It’s the night before Table Scraps’ the Birmingham based noisniks new album, ‘Autonomy‘, is released and I am sat in the Hare and Hounds, Birmingham waiting to meet the band. The three members come in one by one, each looking a little beaten-up by the weather.
I meet Tim, the bassist, who introduces me to Scott (singer/guitarist) and Poppy (drums). They look pretty calm, considering they are about to embark on a UK tour.
The pub is pretty busy, so we move into the backroom to find a quiet spot. I sit opposite the band. After a few beers we begin to talk about the new album:
So, the new album ‘Autonomy’ is about to come out; can you give some background on how this album came to be?
Scott: “We really wanted to take our time with this album; garage rock artists have a tendency to churn out album after album. We really wanted to make an album that felt like it had been worked on for a long time.
Tim: “ Yeah, it was really difficult because each of us have jobs, so finding the time to record this album was tough. ”
Was recording this album any different to the last album?
Scott : “Well, because Tim joined on bass, it was so much easier. We also spent a lot more time at the mixing desk and I feel like that has really improved our sound.”
What about your approach to songwriting?
Poppy: “It hasn’t really changed; Scott brings the songs to us and we bash them out. But, now that we have Tim, we don’t have to think how can Scott be the guitarist and the bassist at the same time.”
Do you spend much time on the band’s social media accounts?
Poppy: “Ever since I started taking Instagram seriously, we have listeners from the US, Germany, Spain, Brazil; Instagram has really opened that up for us”
Scott: “I quite like responding to comments on our content. It’s a more approachable way of reaching a band, instead of just having a cold email; it’s more personal.”
Tim: “Yeah, I don’t think see ourselves as a ‘Local Band’. I dont think it’s ever been our goal to be the ‘Birmingham Kings’; we wanna be as outwards as we can. Social media has played a huge role in extending our reach beyond Birmingham.”
In marketing an album are you conscious of the role social media can play there?
Poppy: “We are conscious of it but I don’t think we’ve ever gone for virality. Viral acts have big hits but little staying power. We want to be around for a long time. ”
Tim: “I mean, getting played on radio 6 gives a band a sense of legitimacy in the UK; so in the early days we used our social media to promote radio play. Nowadays we try and keep it as fun as we can; people can get turned off by going on your Facebook or Instagram and there’s nothing there.”
So being an upcoming band what’s your take on Spotify or even Bandcamp?
Tim: “I love and hate Spotify; people can’t afford LP’s all the time, so the best thing for newer bands is to have racked up 10,000 plays. It is the most important currency for record companies now; when talking about this nebulous idea of how to legitimize what you do, having that backing is great. The drawback is the royalty payment, I mean 50,000 plays got us absolutely nothing.”
Poppy: “One time Me and Tim got a cab; the cab driver told us he had heard us on 6 Music and he got his Spotify out to prove we were at the top of his plays. That was really cool.”
What sort of a platform can a local scene give to a band in comparison to a national one?
Scott: “You feel certain cities have more vibrancy and their student communities go to shows.”
Tim: “Birmingham doesn’t really get caught up in any trends; B-town was just a thing to get London interested. Scenes aren’t built on musical ideas; they rely on excitement and commitment from music fans. Right now in in Birmingham we know there are people we can count on to come to ours shows because the people in Birmingham really love music.”
Scott: “Competition drives bands to work harder. When scenes develop, they improve music, because everyone wants to be the best band in the scene.”
Tim: “I’ve seen these hype bands who have this huge budget; they make the front cover of magazines; I’ve seen them play live, and they’re crap, they don’t have the energy. They haven’t had the years together; they haven’t had the empty venues . You look at your hype bands and they will have two good years and then that’s it; it’s a house built on sand.”
Poppy: “ Garage, Psych or Noise Rock is actually true to itself in that, you can tell when it’s really good and it has a great history.”
Scott: “Everyone is so discerning in those disciplines: Garage rock, Psychedelic, Noise Rock. If you turn up and if you’ve just got floppy hair and flares and it is crap; people will just say it’s crap. People who just listen to bands who have “9/10s” or “best new albums”, will just move onto the next thing, back to square one. At least this is something that is sustainable and legitimate; instead of what’s fashionable.”
How do you see yourself within the wider UK scene and how you do view the UK indie scene right now?
Tim: “One thing that keeps coming up in our interviews is that some things are familiar, but it’s not generic, but it is because there’s been bands with drums and guitar forever.But we’re rehearsing the first two album right now, and we thinking that that sounds like OUR band.”
Scott: “I don’t think I’ve ever grouped a selection of bands and thought ‘these are California bands’; so I’ve never thought of Table Scraps as trying to catch onto a ‘scene’.”
Tim: “You can call us ‘no-nonsense’, or ‘heavy’ or that we’re from Birmingham and are ‘unfashionable’.But we’re not a UK band, we have a lot of interests outside of this. We don’t really care about scenes or measure ourselves by certain standards. We don’t want to embed ourselves in this collective of people. We haven’t had time to think about that, we just write songs.”
Do you ever look to the US to look to expose yourselves too?
Scott: “It’s quite impregnable, you’ve got to think in a post-brexit world how it will be. You can do it for that classic ‘exposure’ but to take a month off and take it financially viable. It costs you 200 quid to just take your guitar, It’s just a big gamble.”
Do you see yourselves as reactionary to politics going on right now?
Scott: “I don’t think we’re like that, it’s quite internalised.”
Poppy: “It’s that cross between the personal and the political, like the lack of funding for things – it does get inherently political.”
Scott: “We played with a band from Denmark and they are touring Europe and the art institution is funding their scene and the fact that we don’t have any of that does make it political. We’re definitely not outwardly a political band as we’re focused on a million different things.”
Do you see Brexit affecting music scenes?
Scott: “It will make it more difficult to get across the channel, because you’ll have to apply for visas etc. The benefit at the moment is that you can just jump in the van and come out in Paris or Copenhagen. When the draw-bridge goes up in 2019 and the amount of paperwork you’ll have to do, it will become more expensive. These are tours where you don’t even make that much money. In Europe you get looked after better, too; people buy your merch and come to shows. What worries me is that, if you get bands flying over from US and not coming to Britain, you won’t have people being inspired by the US bands and it could all become very insular.”
Could you name some bands you’ve been checking out in the UK right now?
Tim: “Swedish Death Candy; they’re from London but they’re from all over and they are just great. They can switch from early Pink Floyd to Rage Against The Machine, and not in a jarring way. And the Punk scene is Bristol is going very well; bands like HEAVY LUNGS seem to benefiting from the IDLES effect.”
If you could choose between UK and US garage rock.. Which would it be?
Scott: “ US; the Sunshine actually helps and the US is bigger; there’s more of them and the cream that rises is actually better perhaps. It’s just an umbrella term for so many bands. It’s more Psych than anything now and I mean we’re closer to Motorhead than we are Psychedelic.”
And finally, is there anything that annoys you about the UK music scene at the moment?
Tim: “ Stop pretending you’re stadium fillers and get on with it.”
Words: Tom Willets
Photography: Sam Wood
