The Zutons rock Gypsy Tea Room (Photo by Alix McAlpine, The Daily Campus)
It’s the first day of their North American Tour with Keane, and The Zutons, albeit a bit jet-lagged, are chipper as can be. And with reason – shows for the duration of their four-week tour are mostly sold out. If people hadn’t heard of The Zutons, they wont be able to miss them now. With their incredibly energetic set (sax player Abi steals the show with all her dancing), and a sound unlike anything you’ve never heard before (no joke), The Zutons are making fans as we speak. Their songs might sound familiar – “Pressure Point,” off their U.S. debut “Who Killed the Zutons,” is part of the new Levis’ ad campaign and is likely to be stuck in your head for weeks to come. On Monday, January 24, our entertainment editor sat down with two of the Liverpudlians for bunch – Abi Harding (saxophone) and Sean Payne (drums). Here’s what was said:
Daily Campus: First off, it seems to me like an odd pairing for you to be out with Keane, they seem to have a different appeal, how do you feel about touring with them being such a different band?:
Abi Harding: It’s a good thing in a way because you get the people who come to see you and those who come to see them; it’s like having two different audiences. And I think, I presume that bands – like Muse, we last toured with Muse, and Keane might think the same way that we’re good support because we’re quite and we get everyone warmed up, we’re a bit of a partyish band.
Sean Payne: I dunno, we haven’t been out on tour a lot really so I don’t know if we have a type of people who listen to our music, or even if Keane has one. I think here people might just be into new music and I find it’s “yeah it’s European music” and you know, Britain’s such a small place, we can just kind of lump into just British music, not just rock, but I like that.
AH: It’s good there’s no sticker on it, they don’t say it’s jazz or rock.
DC: You guys are a bit of an unconventional band, how do you feel about being backed by such a large entity like Sony, and do you feel like that’s a shift that’s happening currently (towards putting indie bands on big labels)?
SP: I think it’s become quite more popular and things like that have happened throughout the years. One big label will put an indie band on and then every thing will follow through and that becomes the kind of music. At the moment it seems like people are up for it like The Killers and Modest Mouse and people like that – people are up for a little bit of an alternative more than just pop music. There’s more to life than rap and pop music and it’s honestly the same in England and you can’t get away from it. For us, we’re actually signed to a smaller label called Deltasonic that was picked by Sony so we got picked up by Sony. You know what I mean, you haven’t got to do it but it just seems like they have a lot of money and they can put you on more tours and spend more money on advertising. We have the best of both worlds because we have Sony but we have the smaller label as a sort of barrier between so if we don’t want to do one thing, Deltasonic will say “look, they can’t do that.” Which is better.
DC: Do think having “Pressure Point” on the Levis’ ad is going to pigeonhole you as the Levis’ band? Are you afraid of that in any way?
AH: It depends. When we saw the song, they cut it up quite a lot and the song doesn’t really come across that much.
SP: I think at first it seems hard because as we get radio play, people are going to start recognizing it but I can honestly say that we got other songs and hopefully the people will like the other songs and what we hope in the band is that that song will make people listen to the other songs and hopefully they’ll like those songs too not just one song on the Levis’ ad that will make us a big hit. I can honestly say I think we’re better than that. I don’t want to be big-headed, but I’d like to say that I definitely think we will get past it. There’s a big thing about commercials and going commercial and whatever but it’s just an opportunity for more people to hear it. And you’re not gonna go sticking up for a product that uses sweatshops or all that kind of stuff but you know, everyone wears Levis, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
DC: I read somewhere that the name “The Zutons” came by accident; can you tell me more about that?
AH: Dave, the lead singer kind of made it up. We were all trying to find a name and we were all racking our brains and he came in with it, as kind of a joke and I think he was a bit embarrassed about saying it because he said “what about this – the Zutons” and we were all like “oh yeah, that’s not like anything else.”
SP: I think It’s hard to come up for a name for a band, especially when there are five people in the band and everyone’s got a say or you say something and everyone goes “hahahah” so we were all a bit reluctant but it worked out, I guess.
