It’s unfortunate that as we grow older, the people you surround yourself during your younger days start to disappear for one reason or another. Ultimately, adulthood drives people apart and with negative effects. It’s a sentiment that Bristol quartet THC Dreams take on with their new single – ‘All My Friends’.
The song’s creation came after a short break, as “real life” got in the way of honing their brand of emo-infused rock. Nevertheless, Nick Fairburn (guitar/vocals), Tamlin Sinclair (bass/speaking), Tom Austin and Sam Harbridge (drums) reconvened last summer for a series of shows before Nick and Tamlin penned ‘All My Friends’. Inspired by the untimely death of a friend, the song serves as a reality check to the band, their friends and fans.
With the single along with its B-Side, ‘Get Over It’, set to be released this Friday (January 11th), we’re premiering the video for ‘All My Friends’. We also spoke with Nick from the band to discuss the track, its message and their forthcoming tour alongside Take Today and WRTHLESS.
AH: Today we’re premiering the video for your new single – ‘All My Friends’. We hear the track came together after a short hiatus from the band?
Nick: It did indeed! It wasn’t such a planned ‘we’re taking time off’ hiatus, just real life started getting in the way (girlfriends, breaking up with girlfriends, work, basically boring grown-up stuff). We kinda drifted apart as mates and got into the mindset of ‘this is our lives now’. I wrote this song in my bedroom and demoed it and sent it to our bassist Tamlin, who said he liked it but ‘the lyrics are shit’ so I asked him to rewrite them and in the process, he added a bass solo.
In retaliation for that, I added a big post-hardcore gang vocal but at the end and then we were both happy. We played it when we were on tour in summer and that really gave us the drive to start taking the band more seriously again, so we all went part-time at our jobs (bad idea we’re all super poor now) and booked another tour!
AH: The song deals with how adulthood drives people apart. Care to tell us more?
Nick: While we were taking a bit of time off, I noticed that a lot of my closest friends were falling on unhealthy coping mechanisms to get them through the day to day grind and I noticed that my other friends who weren’t doing that, weren’t hanging out with us any of us anymore. The song came as a frustrated response to that as I didn’t like seeing my friends (for lack of a better word) fuck themselves up in this weird apathetic state. A few weeks before we recorded the tune we received the devastating news that a friend of ours had passed away from a drug overdose. We didn’t really know what to say; we were angry, upset and confused about how a song could almost predict a moving life event. We finished off the spoken word lyrics and headed into the studio to finish it all off and it just resonated with us: this wasn’t an ode to apathy anymore, it was a call to get up and sort ourselves out.
AH: What message do you think the track leaves on listeners?
Nick: Look after yourselves and your friends. If you see a friend struggling to cope and starting to fall on unhealthy methods of dealing with the hardships of day to day life, then talk to them and help them, it’s easier than it seems.
AH: ‘All My Friends’ along with its b-side (‘Get Over It’) is your first release since last January’s ‘Pathetic [blank]’ EP. With the band taking a short break, how has this reinvigorated THC Dreams developed musically?
Nick: ‘All My Friends’ and ‘Get Over It’ were written by me after a bit of break from the band, much like ‘Pathetic [blank]’ was. During the break from the band, we all found ourselves exploring new genres and experimenting more in our songwriting, and the same happened in the break between ‘Pathetic [blank]’ and ‘All My Friends’. I think that with the renewed inspiration we were able to carve out, our own new unique style that has massively developed on what we were playing on our first two EPs. Many more dance-influenced rhythms are present on ‘All My Friends’ – Bristol, our hometown, is one of the nation’s best spots for drum and bass and jungle, as well as other rhythmically complex genres such as trip-hop.
AH: You’re going to be heading out on tour with some friends from North of the border, Take Today and WRTHLESS. Why should folk come out to see you guys during these cold January nights?
Nick: Well I think reason number one should be to escape the cold and get your blood circulating with some dancing! Number two would be to see us beautiful boys get all sweaty on stage. Reason number three (by far the most important reason) would be to catch our two new singles played live (and maybe even a brand new song) and to see the fantastic, and I mean fantastic, Take Today and WRTHLESS! They’re both phenomenal bands and we are very much looking forward to sharing a stage with them!
January
25th Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh
26th Classic Grand, Glasgow
27th Castle Hotel, Manchester
28th Fox & Newt, Leeds
29th Cameleon, Nottingham
30th Exchange, Bristol
‘All My Friends’ by THC Dreams is released on 11th January.
THC Dreams links: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Bandcamp
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