A Lovely War… War a lovely band they are!

Showcase: A Lovely War

Published on September 5th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams

We be diggin’ the sounds of Liverpool baroque popsmiths A Lovely War – why, check out their sparkling Ezra EP, embedded below – so we fired some questions over to Sean Keogh (vocals, keyboards) and Pad Hughes (guitar, bass) to find out more…

How would you describe your music, if pushed?

SK: I think it’s a tricky one to describe but I suppose we’re a mix of lo-fi indie, ska, Baroque-pop and electronica. I don’t know really, we’re just trying to come up with catchy tunes and do them in a way that’s interesting harmonically and with arrangements that are a bit unusual.

PH: Arty, dance hall pop. We write lullabies for crocodiles to listen to in swamps.

Where are you based, and what do you use to record with?

SK: We’re based in our hometown of Liverpool. My really good friend Tom McConnell, who’s a singer/songwriter and an exceptional musician, was kind enough to help us record and produce our EP. He’s got a 32-track digital home studio in his bedroom so we used that.

Is there a full album in the works? If so, what can you tell us about it? (Feel free to be as abstract as you like…)

SK: We’ve probably got enough songs to put together an album, and I think we have a good idea of how an A Lovely War album might sound – I think it’ll be a while before we start work on that, though. I do love the idea of there being an A Lovely War album in the world but I think we’ll wait til we have a big enough audience for it to be worth putting one out.

PH: We want to create something special so an album is definitely on the cards. We want to save the album. Resuscitating the CD is our next port of call.

Where can we hear your music online?

SK: You can hear our EP Ezra and download it for free at our SoundCloud.

Which have been your most exciting gigs and/or overall moments so far?

SK: Getting one of my songs played on BBC Radio 6 was pretty cool, especially knowing that Tom Robinson must have thought it was good enough to play. Patrick got to play at the London Olympics last year with his previous band which must have been a great moment for them!

Got any more coming up? (Gigs, that is…)

SK: Well, we only started playing together a few weeks ago, although we’ve been in several bands before both together and separately, and Patrick’s been at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival all of August so we haven’t had the time to put together a solid live set yet.

However, as soon as he’s back we’re going to start planning gigs. We’re just trying to build up a bit of an online following with this EP before we start looking for gigs to play together.

Are there any obscure and/or up-and-coming acts that you’d like to recommend or give a shout-out to?

PH: Listen to Hedluv and Passman. They are amazing.

SK: The Ragamuffins, Elijah James and Thomas McConnell are really good.

Finally, if you were forced to spend the rest of your days in solitary confinement, but were allowed to bring the entire works of five different artists along to tide you over, whose would you choose?

PH: Beatles, Nick Cave, Frightened Rabbit, Chance The Rapper and Fuck Buttons

SK: Firstly, I’d say Paul McCartney and hope that that could include all of The Beatles’ back catalogue as well as his Wings and solo stuff. David Bowie and Kate Bush are two of my heroes so I’d have to pick them. I think Bowie’s Low and the second side of Bush’s Hounds of Love, in particular, would suit the mood of solitary confinement quite well.

I still haven’t properly gotten into Bob Dylan so I’ll take his music because there’s lots of it and it’ll give me something new (to me) to listen to. I know it’s not very cool to say but No Doubt pretty much soundtracked my early teens so I’d take their back catalogue too for old time’s sake (and because it’s great!).

A Lovely War, thank you.

Artists: a lovely war, thomas mcconnell

About the Author

Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.