Interview: Still
We kind of wanted to say be careful what you wish for because we then wanted to make something that was shorter and more unlistenable. We wanted to take the harshest elements of what we've done on the first record and take them further...I like to think that we've achieved that.
Back in October 2024, a few weeks before the release of its blisteringly miserable second album, Jack Green (drums, vocals) and Fraser Briggs (guitar, vocals) gave up over an hour and a half of their time to talk to Gary Davidson about all things Still. From front to back we ran through formation, member changes, label changes, ushering in lockdown on tour with Torpor and also a good 45 minutes on our love and appreciation for Joe Clayton (most of that got cut, sorry Joe). In honour of Still’s upcoming tour Gary, finally, dusted off the video and set to work repaying the time and gracious compliments Still provided by finally typing this up!
E&D: How and what brought Still together?
Fraser: I moved to Hull for Uni and in my second year I had been talking about wanting to be in a band, someone I lived with had said “oh and my friend’s in a band and they’re looking for a guitarist” so I joined and Jack was drumming in this band. We kind of immediately hit it off, we liked similar kinds of stuff and the stuff that this band was doing wasn’t really what we wanted to do. Jack was driving home after practice one day and I said I think I’m gonna leave this band but I don’t really want to stop jamming with you, which was a really awkward conversation to have because I didn’t really know Jack at this point. So I thought he would just be like no fuck that, but then we started jamming and we’ve kind of seen each other every week for nine years!
Jack: More than nine years, we started jamming just before my eldest child was born, well probably a good year before so it’ll be getting on for about 11 years I want to say. It was probably something like 2013 or 2012.
Fraser: Then it was just us for probably about six years and then we started adding people and then subtracting people and then adding people…so technically Still probably didn’t start until 2016, something like that.
E&D: Your first physical release and your 2021 debut album { } came out through the wondrous Trepanation Recordings. Was that through a Hull connection to Dan (Dolby, Trepanation Recordings and bassist in Mastiff)?
Jack: We didn’t really have that much of a connection with Dan sort of through Hull, we practice at the same practice studio and I think he heard us in passing.
Fraser: Dan had heard us writing the { } album in the practice room for like a couple of years. He approached us and mentioned starting this new label and wanting to put out our album. The album wasn’t quite ready so we came to an agreement to release the EP on tape before releasing the album.
E&D: { } was 100 vinyl, 75 CDs, and 50 cassettes that completely sold out. How did you feel the reaction to that album was from the press and sales?
Jack: I mean I was always incredibly surprised by it I think, we all liked it ourselves, we were all proud of it and what we’d achieved. You get some kind of shared creative output to that point of the precipice where you’re going to push it over the edge into the wider world and let it do its thing, I think it was amazing to then see on the Bandcamp charts. You put it out into the world and nothing changes until you start looking at those metrics and looking at the way that you can kind of measure that success and it was incredible.
Fraser: I think that we always intended to record the album because we felt if we get it recorded then as far as we’re concerned we’ve done what this band can do, if that makes sense. We were just like that’s it, no one has to hear it but just for us if we do it then we’ve ticked it off the list of things to do. I think that maybe by the time we sold like the 40th vinyl I was like oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck someone else is buying this, what the fuck. By 50 I was like oh maybe this wasn’t a complete waste of time. Honestly I’m not making this up, but when your review came through I remember reading it and then sending it to Jack and being like Jack this Gary guy, something is wrong with him. I think he gets this, this guy understands what we’ve done. That was a big turning point for me when I was like oh okay this hasn’t been a waste of time.
E&D: [Blushing and laughing] I am also a miserable bastard so I could relate, but honestly I love the album, it’s so good. On the back of that you got a slot at Arctangent festival in 2022. Did they approach you for that or did you chase that down?
Fraser: I think a couple of years before when we’d played two gigs we thought it would be funny if we applied for Arctangent, so we’d applied years and years before and obviously never heard anything back. We were having some bassist problems, but that’s like all the time, basically the bassist we had at the time said he didn’t want to do this anymore and the very next day we got an offer from Arctangent. We had always talked about when we play Arctangent etc so to get an email from James the next day, it was a very strange coincidence.
E&D: Prior to Arctangent you probably played a tour that you’re never going to experience again when you ushered in the lockdown with Torpor. Was there any question of just calling the tour quits and going home?
Jack: It was when people were starting to kind of panic buy and I remember the host of the Airbnb that we stayed at in Glasgow said sorry guys there’s only one toilet roll, I’ve been to the shops can’t get anymore because everybody’s stripped the shelves. That’s what covid was at that time, nobody was ill with it in the UK yet.
Fraser: It didn’t seem like that much of a big deal when the tour started but when we were driving after the Glasgow date to Leeds, Lauren from Torpor was having a back and forth with the promoter because they were not sure about it. Lauren’s was like “we’re on our way, please do not cancel this because we have a van to pay for”. I think by the time we got there we weren’t sure but then it was that tongue and cheek era of covid where everyone was like let’s not shake hands but touch elbows. Then the day after it was like we were going into lockdown we were like oh shit we shouldn’t have done that we shouldn’t stood in tiny rooms with no ventilation. But we did.
Jack: So covid is our fault basically that’s the takeaway, sorry everyone.
E&D: Since then you have changed to three piece with Zak (vocals) leaving. Was that a bit different to the departure of previous members?
Jack: Out of all the lineup changes we’ve had I’d say that this is the most difficult one. Zak was in the band for a long time and it wasn’t a decision made lightly. It’s then quite difficult for people like Fraser and I as we’re a bit conflict averse and always trying to kind of see how it might work, and theorise what could go right and what could be better and what could be helped and how we could improve things. So I think it was a bit of a shock to him really, it was a bit of a long time coming. I think he himself had had a couple of times where we’d had meetings and that kind of thing that he left thinking ‘oh I thought they were going to kick me out the band because of x, y and z’. Then after the fact when we eventually did move on without him it was largely a shock because he had survived such a long time with issues that had been raised time and time again. I remember looking back at it and thinking it’s the right decision. I think we probably just took too long to do it and kind of led him on and messed him around. I remember feeling pretty bad about that, I kind of beat myself up about it but we’ve always pushed on to think what’s the best thing for the band and that is the bottom line at the end of the day, we need to make sure that the band can keep on pushing on and doing the things that it needs to do.
E&D: The vocal duties are now shared between you both, when you were recording the new album (A Theft) did the knowledge that you have to do the vocals change the dynamic of what you’d been writing?
Fraser: We had almost all of the music finished with the intention that there would be vocals on it. I’ve always been a firm believer that vocals can always be added to something that already exists, maybe that’s easy for me to say as not a vocalist. I see vocals as another instrument within the mix of things so there’s no reason why it can’t be added retrospectively. We did have most of the music written at the point that we lost my dad so it was quite easy to then fit retrofit lyrics to what we already had and this is one of the things that maybe fed into us making the decision to move forward as a three piece. Leading up to recording we obviously had it booked in with Joe (Clayton, No Studio, Pijn, Floodlit Recordings, all round hero) for I don’t know six months and we were getting closer and closer and there still was quite a few songs and parts of songs that didn’t have vocal placement down or didn’t have lyrics written. Historically Jack’s been the main lyric writer and I’ve kind of been the editor and then obviously everything that happened with my dad, with him being ill and passing, I was writing a lot more and it kind of started to make sense that a lot of the songs would then be about that situation and I don’t want anyone else doing these vocals, it feels like this is for me to do. It feels like we’ve come out of it with an album and a body of work that feels a lot more honest for us as who we are and what we’ve made.
E&D: A Theft is bleak in comparison to the ending notes of positivity of { }. If the music was done before the loss and grief from Frasers father’s illness and passing, what was the driving force there?
Jack: The sort of overarching thing that we’d had for a fair while was the idea that the previous album, certainly in the final track, there was an element of a flash of hope. Almost a promise of something that might get better amidst, essentially, what was an album about self-destruction in multiple different forms and guises. The new album was then sort of the idea that from personal experience that frequently things might get better, but not for long. A Theft, even in its infancy, was about let’s make it worse, let’s make it harsher, let’s make it more adequate to categorize how we see life in a very real way. When a few people reviewed the first album they commented that it was too long, that was the only real criticism that we got from it. We kind of wanted to say okay well be careful what you wish for because we then wanted to make something that was shorter and more unlistenable. We wanted to take the harshest elements of what we’ve done on the first record and take them further in order to then get people to listen to that and go ‘I thought the previous album was a hard listen, now I don’t know what I’m going to do’ and you know I like to think that we’ve achieved that.
E&D: So with the two albums you recorded with Joe Clayton. How did you come to pick him for recording that first album?
Fraser: I think it was because we were massive Earth Moves fanboys and other bands as well. When we were deciding who to record the album with we considered the bands that he’s worked with and the sound that he gets for those bands. A lot of the bands had come through Hull and played practice room shows and all these very kind of intimate settings where you realise Joe has done a phenomenal job at getting their sound on record. So yeah it just seemed it was an easy choice really.
E&D: There’s been a bit of a gap from when you recorded A Theft up to the actual release date. What’s been happening in that time?
Jack: What hasn’t been happening! I think for a long time there was that kind of what label are we going to go to, do we want to go to a label, is it going to be a DIY Venture? We knew that Trepanation Recordings was closing doors for new releases and I think we’d always wanted to cast a net and see what else might we be able to turn over. We lost quite a lot of time in that journey of trying to ascertain what’s best for the band. We shook a few trees with mixed results and then fairly early on in the process I think Fraser and Joe had an idea of this label (Floodlit Recordings).
Fraser: After the first album I had been speaking to Joe and being like you should start a label, I’m not saying that I was the catalyst for it but I definitely did keep saying to him well yeah everyone would want to be on your label. When we were recording A Theft Joe had said oh I think I’m going to do it but Joe was very up front and said I would 100% put you out on Floodlit but I think that you should go for someone bigger than us because you deserve more than I could give it. We were like well actually that’s not why we’re doing any of this. We want to work with people that we are aligned with, you have been instrumental in getting us to this point, if you would like to work with us then we would work with you over anyone else.
Jack: I think our original plan was to get some sort of European distribution and some US distribution there were the plans that kind of largely didn’t really pan out. As soon as you start hitting those delays you’ve got a record that’s ready to be released, you’re actually just thinking it’s worse now sitting on it knowing that actually we’ve been waiting for a year already since we recorded it, then before we recorded it there were all sorts of delays on recording as well and then delays on booking into record blah blah blah. At that stage it became we’ve got something really good, why the hell are we holding on for something that we actually don’t think we want, just for the sake of it? So it became that kind of no-brainer of why are we overthinking it, why are we over complicating it? We’ve got something that will clearly work quite nicely and now it feels so validating to think that we’ve made the right choice as far as I’m concerned anyway.
Catch Still & Acceptance Tour:
FEB 27 // GRYPHON, BRISTOL
FEB 28 // ANVIL, BOURNEMOUTH
MAR 1 // ANGEL MICROBREWERY, NOTTS
MAR 2 // WHARF CHAMBERS, LEEDS
