Jungle's Tom McFarland Explains How Even His Own Mum Treats Him Differently Now He's Famous

It’s Sunday evening in New Orleans when we get Jungle’s Tom McFarland on the phone. The band have just released their second album and are really “enjoying having the songs out and just enjoying life”. 

And enjoy life they have. As they were then known, 'J' and 'T' were shrouded in mystery when they first burst onto the scene in 2013. The self-titled debut that followed cemented the hype and won the collective – as they would turn out to be – a stack of fans with their neo-soul groove that was unmistakably born in the UK. Album number two, For Ever, sees the group embracing the limelight, somewhat more grown up, and telling more personal stories.

“We weren't really ready for the level it went to that quickly, so naturally I think you kind of shy away from the limelight,” McFarland reflects on the band’s beginnings. “Through that, the media made their own story essentially and probably played into some of the mystique and what people loved about Jungle at the beginning. Everybody wants to know something about something that people don't know about. It's a basic human thing.

“Now I think it's a little bit more about the music and the band have grown up a little bit. The band are better and we're just letting people get to know us a little bit more. Because these stories are now more personal and, you know, it's kind of like, out of the darkness and into the light.”

That natural progress and evolution as a band is an easy conversation point for McFarland and something he thinks “is a beautiful thing”.  

“Everything kind of works on the ups and downs and maybe on the third record it will go dark again and on the fourth, it’s light. It's just a transition, it's a change and if you don't change, then you don't progress. You don't really grow and I think it's really important that we did that because we couldn’t still be like, ‘Ahh I don't really want to put my face to it, I don't really want to own what I do.’”

From that initial sense of mystery, Jungle blew up, igniting festival stages across the world with an infectious energy brimming with personality. “Dreaming of people loving you or admiring your music is one thing but actually having it happen makes you kind of go quite insular in a very weird way.

“But it only takes a couple of years to accept that change in your life. Because all these people change, like, everybody talks to you different, even my mum is different to me, you know.

“People's attitudes definitely change and it can be good and it can be negative. People take shots more at you and you just have to be ready for that and that basically means as soon as you achieve something in the real world, there's a lot more attention on you the whole time.”

Because of those natural changes, creating an enduring fanbase is something that plays on his mind. We fanboy out over Radiohead together, with McFarland claiming they are one band where, after all this time, he still buys the hype. 

“I don't know why, I just believe it,” he laughs after slagging off more recent albums from other faves Kings Of Leon and The Strokes. 

Radiohead have “almost got better and I think that's a very interesting trait because you look at where albums go. And I think that's what Jungle's got going on. I think the records are just going to get better and better and better. I think that's a very achievable thing to do. I don't know why that is but like the second one is 100 percent better than the first one and already the stuff we're conceptualising for the third one seems better than the second one”.

“I think the music that we create, we have to have more. People have to fall in love with the whole record."

Within that conceptualisation is a focus on uniting music with its environment. “You know David Byrne had that book, How Music Works or something, that big white one that's on every tabletop. It's a really cool book, and it talks about how music is made for its environment and how music works in its environment. 

“It talks about how people perceive music depending on mood and openness. We've all had that band where you're sitting in a car, and you're on holiday and the sun is shining and you're in a rental car, a tune comes on the radio. Your perception to it is, ‘Oh my God! What's this tune. Ha ha, Shazam it.’ But if you heard that same tune after you’d just had a shit day at work and you’re in a bar, you won't connect with it in the same way. And I think it's all about how people connect with things on their first listen to really fall in love with an artist or fall in love with a musician, you have to have had [that experience].” 

The problem then, he suggests, is that “everyone is so centred on trying to make money and not just exploring – there's no money really left in the industry because of streaming - so songs are becoming shorter”. 

“I read today that that song Gucci Gang is two minutes, four seconds long and it's a worldwide smash,” he laughs. “It's that sort of simplicity that seems to cut with the masses.” 

On the flip side, creating an immersive body of work is something Jungle are preoccupied with. Even if it has had a more personal touch on For Ever. “I think the music that we create, we have to have more. People have to fall in love with the whole record. It's the sound, it's in the sonic. People fall in love with the sonic and the concept.”

Back Down Under in April for a string of shows, McFarland thinks Australia is “a good place for” the band. 

“People dig the music there and it's a cool place, we like hanging out. We'll always come play shows there. The people have a very similar humour to British people and we get along with Australians. It's really easy to get along with Australians,” he chuckles.

More so than with Americans? “America's different. They're just bonkers here, but it's so fun. It's fun and bonkers. 

“The people are just so crazy man. Very extreme personalities. Everything's very extreme in America. It's kind of like there's no laws. No regard for morals or society. 

“Part of your psyche enjoys that and the other part's questioning it and going, 'This is just mental.'”

It’s a nice segue back to the album. The surrounding rhetoric, perhaps sensationalised in the press release, tells a tale of the band following Josh Lloyd-Watson to LA, who moved for love, only to decamp heartbroken.

“Yeah, it’s almost trying to submerge yourself in some sort of American dream in a weird way. That's the weird thing about America – it's a fucking escape. Because the reality, like England for us, that’s home. It's like back to reality. That's where your life is. That's where you grew up. That's where your memories from when you weren't in a band are. And all the other places are like dreams.”

Jungle tour from 19 Apr.