I Will Turn Your Tide

Photo by Fred Thomas.

Quite a while ago we got the chance to sit down with Rab Allen from Glasvegas as they whizzed through Lincoln on the NME Tour. We've already gone on about White Lies, got Florence & The Machine's view on Barak Obama, and posted a gorgeous cover of a Friendly Fires song, so we figured it was time to give Glasvegas some attention.

Our Iron Lung - How's the Tour going?
Glasvegas (Rab Allen) - "Its kind of strange to be with three other bands (White Lies, Florence & The Machine, Friendly Fires) on tour, were used to it just being us. But yea its going good. Everyone's different. White Lies seem to go to bed at like 10.00pm every night, where as Florence & Tthe Machine I don't think have actually gone to bed since the tour started".

Before the end of 2008 the band did that rarest of things, recorded a Christmas album. In Transylvanian church of all places!

OIL - How was that recording?
G - "That was a crazy time for us We'd just come off the back of a tour. We were really tired and drinking loads, so to go and work like twelve hours a day in a fucking castle was the strangest experience. At the end of it we all just disbanded for a few days after some drinking sessions, I think we lost somebody out there as well, but it's OK we found him eventually".

OIL - With summer rearing its sunny head just around the corner, do you guys have any plans?
G - Hopefully loads of festivals, don't think we'll be doing any more tours around then. I think Reading/Leeds, V Festival, Glastonbury, Tea in the Park, Benacasim and a few in America, should be fun, pretty busy".

OIL - Speaking of America, how are things going over there?
G - "It's going good, I suppose. It's hard to judge it really. We've sold double over there what we were supposed to. So that's good. The only real criticism that we seem to get is that we don't play long enough or do encores, but that's about it".

To most, Glasvegas will seem to have risen relatively quickly to their position in the public consciousness, but how did Rab feel about this?

B - How have you dealt with finding mainstream success quite quickly?
G - "People think we've only just come about because of everything that we've just done. But we've been a band for years. It came all of a sudden and broke quite quickly for us really. It wasn't until we signed that things really started taking off for us. It when we first played Reading/Leeds that it changed as well, we were on TV and people started to come and watch us more and more. After that things just changed for us".

B - How has the involvement of NME helped with the band?
G - "Its felt quite natural to be honest, its just been the right time when they've done things for us. It was just the right time for the band. The NME cover that we did came out at the same time as when 'Geraldine' got released so obviously it helped a lot with that, it gave us a lot more publicity. Just felt right at the time really".

B - You've done some rather interesting covers recently, how did they come about?
G - "It's just one of those things, most bands seem to do them anyway. They were really on the spot things actually that we felt like doing. Most of them were just recorded and finished in a day as well, that's how spontaneous they were. The Nirvana cover came out well, we were really impressed with the vocals on that".

B - You've been described in the Guardian Newspaper as “the sound of broken Britain”, what do you make of that?
G - "I don't even know what that means to be honest. Lots of people are gonna write different things about us because it's their opinion. It's not our opinion though. I just think we make really good pop music"

Thanks to Matthew Bryard for transcribing this up. Original interview by Our Iron Lung with many thanks to Leslie @ Charm Factory.

[MP3] Glasvegas - Geraldine - (Alt Link) - Thanks RCRDLBL.
[WEBSITE] Check out Glasvegas online here.
[SPOTIFY] Listen to Glasvegas' debut LP on Spotify now.
[BUY] Grab the album for yourself either digitally or physically.