Call Your Mother, ANTEROS are rising.
"we want to be doing this forever if we can"
Anteros are living up to being tipped for 2018, and then some, in their own, highly colourful, compelling and creative way.
To round off an incredible 2018, these fresh festival favourites have a new single and video plus more tour dates in Autumn.
Watch this space/band - Anteros are rising.
They were also in conversation with Elly Bailey, recently.
Summer 2018 was already hot enough! Laura Hayden, Joshua Rumble, Jackson Couzens and Harry Balazs found themselves in the Moroccan desert making the short film accompanying dream pop (driving bass-lined) new single, 'Call Your Mother'. The single was streamed 100,000 times in it's first ten days of being public. The video (heading for 17,000 views in just over a week) is Part One of a trilogy.
It's a tale within a tale (of sassy tunes and charismatic presence) that has taken the band from the UK's swelling, guitar fuelled underground to wider acclaim, increased recognition and landmark festival appearances (most recently at the Reading/Leeds weekend).
Fresh from playing to a packed out tent at Y Not Festival, Anteros sat down with Elly to talk festivals, David Byrne and more.
Elly : "Have you been enjoying the festival circuit this year?"
Laura: "Yeah, it’s been great!"
"What other festivals have you done?"
Laura: "Oh god, what have we done? Live at Leeds"
Jackson: "Truck Festival"
Joshua: "BBK" (Spain)
Laura: "Citadel"
Jackson: "Neighbourhood, Hit the North..."
Laura: "...Our management told us it would be a quiet summer because we’re getting stuff ready for an album, but we’re like; if this is quiet then what is next summer going to be like? But it’s fun (also this year; Kendal Calling, 110 Festival, Bestival and Humber Street Sesh in Hull. "
Elly : I didn’t know Hull had a festival?
Laura: "Yeah it’s a small festival, in the city of culture. For some reason all my closest girl friends have ended up being from Hull, I’m Spanish so I don’t know how that happened!"
Elly : Excluding playing festivals, would you consider yourselves big festival-goers, anyway?
Laura: "We were talking about this earlier"
Jackson: "I’ve never been to a festival as a punter…"
Harry: "...I went to Isle Of Wight Festival when I was sixteen and after that I’ve never been again. When mates are playing I’ve been for the day but I haven’t camped at a festival again."
Laura: "I’ve been to a few festivals"
Joshua: "Yeah I think growing up, I’m from near Reading, so it’d always been a group of people going to Reading Festival, but the first one I properly made the decision to go to was when we went to Isle Of Wight in 2015."
Laura: "Yeah, Josh and I decided that for my birthday we’d go to Isle of Wight Festival. Fleetwood Mac were headlining, my favourite band, and Blur, Josh’s favourite band so we asked our agent for tickets for my birthday and we went to IOW strictly to watch those bands. We made it to like the second row at the main stage for Fleetwood Mac."
Joshua (laughing): "Proper fan girls"
Laura: "Yeah it was amazing. But I think once you become involved in a festival, it’s hard to be back out in the public. I feel whenever I go to festivals now and I’m not playing I kind of miss the adrenaline before going onto stage, bumping into my mates in artist camp, the catering, the showers the free booze. It’s a crazy thing to get used to but it’s great.
But, we do try and stay on after festivals and watch some bands play.
We’re all big David Byrne fans and he played BBK Festival a few weeks ago. We had just finished our set, and were in catering when he walked in. I turned to Jackson, completely unaware like “Oh I can’t wait to see David Byrne later,” and Jackson was like, “Yeah he’s behind you.”
Joshua: "We were staring star struck and Laura had no idea."
Laura: "I couldn’t see! But I decided that we were going to wait for him to stop talking to people and go say hi, because it’s the kind of thing where if you don’t, you’ll regret missing that chance forever.
But we kind of miss that sort of thing if we’re not performing at a festival. It’s also fun just to be part of the circus."
Elly : At festivals do try to win the audience over? Do find that you have to work harder?
Laura: "It’s quite nice to have a challenge."
Joshua: "It kind of changes festival on festival, you might have loads of fans in some places and not in others. But this year has been really great for us; we’ve played some great festivals."
Harry: "Everything is still a surprise, you don’t know what to expect."
Laura: "The last two gigs, I’ve been able to jump down into the crowd, and that’s something that hasn’t happened before. It’s been really fun this summer. Sometimes you do spot the odd person that’s a bit more apprehensive, but it’s fun to change their mind."
Joshua: "I think, it’s infectious to an audience, they see us having fun onstage and can’t help but have fun themselves, and we love playing live."
Laura: "It’s so weird because anyone can put music up, there’s so many bands, so many artists, you can have a million streams on Spotify but you don’t know if people are going to come to your show, because all those people might not be in the same place. So it’s nice to take a step back from social media and the Internet and see that translate into real human beings."
Elly : Is there anyone playing today that you’d want to check out?
Laura: "I’ve never seen The Libertines live so I am so excited for them!"
Harry: "I saw them once with Colin from Circa Waves. The first time I met him he asked he if I wanted to go The Libertines the next day, went to Nandos and went to the show, it was great."
Elly : You’ve grown through the grassroots venue scene, do you find it’s more a more organic way for bands to grow?
Harry: "A lot of being in a band is trial and error, each gig we’re testing out different stuff, and you learn from that."
Laura: "We’ve toured for nearly three years now; you learn how to work with each other, and also just how to perform."
Joshua: "Everyone loves that feeling of ‘I’ve found this band before anyone found them’ and that’s what you get with playing grassroots venues."
Laura: "It’s really fun, you make friends with the audience, and now when we tour the country we always feel home wherever we are. The beauty is that there’s no one formula to be successful, for me at least we have learnt quickly from performing. Whatever you go with you have to stick with for a while so you want to make sure it’s right, especially because in tens years, it still needs to work. And we want to be doing this forever if we can."
Anteros are off to a credible start.
UK tour dates
Sept 30 Hoyfest, Cardiff (Headline set)
Oct 10 Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, Brighton Oct 11 The Garage, London Oct 12 Rough Trade, Bristol Oct 14 Soup Kitchen, Manchester Oct 15 King Tut’s, Glasgow Oct 16 The Wardrobe, Leeds Oct 17 Rough Trade, Nottingham
Nov 03 2Q Festival, Lincoln
Words and photography by Elly Bailey
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