Creeper: "It took us fucking ages to make this record"
"It took us fucking ages to make this record."
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Sessions · Playlists · Behind the scenes
"It took us fucking ages to make this record."
Get more Dork
Sessions · Playlists · Behind the scenes
"It took us fucking ages to make this record."
Creeper's debut album is finally coming. Will Gould explains all.
Words: Ali Shutler.
Yesterday, Creeper’s guitarist Ian Miles text Will Gould to let him know he’d got some of his lyrics tattooed on him. “I thought they’d be Creeper lyrics but they’re from [our old band] Our Time Down Here,” explains Will. “It’s a line that says: ‘To live this way despite all that they say, means more to me than anything’. Or something like that, it was written a long time ago. He got it on him because of adopting this way of life, focusing purely on what you want to be doing with your life and your dreams versus the crippling realities of the real world. That’s a big theme on this record alongside questions about belief, what you believe in and the choices that you make.” After months of hushed whispers, intrigue and a swelling mass of anticipation, Creeper have announced that their debut album ‘Eternity, In Your Arms’ is finished and will be with us early next year. To say we’re expecting great things is a gross understatement but if it feels like you’ve been waiting an age for it, it’s guaranteed Creeper have been waiting longer. Creeper, at their very core, are storytellers. They simply can’t help it and the tale of ‘Eternity, In Your Arms’ has been amassing in the shadows for a while now. “We’ve been drip-feeding the story really slowly,” explains Will. Everything so far has been a way of setting up for an album. “I knew the sound needed to mature before we got to it, but I had the concept laid out in my head.” As soon as the band found out Roadrunner would definitely be taking the album, Will went for a drink with them to lay out his plan. Sat at Camden’s The Black Heart he pulled out three Disney Tsum Tsums (hamster sized soft toys) and put them on the table. First came Peter Pan to represent ‘The Callous Heart’ and its lost boys. Then came Tick Tock the Crocodile to represent ‘The Stranger’, before Will placed Captain Hook atop them both, creating a cuddly pyramid to explain exactly what he wanted to do with the album. “This is the story we’ve been creating.” “The themes for the record were really apparent at the point when we finished ‘The Stranger’,” starts Will. “We’re introducing the James Scythe character as the first human character and I thought that was a really good analogy for growing up. When you realise your mortality, when you start to worry about things and you fret about how you look in the mirror and being completely carefree because you’ve got to go to work, the idea of growing up and that disconnect creeps in.”
“The message of Creeper is to try and deal with your problems in a creative way.”
As much as being in Creeper is brilliant, a dream come true, and a million other excitable, wonderful things, the real world problems still exist. Family, bills and relationships are all sat at home as the band exists in their own weird, timeless bubble. It feels like a dream but every time a phone calls from back home, it brings reality crashing down around them. “We’re away for this period where you should be growing as a person. Your mid-to-late twenties, you grow so much. “All our friends are getting married, they have proper careers, are buying houses and having kids. We’re out here in some awesome place, don’t get me wrong I’m not ungrateful and I’ve seen some amazing things, but it’s very unsteady and unstable. You go from being a child on tour to suddenly being back home in a very real world where people need you. The record was born out of some of the pressures of that and feeling human in this weird fantasy world. That’s the Captain Hook thing itself. “It’s been a good way of describing what’s been going on as we grow older. Those Peter Pan stories become more relevant than ever. It’s terrifying to think about growing older or entering the real world. When you see old pictures of your parents and you realise you look a bit like them now, that’s scary.” However, it also makes you realise: “The time you get to do this stuff for is really short. We might not have another chance to make a record that’s going to be on this scale ever again. Who knows, the record might go down really badly so we decided to do it exactly how we wanted to do it and not rush anything. It took us fucking ages to make this record. It’s such a big project, the concept is the highest point we’ve taken any of these ideas. “The message of Creeper is to try and deal with your problems in a creative way. It’s the same thing with this James Sycthe story - it’s about being alright and accepting the position you are in life at this moment.” Despite the success, Creeper have earned so far they know a debut album is where everything changes, one way or another. “A lot of things have happened to this band in the past two years and they all feature on this record. It’s weird to think that people who come see this band in years to come probably won’t ever listen to those EPs. They’ll listen to this album and that’s it. We had to reintroduce all these characters, it’s like rebooting something while it’s still going.” Introducing the record with a social media blackout as well as physically disappearing - something that was “a fucking nightmare” and saw Sean have to dress in a costume to go to the Sunday of Leeds Festival, while Will had to put on a disguise to go to the shops - Creeper have already started introducing us to the neon-noir new world that is ‘Eternity, In Your Arms’. “I was just trying to think of an exciting way to engage people. I can’t think of a better way to get everyone’s attention than by not saying anything at all, because everyone’s talking all the time.” It just carries on now.
“You want it to feel fresh and for it to mean something.”
According to Creeper’s producer, before it seemed like they were a punk band that flirted with rock’n’roll. Now though, it’s starting to feel like a rock’n’roll band who flirt with punk rock. “The hope is that kids come to the show and hear something they’ve not heard before, something sincere. They feel something and it engages them. That’s what happened to me, that’s what happened to everyone. You hear a band and it changes everything. You just do it and hope for the best.” That sense of discovery is what Creeper what to achieve with their debut as well. Acting as a time capsule, they want it to hold relevance and power years down the line. “It’s like Jumanji,” starts Will. “We want that music to have the same magic so when someone finds it, they open it up and that world comes pouring back out of it. You want it to feel fresh and for it to mean something. If that only happens to one person, the whole thing has been worth it regardless of whether we hear about it or not. “Even if you never have that acknowledgement, the fact that there might be a possibility that, in years to come, someone connects to it and it inspires them to do something creative themselves, that would be enough for us.” Creeper are very aware of the end. They’ve been doing this long enough to know that all bands end, and because of that: “We’ve been so surefire on our vision. We’ve stuck to our guns and luckily we’re blessed with an audience that has really taken to it and believed in it.” Laying out a trail of breadcrumbs to first track ‘Suzanne’, Creeper still didn’t know if anyone would follow. “We always just hope. We never try and take anything for granted because you never know how quickly people will be done with you. It’s really difficult for a band to constantly capture people’s attention. We try and allow people to escape the real world for a little bit and escape somewhere else, that’s always what we’ve done. Press play on that escapism. Trying to get people to allow themselves to do that, or allow themselves to believe in a mystery and to take something like that seriously in an age with the internet and constant scepticism is hard. That’s a theme of the record as well.” As engaged as people are in this chapter, “I feel like this record will be the last of this story,” says Will. “We’ll move onto something completely different after this because I don’t want to be repeating ourselves, y’know? The worst thing you can do when you’ve got a good thing going is keep going with it until it dies. End it with a bang and move on straight away. All the bests have done that. My Chemical Romance, David Bowie - they killed it at its peak and moved on to something new. We’ll move on too.” Listen closely, though. The story is far from over and we’re getting to a good bit. Taken from the November issue of Upset. Order a print copy here - we deliver worldwide. Creeper’s debut album ‘Eternity, In Your Arms’ is out 24th March.
