Ahead of their Brudenell Social Club show and fresh off the release of their latest album, Landfill, we caught up with Henry and Tom Dartnell to discuss their creative process, live performances, and the ever-present push and pull of making music in the modern age.
The new Young Knives album, Landfill, is a brilliant, ever changing, constantly surprising listen. It’s noisy, restless, and packed with ideas that refuse to sit still, but has moments of respite, beauty and comfort. But that’s exactly why it’s brilliant. For Henry and Tom Dartnell, the record was a product of unfiltered creativity – a reaction to their past attempts at making a ‘hip’ album.
‘We spent a long time trying to write a very, like, cool, well-formed record’, Henry admits. ‘Then we just thought, let’s make something simple but also not be afraid to experiment. It’s a patchwork of ideas, and I kind of like that’. Tom offers this analogy: ‘Its like going through a charity shop looking for a shirt. You have to sift through loads of weird stuff, but when you find the right thing, it just works’.
That thrift-shop chaos extends to the album cover too, which was designed to resemble those obscure, slightly battered records you stumble across in second-hand shops. The aesthetic, much like the music, is unpredictable but cohesive in its own way.
It’s maybe a difficult album to interpret – absolutely not to listen to though, with its refusal to stick to a single style. It jumps from punky thrashes to lounge like moments to angular oddities, from shifting time signatures to straight-up noise. But does the band see it as that disjointed? ‘I don’t listen to what people say’,Henry laughs. ‘But someone told me, I like all your albums except this one’, And then others say, ‘This is your White Album’, which is cool. But I don’t know; does it really feel that disparate? I think it works’.
They initially set out to make a stripped-back, drum-machine-heavy record, especially since their drummer, Mike, was living in Berlin at the time. But as the songs took shape, they abandoned the rules they’d set for themselves. ‘Why force it?’ Henry says. ‘If something sounds good, why not just go with it? Tom adds, referencing their love of found sound and lo-fi experimentation. ‘We’ve always liked things like Faust Tapes, where it’s just a splurge of ideas. Some of it hangs together in songs, and some of it just works for what it is. We get onto their longtime admiration for Frank Black. ‘We’ve always been big fans of his solo stuff, like Teenager of the Year’, says Henry. ‘Those albums have that same chaotic-but-cohesive feel’.
One of the standout tracks, Ugly House, shifts between moods, time signatures, and speeds in a way that feels unpredictable but oddly natural. It was a nightmare to write, though. Henry nods. ‘I was listening to that Smile record – the first one, and the song ‘You Will Never Work in Television Again’ was in a weird time signature, and I thought, Why haven’t we ever done something like this?Then I just started messing around’. Continuing, Henry offers ‘It started it on acoustic, but I couldn’t work out what time signature it was in, so when we tried to play it together, I had no idea how to explain what was happening.Tom, ever the pragmatist, wasn’t sold at first. ‘I was like, why do we have to do it like this? Why not just keep it simple?!’.
But the experimentation paid off. Henry drew inspiration from The Smile and Viet Cong, bands known for their unconventional song structures. Eventually, he had to map the whole thing out mathematically just to make sense of it.
‘I love songs that shift and change’, he says. ‘I want one of those on every album’.
For a band with such a distinct live presence, their relationship with performing at first seems complicated. Henry, in particular, says, ‘I don’t enjoy it at all’ he says bluntly, although it’s with a glint in his eye. ‘I like meeting people, but the showing off part? Not really my thing’. Tom, on the other hand, is more effusive, though even he acknowledges the challenges. ‘Some songs take weeks of rehearsal before they feel natural’, he says. ‘We’re only just getting good at the last album’s songs, and now we’ve got a whole new set to figure out. Henry smiles and whispers ‘I do like it really’, giggling.
And then there’s the reality of juggling music with the rest of life. ‘We don’tt have the time to practice like we used to’, Tom says. ‘When you’ve got jobs and kids, rehearsing becomes this thing that’s easy to push to the last minute’.
Despite that, the band are already thinking about their next steps. ‘There will definitely be another record’, Henry says. The management have a plan (!), an album by next year, next single in autumn, but you can’t just force creativity’, he laughs. Tom, ever the optimist, jokes about how they always think they’ll write something quickly. ‘We say, let’s just bash off a couple of tracks and put them out. And then, two years later, we’re still tweaking them!’
But that’s part of the process for Young Knives – a band that thrives on creativity, that embraces the disjointed and the unexpected. Whether it’s in the studio, on stage, or in their own heads, they’re always wrestling with their music, pushing and pulling until it feels right.
And with Landfill, they’ve struck gold in the rubble.
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