Attic Lights

6^th April 2006: Glasgow

I was celebrating my 18^th birthday in the traditional manner of a teenager in Scotland’s biggest city. I remember next to nothing. However, there is one thing that sticks in my mind, amongst the blur of clubs, pubs and dives. I can recall seeing a band playing in one of our foremost musical meccas, Mono. I remember being transfixed by the sound; harmonising voices underscoring melodic guitars, across a thunderous rhythm section. In my mind, it was perfect guitar pop. It was one of those euphoric moments you experience from time to time, which really – if you’ll pardon the pun – struck a chord. That band was Attic Lights.

Six years on, the local boys have been through a lot. A pair of well received albums, line-up changes, and more than a few high profile shows under their belts. Now they’re back with a new single. Orbison is a tribute to the legendary 50’s rock n’ roller, Roy Orbison, but is thoroughly modern sounding; tight punchy beat backing a typically anthemic distorted guitar melody. However, the band’s deft use of arrangement would certainly have made the Big O smile. I caught up with frontman Kev Sherry for a chat.

What have you been up to since the start of the New Year?

Since the start of the New Year we have been writing new songs for our next record. No plans for when that might be released yet but we tend to write all the time and since the songs are coming we thought we might as well plough that furrow and see what comes out. Other than that, we have been shooting videos and getting prepped for the single releases this year. The first single is called ‘Orbison’ and is out now. The video is full of pop culture references to the late great Roy Orbison, some obvious, some less so. I got to re-enact a scene from my favourite film (David Lynch’s Blue Velvet) in the video, which was great fun. There’s also a reference to a weird, kinky website that specialises in stories about Roy Orbison getting wrapped in clingfilm. You know, just the usual kind of stuff. We hope people will spend some time with the video and see if they can spot all the various references to Roy Orbison in popular culture.

You’ve recently welcomed back your original guitarist, Jamie, back into the fold. How does it feel to have him back?

It’s fantastic to have Jamie back. It’s just like old times and being back in the studio is amazing because Jamie is an amazing guitarist and a great ‘ideas man’ so it’s added a different dimension to the sound of our live shows. And plus, we get to be in a band with one of our best mates again.

What are your plans for the summer? Any big shows or festival spots?

No direct plans for the summer other than to release another single, play lots of gigs and hopefully play a bunch of festivals. We played the main stage at the Benicassim music festival last summer and also turned up to play at another big festival in Alicante to discover that we were the festival headliners, which was a nice surprise. I’ll take something similar again this summer! Everyone in the band has a real hunger about them at the moment which I guess, comes from the big gap between records and also the return of Jamie on lead guitar. At the moment we feel ready to take on the world. I think the summer will be busy but great fun.

Any plans to get back into the studio?

Colin (Bass) and I, are always writing and recording bits and pieces here and there. No time scale yet for album number three but we have so many new songs at the moment that we could go into the studio tomorrow and record it. I’m quite keen to get cracking on it but we will have to have a meeting and sit down and work out when everyone is free and when everyone else feels comfortable with the new tracks. Then we will hopefully go in and make a record sooner rather than later.

Two albums in – how do you see the band developing? Is there anything you’d like to do as a group?

From the style of the songs we have been writing for our next album, the band’s sound is heading down a guitar heavy but more melancholy sound. We’ve been listening to a lot of 90′s American alternative rock (Pavement, Granddaddy, Mazzy Star, Dinosaur Jnr.) Certainly, Colin and I have been developing our songs that way. We are all incredibly excited about the next album. We think it’s gonna be our best yet. We’ve done two records of direct, indie pop ‘Brill Building’ style song writing and I think now we want to try something new. We seem to be moving towards a slightly darker style with a looser more varied feel.

As a group I think we’d like to play as many countries as we can and just keep knocking out albums. It’s great fun. The way we look at it is, if you get to be in a band and release records, why would ever want to stop?