Elbow are a very impressive live band, both in the plethora of instruments they incorporate into their shows, and in the drop-dead charisma of front man Guy Garvey. “We all love them,” Nash says, “and it was amazing to have the opportunity to watch them every night. We really learned a lot from that.” The most important lesson, says Nash, was in the importance of engaging and interacting with the audience. “We’re all quite shy,” he says with a laugh, “so we’re not the best at that sort of thing, but Guy is completely in his element when it comes to crowds. We picked up a lot of little things from him. I’m sure if you saw us now, you’d see the effect of that and you’d think, ‘Hey, nice mugging!’ Seeing Elbow every night was a master-class in how to interact with an audience, and how to get an audience going.”
Bombay Bicycle Club are in the midst of touring their hugely successful third album, A Different Kind Of Fix. The album represented a bold step forward for the young band, featuring intricate arrangements that blended electronic and acoustic elements. The single Shuffle is a perfect example of this, a sweet and shambolic indie rock song, built around a breezy piano loop that recalls the blissful abandon of early ‘90s dance music. When the album was first released, the band said that the aim of these songs was to get everybody dancing more at their shows, and Nash says that he has now seen the evidence of this. “We’ve always been pretty energetic on stage, but I guess the music on the new album lends itself to a bit more dancing, at least for us on stage,” he says. “We’re touring the States right now, and everybody at the shows is dancing and swaying with their hands in the air – it’s a really great time.”
Adopting this newer, more danceable sound has come with its own set of challenges – not least of all, the demands of touring with a large amount of extra gear. “Getting these new songs right has meant touring with a bunch more gear and a bunch more people,” Nash says. “It took a long time for us to figure out how to play those songs live. Before that, it was just two guitars, a bass and drums, and we’d just turn up with some guitar amps and play the songs through. With the last album, there’s so much going on that it really did take a long time to work out how to play it all. I think we’ve just about …” he pauses. “Well not ‘just about’, I think we’ve been in a good place for a while now. It’s given us a lot of confidence, and it’s really opened a lot of doors for us.”
Over the last few months, Bombay Bicycle Club have been writing new songs, and inching towards a sound that’s even more electronic and sample-based than A Different Kind Of Fix. “It won’t be full-on electronic dance music or anything,” Nash explains, “but there are songs of ours on the last album like Shuffle, which had that sample-based rhythm – we’d like to explore a little bit more stuff like that. On A Different Kind Of Fix, there were smaller parts of electronics, and I think they’ll be brought to the forefront this time – we’ll still have guitar and bass and drum and all that stuff, but we’ll be taking a bit more of what we’ve learned on this tour and putting that into the songs.” There are four new songs ready to go, and Nash tells me that currently, at least two of these have found their way into the live show. “There are even more than those sitting around unfinished,” he continues, “so hopefully by the end of the year we’ll have an album’s worth of them. We’re very excited with how it’s going.”
BY ALASDAIR DUNCAN
