We Never Learned To Live [Interview]
When it comes to post-apocalyptic post-hardcore, We Never Learned To Live know their shit. On June 22, their debut album Silently, I Threw Them Skyward will be fully get-your-hands-onable – and trust me. It. Is. Immense.
TMMP caught up with WNLTL vocalist Sean Mahon to dig into the band’s origin story, the creative process behind the new album, and a load more besides…
Your new album Silently, I Threw Them Skyward is coming out this month. What’s the general feeling in the WNLTL camp right now?
We are really, really excited. We have all played in bands now (together and otherwise) for nearly eight years, but this is the first full-length album any of us have ever recorded. It’s given us a chance to express ourselves on a larger canvas, and we are just itching to put it out there. The single Shadows In Hibernation has gone down really well, but it was very difficult for us to pick out singles as the album is really varied and feels like an album that’s hard to nail down or categorise from individual songs. Pre-orders have gone really well, and we are excitedly anticipating the physical copies in the coming weeks.
How would you describe the process of making your debut album?
We were in The Ranch recording our live session of Marionettes and in the evening we were hanging out and listening back over our archive of jams. After nearly two years of recorded jams from rehearsal sessions, we realised we were easily sitting on an album’s worth of material. We spent a while structuring and organising the jams, essentially re-creating them from our interpretations of the recordings, and narrowed them down to a full LP’s worth based on the runtime.
We booked two weeks back at The Ranch as we had worked a lot with Lewis Johns previously, and knew it would make for a relaxed and stress-free recording experience. The songs were structured, but we had gone into the studio open to collaboration with Lewis and allowing enough room for that jammy vibe to come through. I think we were after that half-way house between great production and the raw, loose feeling of the original jam recordings – and I think Lewis did a great job of achieving that.
How have you evolved as musicians over the past couple of years?
In the last two years, our ability to improvise and jam has really come on. We rehearse once a week and normally jam at the start of each rehearsal. With time, the jams have just become more and more varied, with interesting structures and transitions. We have jams ready for our next album that as I’m listening to it and I have to remind myself “We are all playing this for the first time…having started to make it up 30 seconds ago”.
It just feels like we are really comfortable jamming with each other, losing our inhibitions and going for it. Certainly since the EP, I think we’ve become more confident as people and as musicians, and are now feeling comfortable and excited about just writing the music we want to write and putting it out there.
What are your earliest musical memories?
The earliest time I remember singing on stage was for like a Year Two talent show at primary school. I put on a denim jacket that was way too big for me with some stupid sunglasses and sang Don’t Look Back in Anger as my older brother was a big Oasis fan, and I’d learned all the words from hearing it through the walls. A couple of years later I’d started playing a hand-me-down bass, and found a couple of kids from my town to write some songs and play some gigs.
It pains me to say that I’ve been in gigging bands ever since, man I should be better at this by now!
How did WNLTL come to be?
We all originally played in bands in Horsham from our teens. It was the kind of town that for all intents and purposes should not have a thriving music community, but it really did.
Only a couple of us even lived there, but there was a really great network of venues and promoters especially supporting young bands getting shows. They held a Battle Of The Bands competition every year that would have four or five heats, six bands per heat, and would sell out the Drill Hall every week – which was like 500+ capacity, which is absolutely mental. It gave young musicians like us a chance to actually play to a large crowd on a proper stage, and as a result the level of musicianship coming out of that town was (and probably still is) really high.
When both of our bands broke up we stole Brett as we were big fans of his band, and later added Dave, who went to school with Brett. They hadn’t played music together for many years by the time he’d joined, so it made for a really relaxed and friendly atmosphere and you could tell they instantly gelled well as musicians. WNLTL was formed just over two years ago to reflect the new material we were writing and the complete lineup.
What does the future hold beyond your LP release?
We are really, really excited for our release show on the 28th June in Brighton. I think we will have a lot of friends and family coming, so it will be great to have everyone in one place who has supported us in our lunacy over the years. For the rest of the summer we are playing a number of UK weekenders with some really varied and amazing bands (Boxkite, Howls, Eschar, Envoys, Employed To Serve), and we have two incredible festivals confirmed for the summer: ArcTanGent in Bristol and Incubate in the Netherlands – which are both going to be off the chain.
What’s your biggest ambition as a band?
Playing in Asia would be a huge dream come true for me personally. I think we are very realistic about the reality of being in a touring band playing music of this nature. If this band allows us to travel all over the world playing shows and festivals and meeting new friends from all walks of life, then we will be very happy men indeed.
My biggest ambition for us is that we stick it out for the long haul, and create a wide discography of music that people are really passionate about for many years to come. Next year I think we are hoping to get on some big support tours; it would be amazing to go on tour with a band that we love and actively listen to.
Links
Check out TMMP’s review of Silently, I Threw Them Skyward here.
We Never Learned To Live on Facebook and Twitter.
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