The new issue of Lookleft has hit the shelves across Ireland this week so it is about time I posted this interview with We Are Losers from the last issue. Lookleft is available in every Easons north / south & other selected retailers.
It has been a remarkable twelve months for Kildare/Dublin band We Are Losers. What began as a solo-side project of Super Extra Bonus Party guitarist Gavin Elsted writing and recording a few songs in his bedroom has flourished into something much bigger. Barry Healy caught up with front man Gavin Elsted to find out more.
As we began chatting in his kitchen over freshly made coffee, it is abundantly clear he is remarkably humble about the whole affair. There were no grandiose expectations starting out, it was just seen as “a chance to write simple straightforward over the top fuzzy noise pop and this was the music inspiring me at the time and so wanted to try my hand at it”.
Gavin never expected it to get this far explaining “the most I could have hoped for was that someone might have come back to me saying ‘hey, I really like your tunes’. It was a bit scary to be honest because it happened so fast. We put a few tunes online and emailed them around. All of a sudden we landed our first gig at Hard Working Class Heroes which was mental.”
It was around this time We Are Losers blossomed into a four-piece, adding fellow Bonus Partiers Gary Clarke and Stephen Conlan and Bronwyn Murphy-White of Grand Pocket Orchestra. It seems to have been a perfect fit. “After jamming a few times it all fit so quickly” says Gavin, adding “The more involved the three have got the less stressed I am about everything. I find it easy to sit back and let them do their thing. I know what Gary and Steve are going to do from playing in a band with them for years and Bronwyn is such an accomplished musician anyway that I am completely confident in what she brings”.
The band’s sudden rise has really taken Gavin by surprise “there is now way we thought we would get this far so quickly. Within three or four months we had labels interested and had management involved, which has huge benefits. Up and up is the best way to describe how it has been as well as a lot of fun too. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t be doing it”.
One of the many high points so far came in July with the release of their debut double a-side single ‘Sunset Song / Cheerleader’ on Leeds Indie label ‘Dance to the Radio’.
It is a partnership which goes back sometime as Gavin explains. “We’d been friends with ‘Dance to the Radio’ since they put out Super Extra Bonus Party’s ‘Who Are You And What Do You Want’ on a vinyl compilation. I just kept in contact with them and let them know I was doing new stuff. They asked me to send it on to them so I did and they were into it. We were then asked to play ‘Live at Leeds’, they came to see our show and met us afterwards and offered to do something with us. We decided on a single to see how things would go. It has been great so far. They’ve been good to us and they’re looking after us really well.”
Gavin seems equally happy with the response to the band’s debut single adding “it has been pretty good so far. We’ve been getting some good radio play and people seem to be into it. We weren’t expecting anything like that to be honest”.
While on the surface Losers would appear to differ somewhat from his previous work but he is insistent that “even though other members of SEBP will probably kill me for saying this, there was definite pop elements to the Bonus Party tunes. Stuff like ‘Comets’ or ‘Eamonn’ are pop songs. Just because there is electronics or distortion on them doesn’t stop them being pop songs. They are all pop songs with strong melodies and it’s the same with Losers”.
So what of the future for We Are Losers? Well it’s pretty straightforward according to Gavin who is aiming “to gig as much as humanly possible. Try to get down to other places in Ireland apart from Dublin and Galway and write more tunes of course. We’ll see where we’re at after a few months and hopefully we can keep going up and up”.
Download: We Are Losers – Cheerleader
Simple and captivating stuff.