INTERVIEW: Luke Caley & Adam Roffey – Press To MECO
It would be odd to say PRESS TO MECO are giving rock music a swift kick up the backside because, if you’ve ever had any experience listening to the music these three Londoners create, you’d realise that “backside” would be much to harsh a word to use. The fact remains though that in Frankenstein-ing progressive, technical flourishes with gargantuan melodies, their new album Here’s To The Fatigue is on to something big. As such, you wouldn’t be wrong to expect the bunch of twenty somethings to be pretty damn pleased with themselves, however, on the other end of the phone, Luke Caley [guitar, vocals] and Adam Roffey [bass, vocals] could not be more of an embodiment of their music. Now, just weeks prior to release date, we were lucky enough to recount the last few months with them, talk about the new record and their sudden signing to Marshall Records… there’s also way too much about DON BROCO but hey, life’s too short.
In the last few months you’ve signed to Marshall Records, put out a new single, toured with DON BROCO and ARCANE ROOTS, you guys must be feeling pretty good right?
Luke: [Laughs] Yes man, it’s been fun. I feel we’ve been very spoilt.
Adam: Yeah, it’s very humbling
Luke: Just before ARCANE ROOTS we went out with SIKTH at the end of last year as well so the last three tours we’ve done have been with three of our favourite bands who we all love.
There was the headline tour even before SIKTH too…
Luke: Yeah that was really good too. That was originally supposed to be supported by the album. As the tour was coming up we were a bit sceptical of the turnout and whether people would still care because the album wasn’t out, but we were really humbled by the turnout and we just used it as a chance to play a bunch of new songs so people could hear them. The response from that was really good so it made us quite excited to push on and get this album out.
So PRESS TO MECO have been going non-stop for nearly four months now right?
Adam: Yeah, SIKTH was December wasn’t it?
Luke: ARCANE ROOTS was January/February and DON BROCO was February/March. It hasn’t felt too intense. The last few tours especially were quite broken up for us. It’s still been intense because we had loads of stuff to sort out with the album. While we’re not touring we’ll be rehearsing the songs and sorting out logistics.
Adam: We also did a music video while we were on tour…
Luke: Although the actual tours weren’t too intense in the way of dates, in between those shows we were doing stuff non-stop pretty much. It’s good though, I like being busy.
Was that the Familiar Ground video that you did while you were out on tour?
Luke: That was yeah.
Any highlight moments from the past few months?
Adam: All three tours have been sick
Luke: Playing KOKO was one for me.
Adam: KOKO is such a pretty venue. It’s so cool on that stage because when you’re standing there, there’s three balconies that go all the way to the top of the venue.
Luke: And you see the fire exit right at the top that’s miles away. It’s like nine stories up [laughs]
Adam: The way the balconies on each tier come right round to the side of the stage, act so that when you finish a song, you only need four or five people to be cheering and it sounds like there’s a thousand people in there. On the DON BROCO tour there were just a bunch of really big venues. Yeah, the last few months have been sick. It’s all kinda been one big highlight really.
We’re obviously here because Here’s To The Fatigue is coming out pretty soon. PRESS TO MECO must’ve lived with those songs for ages now…
Luke: It’s weird because it’s been kinda different this time. They’re not like setbacks, they’re more like changes of plans, but for a number of reasons, it’s taken longer than we initially anticipated to get out. We have the previous album out to support the shows, whereas if it’s your first album, you’d just be hammering out new songs all the time and getting tired of them. With these last few tours, we’ve had a few songs off the new album and we’ve had a couple of singles but there’s still about half of the album we’ve never played live. We desperately need to start thinking about learning them but it all feels quite fresh and I think when we do a headline show again, we’ll have a couple of Good Intent songs that perhaps we haven’t played for a while now that will feel fresh. The ones that start to feel old are the ones you do six tours in a row and play every show. As soon as you switch something out and put something new in, it feels good again.
The setlist is going to be tricky to compile with the new album out…
Luke: I think we’ll get in a rehearsal room and whatever flows best in a set will go in, rather than what we feel should be rehearsed, especially with some of the new songs that we can’t properly play yet. You want to play the ones that are coming together best and sounding the best earlier on. I’ve got no idea what the set is going to be yet but it should be fun.
As long as Affinity is still in there man…
Luke: [laughs] I can put money on the fact that we’ll still have Affinity in there.
On this album there’s this duality of technicality and melody, so when writing these intricate and uber melodic songs, how do you marry those two elements together?
Luke: The whole writing process with this band is quite organic in that we’ve never really tried to write with a certain agenda or fit in with any sort of sound or do anything like that. It’s just a case of starting to write and have it come out a certain way. We just had another interview talking about the band not sitting in any particular genre and I feel like no matter what we try and write, after it’s gone through all the processes of us putting a song together in the PRESS TO MECO machine, it always comes out sounding like us one way or another. We’ve always done it a certain way and naturally gone with the flow of things and usually put vocals on after the tracks and that’s when it starts to sound like the band we are… if that makes sense.
That’s surprising, I would’ve assumed the vocals come first because it feels like the music follows where the vocals are accented…
Adam: Yeah, we do add some stuff later on like a a bass part or a drum bit or a guitar bit that might work with the vocals better once they’ve been written. Sometimes we write those bits and it might inspire something earlier in the song so we’ll rewrite that or add another vocal part because it works really well with this new bridge you’ve written and so on. Eventually it all comes together like Luke said.
Luke: Generally, pretty much every song we’ve written with this band starts off with the music first and the vocals kind of decorate the song. But like Adam said, once it all starts to come together, that’s when you start listening to it as a whole and chopping and changing little bits or perhaps Lewis will suddenly add some lyrics in and there’s a rhythm or syncopation to a certain word or certain syllables. Until the song is done, we’re constantly going back in and picking little bits apart. Some songs literally come together overnight. There’s been a couple that just take a few hours in my room that won’t change that much. Then on the flip-side, there’s a bunch of songs where we’ve jammed it for ages and tried loads of different ways to try and put it together. There’s no right or wrong really. Some of our strongest songs have come out of both of those methods, but like I said at the start, we just start writing and go wherever it takes us.
Here’s To The Faitgue is the first release with a bigger team working with PRESS TO MECO, I’m assuming the album was already written before Marshall came into the picture…
Luke: We recorded the album at the end of 2016 and the plan was always to just go and get it done because we had the means to go and do so. I feel it’s more appealing to take a fully finished album to a label so they don’t have to do anything you know? With Marshall, we actually spoke to them at the beginning of 2017 but for one reason or another, as the label was still very much in its infancy, we didn’t quite sit right or feel aligned. Where we were as a band at that time, we all collectively decided it wasn’t the best thing for us. We spent the rest of 2017 figuring out just what we were going to do and eventually we came around to self-releasing it after a bunch of different labels. I remember Steve who’s the head of Marshall literally called us up two weeks before the self-release date and was like “loads of stuff has changed, we’ve changed all the infrastructure and we’ve got all these things on board and we really want to get you guys in to have a chat” and we were a bit like “we can’t not hear him out”. So we just went and sat down with them and we came away from the meeting thinking “this might actually be the best thing for the band right now”. That was how it happened. In regards to actually bringing the album together, that was completely us, but in regards to pushing it with a bigger label and a bigger release now, it’s been really great so far. All the support is there where you want it to be and there’s a bunch of doors that have been opened that we wouldn’t have had access to on our own.
So the album’s been born into a world where DON BROCO and MARMOZETS have brought out these quite heavy, quite technical albums with massive melodies and Here’s To The Fatigue definitely sits in that vein. Have you seen that kind of change in rock around you?
Luke: It’s interesting with DON BROCO and MARMOZETS because we both very much consider them on the fray or in the niche of their own genres. I feel that DON BROCO probably sit in their genre the same way we would sit in wherever ours is. We absolutely love the new DON BROCO album but they’re a weird band in the sense of what are they? They’re such a mad fusion of stuff and it just makes these really cool, really super, energetic, amazing songs. I remember there were a couple of their singles that took a little while to grow on me but once it clicked, I loved it. I know there are people who are on the fence but there are also lots of people that didn’t like them before who’ve been completely converted with this new one. Certainly on a general scale as well now, more people are into DON BROCO than they’ve ever been and I personally think their new album is their best one by far, but like you were saying, with us, I think it’s a good thing that a band like DON BROCO, as this weird fusion of genres, are doing so well. It’s always going to be hard to tell. Some stuff seems to connect and just go flying while other stuff that everyone thinks should take off, never goes anywhere. I don’t know about the scene as a whole but people are certainly opening up to newer, different music now which is cool. I don’t know what that means for us though [laughs].
I’ve had the new record for nearly a week now and I’m not sure if I’m reading too far into this but, like your other stuff there’s this dichotomy of upbeat positivity with dark undertones in both the music and the lyrics. Is this a sort of representation of the duality of good and bad in life?
Luke: [laughs] The whole premise of Here’s To The Fatigue is that we’re all fucked and we’re all upset but lets have fun. Lewis‘ perspective is that everyone’s got their problems and everyone’s going through their shit but sometimes you’ve just gotta lift your legs up and float down the stream. Just let go now and then. That’s a good summary for a lot of the premises on the album and the individual songs.
Adam: A lot of it comes from the anxiety of modern life and the feeling of your need to prove something at this age or needing to do something or make something of yourself when you could actually, like Luke said, just lift your legs up and float off.
Luke: Yeah and I think that we’re not a political band in the typical sense. We’re not like a RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, we’re not trying to make a political statement or anything like that. Lewis writes all the lyrics and a lot of his lyrics just reflect, in a less cheesy way, coming of age and your different stages of being a human and the stuff that goes through your head and the stuff that everyone feels, the lessons you learn and all that. I’m a huge fan of that because as Lewis writes it, I can be completely subjective or objective about it. I’ll perhaps perceive them in my own way that Lewis didn’t intend, especially as I know how he intends them to be because we talk about the lyrics. Hopefully people will find their own meanings in them.
Is this what you’re trying to say with the artwork?
Luke: Yeah that was very much the visual representation. This lady is just chilling and there’s all this stuff around her. There’s some evil, there’s some good, there’s some funny and there’s some sad. That’s kind of the metaphor for life… We sound so fucking pretentious right now don’t we? [laughs] That’s the metaphor for life! I think Lewis always had that vision in his head. Just lying in a lilo, saying “fuck everything else, this is good right now”. It was just a case of finding someone who could capture that and represent it. We were lucky to find Max Malone who did the artwork. His style of collage and the kind of art he did made us think “this could be really cool for this album and representing the meaning of it”.
Having had the album done for over a year and playing songs off it quite recently, have you got any favourite tracks?
Luke: So far, my personal favourite to play has been A Quick Fix… the one with the riff [laughs]
Adam: Here’s To The Fatigue is a really fun one to play.
Luke: A Quick Fix is fun because it’s got a big groove and you can just jump about. It’s not too technically demanding for a lot of it whereas, with some of the other songs we just have to stand there. We can’t move as much when we’re playing otherwise it sounds like a fucking mess [laughs]. Here’s To The Fatigue as Adam just said is fun for all the same reasons.
Adam: There’s still four or five songs we haven’t played live yet.
Luke: Yeah, there’s at least half the album that we’ve not played yet.
Are you looking to play them all when you go out again?
Luke: Yeah, I wouldn’t say we’re necessarily in a rush to because we’re probably going to be touring this album for the next year and a half to two years so I’m sure we’ll have lots of time to play all the songs that we want to play. I think just for now, we’re going to get on with learning a bunch more that we’ve not got down to the standard we’re happy with yet. Whatever ones feel and sound good, they’ll be the ones that end up in the set.
So I gather it’s festivals next and headline shows after?
Luke: Yep, pretty much. The plan is, as soon as the album drops, we’ll hit it as hard as we can. We’ll be getting over to Europe and maybe make it to the States at the end of the year. It’s just basically “tour the fuck out of everything”. We’ll try and get a bunch of support tours and definitely have a headline run at some point. That’s all we can say right now I think [with a hint of excitement].
Here’s To The Fatigue is set for release on March 30th via Marshall Records.
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