Shambolics no longer dreaming with debut album.
L-R: Ben Sharp, Robert Land, Lewis McDonald, Scott ‘Paws’ Williamson, Darren Forbes. Image: Liam Maxwell.
Shambolics have won many fans since they started playing gigs around their native Fife but they are now spreading their wings, under the guidance of Alan McGee. Last summer’s festival performances took their upbeat brand of indie rock to a wider audience and the recent singles “Never Be Mine”, “Attention”, “Everything You Should’ve Done” and “Universal Credit” have added to their growing reputation. Darren Forbes, who shares frontman duties with the band’s co-founder Lewis McDonald, talks about their forthcoming debut album, Dreams, Schemes & Young Teams.
The album was recorded in Mogwai’s Glasgow studios, Castle of Doom, with producer Chris Marshall. For Forbes, the location meant there were no distractions from the intensive work that needed to be done. “It was just walking distance from my flat pretty much, so it was great for us because we’d just walk in, record for a whole day, come back at night, write tunes.” The biggest challenge for Forbes was accepting when a track was finished. “Our producer, Chris, hates me sometimes because I am really, really bad at letting it go, and it drives me mental sometimes – to the point where it isn’t even as enjoyable because it’s just so stressful.” Although it felt like it took a while to put the album together and for him to be happy with it, Forbes now says, “I’m just very proud of it, and proud of everything that the boys put into it.”
Dreams, Schemes & Young Teams is a mix of new material written during recording and songs dating back to their earliest days. Forbes and McDonald started the band as bored youths in Kirkcaldy, and shortly afterwards recruited Scott “Paws” Williamson on keys/vocals and Robert Land on drums. Some of the older songs, like “Daily Dosage”, evoke that time in their lives, before they moved to Glasgow. “I was in my bedroom one time and there was a lot of – to put it politely – smackheads outside the house all the time. There were two couples that would always meet, where they were dealing and whatever outside the house to get the drugs. It’s a shame that they’re in that position, but they still love each other. So, I just wrote it, and that was one of the fastest songs I’ve ever written. It’s just what I saw outside that day.” “Losing Your Mind” is another lyric with a message, says Forbes, this time from McDonald. “He came in with it one day. I heard it, and I was trying to get it to sound, like, going up, then for the chorus the band would pick up, and then it would dip down again. If you listen to the song, it’s just a guitar riff and vocals at the start, and then instruments come in, and by the end of the song there’s loads of stuff going on. Aye, that was one of Lewis’s songs, probably one of his best.”
“I think it was a week before going in and recording, we were absolutely crapping it because we never had enough songs”
The title track is already an established feature of their live set, which they felt didn’t get the attention it deserved on its first outing as a self-released single in 2021. “It’s probably one of our best songs live – it always kicks off live.” When they were searching for a title for their first album, it seemed like an appropriate choice with its links to their origins. “Because we’d rhymed ‘dreams’ and ‘schemes’ together in the chorus, we wanted an outro, so we did ‘the dreams and the schemes, and all the young teams’ – young teams is gangs in Scotland, when you were younger.”
By contrast, the first single to be released from the album, “Never Be Mine”, was written during recording – “We just recorded it as a demo pretty much, and it just seemed to work”. “Influencer” was another last-minute addition. “I think it was a week before going in and recording, we were absolutely crapping it because we never had enough songs. So, we just pulled some chords together one night, put the lyrics on the top and it just worked perfectly.” It’s already going down well at gigs. “It’s got good energy. I think once the album’s out, and people hear that song, that’s going to be a fan favourite. The same with ‘Coming for You’, that’s a right aggro tune. ‘Fooling You’ is quite a good one: it reminds me of Arctic Monkeys’ AM, my favourite Arctic Monkeys album.”
Image: Liam Maxwell.
Together with The Beatles, Oasis and the Stone Roses, they form a line of influences that all the band members share. Forbes says that they go through other musical phases together – from Abba to hip-hop – but the Stone Roses remain a favourite. “I hadn’t listened to them in a while, and then I watched a film called Spike Island and just got right into the Roses again. I forgot how good they sound; that first album, I’ve been listening to quite a lot.” Scrolling through his recent playlists, Forbes picks out a few other names. “I’ve just had The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds on. There’s random country from the fifties – Marty Robbins he’s called, I was listening to him earlier as well. So there’s always some bizarre music in there. Aye, we’re into a bit of everything.”
This might explain why they don’t consider themselves to have a distinctive Shambolics sound. “We’re just totally winging it, to be honest, mate!” says Forbes, adding self-deprecatingly that “You can tell that we’re called Shambolics for a reason because it’s just a pure shambles. We go in with no songs for the album, we never have a title for the album … We pull it off in the end but it is an absolute bumpy road with us all the time.” But he knows that the most important part of his job is to make music that people want to hear. “I think that bands nowadays are too concerned about getting their own sound, and they try to think outside the box when the songs are pretty shit. I’d rather just write good songs – as long as people are singing the songs, I’m happy.”
Dreams, Schemes & Young Teams arrives 16th February. Watch the new video Universal Credit below.
Author: Rachel Goodyear