It feels like every time that Basement come back to the plate, their legend seems to have spread another thousand acres
But in the eight years since their last album, the expectations and perceptions of who and what they are have never been more prevalent. Perhaps that goes a long way to explaining why their new album ‘WIRED’ sounds the way it does.
Very much Basement at its core, but with more tenacity, grit and tenderness squeezed in the gaps, it showcases the band in so many wondrously different and daring colours. A furiously brilliant piece of British rock music that feels as vulnerable and intricate as anything they have produced to date, it has been a long time coming but the wait has been worth every second.
To dive into exactly how they made such creative decisions, and what the road leading there looked like, Rock Sound sat down with vocalist Andrew Fisher.
Rock Sound: How does it feel to be at a place where a new Basement album is now out in the world? Did you always know you would end up here?
Andrew: I knew we were going to do something again, but it was scary to have those conversations with people because if you don’t ask the question, then no one can say ‘No’. If you ask, we need to confirm everyone is on the same page, and if they are, we all need to get on the same creative page. But the fact that we’ve done it, and we’ve done it in a way that felt so genuine and felt like it used to feel when we were doing our early 7’s and records. The nature of the beast is that the bigger you get, the more outside voices there are and the more noise there is, and for some reason, you start letting that sort of stuff come in, and it gets in the way. We worked hard to prevent that, and it turned into the most powerful and emotional recording and release experience.
RS: There are a lot of different feelings that go into taking a step back into things in the way you have. What has it been like dealing with the fact that so many people have been anticipating this record? Since ‘Beside Myself’, the eyes set on the band have exploded tenfold.
Andrew: When it came to releasing the first singles, we all discussed it as it approached. I’m just excited. I can’t wait. And then one of the guys was like, ‘I’ve been all over the place and nervous about it.’ But the thing is that it is overwhelming. We’re all very emotional people, as most human beings are, and we’ve all just been trying to deal with it in our own way. But the thing is that I sometimes feel really guilty about struggling with objectively good things. I get to be in a band, it pays my rent, and I’m about to release a record on the label that’s my favourite. But then I’m scared and feel conflicted or confused, and then I have this inner critic that beats me up, saying, ‘Well, you should just be happy and grateful.’ But we are all getting much better at talking about that sort of stuff now. We all want what’s best for each other, and I think the more that we’re just open and honest, the more we can work things out together.
RS: Obviously, with that comes some level of expectation, but it’s clear that with this record, you have just made whatever feels right for you. It’s rock music in its purest form, with no pretence or previous intention attached to it. But how did you reach the place where you knew you were making something so different to what had come before?
Andrew: There are a few steps to it. First, Alex [Henery, Guitarist] and I started talking. We were coming out of COVID, hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and missed writing together. We’d always written together even before Basement was Basement. So we started writing, and loads of stuff came out, and it didn’t take us long for us to go, ‘This is Basement, isn’t it? It’s you and me, what else is it going to be?’ From there came the conversation about whether we want to do this and who else wants to do it. But more than anything, we just wanted to do what felt good. Alex has a way with the guitar, and he wants to write what is enjoyable and what feels fun. So the blueprint was to have fun.
Then, when it came to bringing the other guys back in to put their mark on it, everybody had their own thing that they wanted to go for. But we just wanted to do what was right for the song from the very start, and that made it so much easier when we went into the studio. Because with a different ear than John had, he could say, ‘What is this? Because it feels like you’re trying to do this when it’s coming out like this, and because of that, it was able to come out better than we ever thought it could.
RS: Being driven by the excitement of writing is always a very special place to be. And that’s often where the band seem to find their footing the most. Take ‘Colourmeinkindness’ as an album, which, on release, you had no intention of playing live more times than the two farewell shows just after its release. There’s a purity to that album’s output because of that.
Andrew: Yeah, and we did it because we love making music. For me, it makes sense: I’ve written music, so I record it, put it out into the world, and it does its thing. And that’s what we did with ‘Colourmeinkindness’, we knew that we weren’t going to be a band, because I was scared of doing it full-time, and at the time, we weren’t in a position to do it full-time. I knew I needed to make a decision, do I do the band and train to be a teacher at the same time? Probably not, so let’s do that. But the intention is always whatever makes sense of the music.
RS: So, when was the moment that it started to feel serious again? Because it’s clear that you needed a bit of time away from things to be able to return to it with this sort of vigour?
Andrew: We knew we needed a year away around 2019. Then that year led into COVID, and that’s when we actually stopped thinking and talking about the band. We had band meetings, but just because we are friends and we wanted to catch up. It became an unspoken thing, where the one-year break kept going and going and going. And then Al wasn’t sure whether he wanted to do it, because he felt like it had all just come to an end. No one was talking about it, so no one knew where anyone stood. He doesn’t like loose ends or things left up in the air. He felt like he needed a clean break mentally to be, ‘I can’t think about that, therefore, it’s not an option,’ even though he was clearly thinking about it, so it was an option. And that’s where I put my own hat in the ring and said, ‘I care about this too much, and I really don’t want it to stop’. But we really did need that time away to realise how much it meant and how much we meant to each other.
RS: Then how did the subsequent shows you then played – specifically at Outbreak – affect your stance and feelings on what you were doing? Did it affect what you were working on?
Andrew: We had already decided to make new music at that point. We were all in. But we felt conflicted about whether we wanted to put out music earlier. Because there was a lot of stuff happening with this nostalgia-core around our band and bands of our era. I don’t want this to be a cash grab. I don’t want people to perceive this as us jumping on the back of the current trend in people being into stuff from 10 or so years ago. So, obviously, we did that Outbreak where we played lots of songs off ‘Colourme…’, but we still wanted people to know we were doing stuff. But it’s been six years at this point, so why not wait that little bit longer?
RS: It’s really positive to be in that sort of place. Because you can see these reactions to old stuff, and the dopamine that comes with that can be so addictive that it skews the way you see what you’re working on in the here and now. But keeping things steady and in your hands really worked to your advantage.
Andrew: It was actually a really fun time. We were getting all this really positive feedback about being back playing shows, and it was when the crazy viral stuff around ‘Covet’ was happening. But we all knew, in the back of our minds, that we already had all this new material, and it was this really fun secret we had no idea how it was going to be perceived. But having that whilst playing songs that we have been playing for so long and having reactions like that, it was really weird.
se new songs, because this is a record where, as a Basement fan, you can’t really sit on the fence. Someone is going to love it, and someone is going to hate it, and that’s such an awesome place to want to put yourself creatively.
Andrew: We all said that we didn’t want people to be just, ‘It’s alright’. We wanted people to be ‘I love it’ or ‘I hate it’. it’s alright’ is how I feel about ‘Beside Myself’ really. It’s hard. There are only so many songs you can write, and we were going in a certain direction and doing something that’s really that’s not divisive. Not everyone always hits it out of the park every time, and that was a completely different experience for a whole bunch of reasons. We’re focused on the noise inside, but we would have been upset if people were apathetic. We wanted it to be a conversation. Because we tried really hard to challenge ourselves and to really push ourselves in whatever direction we went. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to write a dance record, but at the same time, we tried different things, and we pushed ourselves out of our comfort zone. And one thing that we did, which I’m so proud of, is that we constantly listened to each other’s feedback and reflected on that and took our ego out of the situation and did whatever we needed to do to serve the song at every point.
RS: As you look to the next few steps, it’s clear just how good it feels to have so much of what Basement is firmly in your control. But saying that, how do you compare where you are and the version of yourself that is playing on this record to the versions of yourself from previous key moments in the band’s journey? How similar and how different does it all feel?
Andrew: It’s really interesting because, like the there’s actually, there’s so many similarities with how I feel now and how I felt at the very early doors of it, because I got to a point where I’m like able to accept parts of my relationship with the band and relationship with being a musician. I’m able to enjoy and experience it in the same way I did when I never would have called myself a musician because I was just in a band with some friends. You don’t care. You’re just doing it because you grew up in a scene and your mates are in bands, and you do bands. That’s what you do. That’s how you spend time with people, navigate relationships and feelings, and get to know them. And then you do that more and more, and you hopefully get better at it. You do it for as long as you can, and throughout all of that, you become more and more successful. That’s when I start to get really conflicted and confused, and I feel uncomfortable about it all. I feel uncomfortable being paid and using it to pay my rent. I feel, you know, imposter syndrome. It’s not a valid form of work. Then I start to convince myself that I don’t care what other people think, and that I only do it for this reason or that.
Now, years of working out what I actually do care about and accepting what I care about and accepting that it was always my dream to be in a band, and I’m okay with that. And I would have been happy saying that when I was 12, and I’m happy saying that now, finally, being 37 and that I still struggle with feeling proud because I struggle with that sort of side of myself. It’s something that I always have. But accepting that and accepting that I care about what people think about what I do and the music that I make, means that I can hold that and try not to let that get in the way of what I’m doing. I think once you accept that, you can see when it starts to come in, and you can go, ‘Fuck off.’ So, that’s through conversations with everyone and being really vulnerable and talking about this sort of stuff and bloody crying with everyone. Like, seriously, we’re really into it. It’s got to a point now where I’m just so happy and so grateful for this. So, yeah, there are a lot of similarities. But to get to the similarities, I had to be vastly, vastly different from how it was when we first started.
