: Not me I hope! 

Graham: You never know.

Adam: I’ll look forward to that! (Laughs) I’m Adam, a co-friend of Graham’s for many years. I think we go back to eighty… two or three. Been in a number of bands with Graham and I still play with Pop Will Eat Itself. I’m going to be playing guitar a lot on this tour, and also hitting some samples as I usually do. 

Mack: I always enjoy when you stand on the keyboard stand!

Adam: I’ve never actually really fallen off. It’s gonna happen one day, isn’t it? And it’s gonna be quite a height, I reckon.

Graham: We’ll get a good cheer when it happens. 

Adam: I think we’ll get the biggest cheer we’ve ever had! Because I’m playing guitar more, it’s less likely I’m gonna be standing on it too much, but I’m sure I’ll find a moment in time. 

Mack: Were you playing guitar on the album recording as well?

Adam: Not a lot because Davey’s a better guitarist than me. He’s a good instrumentalist, bass and guitar, so he makes it sound better, clearer, bigger, fatter, nicer than I ever could. I do play a few little things but basically when people say we need some guitar, they don’t ask me, they ask Davey.

Mack: Why are you drawn to using samples and referencing pop culture in your music?

Adam: It was new wasn’t it? At the time. 

Graham: Yeah. New and exciting. 

Adam: A bit naughty.

Graham: Dangerous. It was a bit provocative, seeing what you could get away with and what you couldn’t. Inspired by a lot of early hip hop, and then just taking it further. Because we were primarily a rock band, or alternative band, it kind of put some sampling in a different context, which gave us our unique sound.

Mack: Who or what are some of your creative inspirations? 

Graham: Crikey. 

Adam: Graham’s mine. 

Graham: Adam’s Mine.

Mack: Awww. 

Adam: We’re fans of music, aren’t we? Or else we wouldn’t have wanted to be in a band. I mean, the punk thing for me was what made me wanna be in a band, like The Clash. Being in a band, you travel to certain countries and you soak up things. We went to Europe and places were open later, and there was new music we might not have heard before. I remember Ciccone Youth with their tracks like Into The Groovey, I think that was quite an influence. You can hear that on the track that Gray wrote called, There’s No Love Between Us Anymore. I remember Craig, our manager, flew out to Sweden somewhere, and bought our first ever sampler. It was a keyboard, and didn’t hold much of a sample. It probably was about two seconds before you had to start loading floppy discs. It wasn’t really very useful at the time, but it was an early sample. And Gray would listen to late night TV and tape it on a video, adverts and things like that. So that was how it started.

Graham: You asked about Heroes, didn’t you? Terry Hall of The Specials, who we’ve sadly lost now.

Adam: Joe Strummer was one of mine, who we’ve sadly lost of course, as well. 

Graham: When I went to see The Specials at Birmingham, they had a row of bouncers that stop people getting to the front section. Only they didn’t always stop everyone getting through, ’cause some of the rowdier bands there’d just be a big charge, and the bouncers who would step aside rather than get trampled. I ended up on stage dancing with Terry Hall. He was a bit of a hero of mine. Then Chuck D, from Public Enemy, always loved them, and Jane’s Addiction. 

Mack: I recently read about your carbon offset project, could you tell me more about it and how it came up?

Adam: It started with a guy called Michael Dun Gate, who works on a farm. Partly to do with bad winters and the poorer summers, he started to turn his farm more into rewilding as they call it. They let Meadows just grow, (introduce) bee hives and hedgehog boxes and that kind of thing. He messaged me on Facebook, saying he’s a big fan and said we could offset our carbon footprint, if basically we’d note down everything; every tour we do, every form of transport – Literally everything you can think of that our band is involved with. He (Michael) planted a field of wild poppies, in our iconic Design Republic robot head shape. And the rabbits and deer and birds ate them all. But we wanted some kind of visual thing because it’s trying to make people aware of the situation. We are just trying to encourage people to think that they could do it too. If you plant a little oak sapling somewhere, that’s gonna grow for up to a thousand years. If you look on Green Acres Future website, you can see the work they do. We’re in our third year of doing it now and we cut carbon emissions from 57 to four tonnes, which is amazing. I’m an old hippy, you see? But why not? We need to look after the planet, and I don’t think we’re doing a great job at the minute. If we spent time planting trees instead of cutting them down, I think it would be a better place.

Reboot the planet. Feels like that’s what it needs – some different thinking about society and politics and how the world runs itself. It’s like a machine and it’s not being run very nicely at the moment

Mack: The new album, Delete Everything is awesome. Could you tell me about the process of writing it and where did you get your initial ideas and concepts from?

Graham: We haven’t done an album for some time, so the roots of some of the ideas stretch back a few years, and they just gradually progressed. We all mucked in, all had ideas and did it digitally. That’s kind of the way you do things these days, when you live scattered across the country.

Adam: I think we had to trust each other a little bit. It has been done quite DIY. 

Graham: I think if you’re a sort of generic, drums, bass, guitar band, then you do get in the same space together. But we use a lot of different layering techniques – it’s layer upon layer, until we are getting the type of sound that we want. 

Mack: Have you found the technology to make your sounds easier now compared to the past?

Graham: Yeah, it’s a lot easier now. You’ve kind of got everything you need in a laptop. Everything’s integrated. The difference is incredible to what it used to be – back in the olden days of six second samplers. You can be more creative because there is so much there at your fingertips to explore and just experiment. 

Mack: Could you talk more about the meaning of the title, Delete everything?

Graham: It’s kind of to comment on the times, how it’s very hard to get at the truth. Once something gets out there on social media, or something’s somebody’s said or fabricated, it’s out there. You don’t know whether it’s true. People get canceled for things that they say, or try to remove records and facts. It’s just kind of confusing times, and Delete Everything is kind of take it back to zero if you could, but obviously you can’t. 

Adam: Start again. 

Graham: Yeah. 

Adam: Reboot the planet. It feels like that’s what it needs – some different thinking about society and politics and how the world runs itself. It’s like a machine and it’s not being run very nicely at the moment, or very well, I don’t think. Or cooperatively. Is that a word? Co-op-er-a-tively? It would be better if it tried to run with everybody in mind a little bit more.

Mack: When I was listening to the new album, it made me think about what it means to be a punk in today’s society, especially in the digital age. What does punk mean to you?

Graham: It’s an attitude, the frame of mind that you don’t feel you have to play the game. You’re doing something because you want to do it, and want total freedom of expression. It’s weird because the way music has developed, it is kind of a level playing field anyway. I think tens of thousands of tracks get added to Spotify every day. So the DIY ethos is everywhere. It’s just about doing our own way. And accepting the pitfalls that may come with us. 

Adam: Yeah. Punk’s not dead.

Mack: What are some of the things that you are excited for listeners to hear in the new album? Is there anything interesting or special that they should listen / look out for?

Graham: It’s available on vinyl and there’s three versions of it. A plain black, radioactive pink and dystopian explosion – and the fancy version has two bonus tracks on it.

Adam: I’ve got a favorite track called Play a Fast Un. I think a lot of people think ‘this is shit’, ’cause they’ll think, ‘there should be a gap there’ or something. We sort of decided to just almost cut it up so that sections jump out at you. The idea is to make it sound a little bit like that doesn’t sound right, and I want people to realise that’s what we want. It’s supposed to sound like that. I like the craziness of it. I thought the other day, why do people always tune their guitars before they play? Everyone tunes their guitars, you know? Put six strings on a guitar, just do one! Music’s meant to be a little bit crazy. It’s probably not that crazy by the way. I don’t think you’re gonna get there and it’s gonna be Captain Beefart or Frank Zapper.

Graham: WTF.

Mack: I like how the song keeps the momentum and is like a tornado of sounds.

Adam: (On the story of the song) It’s when The Wonder Stuff, who we were in a band with. Miles got this bit of attitude about him and a bit of a reputation of being a bit narky on stage. So I’d be in the crowd and I’d shout out, ‘Play a un fast, ya bastard’. And he just wouldn’t be able to keep his straight face. He’d laugh and he used to say ‘Fucking hell Moley, shut up will ya!’. I’m too shy to do it now…

Mack: What can we expect from the Poppies upcoming live shows?

Graham: We’ve got some live visuals going on that’ll be interesting. Me and Mary will be hitting a few things, like a keyboard and some drum pads. We’ve got some great support bands playing with us – Gans, Meryll Streek, City Dog and The Lydons. We’re gonna be playing quite a few tracks off the new album, but they’ll be interspersed with the classic tracks. And we’ve got new merch designed by Designers Republic. It’s action packed.

Adam: I’ll be doing the usual, trying to not fall off a keyboard stand, that’ll be my major thing.

Mack: Do you have any fun memories of playing in Newcastle? 

Adam: Newcastle’s ace, one of my favorite cities. The Riverside was our first regular place. I think we played with Primal Scream and The Shop Assistants. There used to be a pub opposite, I think it was The Barley Mao, and that was the first time we started really going to pubs before the gig. A lot of fans used to come in there, and one guy used to say, no-one left the pub until they saw me! ‘Cause they knew that we were going to be on stage in about a quarter of an hour. We used to stick a load of fake names on the guest list, which were generally Viz characters. If we forgot someone’s name, you’d have to say, ‘My name’s Buster Gonad, plus one. Roger Mellie plus three.’ (Laughs) 

Graham: Fat Slags. 

Adam: Sid the Sexist. We’d all be drinking at four corners of the pub and Ray would shout to me, ‘Billy the Fish in tonight?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve seen him, but Buster Gonad ain’t turned up yet.’

Graham: We’ve given them away now. We’ll have to think of a new lot. 

Adam: We used to have 300 on (the guestlist). No wonder we made no bloody money!

Mack: What is any advice that you’d like to offer people that might be starting out in the music or arts industry? 

Adam: Be yourself and just, well, you can copy, I suppose we copied a little bit so we can’t say just totally be yourself, but it was sort of something new.

Graham: I’d say don’t give up the day job… There’s not much money in it anymore. 

Adam: Enjoy it. Do it with friends. Put a lot on a backing track, that’s the way forward. Just have one of you on a push bike. Take home all the cash on your own. Don’t have five or six and a load of crew traveling around the country.

Mack: That would lessen your carbon footprint, if it’s just one person! 

Adam: You see, I’m saying true to form, I’m on point.

You can catch Pop Will Eat Itself on their upcoming Delete Everything Tour, stopping off at Newcastle on Thursday 13th November at The Boiler Shop.