Start Listening To: Committee of Sleep

Committee of Sleep reflect on writing through illness, embracing imperfection and finding something steady in the chaos of it all.

Formed between old friendships and long stretches of figuring things out, Committee of Sleep channel lo-fi textures into something deeply human and unguarded. On Ruling Overturned, the North East band trace the aftermath of life-altering experiences without ever losing sight of the everyday, where humour, doubt and meaning all sit side by side.

For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

I’m Olly, and alongside Jack, Jenny and Sam we are Committee of Sleep. We are a lofi band from the north of England. Jack, Sam and I met at primary school in North Shields when I moved there from Singapore. Jenny came to us in a dream from which we have yet to awaken.

We’re making music in the vein of Guided by Voices, my bloody valentine, Duster and (aspirationally, for me at least) Elliott Smith.

Your music feels very intimate but never overly fragile, how do you strike that balance when writing?

That’s a great question, and the short answer is it's really hard and I still get it wrong. There’s a really fantastic interview with Grandaddy on ‘The Life of the Record’ where he describes it something like: you have to be mindful of how much of this raw personal feeling you’re putting into the music, especially when you’re performing these songs night after night. He says something about what you put out into the universe becomes real, you re-experience it. Sometimes when you’re feeling good, you feel that strength in vulnerability, this song is me, its real. Then, other times when you’re not doing so good (as we all are more of the time than it’s fashionable to admit) you might want to burst into tears on stage and walk off, because the weight of that song is too much at that moment. That hasn't happened to me yet but its a line in the sand.

A lot of the lyrics draw from personal experience, including your diagnosis, how did that period shape the way you approached songwriting?

Having cancer, from diagnosis, through treatment and then the long road of recovery ( I still have to remind myself I’m on that road), shaped my songwriting, in as much as before I knew I was sick, there was no songwriting.

I was 22 when I was diagnosed with stage II testicular cancer. I first picked up bass guitar aged 14 when Jack and I had the notion to become a Rage Against the Machine cover band, we played together through high school, then formed an outfit with Sam and played our first shows at 16. I played in various bands at University, but always pushing the songs in a certain vague direction, one that I could never define or that I had any words for.

When I got the diagnosis, I had this ‘oh shit I’m going to die’ moment. Whether it was soon or not was secondary to this awakening to the fact of my own death. We all know this in an abstract way, but we spend our life finding ways to kid ourselves out of really feeling it. So in that moment, I overcame my self-consciousness about my pitchy voice and amateur abilities on my 6-string, and wrote the first song. As it became clear that the end was not quite as near as it might have been, I just kept writing my songs, with my own words and my own voice, and here we are now.

Ruling Overturned feels reflective without being stuck in the past, did the songs come from looking back or trying to make sense of things in the moment?

That's a really thoughtful question, the songs that have come together to make Ruling Overturned were all written in the year or so after I finished Chemo (November 2022). They were mostly here-and-now, but our sense of our own present self and situation is always made in relationship with our feelings about the past and considerations of the future.

The thing about coming face to face with your own death is that after the initial euphoria of just being alive subsides again, the question of ‘how do I make my life worth living’ takes on a greater urgency. That’s the question that I’m still grappling with today. These songs are more questions than answers on that theme, and the songs themselves mean very different things to me when we play them now, than they did when I first strung them together. We can try to make sense of our lives backwards, but we can only live them forwards (that's a quote from Kierkegaard).

‘The Planet of Chocolate Bars’ has a slightly surreal title for a very grounded, emotional track, where did that contrast come from?

I find it important not to take life too seriously, maybe that was the reasoning. To me the song is a very stark picture of a pretty raw situation I was in, maybe I felt the need to ease people into that with a funny name. Practically though, the title comes from my favourite line in the song which goes, ‘when did you last look at the stars? Consider yourself a new life, on the planet of chocolate bars?’ There's no vocal hook or chorus on the track so to speak, so there was no other clear choice for a title.

Recording in a rural cottage over New Year’s sounds like a very specific environment, how did that setting influence the feel of the song?

It was a super specific environment, it's where we recorded all the tracks that became the EP. The recording session was the second time Sam, Jack and I had gone to the middle of nowhere to record some of my songs, the first time (Bewcastle) we coined the name 'Committee of Sleep’, and after the second one (Bewcastle 2.0) the guys said they thought we should take these songs out as a band.

The setting was kinda intense, there was a more coherent feel to the songs this time and a general sense that we could make something we all thought was going to be cool. We drank a shit load of herbal tea, Jack handled a lot of the cooking and Sam was the cool head in the middle of my overexcited and vague ambition and Jack’s pragmatic, grounded and realistic approach.

There was more tension, but there was also more riding on the session. And for me the emotional content of the music was heavier than before, so I think the guys sensed that and they really gave themselves to it. I think we’ve learned from the recording, or at least I hope we have. Doing it all yourself, just you and these people who are like family, working on something together, creates that intimacy and space for vulnerability that I hope comes accross on the EP.

There’s a real sense of everyday life running through your songs, even in heavier moments, do you consciously try to keep things grounded like that?

That's a really nice reflection, I hadn’t really made that connection in terms of these songs as a whole but I think you’re totally right. One of the main takeaways that I try to keep in mind everyday, is that life is the everyday. It's not about that big scheme that you think might come off in a couple of years, or the abstract milestones of achievement. If you’re not living your life in the right way today then its going to pass you by. By ‘the right way’, I mean in a way that sits well with you, with your values, morals and sense of what matters. I guess that’s one of the things I got a sense of from the cancer stuff, and I’m chuffed to hear that the music speaks that to someone.

I also want to add to this that the feeling that anyone else ‘has it all figured out’ or whatever is another one of those mirages, away of ignoring the fact that life is messy and tough for everyone and always will be. I’ve got some insights from the cancer stuff but it doesn't mean I don’t still have to fight to remind myself of these things everyday.

You’ve built things up through live shows and word of mouth, how important has that slow, organic growth been for the band?

If we're not doing it for the love of playing music for people, then whether we’re playing to two people in a pub in Hull on a Tuesday, or some big headline show at wherever, then we’d be in it for the wrong reasons.

Life is slow, things take time. That doesn't mean that I still don’t get ahead of myself, it's something we all have to remind ourselves of constantly. Especially in a culture with such a short attention span. We all can become dejected through comparison, the metrics and all the rejection emails. But it's all got to boil down to doing it for the love of it.

Jack can probably speak better than I can on this subject, as he is the guy who makes shit happen for us, I’m pretty sheltered from all the B.S that goes into being a band and for that I’m deeply grateful.

There’s a quiet sense of gratitude running through the music, even when dealing with difficult themes, is that something that emerged naturally?

I guess so, I think gratitude is the first and foremost foil to loss. Life has value because we can’t take it for granted. And that's not to say that I don’t get angry or some other less productive feeling when things are shit, because we all do and so we should. But, being creative, channeling those experiences into something new, is a total privilege. Like, you get to survive this shit and you get to choose what to make of your life after the fact, that's a gift.

Sometimes when I tell people that I had cancer, the first thing they say is ‘I’m really sorry to hear that’ or some other well-meaning consolation and I tell them ‘don’t be’, I’m not sorry it happened. It was like a storm that set the ship on a new course.

The other day someone asked me ‘where do you think you’d be in your life if you hadn’t gotten sick’, and that shit fucking terrified me. Before cancer I was living for an abstract future, I was devoid of any sense of purpose or capacity to change my situation. I was lost.

That’s not to say that I’ve found myself now, in any permanent sense, only that I’m on a journey with myself and living in a way I feel makes my life worth living.

With Ruling Overturned as your introduction, what do you want people to take away after sitting with the EP?

I don’t like to try to tell anyone what our songs should mean to them, it's like when you see an artist who gives a long introduction to every song and tries to pre-digest the song for people. It's kind of patronising, like when you buy a book and it’s like 30 pages of introduction from some PhD before you get to the actual meat of the thing.

That's not to say that I don’t care what it means to people, I do, just that I think what they take away from it is the most important thing for them. I’d really like to hear what people take away from it, and I’ve really enjoyed thinking about some of your reflections about it.

If people like the EP then I’d like them to know that this is very much just the beginning, a blueprint, or a pre-history of Committee of Sleep. It's the reason we came together and the first of many projects we aim to share with the world.

Maybe if the EP can offer even the tiniest glimpses of what we’ve talked about here about the value of just living and being who you are, that would be rad.

What do you love right now?

I’m really into wearing a white longsleeve under my tshirt, peppermint tea and playing shows weekly with my best friends.

What do you hate right now?

Doomscrolling and how seductively addictive it is, I just deleted the apps off my phone after a week of giving into temptation.

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?

Rage Against the Machine self titled. It was the first album I ever learnt to play all the way through on bass, and one of the few that I still can (just about) I picked up the bass the other day and had a nice reflection of where it all started and how far things have come.

When someone hears your music for the first time, what do you hope sticks with them?

Whatever about our music speaks to something in them, and maybe gives them the sense they are not quite so alone in life as we all sometimes think.