It Takes A Portuguese Expression, Saudade, To Best Describe The Horrors

He's just returned to London from Tokyo at the time of our chat and Faris Badwan, lead singer of The Horrors, shares, "I'm glad to be back - or sort of, actually; I really like Tokyo... Even just the way Tokyo looks - I mean, it's pretty different from London - and there's a lot of stimulation... It's a very intense city to be in." When told this scribe imagines Tokyo looks a lot like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Badwan enlightens, "Well I think Blade Runner was actually shot in Tokyo, or parts of it were definitely modelled on the centre of Tokyo. I mean, I'm sure they built a set, but, yeah! It definitely does remind you of that."

Firstly, we wanna check whether album number five by The Horrors, V, is pronounced 'five' or 'V'. "Ah, well, both," Badwan advises. "It's the Roman numeral." Just wait 'til you hear V. It sees The Horrors exploring seemingly limitless musical ideas and so it comes as no surprise that the five members sweated over the tracklisting, Badwan confirming they found the process "very hard" this time around. "Normally, with most records that I've been involved with, it falls into place fairly quickly," he reflects, "but with this one it was really difficult. Because it's quite a diverse record, it was really difficult to find a tracklisting that flowed in the right way."    

The Horrors have achieved something extremely special with V; the album feels nostalgic and familiar, but also like nothing this scribe has ever heard before. "Great!" Badwan sounds thrilled by this interpretation. "Because, I mean, definitely my favourite kind of songs give me that feeling, for sure... there's an expression in Portuguese, which is saudade, which is nostalgia for something that you haven't experienced and I guess that's a feeling that I really enjoy in music and it's definitely something that I try and transmit."

As soon as this scribe pressed play on V, the thick, industrial, electronic sounds of opener Hologram called to mind Bjork's Army Of Me ("Oh, right, okay, cool") - the record is striking from the get-go ("Oh, that's good"). And the droney synth patterns in another album track, Weighed Down, evoke the atmosphere of Iggy Pop's The Endless Sea. "Yeah, I guess," Badwan ruminates. "I mean, the songs are quite different but I get what you mean about the feeling and I think there's definitely quite a few sort of Iggy Pop moments - you know, Iggy Pop songs - that have provided inspiration for different atmospheres, for sure. There's another one [by Pop], Mass Production, which I always listen to and I think has a really great feeling behind it, which, yeah! I've always found inspiring."

So do The Horrors have discussions in the studio about atmospheres other artists create in their songs when they're trying to communicate what they want to achieve with their own songs? "I would say yeah," he considers, "because - when we're recording and writing - we don't ever really listen to other people's music, like, we kind of stop listening to records once we're in the recording process. But when we're discussing how a song can work then we definitely - I guess we're talking about things more in terms of feelings and what would be the right feeling for the song so, yeah! It's more like we'll approach things in that kind of way and describe things quite visually. I think feeling, and getting the right feeling, is definitely the most important thing when it comes to trying to figure out where a song's going."

There's a sense that the songs on V were given the freedom to take shape without imposing restrictions on each song's length or structure. "I definitely think it's true to say that's where it ended up," Badwan states. "I mean, we're not very good at discussing things - like, planning things in advance - because then it kind of doesn't end up being very natural, I think. Because we're not classical musicians and we don't really approach things in that way, or - I mean, that's not to say that classical musicians don't play with feeling, because of course the best ones are incredible at that: transmitting feeling. But it's more like the accidents and the mistakes are as important to The Horrors as the things that were done deliberately. And I think, really, with this record it was about capturing the mistakes as much as anything else, you know. I think it's actually a really important thing for our band... we wanna hear the initial burst of excitement and spontaneity that produced a song in the first place." To capture this raw energy, Badwan says that often "one of the original takes of when someone came up with an idea for a keyboard line or something" will end up in the final version of a song by The Horrors.

One of the album's standout tracks, Press Enter To Exit, is particularly sprawling in terms of arrangement and Badwan allows, "For certain the mid-section in that was quite spontaneous and, I mean, it went through quite a lot of changes, that song, but we definitely kept a lot of elements from the very original writing session [in the final version]."

The Horrors worked with Paul Epworth on V and Badwan enlightens, "The number one thing I'd say that Paul brought was he's really good at knowing how to suspend judgement, because I think a big issue for The Horrors - 'cause we're a diplomatic band, you know, and it's not just one person making all the decisions; I think we can often kind of say no to ideas before they're fully formed, because we kind of second-guess where they're gonna go, and when there's five people doing that it can mean that things take a little longer. But then I think what Paul was really good at was getting us to sort of wait, you know, and to work on things a bit longer before we decided whether we liked them or not and, as a result, we wrote a lot more songs - it actually made the session a lot more productive and a lot quicker - because, you know, we didn't say no to things; we just kept working and then we assessed it later on. I think it was a better way of doing it."

After admitting Death In Vegas are a band he really loves, Badwan recounts, "We tried working with [Richard Fearless] on a song called Sea Within A Sea and we didn't quite finish it with him, but we did try a coupla days working with him," of the song that wound up on The Horrors' stunning second album Primary Colours. 

Back in July, new material from V was premiered at Omeara, a 350-capacity venue in London at which Badwan confirms "we played old songs as well". On album-in-full shows, he opines, "For some reason I've found that, when you perform live, when you try and play songs in the order they are on the album it doesn't really work as well as it does when you hear the record. 'Cause we've tried to do that before with other records and it hasn't been quite right... it's just different when you play it live." When asked why he thinks that is, Badwan ponders, "I think it's just - the energy of the songs change when you perform them live and then it just distorts the picture a little bit, you know; the songs sound different and sometimes they're heavier or sometimes they're more sparse - there's loads of different reasons."

On whether The Horrors try to keep the potential for a song's live translation in mind during the creative process, the lead singer reveals, "Well, with us I think - and this is actually one of the things I really like about, you know, performing with The Horrors: the songs do change quite a lot when we perform them live and they kind of are always changing as we continue to tour, which is kinda cool because you see the songs grow, you know; they continue to grow from the point the album's finished." So they're almost like living entities? "Yeah, well they are. Definitely. And that's a really good thing about making music."

When it came to working out live versions of the songs on V, Badwan admits that "for some reason it wasn't an issue at all". "Normally it takes a little while for songs to work, I think, when we're rehearsing - or it has in the past - but for some reason on this record all the songs came together very quickly in the rehearsal room and they slot into the set quite naturally... but we've only performed four of them so far, so we'll see."

We wonder whether there's ever been a song by The Horrors that they've really badly wanted to incorporate into their live show, but just couldn't make work. Badwan confesses, "On the last record, Luminous, we had a song called Jealous Sun and it was kind of impossible to recreate live, because - just the way the guitars were constructed... we would've had to use a backing track and it wouldn't really have had the same impact, so we haven't performed that one live. I just think, you know, I like it when you hear a record and then you watch a band perform the songs and they have adapted... I like seeing how a band adapts their songs; I like seeing a band can change to suit a different setting."

After discussing how disappointing it can be to see a band performing live and presenting the songs in exactly the same way as their recorded counterparts, especially when there's not even a visual element to keep things interesting, Badwan states, "I've toured with bands in the past who basically just play to a backing track, you know, they sound exactly like the record every night. And it just gets boring after a while, because there's no danger and there's no uncertainty, and I just think if you're doing something creative there has to be an element of uncertainty." 

We put forward the opinion that live performances are particularly exciting when everything seems to be derailing, but then it all pulls together at the last moment and Badwan chuckles, "Yeah, that's definitely something familiar to me anyway." Does he often feel out of control up on stage? "Well, yeah, I mean The Horrors, for sure, feels like it's always on the brink of collapse so, yeah! We're used to that." When told loads of bands probably envy The Horrors, because they try really hard to achieve an element of danger but fail miserably, Badwan hesitates, "Maybe. I mean, it's a lot more stressful way of doing it, but maybe it's more rewarding."

When asked whether he gets out to many live gigs himself, as a punter, Badwan muses, "I guess I'm lucky in the sense that I'll end at places where I'll see shows anyway. I don't have to kinda search it out, because I started a label just for fun a coupla years ago and so I was watching quite a few new bands after that. And there was one band that I was working with recently called Happy Meal Limited, it's spelt HMLTD, and they're sort of a new kind of punk band from London... It's not really straight-ahead punk, it's a bit weirder than that, it's almost sci-fi or something, like, quite strange and quite theatrical but, yeah! I produced their first single and they're one of the best new bands I've seen in probably five years or something, you know; they're really brilliant."

HMLTD were the band on everyone's lips at The Great Escape in Brighton this year and boast a kind of swashbuckling Adam & The Ants aesthetic with electronic bleeps, Sigue Sigue Sputnik shock value and sporadic instrumental flourishes. Badwan enthuses, "They're really good and I think we're trying to get them to come on tour with us at the end of the year if they're around, but I think they're doing a UK tour of their own so we'll see."

Of his other musical project Cat's Eyes, Badwan reveals "Rachel [Zeffira] and I actually were just working on something last night". "We put out a record last year [Treasure House], and we were doing a film soundtrack before that, but we've had another record that we've been wanting to finish for a while. I mean, we've just gotta go and record it, really - we've written most of it - so, yeah! We'll definitely keep working together. I think Rachel and I will always do stuff together... I definitely think that I've learnt a huge amount working with Rachel, because she's just one of the most talented people I've ever worked with... She's just someone who I respect immensely, because she's really gifted."

But, what we really wanna know is: will The Horrors tour our shores any time soon? "I think we are trying to organise a trip over to Australia next year," Badwan divulges. "Hopefully early next year we'll be over there  and obviously, because of the way things work out there, it's better if you're attached to a festival so that you get to go around the whole country. And some of my favourite tours have been, you know, like the Laneway tour or Big Day Out or whatever. So, yeah! Hopefully we'll be coming next year.

"It's just such a big country, isn't it? But, I mean, that's kinda what makes the touring over there so fun, because you get to stay in each city for a coupla days at a time." Lots of downtime, hey? "For sure and, yeah! That's what makes it fun." So has Badwan ever tried surfing? He laughs, "Ah, you know what? I've not tried surfing, but I would. Maybe I will."