Interviews: White Lies

Everyone knows who White Lies are at this point, right? So I don’t need to bother with the obligatory press release stuff or ‘If you haven’t heard White Lies, you must be living under a rock!’? No? Good. All you need to know is that White Lies are great.

I was able to interview bassist Charles Cave (alliteration = automatically cool rock name) very briefly this afternoon before he had to head off to a soundcheck for tonight’s gig in Seattle, WA. Lots of typical talking points came up, along with some not so expected answers (who knew the boys loved Iron Maiden?).

Sean: First of all, how is the tour going?

Charles: It’s really good. It’s always different, this is the third time we’ve been here now. We’re playing a lot of slightly smaller cities this time, places like Minneapolis, Seattle, ya know. I really find it exciting to get out to places like that. To a certain degree the New York’s and the LA’s are very similar to London, because they’re oversaturated with music and bands coming through every day, but you feel a little bit more applause when you go to places where they don’t get a British band every week, necessarily. So we’re having a really good time and I think the reaction to the band has been really positive.

S: How was SXSW?

C: Oh it was great, very busy you know, we were completely rushed off our feet with the two shows that we did but it was amazing. We had two of the best shows of our career really, and I think it was brilliant.

S: Are you getting yourself ready for the Coachella experience?

C: I’m not sure how to get myself ready for Coachella really, besides buying some sun tan cream but uhhh, ya know we’re really up for it. Everyone we meet is just ‘Oh I’m so jealous you’re going’ so we’ve just heard nothing but good things about it.

S: I’ve always been told Coachella was a celebrity-watchers dream.

C: Oh really?

S: Yeah, I think someone said Cameron Diaz was there last year, and the year before that someone saw Danny DeVito.

C: Danny DeVito? I wouldn’t put him down as a fan of that…

S: Kind of an unanticipated guest.

C: Maybe that was some kind of mirage from the heat.

S: That could very well be true. You need to hydrate at Coachella. If you start seeing Danny DeVito, you know you need to seek shelter and drink fluids.

C: Pretty much.

S: Being a bass player, are they any bass players out there that you’ve looked to or admired?

C: Sure..I dunno, the thing about White Lies and they way we all work, we’re all very appreciative of the importance of modesty and doing what is needed for a song. So I will feel no qualms about not playing bass for the first 3 minutes of the song if it doesn’t need it. SO we’re all, that’s taken a lot of time to get comfortable with that, six years of playing with each other, to really understand the importance of humility and not overplaying your stuff, so when it comes to bass players I mainly admire people who do kind of the same thing. So I’d say, who do I really like…

S: Uh-oh, I’ve stumped you.

C: Well, usually I can think of someone…

S: You’re probably not an Entwistle kind of guy…

C: No, well sort of. When I first started Steve Harris from Iron Maiden was kind of a big influence on me. I really like the way he plays. I mean, it’s not show offy but it’s pretty intense. But that’s what the music’s like. Again, he’s doing what’s good for the music.

S: Very theatrical.

C: Yeah, exactly. But you know, I really used to respect the basslines of the band The Stills, from Canada. We all used to really love that first record…what was it called? Logic Will Break Your Heart. And I can’t think of the song’s name, but I remember thinking it was really good bass playing, very involved and kind of melodic and yeah, I really liked that. You know, when I play I tend to just play what comes to my hands, really, not thinking too much about what anyone else is doing.

S: How do the three of you usually start the songwriting process? What’s your approach?

C: It’s a very long process, really. The foundations tend to come fairly quickly, so once I have a set of lyrics that I’m happy with I’ll go and sit with Harry and we’ll sit down and play keyboards or whatever together and he’ll sing until it sounds really good. The core of our songs, in terms of the actual melodies and stuff and the chords are fairly simple, and that’s our sound really. It’s the arrangement that’s complicated in a lot of the songs. So yeah, but after we get the foundation to where we’re happy we can kind of play the song and start with Harry singing and playing keyboards and it still sounds good then we know we’re onto a good thing and it can only get better. So then we’ll work in the drums, and I’ll play bass for a little bit after we’ve got the drums, and then I can work it out with Jack and then when that’s done we start working on the guitars at the very last minute and any additional layering happens. So it does take a long time and we find that the initial kind of, creation of the foundation of the song can’t really happen on the road or anything like that, we need to be in our home, in our zone doing it. We wrote the album in a very intense period of time and I think that works for us.

S: So you aren’t road testing any new material then?

C: We haven’t really had a chance to, we’re all looking forward to it but we’ve just been touring and touring and touring. There’s a song on the album called ‘Nothing To Give’ that we haven’t been able to play, but we’ve learnt it recently and it’s a pretty ambitious song on the album so it kind of took a while for us to figure out how we’re going to do it but we played it for the first time the other night and it sounded really cool so we’re pretty happy with.

S: There are a number of songs on the album that have very complex orchestrations and elaborate arrangements, that must be rather difficult to recreate live?

C: It is, but a lot of that kind of stuff gets lost in live shows. It’s very hard to mix with that kind of thing, so I think it’s better to do it really bold and kind of dramatic. I think that sometimes, while I have respect for bands like the Arcade Fire who have 14 people on stage and stuff, I sometimes think I’d really like to see what they’d do with just 4 or 5 of them and see how they sound. I think it would almost be more impactful.

S: That can be kind of overwhelming for a crowd to process that many elements.

C: Yeah, I agree.

S: Speaking of other bands, are there any bands you’re really into right now? Listening to on the tour bus, etc.?

C: School of Seven Bells we really like, and they’re going to come on tour with us in the UK. We really love them.

S: That’s a nice match, I’d like to see that.

C: Yeah, I think it’s going to be really amazing. We’re also playing a couple shows with a band called Violins, they’re a band from New York. They’re brilliant, very kind of early stages but I think they’re going to do really great things. Who else have I been listening to…oh, a band called Slowdive I’ve been listening to a lot lately, they’re a kind of 90s band.

S: Shoegaze!

C: Yeah, I really like a lot of their stuff. Ya know, there are probably more but I just can’t think of it right now. We’re really looking forward to School of Seven Bells, that’s going to be amazing.

S: How intimidating was it to play David Letterman?

C: It actually wasn’t intimidating, it was just ridiculously exciting. We felt like, really like school kids or something. We were so honored and overwhelmed to be there. I was expecting to get nervous but I wasn’t really nervous we were just so excited that it felt like being nervous. And it was amazing, that three and a half minutes just felt like the greatest rush ever.

S: I was impressed with how good you sounded. They aren’t known for good sound, those late night shows.

C: Yeah, we were really happy with it.

S: Thanks so much for taking the time to do this!

C: Hopefully next time we’ll have more time to chat!

White Lies – Unfinished Business (live)

TOUR DATES:
8 Vancouver, BC – Richard’s on Richards
9 Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge
11 San Francisco, CA – Slims
17 Indio, CA – Coachella Festival

Tags: Interviews, white lies