Chalk Farm Road looks particularly bleak on this damp and cold Friday night. SUPERSWEET is braving the elements and waiting umbrella aloft for Jack Snape and Sam White, better known as To My Boy, who are due to play at The Barfly later tonight. What a beautiful juxtaposition of connotations it is, we thought, that we are to take the band for ice cream in such weather. Ice cream in the winter is perhaps symbolic of To My Boy’s unfailing optimism and belief in the future, in the face of a world with so many urgent problems.
The mood inside the ice cream parlour is somewhat frantic. The lights are bright and the place is packed full of families, couples and friends all conversing vividly and excitedly. It seems that everyone really does love ice cream. Jack and Sam order rum 'n raisin and raspberry sorbet respectively, and two cups of tea.
“They should do White Russians in here” says Jack. “Have you heard of the Beige Russian?” enquires SUPERSWEET, eagerly departing recently divulged information; “It’s the same as a White Russian, but with soya milk, for the lactose intolerant.” “Sounds horrible,” says Jack. “Yeah and they’re really not selling it with the word ‘beige’ are they?” adds Sam. Indeed.
The pair first met through an ad in a local paper whereupon they formed a “bog standard guitar pop band”. However after becoming disillusioned with the state of modern indie, they turned to their beautiful machine. “I started making demos and songs on the computer and they sounded quite good so we kicked out the drummer and bassist,” recalls Jack. “It was quite good that band looking back,” says Sam. “We were alright,” Jack assures.
So there’s no chance of an expansion in the line-up then? “Not for this album,” Sam lightly shakes his head, “We made the album like this so we want to keep touring like this.” “A lot of bands use backing tracks live but have drummers that just rigidly keep in time with the headphones on,” adds Jack, “I don’t see the point in having a drummer for the sake of it.”
To My Boy is without doubt a pop band, but one with a skewered take on every aspect of it. Their music sounds like a cross between Sparks and Mark Mothersbaugh’s contributions to the ‘Life Aquatic’ soundtrack and is full of life affirming histrionics and grandiose visions of the future. And like all good bands, they make a grand statement too. On their press release the words “Down with miserable retroism, hurray for the beautiful machine!” stare at you like a mantra from a future era. But what does it mean?
“Everyone makes music on computers these days whether they like to admit it or not,” says Jack defiantly. “All music in the charts, the Arctic Monkeys, everyone, they all make music on computers. They’re all trying to reproduce music from the past but they're not really embracing the full potential of computers. We’re just trying to celebrate the computer, push it to the front of the band and not hide it away in the background like other bands do.”
“We had a guitar band before,” says Sam, “But what motivated us at that time to change and to do what we do now is that feeling of how miserable the state of indie music was then. It was so focused on retro aesthetics and looking to the past. That’s what was interesting about The Libertines, that there was a utopian impulse and optimism and romance to their music.”
The idea of finding humanity in technology is a beautiful one. It harks back to a time when the human race was excited about the future and progress, a time of the Space Race and rocket packs and flying cars. To My Boy see technology as an inevitable part of modern living, one that cannot be avoided and one that has helped the human race in small and everyday ways, from washing machines, to mobile phones to the internet. Given that their scholarly backgrounds are wildly different, Jack a former physics students and Sam a former art student, do they think that it is the meeting in the middle of this science/art divide that gives To My Boy their special dynamic?
“Definitely,” says Sam resolutely. “That's how a lot of the songs come about - the content and styles. Jack operates the mathematical side of the computer programming with beats and synths etc. I bring the art school aesthetic ideas.”
“The songs aren’t really about physics though, just the terminologies inspired by physics,” adds Jack. “All the songs are quite humanist really; about our lives and even emotional and personal. Even if they sound strange and ‘unhuman’ they're actually about human desire. ‘i am x-Ray’ for example, is a love song even though it doesn't sound like it.”
So man and machine. It’s been a recurring theme in science fiction and popular culture since Jules Verne started writing, and one that has foreseen both the joy and the horror that could ensue from the bittersweet relationship we have with our friends of metal and plastic. The future has long been a source of inspiration for artists, writers and musicians alike but as To My Boy see it, the future is already here.
“The songs use futuristic language but I think ultimately they're quite relevant to current times.” Jack claims, “It’s a kind of social commentary because we're singing about machines, and everybody uses machines and they influence everything, everybody communicates via text rather than spoken word now.”
“It’s not sci-fi or futurism any more, it's social reality,” adds Sam, “The majority of kids' lives now are on sites like MySpace.”
“People live through the internet. It's worth engaging with that and seeing what issues come up. In the ‘80s it was futurism or retro-futurism but it's real now to a certain extent.”
Perhaps they are right; the future that the generations before us have written about and looked towards is here, but most people are too concerned with the present to even realise it.
And, what of the future of To My Boy? What’s next? With the album lightly penciled in for a May release, a current club-night tour and an upcoming tour supporting Shitdisco, as well as a potential tour of Italy, where ‘theGrid’ has received a substantial amount of radio support, things are really moving forward for the band.
“We just want to plough on and get things happening at the moment. We feel like we've been waiting for a long time when we were at uni, writing songs and getting things prepared. We’ve been on the starting blocks for ages and we just want to get stuck in now,” says Jack with an air of excitement.
So as indie music is about to flood the dancefloors, To My Boy are ready, the beautiful machine at their side, to make the people dance like epileptic androids on an electrified floor. They have a vibrancy and strength to their music that is utterly irresistible and viscerally exciting.
To sum themselves up in their own five words, To My Boy are “the unheard combination of elements.” Be that as it may they won’t be unheard for very much longer.