“We’d done all the songs we had grown up playing,” Lewis Durham explains in his London lilt, en route from the pub. “So, really, we were forced to write songs for the new album because we didn’t really have any other songs.
“It is more of an expression of our influences, and ourselves, really,” he confirms. “We have no expectations for it. It will just be interesting to see how people accept it.”
What you can expect is KDL’s signature sound, with a fair bit of growth and experimentation thrown in; wearing their influences on their collective sleeves from track-to-track. The first cut Tomorrow is a feel good Jamaican dancehall number; there is a bunch of boogie woogie barroom piano, as evidenced by the aptly named Boogie Woogie Jam, and there are a few seven-odd-minute instrumentals like What Quid and Smoking In Heaven thrown in.
“We were recording these songs not knowing if anything was any good,” Lewis reflects of the recording process, and the new album’s title track. “We didn’t have a picture for the front of the album or a title. So my dad had a dream where my mum suggested the title Smoking In Heaven for the song. In the dream he didn’t like it, but when he woke up he thought better of it. So that’s what we went with.”
It was something that their unique inter-band dynamic would also help in understanding their musical leanings. “Because we’re a family, the band really is the one thing that holds us together,” Lewis muses on the complex relationship of being in a band with his sisters and on tour with his folks. “If we hadn’t grown up playing music then we all would have gotten jobs and moved out by now.
“When we are on the road it doesn’t feel like, ‘Oh there’s mum and there’s dad,’ it’s just like they’re in the band. A lot of people ask, ‘Don’t they tell you to stop drinking or whatever?’ but when we’re on tour we are fully looking forward to partying and staying out late. They don’t treat us like children,” he grins. :They just treat us like human beings. It’s not like they are parents; they are just members of the band.
“Like on the Coldplay tour [of America] we would just jump in the back of someone’s truck and head off to some bar and do whatever, just like a normal band would.”
Rough and tumble touring antics may be one thing, but Lewis hardly needs his parents to discipline him when it comes to music festivals: particularly those held in the UK. “In my opinion there are too many British festivals. I am not a fan of them, they don’t really do it for me,” Lewis grumbles.
“I don’t like the camping or beer outta plastic cups. And it’s not even beer; it’s lager! I like a nice, real, ale out of a glass. You can’t go for a shit and you can’t have a shower. It’s just too dirty. I don’t think festivals used to be like that. I think they used to be where people went to hear music rather than go to get outta their face on drugs while having music on the side. Not all festivals are bad though, mostly just the English ones; they’re really dirty and not in a good way. But that’s just me being an old man.”
Quite obviously, British festivals aside, Kitty Daisy And Lewis possess something of a mature family dynamic: it was the love of music passed down from their parents that saw the band form in the first place. “We always played music together since we were kids,” Lewis acknowledges.
“We were brought up with instruments in the house and records always being played. There is a musical side to the family and there was always people singing and playing guitars: we just grew up into that. Whenever there was a family get together there would be jam sessions and stuff. So we just learnt how to play from jamming, really.
“Later on we got invited on to stage to play music, so forming the band was purely by accident, really; people just kept asking us to play. So we did and that’s pretty much how it started.”
The siblings are proud not only of their sound but how that sound is recorded. “The reason why we use that old equipment is to capture the purest sounds possible,” recommends Lewis.
“It is not just because it’s analogue, it’s to do with the quality of the system. For example, analogue was used predominantly in the ’90s but that sounds completely different to a 1940s recording, meaning analogue doesn’t mean ‘old sounding’. We found that using that equipment gave us a pure, natural sound that represented what was going on in the room.
“For example, if you played guitar in the room and recorded it through that equipment it sounded like the room; we tried the digital stuff but it wasn’t the same. It transformed and changed it. So the reason we use that equipment is to try and replicate the actual sound of us playing. We are not using it to get an old sound.”
