Circa Waves' Metallica Joke At Glasto: We Weren't Being Dicks

"Chill out, play guitar and eat curry.” It’s not exactly the glamorous life when Kieran Shudall is at home. In fact, it could be the existence of any 20-something commoner if it wasn’t for his weekend excursions, which see Shudall and his pals in Circa Waves jetting around to working farms and wild fields, sharing rock’n’roll with thousands at some of the world’s biggest festivals.

The Liverpudlians had the privilege of playing the Saturday lunchtime slot on the Other Stage at Glastonbury this year, although Shudall thinks that performing at Leeds Festival will be the “highlight of the year” for him. However, the Glasto set was memorable for plenty of reasons, though none of which are tied to the frontman’s tongue-in-cheek proclamation that Metallica’s James Hetfield was going to join Circa Waves on stage. 

“I thought it would be quite funny to make a joke, I wasn’t being a dick,” Shudall explains with a chuckle. “I’ve never seen so many people hating on a [headliner], but it seems to happen every time at Glastonbury where there’s a headliner people don’t like and then they do the show and the next day everyone’s like, ‘Oh, they were really good.’ That happened with Mumford & Sons [in 2013], and Metallica and Kasabian now. But you’ve got to remember, all these bands that get booked by Glastonbury, there’s a reason why they headline, because they’re actually pretty good at what they do.”

Shudall is still getting used to his own meteoric rise with Circa Waves, a band formed out of necessity mid-last year when the singer/guitarist’s average world exploded after a single SoundCloud upload started doing all sorts of incredible things online.

“I thought it would be quite funny to make a joke, I wasn’t being a dick.”

“Young Chasers that we just released, I wrote it in the morning in the bedroom, uploaded it [and then it all kicked off],” he remembers, speaking of the catalyst for the band’s swelling popularity. “I think [to myself], ‘What if I was busy that day, I didn’t pick up the guitar that morning, I just went out to the shops or something? Who knows where we’d be?’”

This instant interest led him to calling up a bunch of musician pals that he knew: not really well, but enough to convince them to fix up, plug in and work Shudall’s raw demos into stage-ready, hook-laden bursts of indie-rock perfection. Since then the four lads have been getting to know each other as the world gets to know Circa Waves, and although the band’s founder is still the chief songwriter, the other gents haven’t been shy in putting their own personal stamp on the songs by playing them “louder and harder” than Shudall ever envisaged.

“You just become a family,” smiles the frontman. It’s like going on a constant holiday with your mates, except you play some gigs in between.”

As things stand with any fast ascent, however, Circa Waves have been making things work on the fly. In the live arena, this has forced the band to hammer together a setlist made up of almost every track they’ve written, though Shudall is still trying to keep a few cuts close to his chest with anticipation steadily building for a debut fell-length set to drop early next year.

“Hopefully by February people will be ready for the album and gagging to hear it,” he enthuses. “It’s probably 50 per cent of those hooky sort of rock songs, [but it’s] very eclectic, every song is quite different. The songs work in both ways, in like a raucous, underground club where the kids go a bit mad or [in front of] 10,000 people. We didn’t set out to design the songs in that way, but it’s been a lucky thing that’s happened.”

No matter what the future holds for Circa Waves though, Shudall can always take comfort in the knowledge that for a moment, one of his tunes held the title of ‘Hottest Record’ in the world. He can’t help but laugh.

“That’s quite funny, I mean Zane Lowe has a hottest record in the world every day [on BBC Radio 1], but it’s pretty cool to have someone like him play your track and say how much he likes it. When you’re writing songs you never expect anything like that, but [it’s great that] it’s happened. It gives you a bit of confidence and makes you believe you can become the greatest band in the world.”