SUPERSWEET can’t even remember how long we’ve supported the indie-pop Good Shoes, but it’s bitterly sweet enough that we’d sit at Dalston’s old man's pub The Stag's Head for over an hour, just to interview the blighters. So getting our own back, we tricked them by orchestrating baffling photo shoot and making them believe we could actually read palms, ha! But before we can grasp a first question response (or describe what didactic means to Rhys), a toothless Irish “gent” arrives to give gummy advice “I don’t want you sitting in the cold, there’s a nice warm fire ov’r tere”, eerily giggling off into the next room. Breaking up the insults, the pub stray almost arrives as a warning to Will’s “future”, so we get our whips cracking about GS’s choice of album title.
Rhys: Someone (Charlie Duck) said it and I liked it...DUDES! (Catches Steve and Will talking) You don’t have to be here if you are just going to speak over me...Tom and I can just do it.
Will: Sorry, we were talking about my hand.
Rhys: The whole album is about just a break-up and it’s quite negative, so it fitted it.
Since the beginning we noticed the four-piece continuously appealing to the younger crowd, so conjuring conspiracies (as we frequently do), we question if Good Shoes have a long term plan to get fans hooked when their young, to make a superior race of overwhelming Good Shoes fans of all ages... (Rhys in a flash thwarted our hypothetical plot, gah, fun sucker).
Steve: That age group (at university) is the most prolific for gig goers...so they are going to form fan base of most bands.
Tom: We have grown up with some fans since the beginning from the first album to the second album.
Steve: We feel like we’ve grown up on a “journey” with them, they only show up every now and then. It’s only a journey.
Asking about Rhys’ gigolo antics on stage (he recently had his shirt ripped off at a recent gig) we wonder if that is his new preferred stage move.
Rhys: That happened one time! If people are just standing there and you get amongst it, they liven up quite quickly; you realize you can do what you want when they come to your gigs. Trying to rile people up!
But apparently “riling people up” has its consequences...
Steve: At Harlow...
Rhys: Is that where I got trampled on?
SS: What happened?!
Rhys: I went into the crowd, and they sort of dropped me and they realized they could get on the stage and so trampled me, they didn’t care about me. I don’t think anyone realized I was on the floor...
Will: Fickle, Fickle, Fickle.
SUPERSWEET, forum junkies, and the in-the-flesh fans unremittingly rave on about their track ‘Our Loving Mother In A Pink Diamond’, but what influenced Rhys and Steve’s solo cryptic number?
Rhys: Nothing influenced it; Steve started playing the four chords over and over again. I was like; we should play this over and over again. That’s pretty much what happened. Steve started noodling all over it. It's about memories, my childhood. The images in my head are really nice, but no one else will understand! It was about being round Sidmouth, Compton Beach, I really liked it there, and of your grandparents when you are younger not interacting with people who are elderly any more. But that is in about 12 lines, so it’s not really going in depth about my feelings about it!
Loosely making generic comparisons, between automobile metaphors and short lyrics, we thought ‘1000 Miles An Hour’ arrives almost as an indie slap in the face to Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’.
Rhys: It wasn’t as intellectual as that. The song ‘Nazanin’, I just thought it would be nice to write a similar song for the second album. I had a riff, and we just played stuff over and over. Steve worked on it too with Tom.
Tom: I like your answer better.
But with an instrument of choice, could Good Shoes engage Kraftwerk in a swarthy slap in the face showdown?
Rhys: I’d fuck them up with a bike! What they hold so dearly, they love bicycles don’t they! I’d cycle up, run them down, and then hit them with the bike.
Will: Well they’ve got quite severe haircuts, so I’d get them with either a really blunt razor, or smash ‘em up with an android. One of their own that they’ve built.
Rhys: What about one of their really expensive keyboards?
Will: Re-programme one of their robots to hit them with a keyboard. That would be quite funny. I quite like them, so I don’t want to have to do that. I’m sure they’re lovely people...
From the debut to sophomore album, Good Shoes have hop skipped through different bassists, settling with Will Church, the previous bassist of short lived Vincent and The Villians (he even remembered performing one of our best SS Greetings, A cappella style!). Apart from being a proficient bassist, we reckon Will must’ve passed an initiation ritual...
Will: They made me drink a pint of their piss.
Rhys: Don’t say that!
Will: I had to learn the songs; that was initiation enough, over 20.
Steve: It felt we were being initiated really with his sense of humour. It’s so vulgar, dangerous. (He is an) ignorant creature.
Will: Yes, yes, above all ignorant...who clearly doesn’t have a good future...and I’m going to have a broken relationship somewhere along the lines.
Steve: A born dreamer. Its great have him on board, because he really knows how to bash-those-strings.
Will: Thanks...
While having a four-day to commemorate their album launch teeters on slightly being egocentric, we thought it was a pretty special idea considering how tiny and god damn far the venue was, so how on earth did the cheeky narcissists wangle a four day-er?
Rhys: It was our management’s idea initially. We had a couple of support bands we knew in November, we asked them to play. I asked a lot of friends of mine/ours to DJ, who are in bigger bands but can’t really play. I quite wanted people to have secret guest play with us on tracks. But that didn’t really work out. Maybe La Shark will play on a track with us. [SS: They didn’t!]
Steve: I spoke to a guy at the bar, and he said he’d get his tuba out and give us a bit of tuba. I said, “By all means”, then he started saying that our kit was really valuable, and I thought maybe he was going to send in a few guys, then he gave me this funny look and showed me this tattoo, then we went to the toilet....anyway. Bought me a drink though! Can’t really remember what happened then...
Tom: Let’s find out what Will’s palm thinks.
Will: There’s definitely a new line that’s emerged. A drug induced rape line.
Last time we interviewed Good Shoes, we asked if there was a Good Shoes Festival (spooky!) who their ultimate support band would be, this time round they set their heights even higher:
Will: I guess Radiohead would be good to just pop-in, maybe The Beatles.
Rhys: Nah don’t want the Beatles man. I’d like At The Drive In.
Will: They couldn’t play here; they’d tear the place to PIECES! People would throw faeces...
Cueing the end of the interview, country Irish violin blares in the background as Rhys argues whether a lyric can even sum up their second album and his prophetic (ahem) wisdom.
Rhys: Can’t really think with this music! I can’t even remember any of the lyrics. I can remember ‘1000 Miles An Hour’. I wouldn’t want to sum it up. The title sums up the world. No Hope No Future. Wait “We’ve past the point of no return” (lyric in ‘I Know’). That’s the lyric! I genuinely believe. We’ve fucked it up, that’s it. We’re gonna have a nice existence then its FUCKED.