In the case of We All Want To it’s because they kicked off last year’s great album Come Up Invisible with a song where Steward rants about all the things he thinks you should stop doing, like “Stop writing letters to yourself, you’re never gonna read ’em” and “Stop caressing your phone!” Predictably, in person he turns out to be totally pleasant even when being interviewed at 10 in the morning, happy to answer questions from someone who uses a phone to take photos at gigs.
“I’m in the generation that grew up without it,” Steward says of the always-connected technology he’s suspicious of, “and suddenly it’s kicked in so I’ve sort of seen both halves and I can see the merits of all technology and whatever, but I can see how it’s very invasive and it takes up your life way too much.”
That’s depressingly reasonable of him. While Steward may actually be a nice guy, he does admit to one flaw: being controlling of the other band members. “We’ll be at band practice writing a song together or something like that and basically I’ll be telling people what to do,” he admits. “Sometimes a little too much. Sometimes our drummer Dan [Mc Naulty], I’ll say, ‘Can I show you the beat I’ve got in mind for this song, Dan? I’ll get on the drums and show you the beat.’ And he’s like a saint, he’s really patient with me, very into everyone putting in their two cents, so he doesn’t mind. But yeah, sometimes I get a bit bossy and ‘It’s got to be like this!’”
On the subject of drummers, their recent video for No Signs features plenty of them. The second track from Come Up Invisible, it’s now been given lead billing on a new EP rather than being released as a single.
“We’ve had a few songs lying around from the album session and we had a few new ones and we’re just suckers for it,” Steward explains. “We’re suckers for working.” The video features a parade of musicians including members of Tape/Off, Grand Atlantic, Skypilot, Drawn From Bees and Edward Guglielmino as well as We All Want to themselves taking turns playing the drums. Skye Staniford, We All Want To’s other singer and also flautist, seems to particularly enjoy bashing away at an instrument that’s much less delicate than her flute. No other instruments are shown in the clip, and you find yourself concentrating on the song’s beat with a singular focus, with the constantly changing stream of different players giving it variety. Obviously, some are better drummers than others.
“It’s really amazing actually because at least half the people there had never played the drums before,” Steward says, “they just got on the kit and did it and it was incredible. They might not have been playing the beat correctly with their foot and the kickdrum but they were doing the tsh tsh tsh with their hands and it looked great.“
It does look great, but it wasn’t easy. What started with a simple idea actually became much more difficult once the filming had finished. “It started being a nightmare when the poor guy who filmed it had to try and edit it, because we’d been playing along to it and it was very loud in the studio, really cranking. Distorted. Everyone was just the tiniest bit out of time, racing ahead and pulling back and things like that. It was very hard for him to edit and get all the particular fills and get all the rolls.
“We actually had to give it to a second guy to edit in the hope that he could just see through everyone’s inconsistencies and nail it together in this sort of rough-and-ready way and he was able to. Even Darek [Mudge], our guitarist, and me had to sit with him and try and push it into time and squeeze it, push it and pull it until it was in time. It took a month or two to edit properly.”
BY JODY MACGREGOR
