Decade: "We know what we’re about"

British pop punk’s black sheep Decade finally announced at the end of last year their second album 'Pleasantries', four years after the release of their smashing debut 'Good Luck', and seven months after the album’s first single ‘Daisy May’. “We recorded ['Pleasantries'] in 2015, and at the time we were unsigned,” frontman Alex Sears starts on why their follow-up took so long to come together. “We knew that the album wasn’t going to come out [because of this], and once a label shows interest it doesn’t happen overnight, it takes a while to get a contract drawn up, and it goes between lawyers. We didn’t want to leave too long between releases, so 'Daisy May' was that gap filler, but it was also us saying we were on the hunt for a label, and this is what our new stuff sounds like, so any potential labels if you’re interested, come to us. That was our way of putting the feelers out. The reason there was such a gap, was because we had no idea what our plans were, whether we were going to be signed, whether the album was going to come out, whether we’d have to pay for the release. It wasn’t like, 'Oh we have to do something so let’s put something out'. It was us going, 'We need to see where we’re at'. 'Daisy May' was the start of the campaign, 'Peach Milk' that we released a few weeks ago seems like the first single. I feel like a lot of people won’t even know 'Daisy May' is actually on the album.” 'Pleasantries' has also seen the band leave Universal imprint Spinefarm for an indie. “[Rude Records] had always been on our radar, as soon as we had finished recording the album, we sent it to them, and we were kinda talking to them. For one reason or another, nothing materialised at the time. We always knew that they were incredibly enthusiastic about the album, and we knew that they were a small family-vibe label, so in the end, we decided that was probably the best direction for us to go in. We were signed to Universal, and it had its advantages for sure, but sometimes you just want that real close vibe, you can just message them on Facebook or email and get an instant response. They’ve got that enthusiasm, and we wanted a label that was a bit more personal, and someone we could go to with our problems if we had any.” “The recording process wasn’t that long, it was over four weeks, so it wasn’t like we were doing it in drips and drabs,” Alex admits about the album’s genesis. “We went to producer Romesh Dodangoda and said, this is our budget. He’s got such good connections with Rockfield because it’s in Wales and he’s done many albums there, and he’s recorded at Real World before too. We recorded the majority of our first album at Romesh’s studio, which is fantastic, and we did some of it at Monnow Valley studios because you’re not taken out of that realm of recording; you fully emerge in it, and it’s all you think about. When we were going to Longwave to record, we were going back to a hotel room each night and it kinda took away from the vibe, so we wanted to go somewhere we could stay.”