When we join Laurie Vincent of English punk upstarts Slaves, the guitarist and singer is walking through Lewisham in south east London, where he has just sold his car. Vincent says he secured £200 more for the vehicle than he’d hoped, which just proves that Slaves’ hot streak shows no signs of ending.
The duo’s debut album, the scabrous guitar assault Are You Satisfied?, crash landed in the UK top 10, and the weekend prior to our chat, the group made no less than three triumphant appearance at Glastonbury (Vincent also found time to enjoy Lionel Richie’s performance).
The aggression and intensity in Slaves’ music certainly makes them stand out from the UK indie crowd. Where does the band’s anger come from?
“I think it’s a youth of a Britain thing,” muses Vincent. “The traditional ideas of punk always resonate when you’re a pissed off, angry teenager in Britain. So it comes from that, but it also stems from us both being heavily influenced by reggae and garage. You can’t really escape what you grew up listening to, and I grew up discovering The Clash, the Sex Pistols, The Ramones and stuff like that.
“Looking back, I’ve always wanted to be in a guitar-based punk band. I’ve done that, but we’ve also evolved from the punk genre, so to speak.”
Vincent and his bandmate, drummer Isaac Holman, grew up in leafy Kent, although the guitarist says their disaffection wasn’t borne out of working class anger.
“It was quite pleasant,” acknowledges Laurie. “It was fairly mundane and middle class, but the majority of people I grew up with – and the majority of British youth – is way more middle class nowadays than it is working class. There’s always been a voice of the working class, it’s the norm. But now, everyone’s got an iPhone and a laptop, and all kids are growing up playing their X-Boxes. I think we’re a normal voice for our generation; we’re quite generic, I guess.
“We’re part of the majority. We don’t pretend to be working class – we’re speaking from our experiences. It was quite an average upbringing where everyone tells you to go to university and get a job.”
Slaves’ distinctive look – which is based around skinhead hair, turned up jeans and Doc Martens – has a noticeable ska element, although Laurie says they’ve tried to cherry pick from different subcultures to create something new.
“What we’ve really associated image with was those subcultures,” he reflects. “Whether it be casual, mods, skinheads – any era of subcultures, we really like. We’ve taken on Doc Martens, but we also wear track suits and Fred Perrys. Basically, we’re trying to draw on bits of all those iconic looks we liked in the past, but we’re trying to make our own thing. There was a while where we were like, is it punk or what is it?
“At the end of the day, all of the people who were skinheads did it to annoy their parents. I don’t see why we should dress like our parents; we should be dressing like something new. We’re finding new ways to piss off our parents! (Laughs)”
A recent Guardian interview with Slaves recorded Miles Kane tuning up backstage with a model to say “hello”. Have the band had any other notable people reach out to them?
“Jamie T has and he’s one of my musical heroes,” replies Laurie. “And we actually were approached by Mick Jones from The Clash to talk about producing our album. It didn’t come together in the end but we did have a meeting with him and that was an honour. We’ve also had Robbie Williams tweet us that he loves our music which is quite good. And working with Skepta recently was great cos we’re big grime fans.
“With regard to Mick Jones, we’re always open to it, but we want to do something new. Getting recorded by one of the biggest punk icons is fitting into a new stereotype, so maybe Sting will do our next album instead! We don’t like to upset people, we just don’t like to conform to what people believe we should be.”