During a difficult year,
Feet have been cracking on with new music.
Words:
Jake Hawkes.
There aren't many bands around that take inspiration from the living conditions of The Monkees – in a pre-pandemic world, living with the same people you write, tour and travel with was probably seen as a bit much. Not for Feet though, who cheerfully bundled into a house in Muswell Hill and set about becoming a "hive mind" (their words, not ours).
"It's actually fortunate that we all live together now, because we can all just play in the living room," says frontman George, adjusting the screen on his laptop so we can see more than just his knees. "The neighbours don't seem to mind too much, we've had the chance to write and practise quite extensively really."
"We've got some new neighbours," adds bassist Oli, sitting down next to George and pouring an Orangina into a glass. "So the living room used to be next to a kid's bedroom, but now it's just some office or something – we smashed it on that front, now we can be even louder."
"The only issue we have had is that the sound was quite..." George clears his throat. "Disparate. A lot of the stuff we wrote just did not work together, so we wrote 15 tracks in our little bubble, went to play them properly when the first lockdown eased, and we could get into a practice space, and then realised we'd have to scrap most of them. Who knew that five-minute prog-rock songs don't fit with our other stuff? That's the issue with the conceptual echo chamber – constructive? For sure. Grating, frustrating, horrible? Yes. But we got through it, and we're at a point with the new stuff where we're feeling a lot more confident, although we might go skew-whiff again and have to be brought back into the light once more."
"Maybe that's how we'll survive these lockdowns," jokes Oli. "Just exploring these fucking horrific avenues of music until we're allowed to go to the pub again."
