"I See Stuff For What It Really Is, And That's A Curse": Doe Discuss Second LP 'Grow Into It'
Monday, 01 October 2018
Written by Laura Johnson
Photo: Andrew Northrop
Earlier this year Doe celebrated their fifth birthday, while all three members of the London indie-rock band are either in their early 30s or about to step across the precipice. On their second LP, ‘Grow Into It’, they appropriately find themselves taking stock.
Here the trio are concerned with emotional growth and evaluating the people they, and their loved ones, have become. When introducing the album, they said it serves as “an antithesis of the overdone trope of male bands singing about rejecting adulthood and wanting to stay young and get wasted with their friends forever.”
That wasn’t premeditated, though. As is often the case with this sort of reflective writing, it was a theme that became apparent during the later stages of the album’s creation. While choosing a title and artwork, and once the band had some distance from the songs, they were able to view things from a different angle. “There definitely wasn’t a brief for the songs or the lyrics,” vocalist and guitarist Nicola Leel says. “It was more what came naturally.”
“I haven’t got time to wait here until I die, it’s not a compromise if I’m never satisfied,” she sings on But It All Looks The Same. Leel is never less than forthright and is a woman confident in voicing her views. She admits, though, that her ability to see through the bullshit cuts both ways.
“I find with stuff I’m angry about now it’s more because I’m so cynical about everything,” she says. “I see stuff for what it really is, and that's a curse. You’re like ‘OK, this person’s an arsehole, this is annoying. This author is really shitty at writing women. Oh, it’s actually probably quite nice to die as a woman because nobody wants to fuck you anymore.’”
Things like this can get on top of you and it’s partly due to this sense of emotional exhaustion that Leel admits lyrics don’t come as naturally to her as the music does. That remains a little surprising considering the intricacy of the band’s indie-punk compositions, which are littered with overlapping and interweaving guitar and vocal parts.
“I always write the lyrics afterwards, which makes it really difficult,” she says. “We have a melody and then I have to try and fit syllables into the space, which is a really stupid way to do things. Even from a young age, before I was writing music, I never really was in to lyrics. I never really listened to my favourite band’s lyrics. I’ve always been into melodies and the feeling of the music, structures and stuff like that. When we started this band I had to write some stuff that had some kind of value, hopefully to someone.
“Now and again, with a song like Labour Like I Do, or Last Ditch from our last album, you occasionally get a song that’s like ‘Woah this is just coming out while I’m playing the guitar’, which is handy. But most of the time I have to put evenings aside, go and sit in the bedroom, spend an hour coming up with one line, then hating it an hour later.
"Then maybe cry a bit and have a breakdown, and then spend the next night doing it again, putting loads of time into it and eventually getting something out. So it can be quite literally emotionally painful. I think it’s worth it to get something that you think has a bit more meaning.”
It doesn’t seem like any part of the process is straightforward for Doe. They have a perfectionist streak when it comes to the finer details. “I think we just care,” drummer Jake Popyura says. “Too much sometimes,” guitarist Dean Smithers adds. Luckily for them, they had MJ of Hookworms in the producer’s seat at his Suburban Home Studio in Leeds to rein them in and let them know when it was time to hit pause.
MJ also helmed their debut, 2016’s ‘Some Things Last Longer Than You’, and drew them back with what Smithers describes as a “perfect combination of being like a lovely soft bear with a brutally dark sense of humour”. Here, he had a hand in smoothing out the band’s rough edges while retaining the vitality of their performances. That is no small feat, while that sort of attention to detail is essential to the integrity of an emerging band like Doe.
That MJ is as encouraging as he is strict also appealed to them. “I feel like we all just play as hard [in the studio] as we usually do and we’re all quite naturally neurotic, intense, passionate individuals and it just comes out,” Popyura says. “I don’t see the point in getting up on stage and not going for it and it’s the same in the studio. You’re paying to be in there and you’ve got a limited amount of time so you might as well just put everything into it.”
Enthusiasm is not only a quality they value in each other but also something they want replicated across the board. ‘Grow Into It’ is their first release with Big Scary Monsters - the Oxford label founded by Kevin Douch that’s also home to bands like Beach Slang, Jamie Lenman, Nervus and emo legends the Get Up Kids. This change of scenery looks apt alongside Doe’s ongoing resolve to make the journey with like-minded people behind them.
“It’s really nice to have a label that’s really enthusiastic about what you’re doing,” Leel says. “I think we’ve been lucky that pretty much everyone we’ve worked with, the different labels, Specialist Subject, Old Flame in the States as well, and Topshelf on this one, has been nothing but supportive. We just like trying new stuff, which I guess is one of the main reasons for the shift over to BSM, to explore new ground and try things we haven’t tried before.”
‘Grow Into It’ is out now on Big Scary Monsters
Doe Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Mon October 01 2018 - LONDON Flashback East
Tue October 9 2018 - LONDON Sebright Arms
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