It’s late afternoon in the baking Oxfordshire sun. Sat on an abandoned tractor attachment between bales of hay are Ric Phethean, Matt Parker and Jamie Bush, the three members of Falmouth’s Tall Ships. The band is sat on said farming equipment because they’ll be playing the Barn stage at Hill Farm’s Truck festival and, as drummer Jamie put it, “…it seems appropriate”.
Slap-bang in the middle of an intensive festival tour which has taken them all across the U.K. and into Europe, the band’s bearded faces attest the many hours they’ve spent on the road in the past three years.
“We’ve played some strange places” says Ric, lead singer and guitarist. “Yesterday we played to about five people in a tool shed in the Lake District” referring to their date at Equinox Paradise near Lake Windermere. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful place. Gorgeous. It’s just…” he leaves a pregnant pause “…weird”. “We had a fourth member join us for a song” expands Jamie; the band chuckle. During their set at Equinox a “mental” dog (as Ric puts it) got onto the stage and barked for the duration of a track before being retrieved by its owner. “It’s a shame we didn’t mic him up” adds Matt, the group’s bassist, “he played the best bit”; the resultant trio of school-boy smirks typifying the band’s dry, sardonic humour.
Although they’ve enjoyed the receptive nature of the festival crowds, especially the “amazing” response of German music lovers at Immergut festival, it’s clear the group misses the company of other touring musicians. The trio have played with the likes of 65daysofstatic, Los Campesinos! and Three Trapped Tigers over the years, most of which they have kind words for. Ric curses the fact that their set at Truck will be clashing with 65days on the main stage; Matt praises the friendly, kind-hearted nature of Los Campesinos!; Jamie jokes that he’s brought flour and eggs to throw at Three Trapped Tigers. It is evident Tall Ships are a warm, affectionate and loving band and, whether or not they’d admit it themselves, their main focus is on friends and family above all else. In some incidences these friendships cross over into the band’s musical output, as their homemade video advertising their imminent first LP ‘Everything Touching’ showcases. Three young girls nervously giggle as they read in unison the release date of the album, then from behind the camera the band throw balloons and pull party poppers.
“They’re just really good friends” says Jamie of the girls. “See, we started at University in Falmouth, the arts college, and a close friend of ours [Harriet Bridgewater], who does all our art work, joined us when we relocated to Brighton. The first year we were there she started work as an au pair and those three girls are the kids she looked after. So when we were doing all of the original art work for the first EP, the kids were always about, helping, and they’re just lovely, and it just seemed appropriate to have them involved”. The homemade aesthetic stretches further than the band’s videos, with Jamie doing screen printing for the single releases, creating individual works of art that a fan can buy for around £2. “You could say it’s a necessity” says Jamie “cos we don’t have a budget. But I guess it’s just part of our…” “…ethos” interjects Ric, “It’s just what we do”. It’s easy to see how a band that’s so reliant on digital loops and tight-knit, unspoken communication are able to finish each other’s sentences.
Renowned for their on-stage ethereal math-rock mix, the band have little room for improvisation: “Because we use loops and such, we can’t fuck around too much”, says Ric, not one to mince words. As such the band has relished the freedom offered by the recording process. Moving into a studio for over a month for the taping of ‘Everything Touching’ meant the band could experiment more than ever before, writing songs specifically for the album, and then shaping them in post production. As ever, the trio’s humour surfaces: “We got the toilet on there, the toilet flushing, Ric going to the toilet” Jamie grins, “I’m even playing a spade on one song”. There’s a manifest positivity in the camp, a clear momentum; it feels as though the band is on the cusp of something, that this latest release will bring a new wealth of fans. Not that the group are in urgent need of any new fans. Closing their set in the Barn, the band didn’t even need to sing the lyrics to the infamous ‘Vessels’, the crowd doing it all for them. The band was beaming. ‘Everything Touching’ is released on October the 8th.
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