Cancel The Astronauts

Edinburgh’s Cancel The Astronauts have been playing around the Edinburgh scene and beyond for the last 5 years. But after two 5 track EPs and two 3 track singles they are finally about to release their debut LP ‘Animal Love Match’ on Monday 17th September.

Self-recorded by drummer Chris Kay, ‘Animal Love Match’ is an ambitious big-sounding pop record which marries glorious hooks with singer Matthew Riley’s often introspective lyrics. Part of the fun in watching the Cancel The Astronauts is finding out the product of differing views within the band.
Chris: “The recording did put a bit of strain on us. Because we were doing it ourselves it wasn’t like one producer saying it’s going to be done this way – it was 5 individuals who all like different music wanting it done different ways. We didn’t fall out big style but there was a lot of bickering and I could have strangled them a few times. But it was really hard work.
Matt: “Because it was the debut album as well we were trying lots of different things in lots of different ways which means it drags on. And one person doesn’t like one thing but another really loves it, who gets the casting vote? So arguments went on and on.”
One thing the band are all agreed on is that it took too long to get the album finished.
Chris: “We started recording as soon as I got my new kit, nearly two years ago. We just took it from there, very, very slowly”.
Matt: “That was one of the disadvantages of doing it by ourselves, it just takes a very long time.
“The benefit has been we’ve been able to add new songs like ‘While I Was Sleeping’, ‘I Sold My Soul’ or ‘Catch You’ when you go that’s a great song, we’ll stick that on the album. But that means 4 or 5 months of extra recording and things drag on and on.”
Chris: “We didn’t have a deadline because we were doing it ourselves and could go back and do things again. If we’d been in a studio it would have cost us thousands upon thousands of pounds, the time we spent on it.
MR: “You can hear the album and it sounds like a lot of time and care has been spent on it. But I think 2 years is a bit too long.
Chris: “Even when it’s finished you could keep going back and listen to it and think ‘no, I want to change that’. That’s where you need to draw the line.”

If differences of opinion sparked the recording process, they also influenced the direction of the record.
Matt: “There’s definitely been a lot of compromises made which is inevitable when we’ve all got very different tastes. It was often me and Chris against Michael and Kieran because we’ve got more of a pop sensibility and I like massive pop tunes and Coldplay. But they’ve got different tastes …”
Chris: “Bands I’ve never heard of!”
Matt: “So there’s always that conflict, putting on pop stuff against putting on stuff that’s a little more experimental.”

Nothing illustrated those differing opinions better than last single ‘Intervention’. Despite being one of the standout tracks in the live set over the last couple of years and not having previously had an official release, it was far from being guaranteed to being on the album .

Matt: ‘Intervention’ is probably the oldest song we’re still playing. It was written maybe 4 or 5 years ago although it’s been re-booted since. For a long time we didn’t play it, we didn’t enjoy it very much, but then we started playing it again and changed it a wee bit and it’s made it onto the album.”

Those changes however were not the end of the song’s transformation.

Chris: “ We added things in the studio to that song. We added the vocal part at the start with all the effects on it. The rest of the band weren’t too keen on it!”
Matt: “That was a session where I’d come over to do vocals for various bits and bobs and I just had this going in my head. And I just wanted to record that and see what it sounded like. I knew if anyone was going to like it, it was going to be Chris because he likes the cheese as much as I do.
“And we thought it sounded quite good with the auto-tune. I can see a lot of people might not like it but it just made me grin every time I heard that vocal hook.
“We let the other guys hear it and I think they took a little bit of convincing. It was even more auto-tuned to start with than the one you hear on the album. I think we’d got a little over excited and the other guys forced us to tone it down.”

Unlike other bands, Cancel The Astronauts are never short of a song and Matt has an astonishing rate of productivity when it comes to songwriting.

Matt: “I sit at home and write songs on an acoustic guitar and over the course of about 12 months I’ll send the guys about 50 songs, sometimes a bit more. The idea is we’ll pick our favourite ones, go into the practice room and see what comes out. A lot of the time it’s rubbish but sometimes it works quite well and those are the ones we stick with.
“The chords and the melodies and all the lyrics are written by me but then in the practice room we’ll all bring our own parts.
“In the room I’ll say to Chris ‘Makes those drums more smashy’ and he’ll do that. Or I’ll say to Michael, ‘Make the synths sound a bit more like angels from space’ and he’ll make it sound like space angels. They’ve got to try and turn my imagination into reality, which is difficult.”
“Sometimes it changes dramatically. Like ‘Catch You If I Can’ was originally a fast three and a half minute pop song. But me and Kieran were practicing it and for some reason we changed it to make it slow and thought ‘Wow, this is so much better’. If we hadn’t had done that I’d have been insisting that it was this 3 and a half minute pop song.”

However bright and shiny Cancel The Astronauts can be musically, Matt’s words put an entirely different spin on the songs.

“It’s what the Smiths did, it’s what Jarvis Cocker did. That’s very deliberate. It’s easier to write melancholic and darker lyrics and it’s maybe the healthier way to express that through art rather than acting it out in real life. But I’m also a sucker for big chart pop and it’s nice to put those things together.
“For example ‘Promises of Strangers’ was written as a Girls Aloud song to start with. It wasn’t meant to be for the band. I’m a big Girls Aloud fan and sometimes I try and test myself by writing a song in a style of a different artist. It keeps the songwriting muscles toned and flexed.
“We’ve had reviews from people before that Cancel The Astronauts are a fun, power pop band and no-one really seems to mention the lyrics. That seems to bypass people or maybe I’m just not doing a good enough job with it.”
Releasing an LP also gives the band a chance to test an assertion that’s often made.

Matt: “People always say that people pay attention to albums which may or may not be true. I’m quite looking forward to seeing if that’s the case or not.
“We’ve released what I think’s quite a lot of good material over the years but we’ve never done quite as well as some of our peers or our contemporaries. Maybe that’s because secretly we’re not very good and don’t realise it or because we haven’t promoted things enough or worked hard enough, I’m not really sure.
“But long term there’s no limit to the ambitions that I have for our band. As long as we keep writing bigger and better songs there’s no reason that we couldn’t become a proper band, by which I mean doing this for a living.
“It’s not the easiest thing to do and it’s getting harder and harder so that’s not necessarily the ambitions for this album. If we don’t get signed to a major label for a million dollars in a month, I won’t consider the album a failure. But if it’s your dream then there’s no reason why you should ever stop.
“So the ambition for this record is to try and player to bigger audiences, try to play bigger gigs and get some radio play.”

‘Animal Love Match’ is released on Riley Records on 17th September and can be purchased from their Bandcamp or in local record stores.

The band have two charity shows lined up – Oxjam at the Circus on Friday 26th October features Mat Norris & the Moon and Lady North and they will also be playing ‘A Brighter Beat’ in Cupar in aid of Kingdom Kids on Sunday 11th November along with Kid Canaveral, TV21, The Bad Books, Martin John Henry and Sam Barber and the Outcasts.

More at www.canceltheastronauts.co.uk

See also: Mike Melville’s interview with the band at the Manic Pop Thrills site, plus attendant podcast.