Interview :: Abe
Words: Linn Branson
Abe are a three-piece from Sheffield who unveiled this little gem below, 'You Are Me', just before the sun set on 2013 as one of a collection of five tracks featured on their debut EP 'Heave Ho'.
So impressed was I with the whole EP, produced by the band themselves, and mixed by Richard Formby (Wild Beasts, Ghostpoet), that it has definitely become my first 'wow!' track of the new year since hearing a few days ago.
With that in mind, I caught up with the guys to find out a little more about them.
So, obvious first question, how did you you three get together to make music as Abe?
We have known each other since the start of school and have been pretty pally since. We used to be in rival school bands but then gradually came together when everyone else sort of lost interest. We've now been making music together as Abe for about 4 years, but doing it full-time for almost a year.
Now, there are two of you with the surname Rogers, so I am guessing here they could be related...!
Yeah, twins and Matt’s stuck in the middle… like a third head!
Can you describe for us what Abe is about as a musical unit?
We have always found it difficult to describe how we sound when people ask us, we can reel off a huge list of people we're inspired by, but we wouldn't say we sound too much like any of them. We listen to a lot Prefab Sprout, Kate Bush and Jackson Browne, so maybe some elements have come through from them… We recently got labelled as 'muscular pop' which we quite like.
And the name, 'Abe'?
Abe is a name we adopted from a character from a computer game called Oddworld, we used to sample some of the noises he made. The fact that it makes us sound like one person, rather than a group, is interesting to us, suggesting something bigger than ourselves. Names are hard.
You give your location as Sheffield - are you all original Yorkshiremen?
We're all from Sheffield, yes.
Has the Steel City had an influence on your music at all?
Arctic Monkeys have affected everyone in one way or another and it was more the aftermath that we reacted to. There were a lot of bands trying to do that when we started playing together. You could guarantee winning Battle Of The Bands by playing a cover of one of their songs. So we just tried to do something different from that.
I see that you have been gigging around during last year, including a Tramlines appearance, judging by how good you sound on record, how haven't we heard of you before?!
Tramlines is really cool, but we haven’t really strayed too far out of Sheffield and Leeds. Now ‘Heave-Ho’ is out we want to show as many people as we can!
'Heave-Ho', I take it is your debut? How long did it take you to put together and how did Richard Formby get involved?
We have made EPs in the past, but ‘Heave-Ho’ is the first real one. We had been working on it for a while, and although the songs are new. they will have grown from parts we might have made a while back and then brought together. As soon as we finished university we got our heads down and just did it. All pretty intense, mind. We knew of Richard through the beautiful production he has done with Wild Beasts, Ghostpoet, Darkstar etc. We just thought we would try our luck and hope he would want to help us to mix the whole thing together. At some point the logic was “if all this goes to pot, at least we will have had this great experience!”. It really was amazing to see such a pro at work.
Could you describe each of the tracks briefly.
'Step Out' had a lot of different iterations before it existed as it does now. We had conceived of it as our "statement of intent", something that would set the scene for the rest of the record. It originally had lyrics that were trying to do the same thing but after struggling with them for a while we decided that we could say what we wanted better with an instrumental track.
We sort of set out to make a "pop song" with 'Wink Wink', with a classic structure and a classic tempo and we always had a gut feeling about it, that it would be the single off the record. It's the oldest song out of the five so there was a danger of overcooking it. We realised this with all the songs, that often the first version is the best, so it didn't change much from when we first wrote it.
As with a lot of the songs, including ones that didn't make it onto the record, 'Dark & Sweet' is a song about being misunderstood or rather the problems of articulating yourself: "I gotta speak with heat" but then: "… out it cools". This is also the song on which we first experimented with the backing vocals. We'd been interested in the male group from Disney films (Mulan, Beauty and the Beast) and other sources.
'Yelp!' is perhaps the song we struggled with and argued over the most but it's sort of a reprieve from the rest of the record. In the meta-narrative of the EP this is where the lovers say goodbye before they go to war.
My personal favourite is 'You Are Me'. Not just a great sound - and some nifty production - but very emotive, vocally.
It's interesting 'You Are Me' is your favourite. It feels a bit different from the others - lyrically and because of the process of creating it; it was sort of miraculous. Just as 'Step Out' is the song from the balcony, this is a summary. The lyrics focus on a meeting, describing before, during and after. It's funny, after all the other songs have been about trying to get "yourself" across, this is about finding it through someone else.
You're unsigned, so what is your next aim - to get a deal and put out an album?
Yep, single and ready to mingle! We've had to learn a lot on the job when putting out 'Heave-Ho', when things don't go to plan we start to over think everything and get quite paranoid (we often talk about writing a sitcom with all our petty episodes), but hopefully next time around we can put everything we have learnt into practice. Somewhere down the line we would love to do an album, but for now we really just want to get out there, make some friends and show everyone our EP. We are also interested in working with film and soundtracks and are hoping to do some more of that in the future too.
You are making your London debut soon, excited or nervous? We're a tough audience to conquer, you know!
Yeah, I’m sure there will be butterflies in tummies, but we will make sure we enjoy ourselves. With a lot of these things we tend to over-hype them so it’s like ‘Abe against the world’ but actually it’s just Abe.
Abe play Birthdays, Dalston on February 3.
Abe are: Matthew Clubbs Coldron - Lead Vocals, Synth and samples, Percussion; Oliver Rogers - Midi keyboard with samples, Akai sampler, Percussion, Backing Vocals; Tom Rogers - Drums (Electronic kick-drum), Backing Vocals
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