Creatures of the night - The Horrors evolve.

April headliners The Horrors. L-R: Faris Badwan, Rhys Webb. Image: Perou.

Between 2007 and 2017, The Horrors recorded five acclaimed albums as their original lineup of Faris Badwan (lead vocals), Rhys Webb (bass), Joshua Hayward (guitar), Tom Furse (keys) and Joe Spurgeon (drums). While the past five years have seen major changes, including the departure of Spurgeon and Furse, The Horrors have continued to explore new musical territory and this month will release their sixth album, Night Life, featuring recent recruits Amelia Kidd and Jordan Cook.

In the eight years since V, their last full-length studio album, there have been not only departures and arrivals but also Covid, financial woes and a change of label to contend with. But Webb now sees those challenges as an opportunity to pause and take stock before deciding where to go next, resulting in some of their most emotionally direct music so far. “It’s always very difficult to put it into words, but I feel we did want to explore a heavier, deeper intensity in the music. I think we both put a lot of ourselves into it – the lyrics are very honest and genuine.” Badwan agrees: “It’s got an emotional connection, which is definitely what I love in other people’s music. It’s something you’re always reaching for in your music.”

With Hayward stepping back from full-time duties, The Horrors effectively became a duo while writing Night Life, resulting in a more insular way of working. “It’s a bedroom record in a lot of ways: we worked a lot in our houses, away from anyone else’s involvement, our label not really knowing whether or not we were going to come back with something, or even chasing us for it. We were a bit isolated,” says Badwan. While this intensity could have caused problems, Webb believes it brought them closer together. “This record’s made us real partners in crime – or partners in creativity. It’s made our relationship stronger because we’ve been both working together for the same cause and needing each other to do it.” Badwan observes that, although they are quite different personalities (“We both have pretty severe ADHD but Rhys is more the hyper side and I’m more the dissociative side”), they haven’t ever clashed. “I think we recognize how well we work together, and how we do different things. Our strengths are slightly different parts of the process, and between us we come up with something that neither of us would do on our own. I think that’s the value of a creative partnership.”

“This record’s made us real partners in crime – or partners in creativity. It’s made our relationship stronger because we’ve been both working together for the same cause and needing each other to do it”

— Webb

Badwan explains their songwriting process in more detail. “We’ll often start the song with a texture or a soundscape, an atmosphere or a feeling that kind of points the way to go.” From there, they build the lyrics. “Rhys might start a lyric, and then I might turn it on its head, or add something to it that maybe flips or develops the meaning a bit. I think that collaborative side of it is cool because Rhys comes up with stuff that maybe is more instant than I would be able to sometimes. He has a real sense of what the hook is, and I’ll find ways that I can connect it to things that I’ve been writing.”

Recently, they’ve gone back and listened to the demos for Night Life, prompting reflections on how they go about creating a song. For Webb, it’s still a mysterious process. “Music to me still feels out of my control. I know we do it, I know we make it, so I listen to these demos and I’m like, ‘How did we get here? Where did this drum come from?’ I find it overwhelming. I don’t mind not feeling in control, because I feel we get the results, but it’s quite an interesting world. It’s quite a magical thing, really, to create.” Badwan notes that, when listening to an album, you are just hearing the endpoint of a journey, without all the “sculpting and refining, chopping away” that happens on the way. To give fans an insight into the changes songs have gone through to reach their final form, they plan to make the demo of “The Feeling Is Gone” available online.

“The Feeling Is Gone” is something of an anomaly in terms of its composition, having originally been written and recorded several years ago. “This was one of the first songs that we ever revisited in a studio environment, just because I think we felt strongly about the melody and the words,” says Webb, describing the early version as having a Gun Club-inspired, almost country feel, with slide guitar from Hayward, before evolving into a more minimalist sound. “There’s a quite heavy ambience that runs through the whole record. I think ‘The Feeling is Gone’ is an example of something we wanted to keep as stripped back as possible, to keep that space and that atmosphere powerful.” Badwan explains that the melody was also modified to complement the bleaker, sparser style. “But I’m glad people get to hear how it began, because I always loved that when I was a kid – hearing the demos on B-sides of records or whatever. I love hearing the rawness of it.”

With the demos completed, The Horrors approached Yves Rothman, impressed by his work as both a producer and a member of Yves Tumor’s band. “Yves just seemed like someone who would be aligned with our way of working. And when we met him, he seemed like he would be a great person to try stuff with,” Badwan says. “He was so up for flipping the songs into different forms, and that felt exciting.” At first, they worked with Rothman in London – “it was like hanging out with a friend, playing around with them in the same way that Faris and I had. We like to invite the producer to be like part of the band, really,” explains Webb – then Rothman suggested they visit his studio in LA.

As a result, the album is a mix of LA-produced material and Webb’s preferred method of recording at home. “I feel the studio can be a little bit overwhelming and intimidating, where you’ve got engineers, everyone’s hanging around expecting you to do something, someone’s making tea, and you feel like the clock’s ticking.” Badwan is more comfortable in the studio, having worked as a producer for the likes of Let’s Eat Grandma, but he is wary of the overproduction that can result from a formal recording environment. “When The Horrors are at our best, there’s a DIY element running through. There’s a bit of a rough, raw spark, and when stuff gets too refined, for both of us it takes away from the spirit of what we feel like we do best.” The final mixes therefore use some parts from the demos, with all their immediacy and imperfections: the vocal for the penultimate track, “When the Rhythm Breaks”, was recorded while Badwan was writing it – “I tried to re-record it, but it didn’t have the same feeling” – and occasional background noises can be heard on other tracks. “It’s about identifying what’s special, whether that’s the raw bit with the mistakes or the incidental noises – so what? It doesn’t matter; you just have to lean into the stuff that makes it special.”

Their time in LA contributed to the overall mood of the album – and even its title, thanks to their daily walk to and from the studio, as Badwan explains. “We did quite a lot of walking over the course of this record, especially walking at night, which is part of the reason it’s called Night Life. It’s the contrasting sides of different forms of nightlife.” “There’s a sadness in LA,” Webb observes, and Badwan agrees. “Yeah, definitely there’s a sadness, but there’s also a bit of an alienated, dissociative feeling, which puts it a dreamlike territory when you’re walking around. It feels a bit alien somehow. It’s a place of contrast, and I think that contrast is something that we naturally really enjoy in songs that we write.”

The city’s contrasts inspired “LA Runaway”, which brings the album to a euphoric close in spite of its undertow of melancholy. For Webb, “it conjures up that feeling of escapism which echoes through LA, where it was written.” He says that someone recently compared the changing moods of Night Life to the transition from dusk to dawn. “I really like the connotation of the night falling at the beginning of the record, and the darkest moments of the album being the top side of the record, the darkest hours of night, and as the night goes on it gets closer to dawn – little shards of light, or a feeling of the new day dawning that breaks through sonically. It slightly ramps up from a quite deep, heavy darkness into more optimistic territory.” The Horrors are excited to see Night Life escape from the “basement environment” of its creation and step into the light. “It has that spark that I feel every record that I’ve ended up being really proud of afterwards has,” says Badwan. “I think it’s simply musical satisfaction,” says Webb. “Like our first three records: every record had a different sound and was a different experience for us to create, for the band. And this again really conjures up that same feeling, like we’ve completed part of a new puzzle, and it feels we’ve succeeded.”

Night Life is out March 21st.

Author: Rachel Goodyear