Stereoboard Talk To LostAlone About Touring & Details Of Their Next Studio Album (Interview)
Thursday, 05 April 2012
Written by Owen Sheppard
On the penultimate date of their tour supporting post hardcore rockers InMe, I caught up with Lostalone front man, singer, guitarist and song writer Steven Batelle at Cardiff’s most intimate and cherished music venue Clwb Ifor Bach or “The Welsh Club” as it’s referred to by English speakers. Lostalone have been enjoying some astounding and arguably deserved fortune and Batelle was more than happy to chat about their experience of supporting My Chemical Romance and 30 Seconds to Mars, as well as his love of all things pop, his respect for Freddie Mercury, his desire to collaborate with Marina and the Diamonds and how their new album and their current tour have been feeding their optimism. He even briefly speaks on their next album. Enjoy…
So your about to embark on the second to last show of your tour, how has the tour been so far? And with the significance of your debut album recently being released, what has playing on this tour meant to you guys as a band?
Well the tour has been amazing. I think Initially, just in terms of that we had never met the guys from Mojo Fury and InMe before, we were quite wary of sharing a bus with them all. That’s 17 of us all on one bus! But we’ve got on so well and I think for us personally it’s been a really amazing period. After the struggles to get out album released we’ve had an overwhelming response from the press and the kids turning up to these gigs too, as well as old fans and new fans. It’s just been a really brilliant 40 something days.
So the camaraderie with the other bands and the way you’ve all gelled has gone well too?
Yeah, Mojo Fury are actually going to come out and support us in May as well, and I think we all wondered if there would be someone who’d be unhappy with being on a bus with that many guys, but we’ve all got on great. Everyone probably has their own little pet peeves but there hasn’t been any arguing and I genuinely feel like everyone’s quite upset about it all coming to an end. It’s been really fun and we’ve definitely made proper friends with each other too.
'I’m a UFO in this City' (their new debut album) had some fantastic reviews from NME, Kerrang, Rock Sound, and The Big Cheese. It seems like your music is transcending the tribalisms of music’s genres in the eyes of the music press, and when you consider that bands like Paramore and 30 Seconds to Mars sometimes experience a lot of contempt from mags like NME, has your all round acceptance surprised you?
Yeah, I mean I don’t want to sound too egotistical but I am really surprised with the amount of praise we’ve got, It’s been overwhelming. But I’m not surprised by the cross genre thing because I’ve always felt maybe because of the way I write and what I listen to…
So what do you listen to?
…Well you’ll think I’m being ironic but I’m not, I’ve just been listening to Britney Spears, Beyonce and The Saturdays. That’s not what I listen to all the time but it’s what I like listening to before we go on stage.
I just love all music, from Bowie to Frank Sinatra to Weezer, Black Eyed Peas and The Beegees. If it’s a good song then I love it, and to answer the actual question, a couple of days ago I did press with NME in the morning and then Metal Hammer just after, but our music isn’t intentionally written like this. There’s no part of me that’s really trying to please everyone. My favorite ever band is Queen and if you listen to their albums from the 70s, you will have a prog-rock epic, and then a ditty 2 minute one, then a love song, and those are just the kind of albums I want to make. I don’t want to write the same song 12 times for an album, but overall they all sound like Lostalone. But yeah it was nice to get that from NME because if anything we expected to be lumped in with Paramore etc but the NME review was actually one of the best we had ('I’m a UFO in the City' was recently awarded 8/10 from NME).
I think one thing that all those artists you’ve mentioned, as well as your selves, all have in common is a great pop sensibility, would you agree with that?
Yeah, I mean, we’ve got day time Radio 1 playing us now, and it feels ridiculous, but I think it all comes from the fact that we’re not really a band that listens to much rock music, I do love rock but I often go for other stuff. No disrespect to any of them but I think there’s a very specific sound that a lot of the current UK rock bands have which we don’t.
Having now played a bunch of arena dates with 30 Seconds to Mars and My Chemical Romance, what changes do you think you make to the way you perform and occupy the stage when it comes to stepping up to a venue like Wembley, and then stepping down to the tiny clubs show like this?
The step up is huge when you’re suddenly moving up to 6, 8 or 14 thousand people, its nerves mostly but also extremely exciting. You have to just go out believing you can. It’s exciting and once we got over the initial “Oh my god I can’t believe I’m playing to this many people” feeling, it actually became really comfortable. But we’ve really been looking forward to doing a small tour like this and I don’t think you should treat the two any different. The 200 people tonight will get the same performance from us as we gave the thousands at the O2 when we supported 30 STM. The music is where the passion comes from, the people here have paid their money and they don’t deserve anything less.
When you’re supporting, I think it’s important to go on, make a statement with 6 or so songs and get off. Freddie Mercury used to always say “leave them blind and deafened, and wanting more” and that’s what I want people to get from one of our support shows, to leaving thinking “what was that?!” and then maybe they will listen to the album and see what we’re really about and hopefully come and see us on our own tour.
How integral to the success that you guys have had so far do you think your support slots with 30 Seconds to Mars, My Chemical Romance and Paramore have been?
Well every tour is really important. We’re day 33 in to this current tour and we’re already a different band to the one we were a month ago. But although we’re not very big, we have fans spread across the globe now because we toured with those three. You really can’t underestimate the value of MCR writing that they like you on their Facebook page because it gets the word out to so many people who now have our name in their heads, and are much more likely to check us out again if they hear we have a new single. Some people will say “oh you’re only big because of My Chem” and in all honesty, great! Otherwise I’d still be sitting in Derby where I’m from.
If it were up to you to choose bands to support you on your own hypothetical arena tour, who would you invite?
I’d love to be able to offer the help to a smaller band because of the reasons I just mentioned about how supporting My Chemical Romance etc. has helped us. But I’d choose Mojo Fury who are the band that are first on tonight. I’d also pick a band from back home called Crushing Blows and another brilliant band called Crash of Rhinos. If I was feeling a bit above my station I’d also ask Marina and the Diamonds, she’s one of my favorite artists at the moment, I’ve been listening to her album for about two years solidly, I’d love to work with her too.
Can we expect a new album from you guys any time soon?
The next two albums are actually pretty much here on my laptop, the demos are all done and ready. Would we release them as a double album? Probably not because that’s now how they’ve been written. But the next one probably won’t be released for another year. Rock bands in the 70s used to release an album every year but now that’s more what you get from the likes of Rihanna so that she always has something new being played on the radio. These days in rock, the record labels will hold albums back so that they can milk and tour the most out the previous one before releasing the next. It’s because touring is where the money is in rock now. The labels don’t get so much from album sales anymore.
If you could support any band around in the world today, who would you choose? Would you pick Queen?
I wouldn’t pick Queen as they are in their current form, no disrespect to Roger Taylor, who I love, it’s just that to me it isn’t Queen. I’d support Marina and the Diamonds. It wouldn’t work at all and I’m pretty sure her fans would hate our band but I’d love it.
Can we expect to see you at any of the major festivals this year, excluding Sonisphere of course? (Interview took place before Sonisphere Knebworth 2012 was officially cancelled).
Well we were actually booked to play the Saturday at Sonisphere, funnily enough the same day as Queen. I know that we are going to be appearing at a few others but unfortunately I’m not allowed to say or I’ll get in trouble. It’s a shame about Sonisphere but I hadn’t really got that excited for it yet. The most exciting thing at the moment is being on the Radio 1 playlists getting played by Scott Mills, Zane Lowe, Huw Stephens and recently Nick Grimshaw and Fearne Cotton. They’ve all being playing us recently! And they aren’t playing us because they are told to, it’s because they want people to hear us, it’s a great feeling!
Check out Stereoboard's live review of LostAlone's Cardiff show here.
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So your about to embark on the second to last show of your tour, how has the tour been so far? And with the significance of your debut album recently being released, what has playing on this tour meant to you guys as a band?
