Before their recent Concorde2 show, XYZ reporter Mo Mostowfi met Will Simpson from Brigade and asked him about their vocally-led new album and the stigma of a famous sibling.
XYZ: Tell us about your new record ‘Come Morning We Fight’ (out 12th May)?
Will: Two things mainly. Firstly, diversity. We’ve pushed ourselves and upped our game. We pushed ourselves as writing as a collective as opposed to a couple of us. The second thing is we’re better songwriters now, so the songs are stronger, more concise. They are complete compositions. The songs are simple, straightforward and interesting as well. We worked hard on the vocals to make it a vocally-led record. Hopefully it’s a better record because of it.
What was it like working with producer Chris Sheldon (Foo Fighters, Biffy Clyro and Feeder)?
Luckily, he didn’t need to do much work on the songs – which we felt quite proud of – he got involved in the production side of things. He stayed with us at rehearsals for three days, tweaking arrangements and taking bits out that were too self-indulgent! We wanted an enormous-sounding record and watching Chris at work was amazing. I think he helped us achieve that.
Is the desire for an “enormous” sound a backlash to the current trend for lo–fi?
It’s completely influenced-based, not a backlash. The bands we all listen to are enormous sounding – ‘Siamese Dream’ by The Smashing Pumpkins is one of my all time favourite albums. We don’t think it’s cool to do one take of a song and get hammered beforehand! We wanted to take our time until it was sounding as big as we wanted it to.
What can people expect from the Brigade live show?
I think when you go to a lot of gigs these days they’ll put on a good show but you won’t remember one song. The one thing we try to do – because we’re song-based – we hope you come out remembering songs and having melodies in your head. We have big riffs, big melodies, lots of energy, intensity and hopefully something that’s just straightforward. No bullshit, no style over substance. It’s not about what you look like. It’s just straight forward rock music. I think a lot of bands forget that it’s all about the tunes.
I can hear a lot of American influences in your music. Who are your favourite British bands?
With our new record you’ll hear more British influences. We’re really into Biffy Clyro, Oceansize, Fighting with Wire (Irish band), Muse, Placebo, Feeder (back in the day), Hell Is For Heroes, Hundred Reasons. With our new record we’ve tried to stay away from American influences so hopefully it’ll show on our next record.
You’re teaming up with your brother’s band Fightstar later on in the tour. Any plans to collaborate with him?
I have another brother in a band called Prego and one day it’d be lovely to do collaboration with them. We could call it ‘The Simpsons’! [laughter] It’d be nice, but no real plans at the moment.
How tired are you with the stigma of having a ‘famous’ brother who was obviously in a very successful pop band?
We haven’t helped ourselves in some respects. We’re going out on tour with them [Fightstar] next month. But, yeah, I get really fed up with it. Largely because of the misconception that people think I’m the younger brother. People think: “Oh, Charlie Simpson’s brother, using his connections”, which is absolute bullshit. I’ve been doing this longer than Fightstar. Apart from the touring, everything we’ve achieved has been done by ourselves. On that side of things it’s really frustrating because people might write us off before they’ve even given it a chance because of who my brother is. On the other hand, it’s been helpful because people would have heard our names quicker and checked us out sooner. It’s given us a chance to tour with them and to play to more people. It’s a double-edged sword and it always will be. But with this new album we have coming out, we believe in the songs so much that if we don’t step out of the shadow, then we’d be pretty gutted.
Words by Mo Mostowfi
Photograph by David Tatnell
