In Conversation With - Broken Hands
I’m sitting in the main bar area of London’s Scala, when the five members of Canterbury five-piece, Broken Hands, come down from the gig room to greet me. While the band have been pretty silent since they finished up touring on their first full length release in 2016, once we get to talking it seems they have actually been the farthest thing from silent. If the name Broken Hands causes you to have the “it’s at the tip of my tongue” feeling, that’s because Broken Hands, for a bit over a year were making waves that most bands only dream of making. When we get down to chatting, I find out that their radio silence was largely due to the fact that they had been working on their signing with the American major label, Atlantic Records. When I sat down with frontman, Dale, and guitarist, Jamie, I found out just what they have been doing since the world last heard from Broken Hands, and what their plan is going forward.
Broken Hands have been living in a remote mushroom farm in the countryside of England for the past year and a half. After touring pretty much non-stop on the back of their first full-length album, a concept record titled Turbulence, the band took a step back to re-evaluate their musical direction. “We could have continued playing live [while writing the new record] but because the last one was a bit of a bold statement, we wanted to come back when we actually had a conversation that was worth talking about. So we just went completely dark, and in that time we had to recalibrate with not playing and figure out what we wanted to say” Dale explains. Coming back from a concept record can be difficult, especially when it’s the first record you put out into the world. When I mention the fact that fans may be a bit disappointed or confused by a completely new direction, Dale smiles and explains, “we still sonically are the same band but we’ve developed, and the things that made us tick as a live outfit are the same things. But it’s just the conversation and the imagery within the records that’s what we wanted to cut a line under.”
Broken Hands will be releasing their new album in early 2019, but this one isn’t a concept record in the same way as their first. “This record isn’t a concept in the same way, it’s still got a theme, and we still have a conversation we’re trying to have with everyone” Jamie tells me. “The last record was everything external, and this record is way more internal” Dales says. “For this record we really had to decide what we wanted to say. This record is technically more testing as a band. We set ourselves a tall order and we really had to stop to allow ourselves the time to get out what we wanted.” They worked together on this record, sharing space and sharing their lives, for a year and a half, and so the idea for it was reshaped and reformed multiple times during their time on the mushroom farm. “We definitely wrote way more songs than we could ever use” Dale says, when I ask how they decided which songs would make the record, Jamie chimes in “you kind of find the time to look through and find the line between the tracks, some don’t fit what you’re trying to say even though you thought they were going to.” Dale then takes over and explains the process more in-depth. “This was probably one of the first times we were allowed to go full time properly, so we thought well let’s make it REALLY good. For the last record we made 30 songs and released 11, this time round we did about 90. Ironically, some of the stuff that made the final track list came at the end. So maybe there was something in it [writing so many songs]. After a year I thought we were losing our way and writing way too many songs, and then at the end we were like ‘AH YEA these three!’ so I was like ah it wasn’t all in vain.”
The transfer over to Atlantic also took quite sometime to be legally finalised. Which also gave the band more time to work on their record, as they knew eventually the perks of being signed to a major label would be kicking in. When I ask what the process of being signed was like, Dale start to laugh, “It took some time due legalities, but it was by no means a historic legal battle, because everyone involved were great. So we just ignored what was happening and wrote.” With so many bands choosing to remain unsigned, due to how much easier it is today with the ability to get brand deals and social media interest on your own, I had to find out what made them decided to move over to major when they were doing so well being signed to an independent label. “It was more just having a label from America, having a really enthusiastic group of people in America wanting to work with us, we want to take our music there, so it was pretty much a no-brainer. We never really had the chance to properly tour The States. We still have work here [England] to do, but at the same time we got a taste of it when we did some shows in the states, and they found us while we were over there and it was that sort of natural progression.”
So Broken Hands have come out of the darkness with a new sound, a new label, and brand new ideas. But, they have been silent on the social media front, and that is something I am blown away by. Most bands when they go into the recording bubble keep their fans updated on social media. But Broken Hands decided to take going dark very seriously, and their social media pages are almost blank slates. “The whole game has changed since we went dark, Instagram, Spotify, all of it is different now” Dale explains, “and we deliberately went dark, but a lot of our peers have grown with it, and we kind of now have to patch back into that. But I’m hoping, and I think we believe we’re having a good conversation, and there’s so much we need to consume. And I think that’s why coming up with some sort of conversation while we were away was really important. We weren’t on airplane mode for two years; we didn’t just shut the Internet off. We did know it was developing around us, so with that, we knew we had to make something right because obviously we were stepping into something we didn’t have experience with. So what we’re saying and how we want to talk about it is important.” The band seems to be on the right track with making waves on social media, as they announced their signing to Atlantic Records and their come back by releasing two music videos that show the two different sides of what their new music is going to be like.
While Broken Hands have been dark for almost two years, speaking to the guys they clearly understand what their music is and what their goals are with their music. They’ve chosen to keep Turbulence in the past, telling me they plan to barely play any of their old music going forward. “We have to leave that chapter behind us, it was such a clear concept so we have to focus on the new ideas” Dale explains to me. And this is clear when they take the stage later in the night. At first they seemed a bit shell shocked and shy, but after two songs, the crowd starts to respond to the music and the band starts to vibe off the crowd’s interest in their music. Every song the band plays is new, other than Meteor, which was their biggest single off of Turbulence. Watching the band become themselves on stage and really live up to the hype I remember surrounded them in 2016 was such a nice moment.
Broken Hands have a lot to offer the world, filled with big ideas and a love for music that’s refreshing to say the least. Running off to a mushroom farm for a year and going off the grid was good to the five-some, and I really think this time round they’re going to fully take the world by a storm.
Make sure the see for yourself just how good a mushroom farm can be for a band, by checking out Broken Hands on their upcoming headlining tour. The dates are:
Saturday 1st of December at The Garage Attic Bar in Glasgow
Sunday 2nd of December at Hare & Hounds in Birmingham
Monday 3rd of December at The Eagle Inn in Salford
Thursday 6th of December at Boston Music Room in London
Featured created and images by Sara Feigin