HORRORS INTERVIEW

• 24th Jan 2007

With their lead singer being recently hospitalised in a street attack and they’re obsession with wearing blacker than black clothes, The Horrors have been made out to be the scariest thing to hit the music scene since the Daily Mail got worked up about emo kids. And with their slot on the NME tour about to take them all across the land, this is a band that could be set for big things in 2007.

Bassist Tomethy (yep, I did spell that right) Furse cannot wait for the NME Indie Rock tour to kick off in Glasgow. “Oh, it’s hugely exciting! It’s a good opportunity to play to people who haven’t heard our music before, so we’re looking forward to it for that reason. We prefer doing our own gigs though, we try and make them more of an event, like we bring our own warm-up tunes and pick our own support bands. Bands we really like and think should be heard by other people.

“But the big NME tour doesn’t really feel like a proper tour. They’re just the same thing every night, same mixtapes and everything, they just blend into one. It’s not what we got into music for.”

To make things even more enticing for the band they’ll be sharing the road with a group who once said of The Horrors, “They’ve just got big hair”- everyone’s favourite Welshmen The Automatic. “How dare they! “I’d never really heard of them before that to be honest. We haven’t said anything back; I think it’s all coming from their side really. [Tourmates] The View are good lads, although I can’t understand a word they say. And I’d like to see [NME Indie Rave tour’s] Klaxons. I think they’re the most interesting band on the tour, apart from ourselves obviously! I’m not really into much new music though, it’s not really my thing.”

Tomethy also says that The Horrors aren’t the hard partying band they are made out to be. “Some bands go insane, like trashing things and sleeping with disgusting girls but we don’t get up to much. A while ago these girls followed us back to our hotel room in Edinburgh and tried kicking the doors in because we wouldn’t sleep with them, but we’re pretty tame really.”

The band release their debut album “Strange House” (named after Tomethy’s favourite track from the 60s British band The Attack) on 5th March but it contains no top 40 hits as all their singles have come with free gifts and been ineligible for the charts. “When we released “Sheena Is A Parasite”, Top Of The Pops was just finishing and that was the only reason we had for getting in the charts. I’d have loved to go on TOTP but now that’s over we don’t really need the charts. I think the charts are more an insecurity thing for other bands who can say, “Yeah, but we had a no.12”.”

They were memorably first described by the NME as having “the smell of a ripe fart” but the band has since become favourites of the magazine and were recently featured on their front cover. “I think it’s good for them and it’s good for us. It’s great to have new bands on the covers rather than The Beatles, I mean I love The Beatles but Uncut has them on the front, like, three times a year. It’s good to get new bands on the front of magazines.”

The Horrors have grabbed more attention not for their music though, but for their dress sense. Their distinctively dark clothed, massively haired look has made the band instantly recognisable but Tomethy says they did not plan it that way. “I don’t see us as fashion icons. People presume we made some conscious decision to be into fashion but I have no interest in fashion at all, I never have. It’s funny when we do fashion shoots, cos we have done a couple in the past, and people ask what designers we’re wearing and we say Primark or Next and they turn around in shock.”

He also says that the band have learnt to live with the occasional bit of abuse on the streets after lead singer Farris Rotter was attacked by a stranger in London last summer. “[We get some] anger and resentment. People imply that we have different sexual identities to them but I’ve never really had any physical threats. It just comes from one guy calling you a c*** because some magazine said we were ‘style over substance.’”

Tomethy also denies that their dress sense has helped them gain an advantage over other bands in the press. “We’ve always looked this way, it’s not like we got together and said, “Chuck out your baggies,” this is just the way we’ve dressed for ages now. Unless you’ve made some kind of conscious decision to not have an image then you obviously have one. Arctic Monkeys have an image, Klaxons have one, it’s just how you refine that image.
Personally I think people should just take less notice of it and concentrate on the music.”

And as for having their music categorised as Indie Rock on their upcoming tour, Tomethy says he’d prefer to be grouped in with legendary “Sheena Is A Parasite” director Chris Cunningham’s other collaborators. “Aphex Twin, Bjork, Squarepusher, it’s great. It’s far more interesting to be grouped in with having a Chris Cunningham directed video than with The Automatic and the NME tour.” And what a happy tour it looks set to be.