THE UNDERGROUND LOVERS CLUB are a rising indie alternative quartet from the UK.
Despite being separated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the band has managed to stay groovy, writing and releasing two new singles in 2021. Fans of Slowdive, Vacation Manor, and LCD Soundsystem will dig THE UNDERGROUND LOVERS CLUB's genre-defying sound.
Their most recent single, "Any Other Night," is the perfect feel-good tune for a summertime late-night drive or a coming-of-age main character montage. The ambient, layered guitar parts, tight drum groove, and expressive bass lines give the song its dynamic and full sound. The vocal melodies and lyrics add to the thoughtful, almost nostalgic vibe of the single.
We spoke to band members Jacob Keating, Matt Smith, Toby Charity, and Lucas King about their influences, latest release, and upcoming plans.
Read the full interview and listen to "Any Other Night" below:
Where are you all from?
We’re about halfway between Cambridge and London. We’re not really a London band-- just near there.
How and when did the band form?
We were around 15 or 16. None of us really played our instruments before joining, apart from Lucas and Jacob. Matt actually started playing drums because our original drummer was sick right before our first gig, so we just picked it up from there.
How would you describe your sound?
Dope… We try not to fit into any one genre. A lot of bands in the UK try to do only indie rock, but we have a lot of funk and disco influence in our music. It’s a real mix of stuff-- it kind of stems from all the songs we like, so the genres we play change.
Who are your influences (as a band)?
We’ve got a bunch of influences, but Funkadelic, LCD Soundsystem, the Talking Heads, and even the 1975 (to a degree) are a few. Toby looks so much like Matt Healy (of the 1975) as well, but we try to dissociate from that a bit.
If you could go back in time to when the band was first starting out, what advice would you give yourselves?
Learn the songs before the gig, and don’t get drunk beforehand. Seriously, though, just how to perform better live. A lot of what we’ve done in terms of writing and developing our style has helped us get to where we are now; we wouldn’t change a lot of it. A lot of our experiences early on developed who we are now-- how we record, produce, write-- it’s all beneficial in some way.
What inspired the band name ‘The Underground Lovers Club’?
After months of trying to find a name, we were throwing out random words. Lucas’s two favorite band names were the ‘Velvet Underground’ and the ‘Modern Lovers’, so we just kind of put them together.
What was the inspiration behind your latest release “Any Other Night”?
It doesn’t sound anything like it did when we started it; it’s gone through a lot of changes. It started out as an LCD Soundsystem-sounding indie rock song and we developed it from there. It was quite a stressful recording process… It’s so difficult to write without being in the same room-- it takes weeks to change one tiny, little thing, and you don’t get any of the natural chemistry you’d usually have bouncing ideas off of each other.
What is your songwriting process like?
It normally just starts with me (Toby) making a really weird sound and I’ll either send it to Matt or make it into a whole song. It’s much more natural when we’re actually together; the good ideas happen quickly. One time, we wrote a song the day of a gig and Jacob hadn’t heard it, but we just went for it and it worked really well-- it’s a great song.
Where would your dream tour go?
We’re fresh out of school, so we haven’t had much opportunity to go on tour yet, but we’d like to do one next summer. We’ve all got different places, but we would love to go to Japan someday. If you go there, you’ve made it as a band. I (Lucas) really want to do an American road trip-- I really like waterparks, and I want to go to a bunch… that’s the whole point of the band: water parks.
What are your plans post-COVID 19?
Play as much as possible and see each other again. The last time we were all together was probably around Christmas. It was just for a photoshoot, so we didn’t have our instruments. Our last few songs were written over Zoom, so we really just want to write together again. Hopefully we’ll have an EP and videos out at the end of this summer in August or September. We want to release another single just before that.
What can you share about your upcoming EP?
It’s going to be good. We’re pretty happy with it; it’s a slightly longer EP than normal, and it’s our most cohesive work yet. We want to show off our range of sound and songwriting.
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