What do you feel is the best song you have ever released and why?
Alec: I think we all agree that Fix Somebody is definitely up there as it has taken off the best out of all of our songs. It’s been getting a lot of airplay in Mexico and the Philippines recently and in America as well. Radio Disney had picked up on it over in the States. Also, we just feel as one of our songs, it probably means the most to us so I think that we all agree that Fix Somebody is our favourite one.
And then kind of piggybacking off of that, do you have a favourite song to perform and why?
Ryan: I think our favourite one to perform is Happy Ever After You. As you can imagine by listening to it, it’s got a lot of energy so when we perform live it’s fun to see the crowd jumping up and down and getting loud- it’s great.
Putting aside all the labels of the music industry and whatnot, how would you personally describe the music you produce?
Alec: So a friend of ours once described it as tribal mayhem and we are still figuring out whether we agree with that.
Nathan: I agree with that. I think it’s fair enough.
Alec: Alright so maybe we agree with that. It’s kind of a mashup of a lot of different influences. We all come from backgrounds of loving bands like Kings of Leon and other kinds of pop bands and rock bands. But also mashing together some more kind of pop artists so we are really big fans of Julia Michaels and we love John Mayer as well who is not exactly pop but is still a big influence.
Nathan: I mean with all of our music, our goal is to make music that is full of energy and makes people feel stuff so all of our music we tend to write ends up sounding quite happy when actually the context of the song is quite sad. But the goal of any song for us is to just to make someone feel something.
Ryan: When we write songs we do have a vision about how they would sound in a live setting because performing live is such a big part of our band. We toured a lot even in a short time so that’s a big part for us when we are writing a song. We like to think can this bring to a live setting and how good can it make people feel in a room.
Alec: I think another thing is we are a playing band; we all play our own instruments in a whole band setup so I think that when we write a record it’s keeping it in a pop world but also it being able to translate really well live like what Ryan was saying into a “full band experience”.
What else goes into your creative process when writing a song?
Ryan: It’s different every time. We have written all of our songs and we love to write but it can start from an idea on guitar or it’s a song title or a lyric idea. And it could take a long time or it could take a short time depending on how it is going. But yeah. We just love writing together and we’ve been doing it ever since the band started.
Nathan: Yeah, literally every song is different every time.
If you didn’t become a musician, what would you be doing right now?
Ryan: I like to think I would have been a professional footballer. Although I probably just would have ended up being one of those guys in the pub who says he would have become a professional footballer.
Nathan: I mean he still does that.
Ryan: It’s a knee injury
Nathan: What about you Alec?
Alec: I’d probably be in university to be honest, studying something that would be mind- blowingly boring.
Nathan: To be honest, I always wanted to be a songwriter, so if I hadn’t been in a band I would probably have proceeded writing for the people. But honestly, being in a band was always a dream for all of us ever since we were very young so to actually do this has been incredible.
Who is the messiest on tour?
Nathan: That’s probably Ryan, I reckon. I mean, we are all messy. I am not very clean. Alec is pretty clean.
Alec: I’m pretty OCD about things so I like to stay neat and tidy.
Nathan: I think it probably is Ryan though. He’s a messy puppy. He likes to make himself home anywhere.
Ryan: Maybe. I guess I agree with that. I kind of just get in a messy sort of state as well.
What is the weirdest or funniest question you have ever been asked in an interview?
Alec: We did an interview in the Philippines recently, and it was called Pillow Talk. And it was basically a bunch of sex- fueled questions.
Nathan: One of the questions was do you prefer to give or receive and another one was do you still swallow. It was weird because all of the interviews we had have been very PG and then there was that one so yeah. These are things we are told never to say and then that one was just free reign.
What would you say the most useless talent you have is?
Ryan: I can do this thing where I can push my stomach out like very very far where I kind of look like I’m pregnant or I’m like keeping some sort of alien in there. I mean, I say useless but the ladies love it so maybe it’s useless but very effective.
Alec: I’ve got pretty bendy fingers. It depends on what context if that’s useless or not. But yeah, they are very hypoflexy because I am double jointed in all of them. I am hoping that one day I can get to the point where I can bend my fingers all the way back and pick a glass up with my hand inverted.
Nathan: I can make anything, and I mean anything, out of cardboard instead of tape. It sounds weird but it’s true like I am very good at it.
Alec: I’ve seen him make a gun.
Ryan: No, we saw him make a mousetrap. That was completely useless; he made it out of cardboard and cellophane, but no mouse was ever caught so…
Nathan: No no. To be fair, there’s still hope in that. That will catch a mouse. We have a mouse in our house at the moment. His name is Bruno Tingle, and I will catch him with my mouse trap
What is it like to perform in other countries where English is not their first language? Is there a language barrier?
Alec: We went to Mexico recently, and we all kind of speak a level of Spanish so that worked. But we like to translate some songs of ours into the languages of the countries we are in or learn a native song that’s quite big in their country. So when we were in the Philippines, we learned this popular song over there that’s in their language, and we performed that at the two gigs we played, and it’s just good because the fans really make the effort to communicate with us so if we can reciprocate that then it goes down really well especially in a live show setting.
Ryan: And also it’s amazing to see them singing all of our songs. They know every word to all of our songs, and it’s not their first language so that is quite amazing to see.
If you had one message to give your fans, what would it be?
Ryan: We just want to say a massive thank you cause like Nathan said we have not been going that long, but we are lucky enough to have fans who really really care about the band and love the music and have just taken us and just really pushed us out there to all corners of the world as well. We are really really lucky for that.
Nathan: Yeah we literally just got back from the Philippines just now and the fact that we get to travel to places like that in the world is really just because of the fans; they are absolutely incredible, and we just never expected to have anything like this. So just really a massive thank you and keep going.
