With a new single out
on Moshi Moshi and an album on the horizon, we sit down with Casual Sex to discuss the band’s past,
present and future.
Granted it’s usually intentional, but some band names make innuendo
nigh impossible to dodge – Throbbing Gristle (snigger!); Helmet (tee hee!); The
Strokes (Ok, that’s enough…). The latest act of naughty nomenclature to trigger
titters is Glasgow-based four-piece Casual Sex – a straight-up mono entendre
that’ll leave the bashful sheepishly clearing their search history after ever
Googling. So, lest smut run rampant, we’ll get it out our system upfront: recently,
The Skinny has been getting into Casual Sex. In fact, The Skinny finds the
sounds of Casual Sex most enjoyable. So much so, The Skinny has decided that a
first-hand introduction to Casual Sex is in order. “I think when we picked the
name we kind of knew that, well, obviously we’d get some kind of jokes” says
vocalist, guitarist and Casual Sex-instigator Sam Smith (known in a former life
as Mother, of disbanded art-punks Mother and the Addicts). “I suppose with a
lot of people, you say it to them, they go ‘hahaha’ and you’ve got their
attention, [so] it serves its purpose at that level. My sister hates it though,”
he laughs. “She’s a mother of two young children. She said ‘Sam, why can’t you
call a band something nice like The Village’, which I think sounds bloody
creepy… So yes, puns around the name are always taken in good humour [but] we
just hope that when people eventually get over the ‘ho ho, Casual Sex!’
reaction, they’ll actually listen to us.”
There’s plenty incentive to do so. Across their slim-but-ace
catalogue of available tracks, the band have synthesised a thrilling mix of sounds,
including rockabilly, post-punk, glam rock and shades of dub-indebted new wave in
the Police/Clash mould. This medley is reflective of the diversity of tastes amongst
the members (in addition to Sam, Edward Wood on guitar, Chris McCrory on drums
and Peter Masson on bass), with dozens of acts and scenes dropped into
conversation across the interview: Sparks to PiL; Detroit electro to northern
soul. It’s a rich soup of influences, recut in vibrant ways: from the crisp space-surf
of North to the strutting, sleazy come-on of We’re All Here Mainly for the Sex;
the spidery guitars and motorik rhythms of National Unity to the disco-tinted
groove of The Bastard Beat. Lean, arch and assured, the band’s appeal is
immediate and infectious.
Casual Sex began life as a series of demos that Sam had worked
on with colleague Emily MacLaren, a fellow engineer at The Green Door recording
studio in the city’s West End. “We just muddled it together really,” says Sam, “and
afterwards she was like ‘you’ve got a body of work here, it’d be a shame not to
get a band together.’” Ed was brought in first, initially to do a drum session
but soon switching to his six-stringed comfort zone. Chris and Peter,
meanwhile, came into the fold via a course they were both enrolled on at Green
Door. “When I was in the studio doing my session, someone let me hear what he was
working on,” says Peter, “[and then] basically, whenever I’d see Sam out I’d be
like ‘oh come on, let me come and play guitar’” With that corner already
covered, the position of bassist was offered instead. “I just said ‘aye’, and
then learned really quickly” say Peter. “I could play guitar, and imagined it
would be about the same, but I remember at the first practices my fingers were
getting really sore but I’d kid on they weren’t…”
Almost immediately, Casual Sex shifted from being purely an
outlet for Sam’s solo ideas to a fully-fledged collaborative affair. “As I
started working with these guys, the majority of what I’d done [on my own] kind
of got pushed aside” says Sam. “Originally, Ed was just coming in to learn the
parts, but very quickly I thought ‘actually, this is fucking boring, all this
stuff’s really old.’” As a result, “warm-up sessions became writing sessions,” with
new material coming together fluidly. “One of the keys to our writing” reckons
Ed, “is we’ve got such a strong rhythm section – like, Chris can pretty much
play any style of drumming, whether he likes the style or not. So Pete will
throw out a bass line and Chris will immediately pick up on the style, and then
it gets embellished with guitars and Sam just drops lyrics on it – it seems to
flow like that every time. Plus, our rehearsal room is a studio, so when an
idea gets formulated it’s really quickly recorded and set in stone. I’d say that
the majority of the tracks we’ve done in the last few years have been written
and recorded in the same day.” Ed credits Sam’s foundational material as key to
this healthy creativity. “The narratives of [Sam’s] early songs have pretty
much been the platform for everything up to now” he states. “There’s a definite
theme. Speaking for Sam, the majority of the songs are about past relationships
and, well, casual sex…” He pauses, allowing Sam time to interject. “Not
always...” the singer counters. “Sometimes I do just make stuff up…”
New single Stroh 80 certainly seems to have a few near-the-knuckle
truths at its core, however. “It’s a very brutally honest track” says Sam.
“There are people that at times think they know what it’s about, and I just
kind of have an interior cringe.” If there’s a line between being honest and
being a little too honest, Sam’s
walking it gingerly. “Those are the trials and tribulations of dating people
who write songs – the good stuff, sadly, is the stuff were you go, ‘I shouldn’t
really write that, oh wait that works…’” The track – a lascivious blend of wiry
guitar, louche lyrics and handclaps – is available now as a limited edition 7”,
released as part of Moshi Moshi’ singles club and due to receive a formal launch
later this month at Nice n Sleazy. The night will be hosted by Mao Disney, a
branch of Glasgow promoters/label/arts collective We Can Still Picnic, with
whom the band has a “really good relationship.” Run by brothers Bjorn and Erik
Sandberg (of Wake the President), We Can Still Picnic have put out Casual Sex songs
in the past, and Sam says the band are “still very much involved” with the WCSP
network. Indeed, later this year Casual Sex will again tour with Wake the
President and fellow picnickers POST – an arrangement that has some obvious logistical
advantages (i.e. shared costs) but which seems just as driven by mutual
enthusiasm for each other’s work.
When it comes to the launch gig, we ask whether the sense of
occasion creates any additional pressure, or if, from their point of view, it will
just be like any other show. “It is a bit more pressure, yeah” says Sam, “[because]
you do get a bit more profile – and of course, as soon as you put something out
to the public there are expectations, so you naturally think ‘oh shit, don’t
fuck it up’… But I think the main thing is, if you feel that pressure, to just
keep on doing it, keep on enjoying it.” Chris agrees. “We’ve put in so much
work over the years, and I mean, we could be all rock star about it, but it’s nice
just to get any sort of recognition. And that may make you nervous – it might,
you know, put additional pressure on us – but ultimately, it’s just really great
that people appreciate things that we’ve worked hard on.”
Having in-band producers and access to a full studio and
mastering suite means that Casual Sex are ahead of the curve when it comes to
putting together an album, with enough tracks for two already in the can. You’d
think that might allow them to ease off the accelerator a little, but already
they’re anticipating the next, hopefully more extended, period of writing: in
an ideal world, two weeks in a cottage in the south of France with an 8 track
recorder (“I just remember seeing footage of Brian Eno’s studio and thinking,
‘you lucky bastard’…” says Sam), though they’d settle for anything longer than the
odd evening here and there. “But then again,” Sam ponders, “if you give a band
too much time and you take away a certain amount of pressure, people just dig
in. They start overthinking, and before you know it you’ve had six weeks in the
studio and done nothing.” He stops and reflects. “Of course, there’s an
argument that bands should never own their own studio for the same reasons…” In
that case, received wisdom can do one: for Casual Sex, the regular recording
time afforded by Sam’s day job is paying major dividends, and we look forward
to hearing further fruits of their labours later in the year. In the meantime,
we take Casual Sex outside to have their photographs taken: first up against a
wall, and then down an alley. Oh, grow up…
Written for the April edition of The Skinny
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