When I remind guitarist, Jamie MacColl, and drummer, Suren de Saram, that in a 2009 interview with this very paper they claimed that they still had university places waiting for them in case the band didn’t work out, a twinkle of mischief appears MacColl’s eye. ‘That sounds like something I’d say.’ It is a mark of the speed at which the career of Bombay Bicycle Club has progressed that just two and a half years after filling in UCAS forms they are appearing at festivals up and down the country and on BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge. ‘I’d say it’s looking pretty good right now,’ says de Saram. ‘The reception to the new album has been pretty positive on the whole so the future’s bright.’
He isn’t wrong. With the release of A Different Kind of Fix, their third fulllength, the quartet have established themselves as one of Britain’s finest young bands. Recording for this, the band’s third album in three years, took place over a period of around nine months with sessions taking place in London, Hamburg and Atlanta. For MacColl, ‘This was the most enjoyable recording process. The first album was harder for all of because we weren’t used to the studio and we felt like things were a bit out of our hands. If it came down to a decision between us and the producer, the producer usually won out.’
The year after their debut, Bombay Bicycle Club underwent a drastic change of musical direction, from the jangly-indie-pop of I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose, to the luscious acoustic folk of their sophomore album Flaws. MacColl confesses that this change was a bid for the band to seize control and do what they wanted, not what was expected of them.
‘I don’t know if we’d admit it but that was partly a reaction to people dismissing us as just another indie band. Principally, however, we didn’t do Flaws to escape those labels, it was just what we wanted to do.
‘The fundamental aspects of what makes us a band are still the same. All the song writing still starts with Jack [Steadman, vocalist] and as a unit we’ve always said that we just want to enjoy it and that we wouldn’t want to be a band if we didn’t get on. Making music should be a fun experience. It shouldn’t feel like work.’
Indeed, the folk release asserted the band’s musical talent and won them a more diverse group of fans. A Different Kind of Fix sees Bombay Bicycle Club plug their electric guitars back in and proves to be their most experimental effort to date, with a far denser layering of sound and the use of more sophisticated studio techniques. When asked about this, the second big change of musical direction of the band’s career and their increased confidence in the studio, MacColl answers: ‘To be honest maybe we’ve gone too far in that way, but I’d rather have done that than try to play it safe.’
Having completed a successful tour of America, the band are currently mid-way through a tour of Britain, after which they will travel around Europe via Brazil. With their new, more complex songs and busier schedule, Bombay Bicycle Club have forced themselves to develop. ‘It’s definitely harder to recreate the new stuff live. The more electronic songs have taken more work but the end result still works. We’re not just a four piece indie-rock band anymore.’
