Interview with Wild Palms

Another day, another East London indie band. Yawn. Or wait. Poke around long enough and you may unearth a group that does something genuinely interesting, new and edgy; is down to earth, unpretentious and frankly couldn’t give a s**t about the hipster scene. Meet Wild Palms, a genre-defying alternative post-punk band from actually not East but North London. I sat down with their charming front-man Lou Hill to drink Red Stripes and coffee and chat about hard work, Italian politics and Ian Curtis.

Hey Lou. Cheers for coming. What have you been up to lately?
-Helping out my Nan, taking care of my little sister, making music...the basics.

23 years old and a family man! Admirable these days. What's your view on the East London music scene?
-We are not really part of that...Especially Shoreditch is full of average bands who play just because it's cool, and it's all about who you know and where you are seen. Of course there are a few excellent bands as well, like Electricity In Our Homes, but generally we try to stay outside the scene and do our own thing. We don't even know any of the "important" people.

Working ethics is indeed a rare thing around here.
-Yeah, you see a lot of bands walking around like celebrities after they've played one gig at some trendy venue. They forget about the stuff behind it. We've always loved hard work, for example in the studio. That's us, not fashion parties or networking. Hopefully someday somebody finds us and gives us money!

The question all bands hate: what are your influences?
-It's more about the attitude. Uncompromising love for music, for the sake of music. Billy Childish or Captain Beefheart.

How are you live?
-We try to bring art to the shows. Our guitarist Darrell is a mad artist, he's for example done a massive canvas we are going to use as a background. Something different than a smoke machine and spot lights. We have more ideas but I won't give them away yet...

Sounds wicked. Any funny rituals before gigs?
-You mean apart from still being extremely nervous?

Yes. Excessive drinking?
-Can't do that anymore. On our last UK tour I realised that smoking and drinking really do no good to your voice.

Next up is a tour in Italy. How did you land that? What do you think about Silvio Berlusconi?
-Haha, you mean the fat old man that walks around with young blondes and owns half of the media? It's just weird, very weird. But I guess Italians are very open to bands from London and our kind of music. Next year we'll be heading to Europe, USA and Japan.

Big plans. So Wild Palms is your job now?
-Pretty much. You can't really look for another job when the first thing you would do is to take two months off. The downside is that we are all really skint. I'm living at home at the moment, we can't afford to go to bars or gigs. So we end up drinking in parks and going to house parties. Which is still very much fun.

What would you do without music? You've studied English Literature?
-I love writing and books. And I've been working with my dad doing carpentry. So maybe doing that by day and then writing by night.

Romance is not dead. Thanks Lou!

Oh, Ian Curtis. We didn't really chat about him; I compared Lou to him and he went all blushing and adorably confused. So, if any of that scenester talk seemed arrogant to you, I assure you, it's everything but. These guys are the most humble, hard-working and genuine lot East London has seen for awhile.

P.S And if that talk about being found and financed seemed wishful thinking, it's everything but. Literally ten minutes after our interview Wild Palms got signed to a London indie label One Little Indian. Congrats!