White Lies

White Lies aren’t finished yet

The group of lads from Ealing, London debuted nearly 10 years ago with ‘To Lose My Life…’. They’ve seen and done everything in the biz, from tour buses to first homes, stage dives to dishwashing, and American sell-out gigs to just a few pints at home with their school mates, they’re seasoned professionals so we said: “let’s talk”.

America is a big scary place ruled by an orange-faced manchild. The little people are kind and loving, the food plentiful, but money talks and swears. The country is like a wild horse, proud and tall, something that needs to be ‘broken’ by British bands before they can earn their keep. White lies have tamed it once before, but when I spoke to frontman Harry McVeigh they had just returned from a second go.

“America’s always tough for us – I think it’s tough for every British band; it’s quite a hard place to go and tour… There’s a lot of distance to cover between the big cities so it’s hard to book a tour where you’re not travelling on a bus for three days straight so we were really apprehensive… We’ve been to America and had good trips and bad trips.”

But, the apprehension ought not to have existed by the sounds.

“The shows were great. Most of them sold out, and the fans were really appreciative… [Five] seems to have landed quite well over there – I think it has been our best-received album since the first one.

To go and play to people in those cities, and to have them come to the shows and check out our new album was great, we were really pleased.”

After cracking the US, the UK and Europe might seem like small potatoes in comparison. But the dates at London’s Brixton Academy are special this year, they mark the tenth anniversary of debut album To Lose My Life; “I think [the tour dates] are pretty much almost exactly ten years to the day of the last time we played there, so it’s going to be emotional to cap off our career so far. We can’t wait to go out there and play again.”

It must be emotional to say “farewell to the fairground” only to one day come back to it.

If we cast our minds back over the last ten years. There’s no question that the guys have evolved – things are different, with age comes long-term relationships, marriages and their own homes. As their 30s begin to loom, they’ve begun to bookend their career so far.

“Looking back on it, when we started we were so young, almost children really, like we 19, straight out of school, we didn’t really know how any of it worked. We were so lucky to have some great people working with us [when we] made To Lose My Life. Ed Buller and Max Dingel really guided us through the whole process, we had no idea.”

Not a bad first chapter, their debut was originally titled To Lose My Life or Lose My Love. It was a dark, monochrome record, too cool at the time to be played at the school disco. That’s understandable now when you realise that the same Ed and Max had previously worked with Suede and The Killers, they were in good hands.

Reflecting on this milestone the band are confident to say nothing has been lost. In fact, quite the opposite, they’ve grown and built upon the industrial foreground of their debut.

“… At various stages, we’ve become much more independent with how we do things. The first two or three albums we were signed to a major record label, so we had loads of money spent on whatever we wanted to do. Lots of people were always really guiding us through the process but since then, through albums four and five, we’ve done a lot more on our own. We’ve had to budget, find the money to make it, book the studio and produce it ourselves.”

I wondered – now that more effort was needed – what keeps them going as a band? Many of their contemporaries have long since thrown in the towel and called it a day.

“We still enjoy it, first and foremost. We have a lot of fun touring, writing and recording – it’s still an amazing experience for us. We still want to create good music and I think we’ve got a lot to explore with what we do – our songwriting and live performances. It’s not the end for us quite yet.”

Being on the road, touring with smelly feet and clothes, travelling from one changing circumstance to the next must put a strain on any group. The only way you could get through it is with a group of people who can keep the mood rolling as if you were kids again.

“We’re really close friends and see each other all the time. Even when we’re off work we spend a lot of time together – we hang around with the same people from school.” It’s nice to hear about artists being just, well, normal people for a change; “We also know when to take a little time off – get back to the home life, wash the dishes and everything.”

As for the rest of 2019, there are still some all-important UK and European tour dates: “We always enjoy playing in Europe – it’s one of the easier places to tour and we have a reasonable following pretty much everywhere. I think it’s the most tickets we’ve ever sold there, so it’s onwards and upwards really.”

Although White Lies are clearly here to stay, ready to see what nifty cuts they can create next, it looks like they’re having a relative rest next year. “I think we’re probably doing a few festivals over the summer, a few shows here and there,” “Album number six?”, “Perhaps,” Harry hints: “maybe towards the end of the year we’ll start thinking about some new music…”

Listen to White Lies on Spotify and Apple Music. Get the latest edition of our print magazine HERE.

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