As Dot To Dot Festival raged around us, LeftLion caught up with Will Harrison and Bill Griffin of Home Counties, to talk about the band's debut album, their sound transformation, and vodka shots...
Sitting in the bustling Bodega beer garden, Will began by telling me how good it felt to be a band with a fully formulated album and to have a more “cohesive” project; the recording of it was quite odd, so it feels good to have it out, he said. Will explained that the recording was broken up and carried out over the space of a year because the members all had to juggle having 9-5 jobs, meaning they would be in the studio every evening after work.
“The album’s sort of about everyday life, working, it’s all perfectly suited,” Will said, but continued, “I don’t think we’d do it again like that - takes too long.”
Lois Kelly has recently joined Home Counties. “We started writing the album immediately after we had Lois in the band,” Bill explained while we were talking about the construction of the debut. “We became a lot better, to be blunt.”
Lois ultimately changed the way the band wanted to do things; a lot of the tracks from the record went through drastic changes as the female vocalist added more potential to the music.
“It was a good time to reformulate what we wanted to do,” Bill added, and despite the recording of the album being long and “a bit of a drag” the band needed the time to understand what they actually wanted to do with the songs.
We discussed the impact of Lois joining and how it is uncommon for a band of their genre in this day and age to have a female vocalist.
“She can actually come up with melodies we had never come up with before ... Lois has allowed us to explore a different part of ourselves instead of just shouting about all the Tories. We can actually have a bit more nuance in the pop realm, like more of the stuff we’d actually listen to,” commented Will Harrison.
We moved on to discuss tour life at their last show of the month-long tour. “It’s been a real eye opener, because I feel like we’ve defined ourselves a little bit more, and then taking it on the road and seeing the response to it has been overwhelming,” Bill recalled. Meanwhile Will said his favourite moment was performing Wild Guess in London.
“There’s the slow intro and then when we started there was just eruption.”
A fun tour story from the Bristol Dot To Dot show was shared where a man spent over £100 buying the whole band double vodka shots and giving them a very memorable experience – which is surprising considering how many shots were involved.
We also spoke about the recent feature with DORK magazine. “It was cool to see us on the cover, I didn’t realise that’s what it was going to be,” said Bill with excitement.
In the feature, Will told DORK that his favourite song from the album changes every day, so I was eager to find out what it was on the day we spoke. Either Posthumous Spreadsheets or Bethnal Green was the answer.
Home Counties were set to play The Bodega later on that day and the band members both expressed their love for the city of Nottingham and The Bodega.
“The Nottingham crowds are always good,” Will said, adding that they had seen artists such as Ugly, Jockstrap and The Dare in Bristol. Despite missing The Dare’s famous song Girls, and being really mad about that, Will still had a great night.
We reminisced on The Magic Gang and spoke about how sad it is that the Nottingham show was to be their last, and discussed how amazing The Bug Club are; their set was the best thing Will ever saw. Bill shared his thoughts about the importance of Dot To Dot festival saying it was “huge” and “amazing the amount of smaller bands that can find stages in this city." According to Bill, their hometown never had festivals of this sort, and so the band members found it difficult to grow in that way.
Will explained that he used to go to university in Bristol, so he’s been attending Dot To Dot for a few years. “I love dotting around lots of different venues in one day, and I love the chaos of it as well, like running everywhere."
As the conversation ended, we commented on the sheer amount of Super Bock at the festival, and how amazing Liverpool band Courting are...
Home Counties' debut album Exactly As It Seems is out everywhere now.
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