Carey Willets- bass and vocals
Joel Pott- guitar and vocals
Steve Roberts- drums and vocals
Tim Wanstall - Keyboards and vocals
Depending on who you ask, Athlete are either Britain's answer to Pavement, the new Steely Dan or Beta Band's little brothers. Infact, the four-piece from Deptford, South London can be all of the above, all at once, then change their minds midway through a song and head off in a different direction. In short, youıll have a hard time trying to pin Athleteıs sound down, although it's good fun giving it a go. Formed at the start of 2000 by four friends who had known each other from the age of 14, Athlete were one of last year's most talked-about new bands and, in almost every publication you care to mention, one of this year's top tips for chart stardom. Their debut release, 2002's Athlete EP, spawned a Jo Whiley Record Of The Week in catchy lead track Westside, follow-up single You Got The Style was the band's first foray into the Top 40 and twelve months of touring have seen them sell out their own shows and open for acts as diverse as The Polyphonic Spree, Mansun, Minutemen, Simian and Electric Soft Parade. Somewhere inbetween, Athlete found time to write and record a stunning, debut album, Vehicles And Animals, that will keep the crazy comparisons coming (you can already add Beck, Mercury Rev, the Beach Boys, XTC, Gomez and Turin Breaks to the list) and prove that the Deptford Four don't sound quite like any other band on the planet.
Not coincidentally, the Athlete story actually begins a few years back, during the Britpop era, when most British rock groups sounded the same. Singer and guitarist Joel Pott, bassist Carey Willetts and drummer Steve Roberts formed their first band in the late 90s, when everyone wanted to be the new Oasis. They played all the Camden dives, got up a bit of a following, but just when record companies started to take an interest, they went back to the drawing board."The record company interest made us question what we were doing," says Pott, now 25. "We realised we were bored with conventional rock. We had just got into to bands like The Flaming Lips and Grandaddy and decided that was more the direction we wanted to take."The band bought a digital, 12 track recorder, started playing around with sounds and having fun making music again.It wasn't until old friend and keyboard player Tim Wanstall came back from university and turned the trio into a quartet, however, that the newly-named Athlete finally found their sound."We had been messing around with effects and weird instruments for a while," recalls Roberts, "but we were frustrated with our lack of keyboard skills. Then Tim turned up and everything clicked. We didnıt know exactly what sound we were looking for, but as soon as we wrote Westside, we knew we had found it. That was our first straight song, but with all the strange, funky bits we like still in there." A year's writing and rehearsing resulted in a demo that got Athlete signed briefly to Regal Recordings. The success of their debut EP then landed them a deal with Parlophone and last year, in stints between tours and singles, at a Deptford studio they bought with the bulk of their advance, Athlete recorded Vehicles And Animals with producer Victor Van Vugt, best known for his work with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, PJ Harvey and Sparklehorse.
"We wrote every song together, as a band," says Willetts. "Athlete isn't about one person coming into the studio with a finished track and playing it to the others on guitar. It's about all four of us experimenting. We can start with a melody, a few chords or a bassline, or even just some noises or a synth sound. Then we sit around a computer, arranging and rearranging what weıve got until it sounds right. Sometimes, we jam over the top to see how the song works live. Itıs a sort of mish-mash that evolves over time." Athlete split lyric duties too - and all four sing live on stage - although the photogenic Pott is definitely their frontman. Lyrically, Vehicles And Animals deals largely with life in London, life in a band and, er, children.
"The title track is inspired by my little nephew," explains Pott. "Itıs about thinking back to when you were a kid, when you could sit and play for hours and hours with your toys and just be happy. Itıs saying how great it would be to get back that simplicity and innocence, although not in the way Michael Jackson means it."Elsewhere on the album, You Got The Style deals with the race riots of last year, "Elsewhere on the album, You Got The Style deals with the race riots of last year, Dungeness is about a day trip Pott took to the coast with his family, Westside describes the rock scene the band left behind in Camden and new single El Salvador is based on their time since being signed. Athlete may love the comparisons to Pavement, but Vehicles And Animals could only have been written by a British band. "What we wanted to do was create an album that was completely different to everything else out there," adds Wanstall. "When we got signed, we were aware we didn't fit in with what was hip at the time. We thought that was a positive thing and we still do. We're not looking to be part of any scene. We'd rather start one of our own."
Source: http://www.athlete.mu/ |
|
Add to Profile
