Switches à la a-ha!
SUPERSWEET's Michael Wylie-Harris caught up with Switches' frontman, Matt Bishop to find out about home-county-pros, teenage lust, "new rave" and Meatloaf…
Switches couldn’t be less rock n roll. Polite, well-turned-out, shy even. They met at university in Guildford. Sitting in the green room at Camden’s KoKo, they chat quietly. Feeling fragile from the night before and faced with pre-show interviews, they’re looking slightly coy and discussing whether or not to charge the price of a haircut to tour expenses. They’re not sure if they’ll get away with it…
But Switches are gonna be big this year. With an NME track of the week behind them, and a debut album (out later this month) collaboration with Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, The Vines); 2007 looks set to be Switches time to shine. With an indie-rock sound that couldn’t be more accessible, and a likeably charismatic leader in frontman Matt Bishop, they’re a def-cert to be among the indie pin-ups of the year.
SS: So, you lived next door to a brothel in Guildford?
Matt: Jim lived there. It wasn’t the band’s house but we used it for rehearsals and stuff. We hung out there all the time and then we found out about the naughty goings on next door. We used to see men going in and out. There was an intercom system between the two flats and it shared a line so we could listen in and hear them talking upstairs about what they wanted and stuff. They were very upper-middle class punters. Old men. Lawyers and stuff probably.
SS: The women were middle-aged oriental ladies, I think. We used to see them a lot and we used to speak to them. None of them spoke English very well though. There was a kind of pimp that ran the place. He was a really nice guy. His name was Eddie I think.
Matt: It worked really well because we could make loads of noise and they wouldn’t complain, and we wouldn’t complain about them. They eventually got booted out and a family moved in and then we had to move rehearsals to day time just to be polite.
SS: Matt, you’ve been called a ‘child prodigy’?
Matt: A child prodigy… isn’t that someone that does classical piano when they’re about four? I had an unusual interest in the mechanics of music from a very early age. I’ll put it that way. I used to have tape recorders, like a little hand held Fischer Price thing and my mum’s old reel to reel, and I’d bounce sounds between the two. I’d record it from the Fischer Price then onto the reel to reel, and I’d sing over the top. I was doing that when I was four. There’s pictures of me lying on the floor with a toy piano. It’s really weird you know. It’s a very strange thing for a young boy to do. It was all pretty bizarre really. At Christmas I dug the old reel to reel out and listened to the tapes. My voice sound very strange. Very squeaky. I’ve put it onto CD now. It sounds very weird.
SS: What did you write about at that age?
Matt: I wrote 200 songs before I was sixteen. They were all about different things. I remember one I wrote about the national lottery when I was thirteen. I didn’t do much else though. Before the age of sixteen I had never smoked a cigarette or drunk anything. I was very shy as a child. Things started changing socially when my mates began dragging me down the pub. Before that I didn’t really do anything. Later I started writing about girls off TV. I had a massive crush on Holly Valance and I wrote a song about her. It’s called Holly V.
SS: Has the writing process moved on since the Fischer Price days?
Matt: Nowadays I have a little studio at home. I’ll come up with the tune and make a sort of demo, maybe put some harmonies on there. Then I’ll bring it to the guys in rehearsals and they’ll add their own bits. I think it’s the same in most bands really. I’m sure Noel Gallagher does the same thing. I think with Oasis though, Liam just sits in a box and then gets let out and told to sing.
SS: Your influences are mainly from the seventies and nineties (Bowie/T-Rex/Blur). How do you sit with today’s eighties revival scene?
Matt: Everything’s gone back to basics. It’s a bit more stark and primal now. I’ve never been into that kind of post-punk, minimalist music. I’ve always been a fan of richly textured stuff. I loved a lot of seventies Queen for its musical layers, and then I found a lot of the Blur albums very richly textured with the type of harmonies that I really enjoyed. I suppose we are kind of standing out like a sore thumb at the moment.
SS: What the f**ck is "new rave"?
Matt: It’s just a made up scene that exists around a few bands, and now other bands that sound slightly new rave get pushed into that box. I think it’s just a cool scene. It’s not really musical. I’ve got no idea what New Rave is! And I’ve also got no interest in what it is either.
SS: You weren’t always called Switches?
Matt: We were called Matt Rock and The Others. I was a bit of an egocentric twat and I decided to name the band after myself. I was really into The John Spencer Blues Explosion at the time, so I just called it that.
SS: We came up with ‘The Others’. The Others stole our thunder with that name actually.
Matt: Power ballads are back. What’s Meatloaf’s 'I Will Do Anything For Love (But I won’t Do That)' all about then?
I used to say to the boys that I’d do it all. I’d see a girl on campus and say ‘I’d do it all to her’. Meatloaf is a cop-out. I don’t know though. It could be football. Maybe she’s a West Ham supporter and he supports Arsenal? He’s saying I would do anything for love but I won’t change teams!
Words: Michael Wylie-Harris
Illustration: Miss Led