by Selina Yang (@y_aniles)
“How do you make god laugh? Tell him your plans,” Charlie Steen says to me after their San Francisco sound check. Embarking on their West Coast tour of their third album, Food For Worms, the band returns to the stage with a reinvigorated joy. The band members’ ties lasted beyond heartbreak, the dislocation of touring, and the fire of creative inspiration. Learning from past albums’ themes of angst and introspection, Food for Worms celebrates the tenacity of friendship through punchy rock ballads, occasionally laced with wah-wah pedal and no-wave spasms.
Shame is a brutally honest reflection of the early 20s, capturing emotional intensity like lightning in a bottle. Steen met guitarist Sean Coyle-Smith at age eight. This group of friends grew up in symbiosis with music, drafting their first album at age sixteen. The second album, twenty. The third, 24. On paper, touring is a numbers game: they have a record of 140 gigs and 57 festivals within three months. In reality, it creates a separation from the continuity of their home lives, a time meant to navigate into becoming oneself. For both Shame and listeners, each album can be a touchstone to a point in personal growth.
The San Francisco show was on a Monday night. It was going to be an intense night out – the crowd was feeling some shame that they’d have to call in late to work the next morning. But it was impossible to defy Steen’s charisma as he commanded, “Fuck work! We’re here to have fun, and to see you move!” August Hall, with its stained glass and Victorian filigree, probably never expected to have British post-punk rockers crowd surfing and standing on heads within it.
Steen didn’t even need to notice Josh Finerty, the bass player’s, attempts to do backflips behind him. The electricity surging in the audience below him was enough to feed off of. Sweat dripping, gravel crumbled off Steen’s shoes as he drifted through a sea of arms and dopey smiles. His steely glare scanned the crowd for anyone not already entranced. He takes his steely glare seriously. It makes every wry smile he cracks even more rewarding.
This interview was lightly edited for clarity.
photo credit: Pooneh Ghana
Selina: In one interview, you said that there are lyrics where you mention people or situations the band members all know about. Every time you perform these songs, do you relive those memories? Is there a detachment you’re forced to learn?
Steen: Half and half. A lot of the things in my lyrics, the band wouldn't know what I was talking about if I didn’t try and cover it up a bit. There’s still things I don’t think they know about. Which is good, because you need that bit to keep to yourself. That's what's hard about it. You have to be honest, but at the same time you have to detach because you can't get too invested in one thing. The key thing is just try and get lost.
At the same time, it's supposed to be about enjoyment and celebration. Even in Food For Worms there’s celebration of even the most sort of morbid of subjects. The ethos of the band is embracing your insecurities and your shame. That’s something that comes naturally where you feel uncomfortable and insecure, whereas there’s the other side to look at it where if you take away that, it’s very liberating and very freeing.
Selina: When you look back at what you've written about on the first album in 2018, do you recognize your youth from back then?
Steen: Yeah, I'm kind of jealous of it. I'm quite opposed to theory, which naturally I think is an insecurity.
Selina: Like music theory?
Steen: Not even that, just like lyrics and stuff. I don't really like any branding being academic or highbrow. I think that it’s trying to cut off a certain audience from being able to experience an amazing thing.
The thing then was the inexperience. It was an insecurity, but when you’re not thinking, you’re still inspired as well. That’s what you’re always trying to chase as a band, because you’re exposed to so much amazing music. There is part of you that has to look at it as a “business thing” because it becomes your life. There’s a part of you that has to detach from that and just be like, “I just wanna do it because I fucking love it,” as cheesy as that sounds. Some gigs will be better than others, some gigs won't, you need to keep having faith in yourself.
Selina: You've known each other since you were pretty young, right? In that case, how does it feel to grow up with people as friends in a personal setting, but also in a business setting?
Steen: That's the thing I don't envy from that time of Songs of Praise and going into Drunk Tank Pink. I don't know if we were in the best place. But, we got through that as a testament of our friendship. There was no clawing at each other or fighting, but the way we communicate now is a lot better. When we were doing so many interviews at that time, and so many shows. It's weird because you go back, and all of our friends are the same in London. When you go out and see people in the band, you get detachment.
Everyone's mature, and people have their own things they have to deal with. That’s life. Now, we just communicate with each other a little bit better. We're just 26 so like, still pretty young, but it feels like we’ve experienced so much. Sort of like marriage.
Selina: In your lyrics, you often use the word “you,” for example in the first part of “Burning By Design”. Is this referring to your past self, or an outside person?
Steen: That's referring directly to a person who the band doesn't even know. Though if they try, they could definitely put that together. A lot of the time I say “you,” there's one person I'm thinking about.
Selina: Does it ever change each time you perform the song? When you first wrote, you had someone in mind. But on the fifteenth time, maybe your life has moved on to something else now.
Steen: With Food For Worms, that’s definitely one of the real strengths about it. Kind of theory and instinct. We wrote it in such a short time period, three months, before we were in the studio.
I loved that you didn't have time to change mood. By the time you come in to record, you'll still feel the same way you did when you wrote it. If you've gone through a breakup, or you're falling in love, you want to capture that while it's happening.
That's why you need to write, because the intensity is what I find interesting. It’s always crap when you lie to yourself. If it’s making me laugh at this moment, or this is making me hurt, it’s making me feel something. And it's always gonna be better than trying to pick a random subject. When you are at school and they're like: “Draw a flower,” most of the time you don't wanna fucking draw a flower.
We're lucky that every record has been a first. First, when we were nineteen, second when we were 21, this one, 24. The late teens, early 20’s. We’re lucky to capture that.
Selina: You started off in the Brixton Windmill scene, but once you started touring, you geographically separated out of that space. With that distance, how have you seen it change over the last couple years?
Steen: There was something I envy about that time. When Fontaines were in we got to see them. Grian’s [Chatten] a good friend. There was a period of time when we were all putting out our first albums. We were all touring and being at festivals with Idles and Fontaines and Sorry and all these other bands we're friends with. It's really nice that we can come together, and we have this history together. To go away and come back, when we go to the Windmill now, and a bit calmer. Not as heavy as it was back then.
Another band, Black Midi, we've known since they started. They supported us on their first ever gig outside of Brixton. Everyone's done well, way more than anyone thought ever. Everyone was just playing and slogging and writing. It's funny nowadays, you speak to people and they're like, “Oh my God, I love this band, and this band, and that band”. You realize how much your friends have created.
Selina: Where do you see the Windmill scene going in the future? Does post-punk, as a label, still have places to go?
Steen: When we look back on bands, it's always retrospectively. It's weird to have contemporaries. It's intriguing to think that someone could put out an album tomorrow, and go stadium size. Someone could put out an album, make a flop, or a band could break up. Or, a band could add a new member, and make a whole new album.
From our perspective, we have a lot more to do in America. New York and L.A., Austin, there’s a lot more to do regionally, it’ll just take time. Do you know that Russian joke ‘How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans. ‘
Selina: What is the band’s relationship to American culture?
Steen: We all really like different aspects of it. There are some things we find quite confusing, but I really like performing on this side of the world. Like Keith Richards, I stick to the edges so far. American audiences are really special. There’s not much insecurity in American crowds. Americans have a main character complex built into the culture. Do a line, do a lyric! Everyone gets so involved. In the UK and Europe, people act too cool for school. Americans on the whole are like, “yeah, what’s up?” and go for it.
Selina: Like people who yell during the quiet part of a show?
Steen: I find that hilarious. And so [Steen pauses] interesting. Nowhere else we’ve ever played, in the world, has done that.