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ACL 2009 preview: White Lies
Steve Gullick
2009 has been a wild ride for British pop rockers White Lies. Their debut album, “To Lose My Life,” premiered at No. 1 on the Official UK Albums Chart in January, pushing aside acts such as Kings of Leon and Lady Gaga. Since then the band has been making the rounds at festivals across the UK as well as supporting Snow Patrol and Coldplay on recent tours. The band will be back in the States this month touring with Kings of Leon, including a stop at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. We caught up with bassist Charles Cave, who called from backstage at Wembley stadium after the band’s set on the final night of Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” tour. (White Lies plays at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 4, on the X-box 360 stage at the Austin City Limits Festival.)
American-Statesman: Thanks for talking to us today. Must be a bit anticlimactic to come off stage at Wembley Stadium and have to do an interview. What is it like to play to that many people?
Cave: (Laughs) Not at all, this is really nice. From our perspective standing on the stage, though, you can’t really gauge how many people are out there. Anything over 15,000 people is just too much to really see. But my parents came to the show and afterwards I went up to where they were sitting way at the top. Looking down I finally got a good look at how many people were actually there. It was incredible.
Do your parents come out to a lot of your shows?
Not many actually, because we haven’t played in London much recently. But they come out when they can. They like to see how the band is progressing.
I’m sure they’re pleased with your success. The album, “To Lose My Life,” has been doing very well in the UK. How did your sound for this record evolve?
We (singer/guitarist Harry McVeigh and drummer Jack Lawrence-Brown) have all been friends for a long time and played in different bands all through school. We had some time off from these bands we started playing together as another band (Fear of Flying). Eventually we started writing with more keyboards, getting into more traditional songwriting and developed a more refined way of making music.
The sound on the record is a big sound, well suited for the huge festivals you’ve been playing recently. Do you miss playing smaller, more intimate clubs though?
We still play loads of smaller shows; we prefer that actually. It’s only really in the UK that we’ve been playing these big festivals. In America we still play small clubs and bars. We’ve got a show at Webster Hall in New York coming up, and that place only seats around two thousand people. That’s a big deal for us.
I thought you guys had a strong performance on the Jimmy Kimmel show (recently). Do you notice a different reaction when you play in the U.S. as opposed to the UK?
America is completely different than the UK. We have released singles in the U.S. that we’ve had to have re-mixed because they wanted more guitars in them. (Laughs) Americans like a lot of guitars. In the UK they prefer a more “poppy” sound. But none of us (in the band) feel like a “British” band. We’re sort of unpatriotic in that sense. Our goal was always to play as many places around the world as possible.
We notice that our crowd has grown a little each time we come back to America. After this tour with Kings of Leon we’re headed back home to work on the new album and once it’s finished I think America will be the first place we’ll come to play the new material. Touring with Coldplay has been great, but we’re looking forward to headlining a tour. It would be great to come back to all these places we’ll be playing with Kings of Leon and really pull out all the stops.
You were just here for South by Southwest. What was your impression of Austin?
We had such a good time there. South by Southwest was really hectic for us, for every band really, but luckily we had some time to look around. We were booked to dj a party at a condo one night and really had no idea what to expect. We got to the building, went up in this huge lift and when the doors opened it looked like “American Pie” going on. We just played as much hip-hop as we could find to keep the party going.
Is there any band you’re going to try to check out while you’re here at ACL?
I’m desperate to see the Dirty Projectors. I’m really obsessed with their new album, so I’m going to make an effort to see them. After that we have a day off to relax, so the band is excited about getting to hang out in Austin. Maybe we’ll meet some good people at the festival to hang out with - hopefully someone who will barbecue for us.
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