Welcome to my fourth interview with Black Country, New Road, which also happens to be the third time I have talked to the drummer Charlie Wayne. Let’s see what he’s been up to, shortly before the band’s Istanbul concert on April 20th.
Nice seeing you again, Charlie. How are you holding up in the craziest timeline of our lives so far?
Charlie: Nice seeing you too. It’s a very, very crazy time. This year’s tour started a few weeks ago, and we were in Australia and New Zealand. All of our travel home got canceled and we had to rearrange everything, but I think that we are not even remotely the people who you should be worried about. It is quite difficult to encapsulate with words how bizarre and sad what’s happening in the world is. It’s a ghoulish American government, and actions that are done by the American and the Israeli states are literally beyond words. So shocking, so upsetting. Condemnation doesn’t even begin to cover it, really.
It’s cool that in this terrible period, there are art fundraiser organisations trying to help, such as Warchild Records which you contributed with your new track “Strangers”.
Charlie: Warchild was an amazing thing to do. We all felt extremely grateful and very privileged to be a part of it. It’s quite rare for musicians to be able to feel as though you’re doing something tangible for people whose conflict exists through your screen, especially if it’s contributing to some material relief. Talking about it with friends is sort of weird, because it exists in this way where it’s both hyper real and non existent. So finding a way to kind of reprieve from it seems like a strange thing to do. If anything, you should be looking at it more and engaging with it in a way that is equivalent to the scale of the thing.
Western governments are only held accountable through certain ways, and it’s just so foul. The White House’s media strategy, as well as communication and the rhetoric they use is bizarrely exaggerated. You know, stuff like “Millions will die, greatest strikes,” they’re almost theatrical in how extreme they are. The presentation too, the video game images and bits from film and TV they use is like a simulacrum, the way in which they’re creating a spectacle of warfare which is ingested as a ‘media event’ dulling the actual reality of it. Bombing schools, killing children, killing civilians, killing anyone. It’s just gross.
It will be difficult to go back to talking about your music after this, but I will throw this question: Knowing you guys, you are always busy working on something. Are you working on new music right now?
Charlie: To be honest, this is the first time in a really, really long time where we are just touring. There’s nothing band wise that’s going on at the moment. I think we’re focusing on making the shows as good as they possibly can be for this year and sitting with the album, without necessarily thinking about what will be next. We want to do this album, enjoy it and then take stock once it’s done and figure out what comes next. There’s going to be a lot of really busy periods, and there’s going to be a lot of downtime. I’ve started a small little record label (The Bird Records) on the side, which is another nice project to do, but yeah, it’s the first time we are doing a proper album cycle that we’re allowed to just sit with.
You seem to be in a more comforted, or rather, grounded period in your history.
Charlie: Yeah. I mean, you are never comfortable with where you are, I think, but it does feel more grounded and a bit more secure. We are just happy to be here and trying to make the most of it.
Time for a nerdy question that I asked to Lewis and Luke last year: Do you have a specific musical event in history that you would like to teleport to if you had a time machine?
Charlie: That’s a good question. I would have loved to have seen the Velvet Underground performing a factory show or something, from around the time of their first album. That would have been cool, just as a flower on the wall.
Do you have dreams often, or do you keep a dream journal?
Charlie: No. Do you keep a dream journal?
No. I’ve been trying to train myself on that, but I think I’m just too lazy for it.
Charlie: (laughs) I’ll very occasionally write down something that’s happened in my very vivid dream. I’m like, “Wow, that was amazing,” and I’ll write it down as soon as I wake up, or if there’s a line which I think would be a nice thing to remember. But no, I think I’m quite happy to let sleeping dogs lie. Not that there’s any real reason for it. I’m interested in interrogating the subconscious, but I’m also not interested in it to that extent. Hearing about other people’s dreams is always fun though. It’s a phenomenally interesting bit of the human mind, that liminal space between consciousness and subconsciousness. It inspired a huge amount of very interesting art and literature. It’s maybe one of the things I prefer to talk about, rather than to actually do.
How is your relationship with watching music videos? I find them to be an underappreciated form of art.
Charlie: You and I are around the same age, and we grew up in that similar period of time where watching music videos either on TV or on YouTube is a real part of growing up. I may watch music videos slightly less now, obviously because of the way in which you engage with it. A lot of videos that I like are pop videos from the 2010s, for the songs by Black Eyed Peas or Skrillex. What are your favorite ones?
The two first two artists that come to my mind are MGMT and The Chemical Brothers.
Charlie: Fair enough. Those are maybe slightly classier picks. (both laugh.)
I like anything that is fun.
Charlie: Yeah, exactly. I remember watching the video for “Telephone”, that Lady Gaga song, which was great. It’s not a lost art, but definitely doesn’t exist in the same cultural way.
You are soon performing in Turkey again. What do you remember about your last time in Istanbul?
Charlie: That was one of the best couple of days I’ve had during that whole touring period. We were so tired on the day of the show, and then we had a couple of days afterwards just to go around the city, and it’s just phenomenal. It’s such an amazing place. Last time we talked, I mentioned that I studied Byzantine history at the university.
It must have been fascinating for you.
Charlie: Yeah, it was unbelievable. England has a terrible reputation, obviously, for stealing and rehousing lots of the indigenous artifacts of the region, but to see it in situ is unbelievable. It’s really fascinating, and it’s a beautiful city. I can’t wait to come back.
Is there anything you couldn’t see or do there the last time, but would love to this time?
Charlie: Last time, I saw places like the Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, and the Basilica Cistern. Quite a few of the churches that I really wanted to go and see were closed. This time we’ve maybe got a day off, so I would like to go and see a bit more.
