INTERVIEW | Ex-Vöid on their new record, songwriting, life as a musician, and more.

Sat in Nunhead’s The Ivy House on a cold December evening, Morris Shamah is joined by 2 parts of Southeast London’s own Ex-Vöid to chat about the band’s forthcoming second LP ‘In Love Again’ (released January 17th 2025). With conversation drifting aroun Ex-Vöid’s origins, songwriting, balancing multiple creative projects and their lack of touring, the interview provides a deep insight to into the workings of an independent artist working in London.

“I feel like our friends work here” tells Owen Williams of London’s Ex-Vöid. “Actually my mum played at the Ivy House quite a few times back in the 90s.”
“Really? I had no idea, that’s cool” replies bandmate Lan McArdle. Owen continues, “[It was like] folk music and my dad comes here at Christmas quite a lot. But that wasn’t why Ex-Vöid had played here.”

Before the conversation takes another turn, attention turns to the bands origins and the journey which led to now.

When did Ex Vöid begin?

Owen: It was a while ago now. It was like 2016?
Lan: That sounds about right?
Owen: 2016-17. We sort of ended up like… [to Lan] When did Joanna Gruesome end? Well when did you stop being in it?
Lan: 2015? Is that right? So it probably ended up being two years after that. I basically left Joanna Gruesome and then like went to…  I guess it was that Fortuna POP! [Joanna Gruesome’s record label] goodbye gig at The Scala
Owen: Oh yeah.
Lan: There was some gig a few years after that that Joanna Gruesome played with not me in it, and then we were all like hanging out in the smoking area and then I think we like met up after that.
Owen: Yeah we thought we were sort of like well maybe it would be funny if we just did it again. After like splitting up and all this stuff- like “hey what if we just do it again?”
Lan: Yeah and there was this point where like I think GN [George Nicholls] thought he was gonna be in the band and it did seem like it was just gonna be the exact same members as Joanna Gruesome. But now that’s The Tubs and not Ex-Vöid.
Owen: Things started like splintering off like multiplying and stuff. Everyone in that band [Joanna Gruesome] split into various other bands. But now GN’s left The Tubs, and Taylor from The Tubs is in Ex-Vöid now.. It’s all kind of like…

Morris: An amalgamation.
Owen: Yeah.
Lan: We like to keep a close watch on everyone.
Owen: Like bacteria. An amoeba splitting or something. A disease.
Lan: It’s like a disease. So yeah it would have been 2017, maybe 2018?

Bigger Than Before [2022]

Lan: We started recording that like before Covid and then lockdown happened. So that took like maybe two years to come out.  My off the cuff memory with dates and stuff like that’s really really bad. I don’t actually know what year… that album, which was here [at The Ivy House]. I remember that. I fucked up my hand , so I couldn’t play guitar.
Owen: Oh yeah.

Morris, to Owen: So are all the guitars on the album you?
Owen: No well you [Lan] recorded them, but we played, when we played, yeah…
Lan: It was an album release. It’s funny that that was an album in a way. Because it feels kind of collage-y. Cuz some of them were like really old, some of them were like supposed to be songs for like other bands, then it took like a million years to come out,  by the time it came out  we were all already like so sick of playing them, cuz we’d like toured and stuff.
Owen: Yeah we were a band for like a long time without actually making that album. And then we had to start playing the album.

Morris: I remember, the first time I saw Ex-Vöid was at Dulwich Hamlet in the clubhouse. And then I went to the Trust Fund gig there and when I saw this pair at the bar I was gushing that they balls to release an album that’s only 20 minutes long.
Owen: Is it only 20 minutes long?
Lan: I think so yeah

Morris: Or like 24 minutes.
Lan: The Joanna Gruesome albums were like 25 minutes.  I have, like a blind spot or something for this. To me, I’m just like, it’s just as long as it is.

Morris: It’s ten songs.
Lan: Yeah exactly. It’s done. Yeah. I hate albums that just have like excess songs on them.
Owen: I feel like we’ve always just been like, trim all the fat.
Lan: Yeah this is the amount that it needs to be.

Morris: So are there songs that were not put on that album?
Both: No.
Owen: We don’t write loads of songs and just take the best ones.
Lan: Yeah, it is what it is.
Owen: So me and Lan would write like five songs each, make them as short as possible, and get out of there.

In Love Again [2025]

Morris: I wanna now ask about the new record. Which is awesome. On certain songs [on In love Again] there is a slightly different balance [between the two vocals]. Did that come in production or did that come in writing?

Lan: I think that is more of a production thing. Especially because I always feel like all the songs are going to be really simple. Then we end up having loads and loads of guitar tracks and like just other stuff and like there’s so many, when we have to start balancing everything, and you keep being like, can we hop that up? Can you put that up? But something has to go. We’re less wedded to the like, vocals have stay the same level 100% of the way through all the time. It’s like, okay, that can also be a bit dynamic as well.

Morris: Do you write for each other’s singing voices?
Lan: Uh, yeah.
Owen: More than we used to. Because there’s certain keys and stuff. Lan sings on the Tubs albums as well. But in those ones it’s a slightly different thing where it’s like, I’m probably singing higher than I would sing in Ex-Vöid.
Lan: Cuz you’re also doing the like-
Owen: The lead.
Lan: You have a way of performing The Tubs songs that lends itself more to a higher register.
Owen: Ex-Vöid’s more like close, close harmonies.

Morris: Do you think that’s because you’re balanced out by having both your vocals prominent? Or is it more about the music?
Owen: Yeah, I don’t know because it’s like a collaborative thing. In my mind I was really into it being like you know how like Teenage Fanclub or something, it’s often a few different voices being either in harmony or quite close. Rather than a band where it’s all about one person.  [To Lan] Then I suppose your songs could be even more like lead vocals sometimes.
Lan: Yeah I think like, I, sonically, especially with this type of music, I prefer, and- I think this is just like an internal kind of self-conscious thing, the stressful experience of hearing your own voice- it makes me feel better when Owen… I think like when I write a song, I do, to be honest, I actually think about your vocals quite a lot. Because it makes me prefer the song to if I’m just singing it myself. Because if I like, imagine that you were singing it, then I’m like, oh, I can like hear Owen sing this and then it sounds really good. But I think that’s part of the way that like when you write songs like guitar music, like for a band, I think most people are, the whole songwriting process, you’re just like you’re hearing the full thing and you’re just filling in the gaps in your mind. Because, like, it’s just you with like your unplugged electric guitar, it just sounds shit anyway.  So like you’re kind like but it will be great because they’ll also be like this thing here and like and like don’t worry about that because like something else will happen.
Owen: I do the same. It’s like you’re an instrument. We’re both an instrument.
Lan: I think it does help me figure out if a song is good.
Owen: I think it’s quite an unusual thing to do actually. Someone said this to me “so you both just sing all of the vocals at the same time” they were like, that’s really unusual. I guess it is in a way because most of the time it’s either like a duet or one person’s doing lead.

Morris: It makes a big contrast, I think, for the new album versus ‘Bigger Than Before‘ because the production has changed so much, and a big part of that is the vocal balancing. ‘Bigger Than Before‘ is a bit more noisier and it’s a bit punkier to begin with, but some of the vocal balancing like, in ‘Swansea‘ you wouldn’t even see on that first record.
Owen: Yeah, we thought about it basically. We barely thought about it on the first album.
Lan: We didn’t. But we’ve spent more time on harmonies and stuff like that. We did have harmonies on the first album but I feel like…
Owen: Yeah there was like on the first one  we were a bit more sheepish about being like, full pop.
Lan: Yeah.

Morris: So how did that evolve?
Owen: I think just because we came from, like, a slightly punk, DIY background. There were pop sounding bands, it wasn’t like all hardcore bands or whatever, but we felt a bit self-conscious about being too poppy I guess. That was always the tension in Joanna Gruesome. Sometimes that’s an interesting tension, but I think we just wanted to finally do an album where we like, let that stuff, let it rip.
Lan: Yeah, exactly.

Morris: Where does the rest of the band of Ex-Vöid fit into that? Into that evolution.
Lan: Well, I guess I mean, Laurie…. Actually, we had that very short lived band? I guess we had like three practices or something? Laurie and the boys. In Brighton. We never played a show or anything but that was kind of like a power pop band.
We have very similar tastes I think and we’ve all been friends for about the same amount of time and like our references are all very similar. Like going from slightly more, like, kind of punk informed to like leaning a bit more into pop stuff, to me, it doesn’t feel unnatural at all.

Morris: I’m comparing it to ‘Bigger Than Before‘, but it’s so different yet so similar. But what is very similar is that they both have a cover song.
Lan: Oh yeah.

Morris: So, Lonely Girls. Lucinda Williams. Why that song?
Owen: I feel like for years we were messing around with a version of that.
Lan: Yeah. I think we actually did record a version that was supposed to go – actually we answered wrongly to one of your questions! We have a previously recorded version of that song that was supposed to go on ‘Bigger Than Before‘, but we didn’t really like it. We hadn’t really figured it out at that point.
Owen: I think it was just like with the Arthur Russel one [I Couldn’t Say It To Your Face] as well, we couldn’t, like…
Lan: We couldn’t have two covers.
Owen: I think the reason both of those exist is because we listen to a lot of, like, alt-country and stuff and even though our band doesn’t sound like that, it’s kind of nice to have a little gesture towards it.

Morris: It sounds like an Ex-Vöid song.
Owen: Yeah I’ve read a few reviews of their album or whatever where they’ll be like, they’ll just mention it, not really realizing it was a cover. Same with the Arthur Russel.

Morris: Yeah I didn’t realise that was a cover.
Owen: There’s no reason to do a pretty faithful cover. You want to hear us doing it.
Lan: Yeah what’s the point, it’s like karaoke.

Morris: I mean, the lyrics aren’t the same.
Lan: Oh yeah, true. Yeah we’re shortening them… massively. But then you wouldn’t want to hear four minutes…
Owen: Of us doing that. Yeah it wasn’t really that thought through.
Lan: It’s not like it’s conscious.
Owen: It’s a bit of a problem with us, Ex-Vöid, in interviews sometimes, because we’re basically just like, we just want to make music that sounds good.
Lan: [laughs] Yeah.
Owen: And I feel like, in both of us, in your solo thing and mine, The Tubs, there’s a lot more about our lives and like feelings and stuff. Whereas Ex-Vöid we’re like we just wanna make the best tunes we can.
Lan: Like it’s a challenge that’s been set.

Morris: But you both have breakup songs on the album.
Both: No, that’s true actually.

Morris: ‘Down The Drain’, is Owen’s break up song, but Lan, you sing quite prominently on it.
Lan: Yeah, but then I guess this is where it kind of all becomes… Like, This is where sort of, this is the nice thing for me about writing songs about your personal life is that you get to a point where it actually doesn’t matter about what the subject matter is, you’re just trying to make a really good song. That was one of the songs where we were very hot on making interesting harmonies and like the arrangement was very important.
Owen: Yeah cuz you like, sing it so many times you lose any sort of attachment to it.

Morris: How much of this album had been played live before you recorded it?
Owen: I guess a few for a while.
Lan: Quite a few of the songs.
Owen: We had a phase of doing like, acoustic sets, me and Lan. 
Lan: There’s also always a lag. There’s a song writing lag that happens every time with me and O, that just happened recently. He’s like I’ve written six Ex-Vöid songs and I was like fuck. It happens every time, where I’m like shit. Now I have to do this.

Morris: So there’s six more Ex-Vöid songs in the ether!
Owen: Yeah but they’re like kind of metal songs
Lan: That’s fine. That’s where we’re going.
Owen: I wrote like a metal – my side of the album is like a metal album. Kind of. There’s just lots of like, metal riffs.

Morris: When you write something for Ex-Vöid – or write something and decide it’s Ex-Vöid – what do you do to bring it Lan? And vice versa. Do you get together with a guitar and play it? Do you record a demo?
Owen: Well I’ll go to Lan’s flat and I’ll be like well what about this?
Lan: Usually we’ll just like do the kind of acoustic style “I’ve written an Ex-Vöid song, it’ll go like this.”  I mean to me, one of the big differences about the first album and the second album is I think the first album I was kind of trying to- but also, just because I wasn’t as like developed a songwriter – I was trying to write songs like Owen writes songs. And I was like, oh I can just write songs, and be like, this is going to be an Ex-Vöid song.

Morris: Is there a particular song on the new album that kind of embodies that for you?
Lan: Probably ‘Pinhead‘, I think? It was one of the ones where I wasn’t really thinking about how it would sound with you [Owen] on it as much.
Owen: Yeah it was more like we were responding to that, rather than you responding to myself.

Morris: Where did that opening strum, before it gets all shoegazey, where does that come from?
Owen: I think you [Lan] were just like, you should do that.
Lan: Yeah. [laughs]
Owen: I suppose, like, I think we just stopped thinking about it very much.
Lan: This is the thing, yeah, and I think in a way, I quite like it, it does feel like a place to just put songs, in a way.
Owen: I think I kind of have a better idea of what should go where now. Like, I know this is a Tubs song… I seem to, just, I do write a lot of tunes, it’s like, they need to go somewhere.

Morris: You write a lot, period.
Owen: Cuz I also have like five songs for this new band I’m doing..

Morris: That one instagram account, roundthabend, is gonna lose their shit.
Lan: [Laughs]
Owen: Exactly yeah. I’m basically just doing shit to keep him in a constant state.

Morris: Please tell me you’re giving him a ticket to one of the shows [on the upcoming The Tubs USA tour]?
Owen: Yeah he’s coming to Philadelphia.
Lan: You should let him go in the van.
Owen: We’ll let him do whatever he wants.

Morris: Sorry, you were saying…
Owen: I’ve always got a surplus [of songs] basically.

Morris [to Lan]: Whereas you feel like you write to order a little bit more?
Lan: A little bit more. The main difference between me and Owen is when Owen writes a song, it sounds like a Tubs song or an Ex-Vöid song or a Joanna Gruesome song. Like the songs that come out of you naturally sound like that. When I write a song naturally it sounds like a Lanny song, which is very different, so it’s more challenging for me in a way, it feels kind of, it’s like genre writing, like I’m writing a pop song. Like Owen will just pick up a guitar that’s in a room and be like oh I just came up with a song and it sounds like a really good Tubs song or really good Ex-Vöid song. That just happens. For me I have to really think about it. I don’t know what it is but, like, I guess people just do have like inclinations in terms of like the way that they write. What I’m prolific at is not Ex-Vöid. Like it’s not that type of musical space, even though it’s like all the Influences and the references are like stuff I listen to all the time.

Morris: What are those influences and references?
Lan: Teenage Fanclub, Superchunk, Big Star, The Lemonheads, The Replacements, the Breeders.

Morris: I have a dream of Ex-Vöid opening for The Hold Steady and you just really cemented it.
Owen: It’s possible… are they still going?

Morris: The Hold Steady? Yeah. They do weekends now.
Owen: Touring with people is so oppressive.
Lan: It’s very difficult.
Owen: Even going on holiday with a partner or something or being in a relationship, it’s like, not as intense as being with people on tour, because you’re just with them 24/7. The only time you don’t see ‘em is when you’re like, in the toilet.
Lan: You’re probably sleeping in the same room or bed even.
Owen: And you haven’t chosen to go out with them. They’re just these fucking people you’re friends with… and maybe like stop being friends within a year.
Lan: And pockets of free time are so limited that you kind of have to still somehow coordinate it with everyone that you’re with. So you can’t really just like, go off .
Owen: And even people you just love you’ll eventually find things that just fucking piss you off. Especially if you’re not getting paid very much, it’s quite a tall order.
Lan: It’s not the company for me, it’s like the regiment, the regime. The time in the band, the way you have to sleep, the food you have to eat.

Morris: So do you think you play better shows not on tour?
Owen: I feel like I play better ones on tour, but it’s like, that’s only like an hour of the thing.
Lan: That’s like literally the one hour, of the 24 hours a day you have. You usually play better because you’re used to it and you’re in the zone. I don’t really like playing live, I get really anxious about it, and I also don’t really like practicing that much. It’s like, bad. It’s a bad equation, because then like we play a show and I’m like freaking out cuz I’m like fuck I can’t remember anything, I’m so like stressed.

The Tubs, Lanny and Joanna Gruesome

Not only busy bringing the latest phase of Ex-Vöid, Owen and Lan have other ongoing projects, Owen as sing/songwriter/guitarist of The Tubs, and Lan’s solo output as Lanny.

Morris: Is there anything that was left off of that album? Because in the meantime you [Owen] have got an album coming out with The Tubs, and you [Lan] put an album out as Lanny.
Lan: Oh yeah. Well I guess actually, when I wrote it I played Owen, ‘ur an angel im evil’. And we’d finished recording the Ex-Vöid album [In Love Again] and remember you being like we could just quickly go back in the studio and like, put it on the album. And I was like, nah, I think it’s going to be for a different thing. I don’t think it would have really worked on that album anyway

Morris: Certainly not in its Lanny form.
Lan: No.
Owen: I’m really like, unfaithful with songs. I just write a lot of them and then I’ll be like, okay I need ten for a Tubs album, 5 for an Ex-Vöid album.

Morris: So you don’t write with a specific project in mind?
Owen: Sometimes. but like often like I’m like which one will work for… and I reuse a lot of stuff all the time. But it’s because I have to like come up with two albums every year

Morris: How do you balance these different projects and where does Ex-Vöid sort of fit into the wider universe?
Owen: Well I balance it by like, I just work in an art gallery, I can book my own shifts, so I just take off for a few months now and again and come back. I don’t earn very much money from the bands, so I just kind of try within reason to commit as much time to it as I can, but I mean, there’s time to do both. I guess I’m not like trying to pursue a career or anything. Well I am trying to pursue a music career I guess but I’m not trying to pursue another career at the same time. So any time I do have I can spend on the bands. I gave up any idea of having, like, a salary job I guess. At  some point. But I don’t know how it fits into the universe.
Lan: It’s just there.

Morris: Speaking of live shows, The Tubs have live shows coming up, does Ex-Vöid have shows coming up?
Owen: There will be an album launch…
Lan: There will be something. There will be something. We’re not as active as The Tubs…

Morris: Why are The Tubs more active than Ex-Vöid? I guess is kind of the question.
Owen: We like touring more.
Lan: I don’t like touring. To be honest, I feel I have a continual arguing argument with myself in my head, doing music, you have to play shows, it’s like, oh god, I have to go on tour, but like, that’s what you do, that’s what it’s for.
I mean when we started the band, I kind of was like,  I said to O, I don’t want to get in the position where suddenly I’m on tour all the time. There’s just this line where you like you might not even necessarily be making much more money than you do if you don’t tour all the time but you just are more active. Ex-Vöid are on the other side of that line. Cuz you just end up, it’s like generative, it kind of like starts…
Owen: You don’t want to be in the worst of both worlds thing where you’re like, touring quite a lot, but still losing money, but losing even more money because you’re touring. With the Tubs we’ll just commit to do loads, because doing a middling amount will be…
Lan: It’s not financially viable.
Owen: So you kind of have to go all in or play when it suits you.
Lan: Yeah. That is kind of it. It’s like all or nothing. Cuz otherwise yeah you just end up, you lose all your time. Well not all your time. You lose like a huge amount of time,  because you’re like, okay, we’ll take this much time off touring and then you don’t make any money anyway.
Owen: So it makes sense for Ex-Vöid to be like, selective about when we play and make the most of those tours we do. Whereas The Tubs will just play for anyone.
Lan: When you start being in a band you say yes to like everything. Even crap shows there’s something romantic. When you just get like someone’s like we want you to play our random hometown, and the fee is like 100 quid and everyone takes the megabus there and you all lose money. It’s like you get to the point where it’s just like, why did we do that? When you’re younger it’s kind of like ah it’s the experience! Now it’s like, no, I need to know what the purpose of this gig is. It has to be like either, financially a good idea or some other good reason, rather than like someone booked us so we’ll play. I don’t really adhere to that.

The Industry

As a working musician in the year of 2024, there’s a lot of talk about it what that really means for artists. With Spotify wrapped coming out, everybody starts talking about it again, about how you can’t make money in music. The New York Times recently had an article (about 10 years too late) about the decline of the touring circuit, so I ask the pair on their experiences over the past decade. Is there any differences?
Owen: Yes.
Lan: It’s way worse. The support fees are the same.
Owen: Fees haven’t risen with inflation or anything. We get paid the same amount we did like ten years ago.
Lan: I literally remember being like 18, living at my parents house, playing a gig. I got paid 50 pounds. And to me that was amazing and we bought pizzas.  When I was 18 and living at my parents house. Now, you get booked for a support slot, and it’s still 50 pounds.
Owen: Yeah they’re still just basically offering you like 50 or 100 pounds which is crazy. When there’s a band of like four people. But even if you get like, 500 quid, it doesn’t go that far really.
Lan: It doesn’t go anywhere.
Owen: Hiring a van is incredibly expensive, everything is expensive. So it means that it’s just basically now the reserve of the middle class people, which is us as well.
Lan: That is partially the reason why we still can do it.
Owen: We can take the hit more than someone who couldn’t afford to.

Morris: In your scene, are you seeing less people doing it?
Owen: In a way. Because there used to be like DIY spaces. Which is a forgotten memory now.
Lan:  We’re obviously speaking from a London centric angle, so I don’t know.
Owen: Yeah there more venues, back then… but then it’s hard to say because we’ve gotten older so maybe you feel less likely to be like in a DIY space.
Lan: Also it’s like we’re still playing guitar music, so it’s for this particular scene… but I mean I don’t really know.
Owen: But the fact is like, you know, if Spotify didn’t come along and devalue everything, like, we’d sell a lot more merch you know, we’d sell records. The fact that your album recordings are now worth nothing and that everyone’s agreeing to that, it’s part of the reason why you can only rely on live shows.
Lan: Especially in the UK.
Owen: The UK and the US know that they can basically exploit musicians, whereas in Europe they’re more eager to court musicians so they’ll pay you quite well. I suppose it’s more popular bands in the UK and the US so maybe they don’t have to like, they know that they can create an incredibly competitive environment.
Lan: Yeah, I feel very bleak about it to be honest.
Owen: It does separate the wheat from the chaff. The lifers. Like a lot of people we know have dropped out and got proper jobs. But I do think people can get a bit binary about it. Some people are like oh, I’ve quit music now and I can’t do any more bands. I have to focus on my job. But in a way barely anybody is making money as a musician, like, nominally.

Morris: I thought you were gonna say barely anybody is making money at their jobs.
Owen: No that’s not true. A lot of people become, like, marketers. Even the people who work for us…
Lan: [Laughs]
Owen: But like in the industry generally, you’ll get people being paid to be like marketing people but not, like, the artists.
Lan: Well this is the thing , like, where the money actually goes. It’s very irritating, when you’re actually like making the stuff and you know, you’re not actually getting a slice of the pie. 
Owen: For some reason you can have a team around you, salaried people. Which is what they should be getting. At the same time, it’s like always the band members are getting the least.

Morris: So, what is the best way for people to support, Ex-Vöid particularly, but bands in general?
Both: Buying merch.
Owen: You could buy recordings off bandcamp but I don’t really expect anyone to do that.
Lan: No.
Owen: Like, I use Spotify. But yeah, buying vinyl, buying merch.
Lan: Come see shows, paying for a ticket to the show.

Morris: Do you see people showing up at Ex-Vöid shows and Tubs shows wearing Joanna Gruesome shirts?
Owen: Not necessarily the shirt – we didn’t make any shirts.
Lan: They definitely mention it though.
Owen: But even the fact that we probably are getting more out of like Pitchfork because they remember us from before.
Lan: Yeah it’s like, “ex-Joanna Gruesome.”
Owen: If you’re like a band starting now and you’re like 22 it’s like how are you ever gonna get picked out?
Lan: And also you have to do a whole different thing. Which, like, I guess there’s something that maybe we lose by being, like, old, because we don’t know how to do, like, TikTok and shit like that. But like that seems to be basically the new way of like entry, whereas before, like,  we were just playing gigs.
Owen: It was more – it was IRL. Because there was more venues- 
Lan: Maybe you would post on Instagram but it really wasn’t like a thing, really, until recently.
Owen: Yeah we were doing it for years before you would even post, which is crazy to think about.
Lan: Yeah like bands would have a twitter just to make jokes. You’d just have a facebook page! You’d have your facebook page to post the events. People would be like where’s the facebook link, and like, that would be the only thing you’d have to worry about.
Owen: Yeah before it was very much like, there’s a scene of people and these are the kinds of bands that play what we play in the UK and we all play each other’s shows and in a way that generates interest I suppose, just from being, like, a scene. Now I guess so much of it’s moved online, and, like, the venues and any kind of DIY spaces have closed down. So everything’s shifted to online subculture I guess.

Morris: There’s a little voice in my head that’s like, I just don’t know where they are. Like the DIY spaces still exist, I just don’t know them.
Owen: No, no, they don’t.
Lan: I know that some do, but I just don’t think it’s as feasible.
Owen: Even if they did exist, no one’s got any money, and everyone’s working all the time.
Lan: It’s not congruent with, like, the cost of living.
Owen: Yeah like that’s just risen and risen, rents have risen.
Lan: And to have time to do everything yourself, you need money to have time, y’know, it’s just not…
Owen: That’s why I think a lot of younger people, like, it really moved online a bit more because like that’s more of an obvious outlet for stuff to happen.
Lan: And you don’t have to have, like, the physical premises. You can make music on your laptop, try and make a sound go viral on TikTok and like see what happens. I’m not slating it or anything, particularly not the people doing it, it just feels like the goal posts are shifting in such manic ways.

Morris: So how do you stay focused?
Owen: Well we don’t get involved in any of that.
Lan: Yeah we have nothing to do with it.
Owen: We just pretend that like, none of that’s happening.
Lan: Yeah, pretty much, I think. Like, I cannot, uh, imagine, um, like, I will stop doing music when writing music is like, not interesting to me. Do you know what I mean?

Morris: Has that ever happened?
Lan: Yeah, I mean, like in periods. Like, like over periods of time like, especially when I’ve been. like. depressed or like stuff like that. But if the only thing driving me was to like, crack the system and like make it…  That’s just like, I can’t imagine a more thankless- it’s  thankless enough as it is, if you’re just doing it for the love.
Owen: I kind of would like to.
Lan: Owen is a step up from me.
Owen: But I’m not prepared to do what it takes. And I just think like, millennials going on TikTok is like, always a terrible idea.
Lan: But I imagine  if you genuinely stopped enjoying making music you would probably just stop.
Owen: Yeah.
Lan: I feel like you do want to have a music career, a bit more than I want to have a music career, but like, ultimately, it’s not just because you’re seeing, like, dollar signs. You’re like, oh, it would be really great if I could also monetize this thing that I love to do. Which is like, how I feel, but I’m like less- I’m really glad that I just really love making music, because there’s nothing appealing about being a musician, really, to me anymore. Navigating the industry and like, well, that stuff is like, it’s gone.
Owen: The one good thing about it is like now because of streaming and whatever you can like, you know you’re gonna reach a lot more people than you might have, in like the 90s. You’ll get a lot less money. But in a way I care more about the recordings – the only good thing about them having it for free is they’ll listen to it. [laughs]

The Singles

Morris: We should probably wrap it up. But before we do- ‘Swansea‘ and ‘Pinhead‘ are the two singles, at least so far. What went into choosing those as singles?
Owen: We did choose them.
Lan: We chose them.

Morris: That was you, it wasn’t the record label or?
Lan: They had a shortlist and I think we kind of disagreed with most of it to be honest. But this is a conversation we had, it’s like a mystery to us what a single should be. I never know.
Owen: I always said, increasingly, I don’t think it matters. Like for The Tubs first album we put singles out and no one gave a shit. And then the album comes out and people start writing about it.

Morris: Did you consciously choose an Owen song and a Lan song?
Owen: I think that’s probably part of the calculations.
Lan: Probably. Well, maybe that’s more subconscious, really I don’t think I’d be like, lets make sure we all have ours…
Owen: Cuz some of them feel a bit more like co-writes now.
Lan: It all just seems like this weird alchemy that I don’t understand. I just think it should be like the songs that are the best, and everyone seems to think different things about which songs are the best…

Morris: Which songs do you think are the best?
Lan: [Laughs] Well, like, loads of them, probably like the whole album to be honest. It’s very hard to choose. I feel very good about this album. So in a way it’s sort of just like meaningless to me which ones are the singles,  but in another way, then it’s like oh, you’re choosing it, so it feels like you’re saying something with the choice that you make.

Morris: Well ‘Pinhead‘ for one has its own album art you know, it’s purple instead of red.
Lan: Oh yeah, that was just something that was like… This is the shit that I don’t care about! Where it’s like “I think it’s more interesting for people when they see that the album art looks different.” I’m like, is it? Okay? I don’t. Is that true? 
Owen: A lot of it just feels like complete, like, just guesswork.
Lan: This is like marketing shit though. I used to work in marketing. This is all like absolute bullshit, when I was assisting that artist in Liverpool and the big banner of the exhibition went up outside the gallery and everything was the wrong way around and I was like stood there with the artist and the curator, and I was like why is it the wrong way around and she was like the gallery director said that people would come out the train station and see it better. And I was like you can’t see anything, you can’t see this building from the train station. People just say shit. Marketing people just say shit.
Owen: It’s just like bullshit jobs. Everyone needs to be something in their job so they start to like coming up with ideas just to have an idea.
Lan: I’m sure it would make sense if you would like some kind of psychologist or something. Like, if you could like, if you looked at it really cynically and you were like, there’s something about this chord that resonates more with people’s brains than other chords. Yeah then maybe I’d be like right, we’ve got something.
Owen There probably are ways of,  like, gaming the algorithm and stuff but who’s got time, who cares.
Lan: And we’ll leave it there! Who’s got the time, who cares!
Owen: Who’s got the time, who cares, I need to piss.

At Last…

Morris: Is there anything you wanted to talk about that we didn’t talk about?
Lan: We wanted to talk about people freezing themselves cryogenically.
Owen: I don’t need that on the record. The thing is we don’t have much to say about Ex-Vöid, in a way.
Lan: In a way. It is what it is.
Owen: Let the music do the talking. 
Lan: It’s there. We like it. We’re fans.

‘In Love Again‘ is out 17th January from Tapete Records. You can preorder it now from Tapete, Bandcamp, Rough Trade, or your local record store. ‘‘Swansea‘ and ‘Pinhead‘ are streaming now.

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