Life has been far from smooth for Hope Of The States’ Sam Herlihy and Simon Jones. Personal tragedy nearly finished the band before it had even begun, while their debut album The Lost Riots was perceived as something of a commercial under- achiever.
Such woes weigh easily on their shoulders though. Certainly, they haven’t gone out of their way to curry the favour of the music industry.
“We took time out from being a signed band,” says Sam, “and went and did the demos ourselves, recorded them ourselves in these barns around England.”
Quite what their label though of this remains a mystery.
“I’m not sure what kind of band the label thought they'd signed, but we turned around and said we’re going away to write some songs so give us money to get some gear in. There was no grand scheme behind it.”
The fruit of their labours is Left, an album that is notably more straightforward than their deubt. Did they find it difficult to follow up the epic that was The Lost Riots?
Sam shakes his head: “It wasn’t difficult to have the idea of not wanting to do the same thing. I think that these days there’s a culture of repetition, of bands endlessly regurgitating the same thing. They’re all scared because they made a lot of money on their first record and don’t want to rock the boat. Fortunately we didn’t. You get bored of things. We wanted to do something different, so it was easy.”
Hope Of The States have been busy plying their wares on the summer festival circuit, doing their stuff on the smaller stages while some of the bigger names find themselves struggling to break out of the touring treadmill.
“That’s the difference between being a band who care about their art and being a career band”, says Simon firmly. “They’re only worried about paying the mortgage. If you cared that much you'd take time off. Maybe you can write that fast but I doubt it.”
Sam has his own opinion: “I think we all sense a weird cynicism that’s crept into music lately. It’s always the same when guitar music becomes big, everybody gets sell-out and scummy about it.”
They’ve always felt distinct from musical trends: “We feel very, very apart from that. I appreciate that it’s easy to say that from the sidelines when you’re not Franz Ferdinand or whoever, but at the same time there are a lot of things we’re not prepared to do that others are. To us success is making absolutely the record we want to make and we’re in no hurry to do that. In some ways maybe there’s more pressure because we didn’t sell that many records but we sold enough to get the opportunity to make another one. If that doesn’t happen this time we’ll go and do it another way.”
If they’d been prepared to compromise their beliefs, Hope Of The States could have jumped on the second Britpop bandwagon, although you sense that Sam would rather drink his own piss.
“We’re kids of Britpop, for so many of us in the band that was our formative experience. There were so many amazing records but all those bands suffered from second album syndrome and it was absolutely horrible. The bands who did make a great second record were the ones who did something completely different, like Mansun. They got completely crucified but that album still stands up now. All these other bands achieved some success and then retreated into lowest common denominator, join-the-dots bullshit. That’s already started with this lot. Maybe there’ll be some great songs out of all of this but great bands, albums? Really?
"There’s no irony to what we do which is why we get such a kicking. People see us as being earnest but I get drunk and have a good time and I believe passionately in what we do.”