Start Listening To: Most Things

A conversation with Most Things’ Tom Grey on mythologising the mundane, the poetry of London, and finding catharsis in simplicity.

Alternating between twee and screams, Most Things paint a vivid and poetic image of London life through a mix of minimalism and complexity. Their rattling bass and drums capture everything from sentimental whimsy to haunted memories, all with sincerity and precision. Like Young Marble Giants and Life Without Buildings before them, they cut through a growing indie landfill with skill and simplicity. Chatting with singer and bassist Tom Grey makes it clear that his process and personality are deeply reflected in Most Things’ debut LP, Bigtime. As he discusses his artistic methods and the importance of the mundane, it rapidly becomes evident: Most Things is a project with a powerful heart, and you can hear it beating on every track.

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

I'm Tom from Most Things, which is the band that this interview is about, and it's a two piece band and I sing and play bass with a drummer who is usually Malachy O'Neill. He's the main guy. He's from New York. And then I sometimes play with other people at gigs and things. And I'm from London and I have hair and two legs and two arms, so that was who I am. The music that I make in in most things is made of bass and drums, and voice, and nothing else generally. It's a minimal attempt at utilising mundane things and mythologising mundane things to seek a kind of universal, cathartic, surreal enlightenment. That's the sort of y’know Ted talk pitch and music, but yeah, it's been described as industrial folk in a review. That reference to Pere Ubu and that that description of the music is my favourite way to talk about it in genre terms anyway.

Do you think the mundane is a major element of most things and what you're doing with most things?

Yeah, I think so. Especially at the moment it's been a core focus of the subjects. Also, I think the methodology. It's trying to be quite simple and considerate with without much fluff, I suppose. 

From the start were you a two piece or did you ever experiment with having more members or instruments in the band?

It just so happened to be that way and then I’ve never felt the need for it to be any other way. I think at some point it might evolve. I mean, it's not a particularly ideological commitment to the singularity of two people being the only people and these instruments being the only instruments. It just sort of feels like it works, and I do have a tendency to like the simple ideas that work. So, if something is simple and works, then I'd rather not change it.  But it is I think it's a good gimmick as well, so maybe I should make up a sort of excessive, intense and extreme ideological reasoning for it being that way.

Maybe include a manifesto around the reasoning in the next release.

Yeah, yeah, a big manifesto and maybe do some sort of political act of violence. (laughs)

With your debut Bigtime, a lot of it is really centred around London. It's almost psycho-geographical. Do you feel London is kind of a key part of Most Things?

Yeah, sure I do. Especially for now. Again, it's one of those things that I could see changing. It's in one way, very essential in in a in another way, inconsequential to the obsession with London, because it could be anything. It's just London is what I know, and there's certainly the aesthetics of the sound, my accent and the way I use my voice and stuff, it all feels tied to London. I like music that feels of a place. For it to be of place, and about a place, and to have the feeling of the place is again, this seeking out a singularity where it's watertight. A seamless thing that contains itself.

But London also really bores me sometimes and means very little to me. But then it can also mean so much. I don't know. I think it's just the humanity and kind of narrative drama of London that I find very inspiring on a good day. And that’s why the music has it in there.

The term magical realism comes up a lot when people describe your lyrics. How does it play into Most Things music?

It’s certainly there. I don't know if it's intentional. I didn’t intend to do it from the get-go. But yeah, now it’s about trying to open up these mundane, commonplace things and seek something a bit surreal in it. It's what I've said before, this kind of seeking of universality. I think that magic realism is a great tool for finding that. Y’know, everyone can feel wonderment. Everyone has put on a kettle before. So, if you can combine these things. Then I think there's a way to engender feeling or tell a universal story, or yeah.

A lot of the lyrics seem built around personal experiences. What was the lyric writing process for the album like?

To be fair, most of the writing process was having a gig coming up and having to sing something. So then writing a song very quickly and then never getting around to changing it. That's always how it happens, I think. I think that's probably a very common thing with bands and songs, that you do something quickly and it becomes what it is. And then trying to reverse engineer a deeper meaning or more poeticism, or a better metaphor or something that goes beyond your own experience.

Something that doesn't exploit your personal experience and friends and family for artistic content y’know, it's like trying to do that post having done and having done the act. It's a bit impossible. So, a lot of that stuff, I didn't really want to commit to a record when I wrote it. It just came out. You can write about personal things very quickly and it takes me a lot more time to write about stuff that I haven’t directly lived or felt. It spills out quite quickly and once you sing it a few times, it's it kind of becomes a song. They’re never written thinking ‘oh, yeah, that's gonna be a song.’ But then you do it and you're like, I guess it must be.

On the more instrumental side of songwriting, I found your bass playing on the record really interesting especially its focus on melody. Were there any bassists in particular who influenced your style?

I don't think there was really. I mean what I imagine one’s mind jumps to is Peter Hook, Joy Division’s bassist. I do like Joy Division, but I never had a sort of obsessive Joy Division moment and nothing like that ever led me to writing on the bass. The way I wrote everything on the bass was quite uninformed by other music. I mean, I've never learned how to play another song on bass other than Pop Tones by PiL and Harvest Time by Pharoah Sanders.

That's a good two to know though.

(laughs) I mean, I can't really do the Pharoh Sanders track justice, obviously. If you listen closely, to it you can hear the bassist singing along to what he's doing. It's so amazing to listen. Just out of this world stuff. Pop Tones as well, it's just such a great bassline. But I've always felt a bit outside of like music as a practise and like not very good at just picking up songs or, you know, I don't know. I've been hanging out with some friends, Earl Cave, who's an amazing musician and just he's so tapped into songwriting as a practise and the blues and country music and can pull out these songs out of that legacy. I've always really loved that but can't have felt quite awkward in those shoes. So, when playing the bass and writing the songs I kind of purposely tried to not take in inspiration or reference other players just because if I do that, I generally disappoint myself. So, it's often like an outsider approach by virtue of that being the only way I can feel like I'm doing something of merit. I think with the bass you can write a song with it. But yeah, you start to just get more melodic because the longer you go without getting the guitarist on board, the more you your fingers start seeking out a bit more juice from the four strings.

You mentioned feeling like an outsider to music, are there any musicians’ whose methodology or practise or style informed how you make music?

I love that classic outsider artist like Daniel Johnston, of course. My friend James, who I make music with, he has down syndrome and he's fucking, just a genius. He's like Scott Walker, Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed put together. He's just an amazing drummer and sings.  He’ll pick up the guitar and just fucking play it, y’know, and not try and play any sort of chord. He'll just play the guitar and start singing and it'll be a song. So that approach is very inspiring. Someone in particular is Mica Levi. Just one of my all-time most inspiring artists, seeking refuge in the work of their stuff just really keeps me going. It was a real way for me to break down the feeling of inadequacy as a musician, because their approach to songwriting is just so free, and bombastic, and sincere. They’re an incredible musician, obviously, and scored films and stuff like this, but listening to their work makes me feel like I could score films.

If you were to score a film, what sort of film would you score?

When I was in school, I did a project scoring for film and scored a bit of Rat Catcher,  the Lynn Ramsey film so maybe something like that. I love that whole kind of British realist cinema stuff.

Like Ken Loach?

Yeah Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, and Antonia Bird. Not so realistic, but I just love Antonia bird so much. I'd love to do really pulpy TV like an episode of Casualty, just trying to shoehorn kind of experimental sound design stuff into some daytime TV like an episode of the Chase. That'd be fun. 

You also do a lot of promotions work as part of Atomizer within the London scene. How do you feel Most Things fits into the London scene?

I don't think I'm a good person to ask because I've always felt a bit outside of it and still do. But I think it's imposter syndrome and just having a very fragile little ego, or a fragile big ego I suppose. I never really feel like part of the gang, but then that's just being cynical. I mean, there's definitely a scene. I have a bunch of friends. The London scene is just friends really, and in that way, it's great, and a bit cliquey. But it feels like the music scene has a similar sort of politics to social scenes and structures and stuff. So yeah, there’s a brilliant scene of friends making great music like Sydenham High Road, Tony Martin who’s very close, I don't know if he would want me to reveal the identity, I suppose really, but he's involved in Most Things in an undisclosable way. UV Raymond is a friend of mine called Lewis who has just started releasing music, but he's got a heavy, extensive SoundCloud that's incredible. And then Mimi my girlfriend who makes music as Mimiko and in Bell Practice with Earl Cave who I mentioned earlier. Just a lot of friends making great stuff. People in the atomizer world as well. Like we had this tour with Elias Rønnenfelt and then Xmal was playing drums for Double Virgo. Yeah, there's a few little words in London, but at the same time I always felt like a bit of a bit of a pariah, bit of a leper, social leper. I think maybe my head's just too far up my own ass. 

Do you feel like there's any sort of achievement that would make you stop feeling like a social leper?

I don't know. I don't want to say anything cynical, but yeah, there's certain things. I don't know if I want to feel that and I don't think it's necessarily real anyway. Your personal impression of your social standing in, your own world is something I think you can't have an objective sense of y’know. That being said it's probably drugs that’ll be the ticket. Maybe a good line of ketamine will do it (laughs). Maybe not ketamine that can go either way. But yeah, I think there's other measures of success, like having a having a core fan base that’s get something out of the music.

Anyone getting anything out of the music makes me feel like I've made it, so to speak.

What direction do you feel like the music’s going in after the release of big time?

There’s a lot more stuff that's written. The drummer said that the second Most Things album is like the album Green Day released after Dookie. As in, it's a lot weirder. It’s a bit more mathy and there’s a lot more stuff that’s written, it’s a bit showier offy. The future sound of Most Things is very open. I want it to be either, almost extremist minimal, pair it back further and further to doing of only guttural stomach sounds. Or really maximalist and bringing in lots and lots of sounds and more electronics. But I'm also I'm learning a new instrument that might change everything.

What’s the instrument?

It’s a reed based instrument, it's the sound of reeds.  The sound of reeds is a sound I love and have loved since before the bass guitar, so I think it might be where I end up sonically.

But I don't know, it’s quite at the whim of the wind at the moment.

What do you love right now?

The Moors, devons moors, Dartmoor, I’ve been there recently and loved it. Tap water, really loving tap water at the moment. Sleep, I really love sleep. Sweet Thames Run Softly that was the last book I read, and I loved it. That was recommended by Stuart Moxon of Young Michael Giants, big fan.

What do you hate right now?

The experience of time in a digitally interfaced world, I suppose is what I hate. I was talking about this last night with friends about how the phone and scrolling and emailing and all these things. They're sort of not so bad in themselves, but it's the gap between that experience of time and the experience of time in the real world, or the physical world. I think a lot of my discontent comes from shifting gears between cycling downhill on a lime bike and then waiting for my 4G to load so I can lock the thing. And those experiences of reality being like on such different levels that brain my brain just gets spun out by switching between all the time.

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

S.K.I.M. It's all caps, with full stops in between. It’s by big Cakes a rapper from north London. I think from not far from where I am. I got this album on Chapel Market when I was like 10 or something and used to listen to it a lot. I'll still come back to it occasionally, and it's just great UK rap stuff. I think it’s the album where I had memorised the most songs. Y’know from the earliest stage, that kind of thing. 

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

Kind of cathartic optimism, like a righteous melancholia somewhere between sad and good. Nostalgic but true. Somewhere between these things.