Six Of The Best – Weathership

This Friday (7th March) Teesside’s haunting alt-indie merchants Weathership are set to perform a headline show at Middlesbrough Town Hall’s courtroom alongside Church, Honey and Robyn Errico. 

Tickets for this evening are available here and ahead of the show, Weathership’s frontman James Riggall tells us about his influences with a Six Of The Best…

Film – Interstellar (2014)
When I was five, my aunty gave me a VHS with Star Wars (A New Hope, but remember when it was just called Star Wars?) on one side and Superman II on the other, I watched them constantly, through better or worse. As I got older I could add Jaws, Alien and Se7en to that list. 

   But over the last decade or so, there’s only one film on par, and that’s Interstellar, from its cinematography, to its Zimmer soundtrack and its complex look at time travel it blows my mind whenever I watch it.

Art – Michael Sheehan
I’ve spent a lot of time since lockdown relearning how to draw, I’ve always loved drawing, but was put off as there was a million better kids at it through school. A few bits of art have really gripped me lately, the obvious being Stanley Donwood’s work with Radiohead/Thom Yorke and the ambiguousness of his work that still seems to fit. I also love landscape photos (if anyone’s seen any of Weathership’s art) and the ‘Let Not the Deep Swallow Me Up’ exhibition using photos by Michael Sreenan last year was lush and a heavy heavy influence on our next release. 

Zine – All the locals
I’m prone to picking up a Mojo special if it’s got a band on the front I like, but my main reads are all the local mags, which started off by seeing if myself or Weathership had featured but now pick them up to see what’s going on, which isn’t a bad thing. I’m a sucker for artwork and band names with a proper meaning, so I often check bands out from narc et al.

Podcast – Smartless with Jason Bateman and Will Arnett
I spend most evenings listening to podcasts about snakes and RNLI, depending on what gets my boy to sleep and my wife has recently been listening to Comedians Jake Lambert and George Lewis’ podcast, which is pretty funny.

I like to delve into the Smartless podcast with Jason Bateman and Will Arnett when I’ve ran out of music to listen to.

Adam Buxton’s is really good too!

Music – 2000’s indie
We all know the 90s had britpop, but indie in the early to mid 2000s is vastly underrated. Remember when NME really mattered? If they said a band were good, they generally had some nous about them. 

I’ve been reconnecting with Interpol, The Strokes, Bloc Party and The Man Who by Travis (ok I think this was late 90’s) lately. 

The production on bands’ albums during this era was fantastic too,  wonder if Jackknife Lee is up for some Weathership production?

Community – Teesside Music Scene
2024 was a big year for our local scene, lots of bands getting the privilege of playing local festivals and with each other at different gigs. 

Previous years and coming out of COVID, there was an edge to everyone’s attitude in terms of opportunities but I’m seeing a lot more togetherness and community within bands and the support we’ve had and tried to show other bands has been great. Roll on 2025.