|
 It’s
a traditionally nippy October evening when UK Music meet up with geekbeat
rockers GoodBooks. Tonight they share the bill with fellow new kids on the
scene Fields and Kid Harpoon. Kid
Harpoon is soundchecking, but everyone else is upstairs, chilling hanging
around waiting for the gig to start, so, it’s a pretty noisy, but every one
seems to be in a jovial mood.
GoodBooks
singer Max Cooke, keyboardist JP Duncan, Chris Porter on bass and drummer Leo
von Bülow-Quirk are four friends from Kent, they were not, as they
mischievously claim, a producer for Take
That, a concert pianist or an Oxford University Professor. They caught the attention of uber cool indie
label Transgressive who released their limited cassette single, Walk With me.
“Our manager sent them [Transgressive] a
demo, one of our demos that we recorded last year, and they loved it. Then they
found us on Myspace of all places, and rang our manger and were like’ yeah we
really want to put this song out, now!’ That’s how they contacted us. We met
them last October, sorted out the single and released it, and it went really
well,” explains JP.
“It was the first time that someone else had
it as seriously as we did and it was a really brilliant feeling, because as
anyone who’s ever picked up a guitar will know, you spend years taking yourself
seriously and everyone else kind of humouring you. For someone to actually say I want to put
some money into this, and see what come of it, it turns into a different beast,”
adds Max.
Since
then they’ve found themselves being named by NME as ones to watch and winning
new fans at gigs, which include appearances at Reading and Leeds Festivals.
“We kind of walked out and I was expecting a
hundred or so people there, which would be OK, but the tent was pretty full.
That was like Wow! That was a real indicator that things are going well, people
are getting us, understanding us and really like us,” says JP. “I think a lot of the bands that have the
most longevity to them are bands that have a gradual build to them and build
momentum. Like Arcade
Fire, like their record, it wasn’t a big deal to begin with, but it just grew
and grew and turned them into this cult band. That’s far more impressive to me
than say the Arctic Monkeys, who are fantastic in that sense, but it was jus a
big massive explosion and it’s like where do you go from there?”
Now
signed to a major label, Columbia, the quartet are working on their debut album due out in the
spring of 2007 working with producer Dan Grech, who had worked on Scissor Sister’s current number one
selling album.
“He’s feeling quite smug about that,”
grins Max.
“He is!” concurs Chris. “I just texted him today and I was like, did
you get it again this week? And he was like, No the Killers go the album. Oh did
they? What a shame!”
Chris
then goes on to talk about how the album’s shaping up.
“It’s quite a contradictory record in a way.
The way we enjoy music is there two types of music we do: there’s the ones you
sit down and really get your teeth into and appreciate the lyrics, and there’s
the ones you dance to,” he reveals. “There’s
a kind of melancholy that runs through it that I think we’ll really going to
take hold of and emphasise that as much as possible”.
Max
and JP also did some writing in Paris. “We
just went out with the attitude of let’s just see what happens. We were in an
area of Paris, which was just so creative, like the equivalent of Soho, we kind
of just go down everyday to the set and take in the situation and come back and
just sit at my laptop and see what happens,” recalls JP. “The stuff we came out with seemed to be more
for B sides. Not in a negative way at
all, it’s just we were in a different place and that let us create something
different that might not necessarily make the record, but maybe apart from a
couple”.
As
well as their album to look forward to, they’re also doing a couple of dates
with old friends and supporters of theirs, the Magic Numbers in November.
“At last!” exclaims Max. “They’ve been promising it for years, and
finally they called!”
“We did the one gig with them about a year
ago in Sweden
which was incredible. It was such a whirlwind 46 hours of going over to Sweden
to play with the Magic Numbers and going home again” Chris reminisces.
Their EP Leni is released on the 4th
December.
For more info:
www.ilovegoodbooks.com
Words: Helen Duong
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