Alt, Who Goes There - Alt-J Interview

“It’s a big room out there.” Hot Press is being its usual succinct self, describing 3Arena to the three members of Alt-J, backstage before soundcheck.

“Twelve thousand people,” reveals Gus Unger-Hamilton, the geeky Groucho Marx lookalike (keyboard/vocals). “Oh shit,” says singer/guitarist, Joe Newman, the most pin-uppable member of the three-piece, like a taller, slightly chubbier Leonardo Di Caprio.
Despite winning the Mercury Music Prize for their 2012 debut, An Awesome Wave, which went on to sell a million copies, as well as multiple European and US tours, Alt-J aren’t averse to nerves.
They needn’t have worried. It transpires that evening’s gig, their biggest headliner to date, eclipsing the 10,000 souls packed into London’s Alexandra Palace a few days earlier, is a stormer, with a packed 3Arena singing along, dancing like nobody’s watching and treating the slightly nerdy indie popsters like rock royalty.
So how do a band with a reputation for being literate and intelligent go about putting on a live show and making it rock?
“We don’t really make it rock,” deadpans drummer Thom Green, blessed with the fastest hands outside of a cartoon conman. “We play the best we can and that actually comes across. The only criticism we get is that sometimes, with our live show, we don’t look that interested. We perform the music but we’re not one of those bands who jump around. Half the time, we’re purely concentrating on what we’re doing because it’s very hard to play.”
“We actually have to focus on what we’re doing,” adds Joe. “When we play live, it’s quite intricate: we play to a click-track and we can’t get it wrong because if we get it wrong, the music sounds awful and that’s what people have come to hear. We invest most of our time in playing the music the way it should sound. We are quite statuesque on stage because we like to do our songs justice live.”
And what songs they are. Their just-released second album, This Is All Yours, veers from folky Tudor affairs like ‘Choice Kingdom’ to ultra modern slinky beats and effects on ‘Hunger Of The Pine’ or ‘The Gospel Of John Hurt’, the latter inspired by the chest-erupting scene from Alien (“It was a really powerful moment, so it stayed with me and lingered in my subconscious”). Are they setting out to challenge their listeners?
“It’s not about challenging people. Equally, we’re not setting out to make things easy for people,” admits Gus, “so we’re not thinking, ‘Is the song too complicated or too unusual?’”
Of the writing process Gus says: “most of the time, it’s Joe coming in with an idea for a song, which could be anything from something almost completely written or a guitar line”.
Given that they then bend these ideas into all manner of weird and wonderful musical shapes, how do they actually know a song is finished?
“It’s a bit like Buckaroo,” Joe laughs. “You keep loading things on. When it bucks, you take a few ideas off the track and you have it where you want it to be. So far, for me, I’ve never thought, ‘Fuck, I could’ve done so much more with that track’. We have a good idea knowing when we’re finished.”
So did they ever dream when they started making music together in University of Leeds in 2007, that by the time they released their second album, they’d have already won the Mercury, flogged a million records and become the coolest nerds on the planet?
“I was just excited about the music we were writing,” Joe reveals. “We are our own toughest critics and I thought, 'If I’m excited by what we’re doing, I can’t wait for people to hear this'. I felt that some people were going to like it and it was going to be a big enough minority that we are going to be well liked, generally, in a weird kind of way. So I was almost prepared for that to happen. I certainly didn’t think that we were going to win the Mercury – that was a dream and I didn’t entertain the idea. With this second album, we’re more ready to deal with the success of this, more prepared.”
One big change, this time around, is that Alt-J are effectively a three-piece, following the departure of founder member Gwil Sainsbury earlier this year.
The split was amicable and didn’t come as a surprise to the three remaining members. Initially, Gwil wanted to still be part of the band creatively. In the end he left.
“We had lost a member but were very keen to keep playing. We realised we had to start working as quickly as we could or become stagnant. The damage would infect us all.”
Obviously, that hasn’t happened. Indeed, a recent performance on Later With Jools Holland showcased Alt-J’s fourth touring member, Cameron Knight. Given the appreciative noises from the female part of the Walshe household, I put it to them that their new guitarist is far too handsome to be part of Alt-J.
“I think that’s good,” laughs Joe. “Gwil was famously quite small and Cameron is a big tall, handsome lad.”
They admit to a touch of pre-show nerves before appearing with the former Squeeze man. It is, says Gus, “different from other TV shows”, highlighting the fact that “there’ll be at least one musical legend there”, as well as “these other bands that you know and respect”.
I have visions of the last act on suffering huge crises of confidence as every other act does their stuff...
“This time, there was FKA Twigs and Jungle, who are both brand new, popular and Mercury-nominated,” recalls Thom. “I felt we’re a bit past that. We’re not that cool, compared to them. We were in that position once, where we were the newest thing. We met them, and they were really nice. So it made me realise that any kind of bollocks like that... it’s all in your head.”
One criticism this listener has with the new album is that, if anything, the lyrics are even harder to decipher than those on An Awesome Wave, which makes my job that bit more difficult.
“For me, the lyrics do make sense but that’s because I’ve got the translations,” smirks Joe. “I don’t want it to be easy for someone to figure out. I don’t want to say an obvious message, so they hear it the first time and know what I’m saying. I don’t want to challenge the listener but there’s a certain type of language that I feel most comfortable going through, and that’s how I express myself. That’s how I feel comfortable.”
One line which is easily decoded is from the brilliant and downright lustful ‘Every Other Freckle’, with Joe explaining how he wants to “turn you inside out and lick you like a crisp packet”. Is he not embarrassed his mother will hear it?
“You’ve got to do your duty, don’t you? It’s more important to me to relay an interesting message or an interesting lyric and not worry about what my mum thinks,” he laughs. “If I was worried what my mum thought, I'd only be able to put out a third of the album.”
Balancing success with fame isn’t always easy. Alt-J have about the perfect mix, according to Gus.
“We have a great balance of success and fame as a band but not as individuals,” he grins.
So he can go to Tesco in his trackie bottoms?
“I literally do that,” he grins. “I was walking around my local Tesco in tracksuit bottoms on Thursday and it was great. I don’t often wear tracksuit bottoms outside the house. Thank God, nobody recognised me.”
Enjoy the slobbery while it lasts, Gus. If Alt-J’s career trajectory continues at its current pace, anonymity may soon be a thing of the past.

This Is All Yours is out now on Infectious.