Start Listening To: Family Art Club
Family Art Club discuss growing older, finding warmth in uncertainty, and why birds, gardens and homemade brownies remain central to their wonderfully earnest world.
Leeds-based collective Family Art Club make music that feels lived-in and lovingly handmade, blending folk, emo and indie rock into songs full of humour, heart and small everyday details. Their latest single, ‘Bird Watching Accident’, explores childhood, mortality and the strange process of making sense of the world around us, all wrapped in the band's characteristically warm and communal sound. Ahead of the release of their new EP Pigeons When I’m King, we caught up with the band to talk alternative tunings, sincerity, the Leeds scene, gardening, vegan brownies and the art of growing older without losing your sense of wonder.
For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?
Adam: We’re Family Art Club, a gang of limpid droogs stretching from Southampton’s demonic oil refineries (Adam) to Rick Astley’s Newton-Le-Willows (the cradle of the North) (Sam). We don’t know where the other Sam is from. We were very blessed to find him tapping some acoustic basslines by the side of the M62 one day so we picked him up and kept him. He doesn’t remember anything from before that. The other two are recovering Londoners. And I don’t know how to describe music in words, it’s probably impossible.
Sam Guitar: Essentially we’re from Leeds but none of us are actually from Leeds.
‘Bird Watching Accident’ feels incredibly warm and comforting, but there’s also this undercurrent of uncertainty and melancholy running through it. How did you find that balance while writing the song?
Sam Bass: It’s the magic of collaboration. I think the original draft recording Sam took of the guitar could have gone in a few directions but was melancholic at heart. The band just took this and injected our energy and individual styles to lift it into something really special. The warmth is sort of us as a collective then in that sense.
Sam Guitar: Yeah, at the time I’d got into alternative tunings, thank you Malkmus, and there’s something in this tuning that makes open chords sound very melancholic. There’s probably some music theory that explains that but I wouldn’t know I’m still trying to figure out what a third and a fifth is.
Evan described the track as being about the “death of childhood” and trying to understand the present. Was writing this song a way of making peace with growing older?
Evan: Yeah absolutely. For me the world we live in seems to be unendingly chaotic, and growing up can just feel like the process of becoming aware of the chaos. It’s a confusing thing to leave your childhood world and enter into everything else, and then there’s the second step of having to realise for yourself what kind of crazy and dark things are happening once you get there, and it completely changes the way you understand things. I find myself constantly in need of ways to make sense of this kind of stuff and to integrate it into my internal narrative, which is why I write songs.
Your music often feels very visual and domestic, full of gardens, birds, homes and small observations. What draws you towards those kinds of everyday images in your songwriting?
Evan: I’m obsessed with the idea of home and everything that surrounds it. I’ve always been very attached to places and things; I get homesick very easily. I guess it’s just a very important part of my world and I feel a need to capture it somehow in my lyrics.
You’ve been described as equal parts folk and emo, which is a really interesting mix. Do you consciously think about genre when making music, or does everything just naturally blur together?
Sam Bass: I think the culmination of our individual influences ends up absorbing most genres in some shape or fashion. Everyone has something to bring to the table beyond folk and emo, although we certainly all cross paths somewhere around there. To us, genre is a really useful tool for figuring out a direction, but it never limits our options. The music goes wherever we feel like it needs to go really and that might end up blurring the lines between genres - hopefully in a good way.
Sam Guitar: The emo type stuff definitely is a more recent development, for me anyway. When Evie joined the band with her trumpet and sax I definitely started to lean more into the type of riffs you’d maybe expect from a poor man's American Football.
The phrase “Pigeons When I’m King” is such a striking title for the upcoming EP. What does that phrase mean to you?
Evan: It came from the lyrics in Bird Watching Accident. I liked it as a title because it’s kind of absurd and delusional but in a bit of a childlike way, and it doesn’t properly make sense on its own, which is kind of fun.
Adam: I think it’s about how we all want to be loved and cared for like royalty but really we’re just shit and tragic like pigeons.
Your songs feel earnest without ever becoming overly sentimental. Is sincerity something you’ve had to protect in a music culture that can sometimes lean heavily on Irony?
Adam: I really value earnest music and sincerity in general. True fun is sincere. There’s still a lot of earnest music nowadays and irony is mostly for online people and bands like Yard Act. And I think sincerity is kind and connective. It’s good to be both silly and serious, or maybe the other way around. Evie taught me that. And I don’t think we’re protecting anything as a band. Although my phone has got an extra-secure passcode (524892) whilst Sam’s phone is very easily hackable because his passcode is just 000000.
There are clear touchpoints in your sound from bands like Neutral Milk Hotel and Pavement, but your music still feels distinctly rooted in the Leeds scene. How much has being based in Leeds shaped Family Art Club creatively?
Sam Guitar: There's definitely a general slacker vibe in the Leeds scene that we tend to lean into quite a bit. Maybe that's down to all the beers Private Regcords buy. Me and Evan are the big fans of Pavement, the rest don’t seem to care for them that much. Their loss.
Adam: Neutral Milk Hotel is where our music tastes all converge, when we drive to gigs sometimes we listen to In The Aeroplane Over the Sea and sing it together. Maybe the music only sounds like Leeds when you know it’s from Leeds, maybe if we were from Nottingham it would sound like Nottingham. Maybe it also sounds like Bournemouth or Stoke-on-Trent. (I would like it to sound like Amsterdam.)
Evie: I love that people bring up Neutral Milk Hotel in relation to us, I remember loving them as a teenager and when I had no plans to be in a band thinking that if I’m ever made music I’d want it to sound like them.
‘Bird Watching Accident’ spends a lot of time reflecting on mortality in quite gentle ways. Do you think writing about difficult subjects becomes easier when framed through softer or more playful imagery?
Evan: Yes, definitely easier, and also just true to the way I think about things. With this song in particular I was trying to explore the thoughts and feelings that arise in childhood and remain throughout life, and I wanted to express them in a way that felt authentic to that, like the song could be understood by a child almost.
Your live shows are described as feeling like they’re “straight out of the living room oven”. What do you think makes a Family Art Club show feel different from a typical gig?
Sam Guitar: Adam is very passionate about baking sweet treats to give out at our gigs. He’s recently perfected his vegan brownie recipe.
Adam: Yes I like to habituate audiences into salivating whenever they hear our name or any of the chords we use, like dogs. That way we can rely on a stable base of listeners.
Evie: I like it when people feel involved, one time we had loads of people up on the stage dancing before the gig started, that was fun
With this new EP on the horizon, what do you feel has changed most about the band since Friends From Home came out last year?
Adam: We’ve got more confident playing and writing together and I reckon we have more fun too. And Sam Guitar Sam can play guitar solos behind his head now but he’s a bit shy about it.
Sam Guitar: That was a one time occurrence, you had to be there.
Sam Bass: For Pigeons When I'm King some of the music went through a good few iterations to fully realise its potential. I’m really proud of how committed everyone has become to persevering with tricky tunes.
The songwriting process worked like a bad relationship: we would get together, partially work it out, then give it a break for a bit and keep going back over time to touch it up when we had ideas (this analogy has gotten a bit inappropriate actually).
Also Adam and I have been perfecting our interbrain synchrony. I can now telepathically sense when he's winging it and vice versa.
Adam: I like the bad relationship analogy. There’s a lot of love there but also a lot of hatred and disappointment, and regret.
Evie: I think we’ve gotten so much more confident bringing out our more wacky ideas, when I first joined this band I was really nervous that the others wouldn’t like my ideas, and they don’t always but I’m not nervous about it anymore.
What do you love right now?
Evan: Gardening, Nic Jones, Zen Buddhism, drunk cycling, porridge.
Sam Guitar: Abu Bakur Veg Samosa’s, the idea of using a scythe, meal deals.
Adam: Silence, my friends, hot chocolate.
Sam Bass: Tahini sauce, D(add9) played up on the 10th fret, TouchDesigner, succulents.
Evie: tin whistles, rice, documentaries, fat chips.
What do you hate right now?
Evan: Robots, laundry, lawnmowers, bus fares.
Sam Guitar: Paved over front gardens, Manchester, platform 16 at Leeds station, all types of pollen.
Adam: my birthday, expensive hot chocolates.
Sam Bass: Tree pollen, grass pollen, the fact I can only take one fexofenadine daily but it wears off by 5pm. Due to recency bias, I also currently hate when the circuitry in my bass stops working.
Evie: waterbottle culture, meal deals, non-non-stick pans, how easy it is to get selenium poisoning.
Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?
Evan: Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon & Garfunkel has been with me since early childhood and it’s still one of the best things ever for me. Paul Simon writes in such a soulful and tender way and I find the softness of the vocals very powerful in a way that I think can be appreciated by both child and adult.
Sam Guitar: Deep Down Happy by Sports Team. The whole album feels distinctly British in a lovely living in a parish council kinda way.
Adam: Evan and I are going to see The Front Bottoms play Talon of the Hawk at Outbreak Festival this year. I’m going to cry a lot and attempt to break my personal record for Greatest Number of Stage Dives in A Single Set Whilst Crying (which is currently 14). That album reminds me a lot of being a teenager, staying up late and doing pills in the forest with my girlfriend. Every time I listen to it I get so damn excited. (I also love McFly’s Motion in The Ocean.)
Sam Bass: Emergency on Planet Earth by Jamiroquai. This album has been getting spun by my parents from when it first released while they were at University. Stuart Zender (and his superhuman feel) has clearly been a huge, sort of subconscious influence over my bass career since I was a kid. Listening to this now encourages me to take musical risks, and reminds me of my family and the support network I have back home which is a massive motivation. If my Mum had her way the next FAC project would be a genre-pioneering folk-funk fusion. She'll be sorely disappointed, but if she's lucky she might get a bit of didgeridoo.
Evie: The rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from Mars by David Bowie. I think this was my first ever favourite album and it was the only cd i had in my car for ages. I love the idea of an album being a story with characters and all of it happening in space.
When someone hears your music for the first time, what do you hope sticks with them?
Adam: I try not to get my hopes up.
Sam Guitar: That every song is in a different tuning and how much the rest of the band loathe me for it.
Adam: When I die I will see Sam’s fucking tuner flashing before my eyes.
