INTERVIEW: REDFACES

I sat down with RedFaces, in collaboration with Newcastle Student Radio, and had a good ol' chat. Here's the best bits:

At festivals, how do you pull in a crowd and convince them to stay?
Isaac: We usually do a strip tease before we go on. The full monty
Ryan: I think it's all about energy. At the end of the day people pay for festival tickets to see good bands, to see a show so as long as you put on a show.
Harry: For them, if they don't know you they're thinking why should I walk in that tent and listen and as long as you've got a half decent reason why...
Charlie: We talk a lot more with the audience as well. Isaac and Harry tend to have a joke around with the audience rather than just go 'hello', 'bye'.
Harry: There's so many bands who have this presence on stage, they try too hard to be cool and take themselves too seriously and I'm not saying run around in a clown suit doing cartwheels or whatever but...
Isaac: Why not? What's wrong with that Harry?

You've known each other quite a while, how does that help on tour?
Charlie: We know how to tolerate each other.
Harry: Yeah we know when everyone's pissed off at each other, when to stop.
Isaac: I think more importantly we also know when to carry on.
Harry: We've all got a similar sense of humour as well, we all laugh at incredibly stupid things.

On meeting Wolf Alice...
Isaac: Yeah, we were like hi and they were like, "who are you", and we said "RedFaces" and they went, "who?", 'cos everyone does.

On Britpop v Pop...
Harry: Britpop's about swagger, and it's getting a bit boring, swagger.
Charlie: Yeah we like to pull things from everywhere, even from mainstream pop that you hear on Radio 1, there's some good stuff on there, artists like Sigrid (rest of band agrees). People just categorise that stuff.
Harry: Yeah, we all did to start. It does annoy me when people are talking about sound and are like, "that sounds massive", like that's the best thing. They're never like, yeah it's got a good melody.
Isaac: I think there's a danger when you're just into bands like the Britpop thing because it's so restricted. When people open their minds and ears up to other stuff it's better.

On Sheffield's music scene...
Harry: There's a lot of good bands, but there's also a lot of, "bands". Then, because something's average, something just above average, "not saying who", then becomes brilliant and everyone's like "wow they're amazing".
Charlie: There are a lot of good bands in Sheffield though. There's a band called Insults we really like.
Isaac: There's a lot of good reggae in Sheffield too. There's a lot of good stuff in Sheffield, you've just got to go digging for it.