The Young Knives became active in 1998 peddling spiky, jangly guitar based tunes reminiscent of The Gang of Four and looking back to Britain’s post-punk scene of the 70’s and 80’s.
With lyrics analysing and dissecting themes of decidedly middle class British life, the band rose to prominence with the success of their 2002 album “The Young Knives…. Are dead”, and in “Voices of Animals and Men” was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. In a world in which artists come and go faster than lightening and genres perpetually merge and redefine themselves, it is easy to view to see the band as musical dinosaurs. Despite the genre having fallen out of favour in recent years, my conversation with the post post revlialists’ lead singer Henry Hill was surprisingly interesting.
The Young Knives have recently chosen to abandon the conventional format of releasing albums via a record label and have instead opted to do the process completely independently; funding it entirely via crowd sourcing and using donations from fans via the website Kickstarter. “It’s hard. It’s really, really hard”, he says of the amount of work involved. “It’s just all the little costs you wouldn’t even think of. You want three colours on your album cover instead of two, that’s an extra grand.” Despite the extra trouble, Hill does not regret pioneering the independent route. “Not at all. With the music industry going the way it’s going, the record labels have an incentive to release boring, safe, commercial music – that’s not what we want to make.”
Expanding on a dissatisfaction with the music industry that seems increasingly echoed, Hill explains how “it’s much less centralised. People are exposed to music through so many more channels than they were before. You could spend £15,000 on a video because it’s going to be on MTV 2 and everyone is going to see it. You can’t do that now. There is more good music being made but it’s harder to find.” Would he want to want to start a band in the current musical climate? “I wouldn’t want to be starting at anytime. It’s always been hard. Some nights, some towns you’ll end up playing for three people. But you just have to keep going.” On the topic of the UK music scene he seems pretty negative. “There’s a couple of good bands doing interesting things here, but there’s a lot more in the States. People seem more interested in making interesting music than here in the UK.”
Their image differs a lot from indie bands of a similar ilk, the band sometimes seeming intent on distancing themselves from the pretty boy indie band feel of The Strokes and Libertines.“The whole image is a bit of a drag in a way. The PR Company really pushed it, we did a photo-shoot for NME and it all just got out of hand.” Do they regret it? “We’ve got to make music that transcends the tweed jacket.” With bassist nicknamed “The House of Lords”, this is in many ways a tall order.
On the topic of pigeon holing, Hill says he doesn’t “want to just be thought of as another indie guitar band – but I just love guitar music. I got into the Gang of Four quite late so the similarity was not a conscious thing. We always want to be looking towards the future rather than the past.”
On their new album, “Sick Octave”, Henry was very ambitious in his aims. “The name ‘Sick Octave’ is about making new, different music. Almost like something you would get in hip hop; larger than life. We don’t want to make a generic safe record. We’re more interesting in catering to the fans we have rather a trying to make some slick indie pop and play stadiums.”
With this signal of intent, our interview comes to an end. The Young Knives are a band that have preserved and made the music they want to make against a relatively harsh commercial environment, and are doing so successfully. Although their nasal guitar ranting may at times be hard to like, it is even harder to fail to admire the single minded devotion that makes it happen. Oh, well. At least they suit tweed.