“WE FINALLY HAD SOME MUSIC THAT WE GAVE A SH*T ABOUT” | AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHNNY BORRELL

“We had no idea if anything was going to come off and if this was going to happen or not, but I was fully prepared to just to let the band go if we did“

It may have been 20 years since the release of their iconic breakthrough album Up All Night, but for prominent mid noughties indie band Razorlight, 2024 won’t be defined by nostalgia. Refusing to be archived as a heritage act, the classic band line up of Johnny Borrell, Andy Burrows, Björn Ågren, and Carl Dalemo (with the addition of Reni Lane on keys) have returned to the studio and on October 25th they will release Planet Nowhere; an album which Borrell shares is “a record that could be a real favourite Razorlight album for a lot of our fans”. Despite offers to tour on their legacy with a fat paycheck, the notorious quartet came to the conclusion that if they couldn’t record (and subsequently tour) new music then they may as well “just forget about it”.

With single three, ‘Zombie Love‘, released this week, Razorlight continues to build an identity of what Planet Nowhere has to offer. Hoping to find out a bit more about their latest project, I had the opportunity to chat with Razorlight’s legendary front man, Johnny Borrell. It may have taken a few awkward silences and bit of time for Johnny to warm to me but I think we got somewhere in the end…

Congratulations on the new singles and upcoming album news – how are you feeling about it all?

“Yeah, yeah, I feel, good. Thanks.”

How do you feel the new singles have been received so far?

“Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about that. I just make the music, but yeah, I’m excited to play them. I’m looking forward to it.“

So, Planet Nowhere is out on the 25th of October, What can we expect from this album?

“Do you want me to describe the album to you?“

Yeah, what’s your take on it? How would you like to introduce it?

“Well. I don’t know. That it’s a record…It’s an album and I think people could listen to it and figure that out.“

Do you think it is keeping in line with the sort of music that Razorlight have previously put out?

“I’m not sure if I know what you mean by that. I’m sorry, I’m struggling a little bit here. Do I think it’s in line with the music we’ve done before? I don’t know, I’m not sure what you mean by ‘in line with?“

By this point it felt a bit like pulling teeth. I’m not sure if it was a breakdown in communication due to my accent, or maybe just a bad line, but the conversation was going nowhere. It was a bit painful but we tried again.

“That’s okay, I can move on… I’m putting you on the spot a bit.” I laughed off.

Tell me about what led to recording this album? What were the thought processes leading into it?

Another enduring awkward pause…

It’s just you’re not giving me a lot to go on, because your questions are really kind of vague, you know, and like so it’s hard for me to kind of get a vibe…

As more awkward silences arise and Johnny’s suggestion of me being “too vague” in my questions, there were genuine concerns that this interview just wasn’t going to happen. Eventually, Johnny suggests “I can tell you the story of making the album, if that if that’s what you’d like me to do?” A little bit of rephrasing my question and we’re finally getting somewhere.

“We reformed this old line up of the band during the pandemic and that was quite a big deal to get to get us all back together,” shares Johnny, we started playing and we started writing a bit but it wasn’t actually leading into anything. I ended up saying to the guys ‘Okay, we’re gonna go to Spain. We’re gonna go try and make a record and if we end up making something that we really believe in then we’re gonna do it. And if not, then let’s just forget about it.

So we went out to Spain with the producer, Youth [Martin Glover – The Verve, Embrace, The View] and we had literally no material. We had no idea if anything was going to come off and if this was going to happen or not, but I was fully prepared to just to let the band go if we did. Then we were actually on the last day of the session and I just wrote this song which turned out to be the first new song that we released off the album, Scared Of Nothing. We just kind of just kind of wrote it and finally had some music that we gave a shit about, and that we cared and wanted to get out into the world.”

Heading out to Spain in December 2023, the process of recording an entire 10 tracks and making them album fit before the official album announcement in July, the journey of Razorlight’s fifth studio album ‘Planet Nowhere‘ has been a rapid operation. Coinciding the news with the release of lead single ‘Scared of Nothing‘ – Razorlight were establishing themselves as back in the new music game and shared a mini documentary, logging their journey in Spain.

Personally, I feel the singles out so far feel very raw. They feel a lot punkier probably than some of Razorlight’s earlier stuff. Do you find that, Johnny?

“Well, I mean, we’ve made like a lot of records. So it depends on what you’re comparing it with really.“

Well, there’s a lot of old school punk vibes in there I think, do you think that’s Youth’s influence?

“We’ve always made really stripped back records. I’ve always never done anything apart from record the band in the room, and try and capture the truth in that. That’s something that I really love in music and in records. I think Youth brought a lot of simplicity to it and really helped us find a creative place to move in. We couldn’t have done it without him, he really really unlocked that process”

Do you have any particular favorite songs or ones that you’re excited for people or to play live?

Oh, I love all the songs on this record. I really feel like I think the only reason that a band should ever release any music is that if they really love it. I feel like this is a record that could be a real favourite Razorlight album for a lot of our fans. I just hope that it gets out to as many of our fans as possible, because that’s that’s a challenging thing in this day and age in terms of the songs.

But probably ‘Empire Service‘ is [a favourite song]. As you said, it’s probably the punkier side of the album and I’m sure that’s gonna be really fun live. So yeah, I’m looking forward to it.

Having shared three tracks from their much anticipated new album now with ‘Scared of Nothing‘, ‘Empire Service‘ and now ‘Zombie Love‘, Razorlight are set to drop the full album late October; but not before heading back to basics and setting off on a sold out intimate UK club tour.

“It was a really straight choice for us [to do an small venue tour] because we were offered a tour playing the Up All Night classic album, but I just felt like we’ve made an album that we believe in and that we love. It felt like that if we had any balls whatsoever, then we’d just go out and play that [the new album] So we’ve decided to go into a little tour of that, and then see what it can build into. But I love going out. and playing shows. I’ve been out in the last 2 years with my other band, Jealous Nostril playing tiny shows and I love it.

I just felt like I want this band to move forward towards whatever is coming rather than being a heritage act. I still love playing the old tracks and I still love playing the old hits, but I think for a band to survive that you really have to be making new stuff, you know. You need to be going somewhere, otherwise you’re going nowhere at all.“

The conversation evolves into a legitimate discussion around the modern live scene, with Johnny sharing his perspective on the demise in authenticity of rock music.

“I know these days people think of an album as something that like you release, and then it kind of disappears 5 min later. But that’s not really how a rock band works. Getting out on the road and being a band; seeing a band that isn’t using a click track or a backing track; having a laptop behind them that’s playing half the music is getting rarer and rarer.

As a young band starting out, you need to pay for the Diesel in the van to get you from show to show. It’s really really hard when you’re competing with other live acts which are essentially just [backing track], and it’s so much easier to do. Because, yeah, why bother bringing a drummer? Why bother bringing a bass player and guitar player and all that kind of stuff when someone could just stand up there on your own?

I would say, somewhere between 80% and 90% of the shows by bands – you know, the bands that people think of as real bands, are playing along to a backing track. And to me that is sort of the enemy of of live music – they’re conning people. That’s something that I’m really passionate about with Razorlight; we make mistakes but we play live. Our performance is completely dependent on on the vibe that is created by the audience and the interaction with us. The last time I saw The Rolling Stones live they were shit for the first 3 songs but I was really pleased about that, because it should take it should take about 3 songs to warm up before they get good.“

A lot has changed in the 20 years since Razorlight’s debut for young emerging indie bands. And it’s not just the touring side of business, with so much focus shifting to maintaining a social media presence above anything else, bands are expected to be content creators on top of all the other responsibilities of being a musician. It’s a well known fact that industry expects a band to have a strong following before making any real investment into them. However, for Johnny, this side of the industry couldn’t be any less important.

I’ve heard that you don’t even own a smartphone. Is that right?

That’s that’s correct, yeah.

That’s that’s not my world, I don’t know anything about it but I do feel pretty strongly about how difficult it is for bands at the moment. In the late nineties and early noughties, when I was hanging out with The Libertines and stuff like that, and we were trying to figure out how to do what we were going to do. I’m really really grateful that there was no such thing as content creation, and there were no such thing as smartphones or social media because I think it was really important for us to be in our own world.

Young bands tell me that the worst part of trying to break a band is like doing all the content creation, all that kind of stuff. Maybe we’re gonna have a band that will break through. That won’t do it. And I’ll just say, ‘do you know what, fuck that we’re not doing it’.

It’s well publicised that the classic Razorlight line-up had their internal ‘conflicts’ over the years. Battle of the egos left Borrell and drummer Andy Burrows at loggerheads often, and in 2009 decided to step away from the band. In 2011, Björn Ågren and Carl Dalemo followed suit and it was left to Johnny to carry on the Razorlight legacy. The ‘band’ remained somewhat active, however they never really regained that initial buzz that launched their standing in the first place. But still Johnny preserved, and in 2019 Ågren rejoined as Razorlight guitarist and in 2021 Burrows and Dalemo were back. Now, they release music under that classic line up (albeit not the original as I was rightly corrected.)

“Our first drummer [before Burrows] was called Christian Smith, and he did the whole first album [Up All Night], he was a big part of our original sound.

Andy is hugely, hugely important musician in my life and in the band. We certainly had issues in the past, I don’t mind talking about that, but it is what it is, you know. I mean, when you’ve got a bunch of young guys basically living together in a tour bus then shit’s going to go down, you know.“

Johnny appears very reflective of the younger version of himself and genuinely appears to be in a much stronger space, both mentally and musically. Do you feel like you have matured as a band?

“It’s funny because I was listening back to the show we did in Hull with The Zutons the other night and then I was going back and listening to some shows, some like big headline shows from like 2006, 2007 and I think we’re better than we ever were. I think, live, we’re we’re we’re probably better than we were back then.”

After the new album release, you have a (now sold out) 20 year anniversary celebration show of Up All Night at London’s Brixton Academy – do you think there will be more dates like that next year?

“I’m just focused on this album and moving forward. I really love Up All Night: it was a great [album], it was a huge record for me in my life and a very difficult record to make. There’s a huge chunk of my life in that album, and I’m looking forward to playing it live once. I don’t know if I’m going to want to do it again. Maybe but I’d like to make that time really special.”

And so we leave it on that. A nod to the past, but a toast to the future of Razorlight.

Planet Nowhere is out October 25th with limited signed albums, t-shirt bundles and exclusive test pressings available via Razorlight’s Official Store or pre-save/pre-order the new album via your preferred record shop or online streaming service HERE!

Plus JUST ANNOUNCED intimate acoustic in-store dates are on sale NOW but be fast as some dates are already sold out.

OCTOBER – RECORD STORE TOUR

25th – London, Rough Trade East (7pm)

26th – Leamington Spa, Head Records (1pm)

26th – Birmingham, hmv Vault (5pm)

27th – Bristol, Rough Trade (7pm)

29th – Bury, Wax and Beans (1pm)

29th – Manchester, hmv (5pm)

30th – Liverpool, Jacaranda (7pm)

31st – Newcastle, Beyond Vinyl (7pm)

OCTOBER – UNDERPLAY TOUR

18th – Birmingham, Castle & Falcon (SOLD OUT)

19th – Edinburgh, Mash House (SOLD OUT)

20th – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club (SOLD OUT)

21st – Manchester, Band on the Wall (SOLD OUT)

22nd – Brighton, Komedia (SOLD OUT)

24th – Bristol, Strange Brew (SOLD OUT)

NOVEMBER

21st – London, O2 Academy Brixton (SOLD OUT – with special guests Mystery Jets)

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