What do you think of Glasgow?
Jon: We've been here for about half an hour, we've had a coffee and a sandwich, and we've not seen any of it.
Lee: But the sandwich was nice.
Stuart: I went to the corner shop to get some credit. That's about the most exciting thing we've done so far.
So how's the tour going, is it all pretty much rock n roll?
Lee: I don't think touring these days is very rock n roll.
Jon: You can't really get away with it these days. Cos if you go mental at a gig there's gonna be pictures and images on the website the day afterwards. But we're only gonna get 5 hours sleep cos we have to get up and drive for another 5 hours tomorrow.
Lee: It's good though, we've had pretty good reactions everywhere we've been so far, not necessarily full venues. The people who have been there have liked us.
What's your favourite venue been?
Jon: I really liked Cork, there were only about 30 people there but they really liked us. Everyone kept asking us, why did you come to Ireland when you only released one ep?
Stuart: People we met in Cork were really nice as well, really friendly. I've always wanted to play here, (Glasgow, King Tuts) it's a lot better than I imagined.
Lee: It's a kinda strange setup with the bar downstairs but it's really cool.
You've got a new single coming out soon?
Jon: Quiet life is the new single. NME reckons it's out on May 30th. But that's new to us. We thought it was supposed to be out on May 16.
Lee: Or May the 23rd.
Stuart: somewhere in the middle of May anyway.
You've just completed the video for the new single - what's that like?
Lee: It was great. Jon cut his finger on the first take.
Jon: After we got to the end of the first take there was blood all over the strings. If you look in the video my hands keep changing all the time because there's different plasters and gaffer tape.
Lee: No it was cool cos we had loads of friends down with loads of crates of beer. The camera crew had this buggy...
Stuart: Which we managed to set on fire in the second take.
Lee: We are just in the centre and they basically set off loads of different spotlights and strobe lights. It was a health and safety nightmare, loads of drunken people jumping around in the dark with a buggy driving around.
Stuart: I had to ride in the back of the buggy at one point and I'm sure we clipped at least one person.
Have you got an album in the pipeline?
Lee: In terms of 'have we got a few songs ready for it', yeah. But we're not recording them probably to about May, June, July time and we'll probably do a few more things on it towards the end of the year. But it won't be coming out until January.
How many songs would you have for an album?
Jon: We could put out an album with about 14 songs, but it would be really really long.
Lee: I think we'd put about 10 songs on an album.
Jon: That would end up being an hour. Most people aren't going to listen to a new album for much longer than that. We wanna write and develop a bit more. We could use the songs that we've got now but we wanna see what else we can do.
How was the SXSW festival?
Jon: A big musician's playground. We met the Kaiser Chiefs, we weren't that bothered. They were a bit boring (jokes).
Stuart: I got attacked by Edith Bowmen at one point, which wasn't completely unpleasant but it wasn't something I wanted to happen. We met the editor of the NME.
Lee: Who was a cock.
Jon: Wow, wow, wow he was a really nice person.
Lee: That's what I said, he was amazing.
You're playing Glastonbury this year, is that right?
Jon: Yeah, the John peel Stage, 4 o'clock on the Friday!
Is that the only festival you're doing this year?
Lee: No, we're doing TITP, Oxygen, Leeds (hopefully) and Fuji. I think that's about it. We might have a couple more European ones.
What's the music scene like in Manchester?
Jon: Yeah, it's a really good city to be in when you're in a band.
Lee: When we first started there wasn't really a music scene that was kinda getting noticed. The thing in Manchester is there's lots of little scenes.
Jon: You don't really break into it, you get to know the acoustic lot and a few of the other promoters but there's not like a click where people are really protective of their scene. I think London gets a bit like that. In Manchester, if you can play well and your interesting people will be into it. People are more into the music rather than any status thing.
So where do you get your influences from?
Stuart: When we came to Manchester we didn't really listen to Manchester bands at all.
Jon: Then people started saying "Ohhh you're from Manchester, you sound exactly like Joy Division and New Order, and they must be your favourite groups."
Stuart: I don't think any of us listened to that kind of music before we went, obviously when you're there and you're in clubs they tend to play it quite a bit more than other cities would, but major influences are a lot of American bands, Sonic Youth, etc.
I've heard your music likened to the Rapture a lot?
Jon: That's because they're a band that use dance music and guitars.
Stuart: It's something I don't mind so much. Because people who are coming to see us need to have some sort of point of reference. I guess in terms of new bands it's quite close to what we're doing. But I don't think its the be all and end all.
Lee: Its OK, I mean we like The Rapture.
So how did you get the name 'The Longcut?'
Jon: Have you heard of a band called Uncle Tupelo; they used to be some of the people that were in Wilco and Sunvault. They had this tune called 'The Long cut'. We needed a name for this battle of the bands night. We didn't really take it seriously; we just did a piss-take of the 'THE' bands thing. It was a combination of needing a name and being way to lazy to change it.
Lee: and we're also crap at thinking of names.
Jon: There are bands like The Smiths and The Shins whose names mean absolutely nothing. The Shin's especially. I remember thinking it was a terrible name before I heard the band.
Lee: Well Oasis and Blur aren't that cool either.
How do you write your songs, individually or separately?
Lee: Essentially we just get together and jam, different people come up with different ideas and different parts of the songs.
Stuart: We usually end up having about 20 minutes worth of ideas and having to cut that down to 4 or 5 minutes of a song.
Lee: You do things spontaneous if you're just jamming through things.
What's the main thing you're looking forward to this year?
Jon: Japan, and Glastonbury. The Nine Black Alps really enjoyed themselves in Japan. They do this thing where they go crazy while you're playing and then go absolutely silent when you stop in case they miss something that you say. They said it took them ages to get used to that.
Thanks for your time.
Lee: Cheers. Can you edit out the bit where we called the editor of the NME a cock?
article by: Scott Johnson
published: 18/04/2005 19:09
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