Falling Into Place

Before talking to Lanark frontman Tem Seivers, this scribe had trouble finding out what “Lanark” actually meant. It's in fact a town in Scotland. But, just like their music, the naming basis for Lanark is deceptively simple. “The name just comes from this house that we all met at on Lanark Street,” Seivers shares. The road there was a little more complicated, not least because of the amount of other local acts Seivers, along with his bandmates, are involved in. “Ok, so... the bassist, Michael, who also plays in Spilt Cities; we played in another band with Darren, the drummer, called All Eyes On Saturn. It was pretty different material. Our vocalist went overseas to take on other projects, and so from that the band kind of fell apart. We were just trying to put it all back together, we still wanted to play. All Eyes just released an EP, so we wanted to keep going. Good friends of ours, the guys from Hi Hello... their band had kind of just gone through the same thing. It just so happened that that was bass, keys, guitars... all the pieces we were missing. So we all decided, like, 'Hey, this could work, let's go with this and see how far down the line we can take it.'”

The initial pick'n'mix of bands that led to Lanark definitely has an impact on the music of Lanark. There's no definitive way to describe it other than maybe “Perthish”, as there's a similar strain going on in a lot of other breaking bands, like Flower Drums, Diana and Mt Mountain. The music already released finds a happy medium between intricate indie riffs and delicate, folk-tinged harmony. “We're not strictly, like, an indie-pop band, but there's definitely that element there. And, I don't know, there's a lot of that stuff going on. I mean, we didn't set out to do one thing or another; it was really just things falling into place. So I guess we are what we are, and that's a little bit indie but with the rock background.”

The sneak peeks from Lanark's upcoming debut album hint at a huge amount of variation between sounds and structures, with an effusive mix of driven rock tracks and spacious, slow-burning and atmospheric tracks. “I think what this album has allowed us to do is work with more space. The album's done now; it's in our hands, ready to go. It's a relief, absolutely. It feels like validation, in a strange way. Strange because we haven't released it or anything yet, but to see all our hard work over, like, two years or something in our hands is fantastic. There's music on there that people might be familiar with, but then there's all this other stuff that we're all really proud of. I mean, we used this as an opportunity to make something that would work and last.”