MUSIC INTERVIEW: WHITE LIES

Harry McVeigh & Jack Lawrence-Brown Talk About Creating An Uplifting & Upbeat ‘Ritual’

By: Team Buzzine

January 14, 2011

The members of London-based band White Lies originally started playing together for fun while still in school, but when their self-described ‘weekend project’ turned serious in 2007, the UK music scene quickly started to pay attention. In 2009, when their debut album, To Lose My Life, beat out competition from Lady Gaga and the Kings of Leon to debut at #1 on the UK charts, that attention became global. White Lies are now set to release Ritual, their much anticipated second album, and Buzzine got the chance to sit down and talk with the band’s Harry McVeigh and Jack Lawrence-Brown when they came to LA for Filter Magazine’s Culture Collide Festival…

Stefan Goldby: Tell us a little bit about the beginnings of the band back in England -- moving from Fear of Flying into White Lies…

Harry McVeigh: We started playing music together when we were in school, I guess, and it was started very much as a hobby, just a thing to do to fill the time of the weekends and after school and stuff. And also, it was kind of cool to say to your friends that you were in a band, even though we weren’t… We didn’t take it that seriously, and I genuinely didn’t think we were particularly good, and I didn’t think we were good until we… sort of hit a wall, and we wrote a couple of songs that were a little bit different, so we just decided to move on from the band as we were (Fear of Flying) and change our name and start something fresh, and that’s when it all took off for us, really.  It just sort of happened since then. We got management, we got signed, we made a record, and ever since then we’ve been playing shows around the world and spending time here in LA. It’s great…

SG: Your debut album went straight in at #1 in the UK. Not too shabby, all things considered…exactly where were you guys when you heard that’s what had happened? 

Jack Lawrence-Brown: In the week leading up to the week of release in the UK, we were quite nervous and excited, and you get the mid-week through and they’re telling you that you look like you’re gonna chart throughout the week, so from about the Tuesday or Wednesday of that week, we had a good idea that we were gonna chart quite highly with the record, which was more than we really wished for, to be honest.  We were just happy that it had been released. And we were actually in Russia at the time, because we were filming a video for “Farewell to Fairground,” which is a very long way from anywhere that we know, and it was just the three of us, actually, with a couple of directors and cameramen and stuff, and it was quite surreal. It was quite a surreal place to find out. We got a text in the morning of the Sunday when the album charted at #1, telling us that we’d be charting there.  And it was an amazing moment. It was actually quite nice to not be in London or in England when we found out. It was nice to be so far away and it was just the three of us, and it was a real moment in our career, obviously—a really important moment in our career.  Everything since then has kind of been catapulted because of the album doing so well to start with in the UK, which was more than we ever hoped for, I think. 

SG: So that took care of an amazing next 12 or 18 months of your lives right there…[Smiles] It also set the potential stage for worrying about what in America they call it the sophomore slump, and in England the NME probably calls it something much more vicious: When it came to following up a huge global hit like To Lose My Life, what was it that you had in mind?

HM: I think, after spending so much time on the road - 18 months… no, two years, actually - because we were touring for about six months before our first record even came out - I think we’d just had so much pent-up energy and we’d taken in so much new music and expanded our record collections ten times since we started the band, so with so much going in and no time or space to output creatively, I think we were just ready when it came to recording our second record. We were ready straight off the block so it only took us, from the beginning of the process to the end, five months - including writing and everything, to finish our second album, and I think it was just something we were really looking forward to, and when it came around, we really enjoyed it, and I think that’s definitely reflected in the mood of the record and the songs on the record. It’s a lot more uplifting and I think you could even go so far as to say upbeat than the first record, which is something that a lot of people picked up on, on the first - how serious and almost how gloomy it was. I think that’s really turned around on the second record, and it’s a reflection of how much we enjoyed making it, so it was definitely not a typical second album. We were really ready to write and record again, and we really enjoyed the whole process.

SG: When it came to actually going into the studio with Alan Moulder, is there a day or a moment or a song that stands out in your mind?

JLB: The whole process of making the second record with Alan Moulder was a massive thing for us. He mixed the first album for us, which was a big deal… he’s an amazing producer and world-renowned mixer as well, and we loved what he did with the first record in terms of that. And when we heard that he was interested in producing for us and wanted to get involved with the next record, it was a no-brainer for us. We just said straight away, “yeah, we’re gonna do it with Alan”. I don’t know if there was one moment that was really vital or important in terms of working with him. He had his input throughout the whole recording process, and when people hear the new record who are aware of his previous work, they’ll hear bits in songs and they’ll hear moments in songs, and that would probably be enough for them to realize then and there that it’s an Alan Moulder record. I think that’s great because it’s full of White Lies ideas and songs and a lot of techniques that we learned over the last couple of years, but at the same time, there’s lots of stuff which you can tell is Alan’s input, and that’s vital, I think, when you’re making a record. Loads of bands say that’s true - it has to be a collaboration: It can’t be more one person or the other person. It’s got to be the band and the producer working together, and I think definitely that’s what we achieved with the whole process.  It was a lot of fun, and Alan Moulder is surprisingly childish when it comes to his humor, which is perfect for working with us! We got along very, very well.  It was a really good atmosphere in the studio. We didn’t have to feel like you had to be on your guard or you had to be too polite to him or anything.  It was like we were good friends by the end of the first week. We felt very comfortable.

SG: What are you most proud of about the new record?

HM: I think we probably, individually, as member of White Lies, have our own moment making the record, or our own song that we’re probably most proud of or happiest with, in terms of the way it turned out. I think a song that we can all agree on is probably “Peace and Quiet”, as a recording and as a piece of music, and also, as musicians, I think we’re probably all very happy with that. I think it’s an example of how much we’ve learned over the last couple of years, touring and playing together pretty much every day, and playing our instruments more than anything else in our lives. I think that’s really aided a lot of the recording on the second album, but especially in that song, you can hear the musicianship and how much we’ve learned in the last two years, letting it shine through in a very obvious way. We made it right at the end of the recording—it’s a little bit freer as a recording. We didn’t try to focus too much on making it completely perfect and bang-on. We allowed for a few sloppy mistakes to come through in the song, and I think it makes it sound more human and more emotional, more touching, and I think it’s just a great moment on the record for me, and I love it.

SG: You’ve mentioned it several times - the amount of time you guys have spent playing live over the last couple of years. Other than letting natural mistakes go and not being quite such a perfectionist in the studio, what else do you think you guys have learned from the boot camp of global touring?

JLB: The whole thing is a learning process, from when you first start especially. The first six months is really the period where you’re learning everything. You have to learn the difference between being able to play your songs live and being able to perform your songs live, which is two different things completely. The first six months, I’m sure you can find, on YouTube, videos of us playing in the early stages of White Lies’ career and we look very stiff and very awkward. It was something that takes time to get used to. Playing live is still a weird concept to me, but a good live show is the best thing that a band can do, really. If you do a show which is big and impresses the audience, it’s the best way to connect and enhance what you’re doing as a band, and it’s important to be able to get that right, and it takes a long time to learn. Especially things like festivals.  Festivals--it’s a whole different process.

SG: You are here in LA this week playing at Filter Magazine’s Culture Collide Festival, and you play three very different sets (one acoustic, one nighttime club, one daytime outdoor stage). You’ve played CMJ, you’ve played SXSW, you’ve played European festivals and around the world. How do you approach that week -what is it you try to get out of coming here to LA and playing three shows in four days at this festival?

HM: For us, I think we just try to take every day as it comes. Obviously we have loads of people around us planning everything that we do—our tour manager and our management who are with us on this trip, and obviously the label as well, so we just do what we’re told! We have a lot of trust in our tour manager, and they are very experienced and they know what they’re doing, and haven’t let us down so far. We’re doing pretty well, so I just like to take each day as it comes. It is nice when you get a bit of time off, especially in a place like LA—you just sit by the pool and relax, which is great…

JLB: What’s nice about these couple of shows that we’ve done out here is--I wasn’t aware of this when we came over, but they’re all-ages shows, which is great because over here, I think even more so than in Europe or the UK, the restrictions on kids wanting to go to shows is pretty tough so we do these shows—we did one yesterday, the Block Party show just out in the middle of the street somewhere, and there were so many younger kids at that show who came up to us afterwards and we got to chat with them, and they were all saying that this was like the first show that we’d done that they were legally allowed to go to, and I think that’s great. I’m glad we got the chance to do that because I know we’ve got quite a lot of young fans and it’s nice to make sure they’re not too left out of anything. 

SG: One of the other shows you’ve played in 2010 was when you were one of the first people to play at Factory 51—the new Factory Records venue in Manchester. Was that kind of a big deal for you personally or just another show?

HM: When you look at it in terms of the history of music, obviously Manchester is a very important place, and Factory Records was very important, but it’s not something that we had any real connection to. We listen to a lot of music from that period. I just don’t think that’s our favorite. But it was still a cool thing to do, and I think playing any show in Manchester is great. There’s always a good crowd out there, and people understand and enjoy music there. The Factory thing didn’t really have that much of a connection with us—it didn’t resonate with us that much, but it was a really cool show to play, so we did it.

SG: After hundreds of White Lies shows, which has been the best? What has been the best single “I love my life” moment from being on the road?

JLB: I’m sure we all have our own favorite shows, but there have been so many that a lot of them, inevitably, you forget. I forget loads of stuff anyway. But there are some that I know that I won’t ever forget. My favorites to play were the two shows we did at the end of last year in London at the Brixton Academy, for no other reason than that it was obviously the biggest venue for us to have ever played—the two nights there—and that was amazing, to have so many people coming to watch us. But for me, the important thing about that show was all the weird memories I had of going to that venue when I was in my early to mid-teens, going and watching all sorts of bands. I saw Rancid there, actually, which was great. But it was quite surreal, to play at a venue that you have so many memories of and just be on the other side of the stage. It was great. It was really amazing. 

SG: For you, Jack, aside from being a musician, you’ve been booking shows in the UK as well. I’m assuming there’s less of that these days…

JLB: When I was younger—when we were still in school, actually, when we were starting White Lies, I had a couple of friends who I started doing club nights with in London, and we started a little record label, and that record label is still running. It was really good fun, actually. I can’t do it anymore because I’m never in London and it would be stupid. In fact, when we were out in Belgium making the first record, I was trying to promote a show in London at the same time, and everything just fell apart. I had to cancel the show the night before, and that’s when I realized I really can’t do both those things at once. But it’s nice to know that the Chess Club thing, which is the label, and the promotions thing is still going, it’s just not got me involved anymore. But it was a lot of fun. And good life experience, I think. Maybe when White Lies break up, I’ll end up doing it again. It might not be for like 35 years, but still…

SG: So here we are in LA: your new album is in the can, and you just played new music for fans old and new three times this week. What is it that you hope people walk away thinking, after seeing you guys play?

HM: For the second album, we’ve definitely tried to step up the live show as much as possible, actually, so I just hope people walk away from the show feeling that it was an event and feeling like they’ve seen some good songs played well.  I think one of the biggest compliments we got from playing our first record was that people felt that the live show was better than the record, and I hope that’s what people feel when we play the songs from the second record as well.  That’s the icing on the cake, really. That would be the best thing. Hopefully people can discover new sides and new aspects to our music, and us, when they come and see us play live. I think that’s important. 

White Lies' 'Ritual' is released via Fiction/Geffen Records on

January 17/18, 2011 in the UK/US.