Bayside are an emo juggernaut, not afraid to experiment or reinvent their sound. With 14 years of touring and six albums under their belt, it’s an understatement to say that they’ve continued to thrive while over bands have risen to the top only to burn out.
Sixth album, ‘Cult’, saw its UK release in February of this year, and has been met with an overwhelmingly response from critics and fans alike. Refining their unique sound and pessimistic lyrics to a perfect point, ‘Cult’ summarises the band’s work to date, while continuing to push their sound forward.
We caught up with lead vocalist Anthony Raneri at the London date of their extensive EU tour for a brief chat about new album ‘Cult’, signing to Hopeless Records and trying to win over A Day To Remember’s fans…
Already Heard: So you’re coming to the end of the UK leg of the EU tour, how’s it been going so far?
Anthony: Ahh it’s been awesome, it’s definitely been our most successful UK tour for sure.
Already Heard: And this is the second time you’ve toured with Alkaline Trio in 18 months (they previously embarked on the same tour in the US), what made you decide to bring the tour over?
Anthony: They asked us! They were coming over and I think this is their first tour here since the new record came out, they’re still on their cycle and our record just came out a couple of months ago so we needed to get over here to help support the record. They’re a great band for us to support, there’s not a lot of bands that really work for us to support, not a lot of bands that we necessarily fit in with. With them we certainly share a lot of fans, we’ve been compared to them since the beginning, playing for their fans has been great and we feel it works for a lot of people.
Already Heard: Aside from a support stint with A Day to Remember in 2011, you haven’t really toured the UK since 2008 – would you say your fanbase has grown since then? How has it evolved?
Anthony: It’s been growing. The A Day to Remember tour, while it was cool to play places like Brixton, it didn’t go over very well for us. If Alkaline Trio were the perfect support for us then A Day to Remember were the opposite.
Already Heard: Was it challenging?
Anthony: That’s like, a total understatement. It was challenging, it was hard – for one thing, the kids coming out to the shows listened to heavier music, they don’t listen to our kind of music really and also at that time A Day to Remember were just starting to really break here, so I think the people coming to the show were so excited to see A Day to Remember. I mean with Alkaline Trio, most people have seen them before, but with A Day to Remember they just could not wait another 45 minutes for A Day to Remember to go on.
Already Heard: You have quite a cult following, which you’ve already acknowledged with the album title ‘Cult’ and it’s bird logo cover, what do you think makes your fans so passionate about you?
Anthony: I think it’s our honesty in our lyrics and in our music too. We like to try new things, we like to stretch the boundaries of punk rock and that isn’t always the best for mass appeal, but it does work for us. We’ve been a band for 14 years, have 6 records out and are at our biggest now, the US tour we just finished a few weeks ago was our biggest ever and it’s cool that even after all these years, we’re still an upward trend.
Already Heard: What’s the best part of being a cult leader?
Anthony: It’s cool, it’s like I have an extended family – that’s my favourite part. The fans, I know they trust me and if I try something new on a song or on a record they’re going to come with me and as a songwriter, as a musician – if you were to ask 10 other songwriters about that, if they could have the comfort of knowing their fans were going to trust them and go wherever they take them then that’s the best thing you could have because everyone is so nervous about losing fans. Once you get there then you’re afraid of losing it.
Already Heard: You’re really famous for your cutting, cynical lyrics, would you say with the new album you’re acknowledging this with songs like ‘Stuttering’ and ‘Hate Me’? Do you play with that status?
Anthony: Definitely, I like to make fun of myself a lot. I try not to take myself to seriously but there’s definitely still a lot in the record touching on the legacy I’ve created for myself, and in some ways, I feel like I’m in a box with the song writing, but then like I said, deep down I know the fans are going to come with me so that’s why it’s stuttering. For instance, in one verse I say about how I’m in a box and I’m trapped in writing a certain kind of song, but in the second verse I say, well, no I’m not – I’m putting that on myself.
Already Heard: But on the flipside of that you’ve got ‘Transitive Property’, which is your most romantic heartfelt song yet; was it nice to try something different?
Anthony: Yeah it was so nice. It’s really cool to do it, and that’s the perfect example of how cool it is to have the fans we have because that’s so outside the box of what Bayside does and it’s one of the most popular songs on the record. It’s cool for me because when I write the next record, I know I can take chances like that because the fans are going to be there for me.
Already Head: On ‘Stuttering’ you also mention “making cash for heartless fucking crooks who prey on all your failures” – is this a dig at the music industry in general or something more personal?
Anthony: That’s sort of a cheeky, sarcastic dig at the music industry in general because the music industry survives on people exploiting others. You have managers and agents and promoters and club owners and record labels and radio stations who are going to squeeze everything they can out of a band because they know the band is going to do it because the band loves what they do. They know those people won’t say “Fine! I won’t play anymore shows or make anymore records”, no musician who loves what they do will ever say that. They know that, so they take advantage of that sometimes, there’s definitely good ones, there’s good club promoters and owners, there’s good labels.
Already Heard: You signed to Hopeless Records –
Anthony: Yeah they’re the best.
Already Heard: What made you choose them? You obviously trust them.
Anthony: With Hopeless, where we are in our career, we’re very happy where we are, we’re very comfortable with what we’ve accomplished. If we got bigger that would be cool but that’s not the goal anymore. When we were younger it was all about writing songs that will appeal to people, about opening the biggest shows possible. For instance, we went out with A Day to Remember and there were 5,000 people a night at those shows because we wanted to try to gain new fans. We could go and do that again, we’ve turned down tours that are going to have 5,000 people there because we know that we’re not going to have fun playing to a room of people we don’t fit in with. So we’ve come out on a tour like this, I mean Alkaline Trio are certainly bigger than we are, so we come out to play to 2,000 people instead of 5,000 because we know we can possibly connect with those 2,000 people. So that change of mindset is where we are at this point in our career, and Hopeless is perfect for that because their goal is not like our last label [Wind Up Records], they were pushing for the radio stuff, they wanted songs to be on the radio. They want the band to sell million records, it’s like no – let’s make a good record, let’s connect with some people, let’s make a few people’s lives better and everything works itself out. We’re big enough, if we got bigger it’d be cool, but we’re big enough.
Already Heard: So what’s next for Bayside?
Anthony: We’ve got a month off. We’ve got two weeks left on this tour, then we get another month off, then we do the Warped Tour for 6 or 7 weeks. We might come back here again this year.
Already Heard: Any final thoughts?
Anthony: This has been our most successful trip over here, so it’s cool to know that we’re finally making a little progress. We definitely want to come back here more often if the lovely people of England will have us!
‘Cult’ by Bayside is out now on Hopeless Records
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Words by Jay Sullivan
