Bassist Julian Que puts the long wait down to a crazy amount of touring. “Your schedule fills up to the point you have a whole year booked out and you realise ok so we’re touring until next year and then we’ve got a month off then we start doing it again. If we don’t record an album then, then we’re not going to release an album for three years. It’s kind of scary looking that far ahead, so you just have to book it in and jump into it.”
Into the Mouth of Hungry Giants is the result of them finally getting into the studio to put together an LP; 11 tracks that swing between punk rock, Eastern European folk, and a myriad of other influences. It can probably be tricky then explaining to people at parties what your band sounds like…
“It is still kind of a tricky one,” says Cue. “It’s your child, you want to do it justice, and explain as humbly and without ego as you can. But it is very hard to describe, because we come at it from so many angles, we genre mash, that’s kind of our thing. If you catch me in the right mood I’ll talk your ear off about it, if you catch me at the wrong time I’ll probably stutter at you.”
They are a hard band to explain, so listening and seeing is really the only solution, and they’ve been giving people plenty of opportunities to do exactly that; touring through America, Canada, Mexico, as well as Europe where they got to play in Hungary, a country whose folk music traditions have a significant bearing on The Barons of Tang’s music. “We were really interested in what they would make of our strange mash up version that’s very influenced by music from their culture, and it was great, everyone loved it.”
Their time in Budapest capped off a three-month tour that spanned two separate continents, a surreal end to a hefty amount of gigging, but not a minute seems lost on Que. “I think you have these moments just before performing in any country that you’ve never performed in – it’s kind of like, ‘Wow, I managed to get here somehow, that’s awesome’. In my memory it feels like a blink of an eye, like a very small portion of time but when it was happening it felt like an eternity. But it’s cool to have those opportunities to travel with your music and get it over an ocean.”
It’s certainly a long way from where they started; self-described as “down and out” musos back in 2007, The Barons of Tang provided those in the group new direction in their musical lives. “It was definitely one of those life changing things,” Que ponders. “But we didn’t all get together saying, ‘This is the kind of band we’re going to tour the world with’ or anything like that. It has been a really big, if not the biggest factor in all our lives for the past seven years I guess.”
It’s not without it’s downsides though, when quizzed about a particular track on the album, Three Piece Lawsuit, Que opens up about the bureaucratic world the band still has to deal with. “It’s not a specific story about anyone in the band,” Que explains. “I mean, we’re playing in a punk band, and you have two lawyers and an accountant, and insurance. And you don’t know how you ended up in this place where you play in a band, a band that no one has ever heard of, and you still need a lawyer,” Que laughs at the ridiculousness of it all. He doesn’t take it all too seriously though, finishing our conversation with a statement that every musician can agree with: “I’m just happy people listen to it”.
BY GARRY WESTMORE
