Ahead of The Night Café’s album release tomorrow, Caitlin had a chat with their guitarist and vocalist, Sean Martin, on the inspiration for the forthcoming release.
Let’s start from the beginning, when did you first encounter music?
I’ve got quite a musical family: my uncles all play guitar and so does my mum. One of my first musical memories is being round at my auntie’s house and everyone getting their guitars out and playing together. My grandad and my nan were both proper musical as well – they both played piano. Growing up around it definitely got me into it. It’s meant more than anything academic to me. It wasn’t even like I had the choice, really, I didn’t try in any academic things because I just wanted to do music!
And it’s worked out!
Yeah, yeah! It’s the way to do it. I’m sure there’s loads of people in bands who end up going to university and getting degrees and stuff like that, but that just wasn’t the case for us. We bailed off sixth form just so we could do the band.
All the instruments I play are played by ear and it’s the same with the boys.
You released ‘A Message To Myself’ two weeks ago today, and I’ve had it on repeat since. How have you found the overall response has been to it?
I reckon it’s been the best out of the whole run-up to the album, to be honest. It’s had the most response of all the singles we’ve put out in the lead up to the album, so far. I think that’s purely because it’s so different, and I don’t think anyone was expecting an acoustic song from us, or one so stripped back. But yeah, I’ve been very happy with it. It’s a very personal song to me so I was a bit nervous about putting it out at first, but now that it’s out, I’m made up. It’s one of those tunes ain’t it; you can just imagine it going off in a gig and the whole crowd singing along, y’know what I mean?
That was the first thing I noticed – it was a lot different to any previous stuff and I loved it, I found it to be really nostalgic. Do you reckon nostalgia plays a significant part in the creative process?
I think that you can definitely take stuff from the past. For me, the way I write music in general is about emotion and feeling anyway, because I’m not technically trained in playing guitar or anything. All the instruments I play are played by ear and it’s the same with the boys; when we write songs, it’s always heavily based off feelings.
It’s weird because sometimes you’ll even write a song and think, “it’s really hard to explain this”, y’know? Say if I hear a song, years ago, and back then I think like, “I wish I wrote that song”, I can’t go out and write that song again, but I would write a different song which gives me the exact same feeling. Nostalgia definitely plays apart there – just from hearing stuff, even remembering conversations in the past, you try to create a feeling from them. It’s more than just writing a song.
There are quite a few songs on the album which are very different to anything we’ve done.
Can we expect more acoustic stuff on the new album?
There aren’t so many acoustic songs, but I think ‘A Message To Myself’ is a good one to maybe shock everyone and let them know that the album is going to be quite different: there are quite a few songs on the album which are very different to anything we’ve done. There’s like, a seven-minute-long song which is essentially a pure waltz – it’s proper slow and emotional. So, there’s some of that, and then there’s some standard Night Cafe songs which are hectic as well so there’s a good mix of everything on there. I think 18 tracks is enough to put loads of different types of music on there.
I can imagine ‘A Message To Myself’ being immense at Leeds festival in a few days. It’ll be nice to see the atmosphere change from being really hectic to slowed down and nostalgic, the crowd will love it.
I know! I’m a bit iffy with singing it live at the moment because I’ve been really unwell over the past few weeks, so my voice isn’t quite there. I’m nervous to sing that one at the moment, but we’re just going to see if I can do it on the day. I hope I can, because it’d be boss – especially at a festival.
No one knows about this, but we’d pre-recorded the song so the vocals do sound a bit different in places…
Was there anything specific which inspired you to write the new album? Was there a sort of milestone event which triggered the writing process, or was it just kind of like, “I’m writing this, you’re writing that, let’s put it together”?
Yeah, it was more of an organic kind of development rather than something sparking the making of it. After we signed our deal we were told that they wanted an album from us, and we were already writing loads of different stuff at the time – it was all quite different and interesting so we thought we could make a big stream of music rather than writing random songs. We’re all very different, so the songs are both lyrically and musically different.
In saying that though, we have put ‘Addicted’ as the first song on the album, which was the first song we ever brought out as The Night Cafe. We thought that we should just put it on anyway, purely because that song means a lot to us. It’s come so far and people love it, so we thought we might as well put it on the album. It’s mad actually: in that song – no one knows about this – we’d pre-recorded the song so the vocals do sound a bit different in places, and in the chorus we ended up keeping the old vocals but I just sang with it.
That’s mad, you’d never guess it!
Yeah, you’ve got like, a seventeen-year-old me and then a twenty-two-year-old me at the same time. It’s so weird.
So, a lot of previous stuff is very reflective of hard times and mental struggles, with that being a really prominent theme in previous music. What kind of themes can we expect on the new album?
There’s still quite a lot of reflection on hard times, I think it’s easier to write the lyrics when you’re still in a bit of a rut anyway. But then again, there are songs about all sorts, really. Songs about love, and songs about looking after your mates –those are quite personal to me. I made sure that when I worded them, I made them more open-ended so that the songs that mean one thing to me can potentially mean something different to you. I always find that that’s important when you’re writing songs. Like when I write songs about a break up, for instance: I’ve never broken up with anyone, so how would I know how it feels? I’ve been with my girlfriend for six years, so I have to imagine what it’d feel like and then kind of write it based on that perspective.
My favourite artist of all time is probably Bon Iver. I really, really like Bon Iver…
I think that that’s what’s so good about music. You can say one thing, or imagine how something feels from someone else’s point of view, but whatever it means to you personally could mean something completely different to someone else – it’s so open to interpretation.
Yeah, exactly! That’s what’s so boss about music: it’s so subjective, but it’s so personal as well.
Have you had any particular artists on repeat lately? Did you find yourself honing in on specific artists for inspiration when writing the album?
I never actively, directly take influence, but I realise sometimes when I’m writing that I take inspiration subconsciously. My favourite artist of all time is probably Bon Iver. I really, really like Bon Iver…
‘A Message To Myself’ reminded me of Bon Iver’s stuff so much. I thought of ‘Holocene’ as soon as I started listening to it.
It’s proper like some of their stuff, isn’t it! That’s exactly what I mean when I say that I probably do it by accident. When I wrote that song, I hadn’t listened to them for ages. Sometimes, even though I’m a musician, I can go months without listening to music. It’s mad. I still play music, so I’m technically still hearing it. My Spotify ran out the other month and I’ve only just renewed it now, but when it ran out, I didn’t even use it. When you don’t have premium, it’s a nightmare to use – I hate it! You shuffle a playlist by someone, and it comes on with a completely different artist, and you’re just like… I don’t know what to do, there.
Can we expect any collaborations in future albums? Would you be up for getting together with another band and writing something together?
Yes lad! We’re not opposed to doing that. We all make beats and stuff, and produce some of our own music individually anyway. I’ve always wanted a girl to sing on one of our songs, but for it to be an R&B singer. Or, a really soft-spoken voice. We’ll see how things go, but we’re definitely open to making tunes with other people in the future.
[The Wombats] got me onstage on my twenty-first when we were at Pride, and made me dress up as a wombat.
A Wombats and Night Cafe collaboration would be sick…
A Scouse one! They got me onstage on my twenty-first when we were at Pride, and made me dress up as one of The Wombats. I really didn’t want to do it – it was my birthday, I just didn’t want to dress up as a wombat and be sweaty in a costume! They planned it out so they got me up on stage and their sound tech Brian came and took the hat off me so then everyone could see it was me on stage. I was proper para, like, fuckin’ hell. They made everyone sing happy birthday to me, and I had to sing the tune with them.
What’s your favourite place to perform?
Liverpool, always. Manchester is a really good city to play in, as well. Festivals are always fun because everyone’s just off their heads, so they’re always having a good time. But yeah, top one is Liverpool.
Knew it would be, nothing beats Liverpool. Finally, what’s the biggest obstacle you’ve had to overcome as a band?
I think that one thing I found while doing what we’re doing, is that you’ll have a lot of people who are pure doubters. Even at school, I had teachers call me out of class and say, “I know you think that your band is going to make it and that, but there are thousands out there and it probably won’t”. And those were the music teachers as well. Proper bitter that, ain’t it?
I bet you they’re the ones who act sound with you now.
Yeah exactly, like there’s pictures of us up on their (classroom) walls now in the music department, apparently… But yeah, biggest piece of advice is just don’t listen to anyone else. Do what you want to do.
Yeah, don’t listen to music teachers apparently…
Yeah, but always listen to music technicians though. They’re sick. There was a music technician in our school who was like, don’t listen to them lad, you’re going to smash it.
The Night Café’s debut album, 0151, is out 23 August 2019. In the meantime, catch up on Spotify or Apple.
