Looking back on last year, how would you describe the year for yourselves as a band? Lots of time recording and writing? I have a really hard time remembering things by dates… I don't know where one year begins and another ends, 2018 has been last year for ages. But yeah, just getting this album together really takes quite a lot of discipline to draw a line and say this is the thing, this is what it is, it is written and final, you know? Especially when you're doing it independently, there was a chance it could've taken us several years. I guess it did, actually. Some of the songs are several years old. A lot of the time, we have felt a pressure to keep putting stuff out immediately as we're writing it and have to quite retrospectively work out what it is we were doing. Creatively, it was quite refreshing to take a bit of time off from the releasing and just immerse ourselves in something more long-form, so I'd say the year was creatively our best yet.

You've just announced your debut album, 'Lullabies From The Lightning Tree'. How does it feel having a whole body of work together, and what can people expect? Exciting, yeah. I'm not sure how frequently people listen to albums now, but that's how I grew up listening. I only really develop any significant affection for other artists when it gets to albums that define the dimensions of their world in some way, so I'm excited to see what people make of what it is we've spent some time building. I think it's quintessential SBC. Equal parts dramatic, sincere, obsessive and guilt-ridden.

Did you have an idea when first starting to piece the album together of the sort of album you wanted to make? Has that changed over time, and how do you look at the record now it's been announced and ready to land in the world? The themes of our songs have, up til now, all kind of dealt with similar questions of what it means to be good, or striving to be better. In that sense, I always knew the album was going to be about this stage of life, stumbling into some version of adulthood and trying to work out what matters. We decided pretty early on we wanted it based in that kind of reality and to sound like the band in a room. But a lot of it is instinctual and spontaneous; there's no masterplan that has to be kept to. Not on our budget anyway.

Lead single 'To Heal Without A Scar (Is A Waste Of A Good Wound)' is an absolute stormer - you mention it "unblocked a majority of the writing on the record" after a period of writer's block; how was the recording process for the album? Did you have any clear influences in mind/ambitions with it all? We're always sharing and listening to music, so I'm sure on some level there were pillars of influence that are consistent through the record without us really realising. I don't tend to like leaning on conscious influences too much because how do you get anywhere but at some replica derivative of that thing you're aspiring towards. That's probably quite a wanky answer, Pedro will probably give you lots of technical stuff - but for me, by the time it comes around to recording, and I've explored the songs in writing, I'm just trying to articulate the space I was in when the thing was first born, it's kind of cyclical in that way which I like.

You're playing the first Dork's Night Out of 2023. Can people expect a taste of new music and what's coming next from you guys? What should people look forward to? Yeah, we're running a whole load of material off the album straight off the bat; we've been working on the new live show. It feels weird saying bye to a lot of the material we've been playing the last couple of years relentlessly, but there's a good/bad/tolerable nervous tension depending on who you ask about getting into these tracks; anything could happen, really.

Aside from the album, what plans are you looking forward to this year? Touring. I miss live. The others are all studio geeks; I'm too impatient for that, really, I need to rage. We're heading out to places in Europe we've not played before, which I'm excited about, and just seeing how we develop the live show around the new record. The evolution of all that gets me fucking going.

And the most important question - what's the best pizza topping? As a child on holiday with my parents in France, I insisted on going to a place called Le Jacobin as I ought to own the joint - the namesake pizza was ham with a fried egg on top; I've never looked back since.