INTERVIEW: Thank @ ArcTanGent Festival

The rock band Thank from Leeds, as they are officially known, played an incredible set at ArcTanGent festival back in August, with a full crowd gathering at the Elephant stage to hear their distinctive punk vocals and irreverent lyricism. Tabitha Smith had the privilege of sitting down with the full band to talk about their next moves going into the autumn months, with a new label and new single that’s been attracting a lot of attention.

The group had arrived a little later to ArcTanGent as their set was on the Saturday, the final day of the festival, but it was revealed that bassist Cameron had been there most of the week. ‘You consume it like a sociopath’, drummer Steve joked, with Cameron claiming that he felt like he’d been at the festival since the previous year. ‘In terms of ArcTanGent…you know what to expect,’ Cameron told me, ‘it delivers that same level of quality, although it does get bigger every time, somehow!’ 

The group appear to have been going from strength to strength since the release of their new single ‘Writing Out A List Of All the Names Of God’, a title which vocalist Freddy joked was ‘purely to try and make as many journalists as possible stumble over the words’, and it admittedly caught me out too. The band have described the song as a ‘diss track’, and it certainly grabs the listener’s attention, with a personal highlight of mine being the drawn out ‘excuse me’s at the beginning of the song, denoting an impatience that stays and builds throughout. The band told me they released this as a single as they believed it would appeal to existing Thank fans, and it has garnered more attention than they were anticipating. BBC Introducing Sheffield and Leeds have given the track a spin, as well as Radio X and 6 Music, something which Freddy said ‘bodes well’ for the subsequent tracks that are ready to be released soon. ‘Writing Out A List’ has also been very well advertised across the band’s Instagram, something I had to ask them about due to the sheer level of shitposting on their feed. Freddy owned up to the posts, claiming that shitposting is one of his ‘few skills’; ‘I’d say this band is fifty percent making music and fifty percent me being a menace on Twitter and Instagram.’ Personally, I think their social media, whether intentionally or not, will draw listeners in out of pure curiosity. Reaching out to your fans and asking them to buy your merch, while simultaneously calling them all nerds who were wedgied in high school, is just the kind of psychological marketing ploy that would work on someone like me.

The band are taking their new music on tour this autumn, with a week straight of gigs across Europe in October, as well as supporting noise rock band Cherubs in Manchester in November, something they seemed very excited for. One of my favourite things about interviewing artists is when they show their enthusiasm for the other bands around them, and Thank were no exception. The group recently signed to Big Scary Monsters, a label each of them have an innate appreciation for. Steve talked about how he used to work as a sound engineer and would hear a lot of BSM’s acts. ‘At the time I was literally just into grindcore, and at first I didn’t get it at all, but by the end I was really hooked on it,’ he explained. Freddy’s association with the label dates back a fair way too, with some of the first vinyls he ever bought being by bands signed to the label, including a seven-inch of ‘Meat Balloon’ by Pulled Apart By Horses.

After asking if this signing has created a new era for Thank, Freddy responded that it was definitely ‘a bit of a step up’, but fundamentally Thank are continuing to cement their sound and their name in the scene in the midlands. ‘If there's a new sound or a new angle’, Freddy added, ‘it’ll be largely to do with Steve.’ The upcoming album is the group’s first full-length project with the drummer as part of their ensemble, with the group agreeing that ‘he’s brought a lot to it; not that previous drummers weren’t involved in the writing but Steve’s taken a way bigger part in the writing of stuff. He’s a very talented man!’ 

Steve’s influence has reached the album art too, with the cover for ‘Writing Out A List’ being a painting by Nick Sheehy, otherwise known as Showchicken, who Steve had been a fan of for some time. ‘His artwork is really sick; he used to do stuff that was a lot more sketchy [...], but the stuff he's been doing recently, it kind of looks a bit like weird CGI, it almost looks like AI art, but it’s fully hand-painted!’ The comment about the AI art by Steve makes a lot of sense, as the frog in the painting looks iridescent and almost like he’s been dreamed into the image. I asked the band if the frog had any significance, and despite the painting already existing before being chosen for the single artwork, the group had had a strange experience with frogs in Bilbao in Spain. The lyric video for ‘Writing Out A List’ shows a frog from their trip, something Steve described as being part of ‘a mad, basque-country bar game; there was a little metal frog and you had to chuck a euro coin into its mouth - it was nearly impossible!’ Alongside these recurring appearances of frogs, Freddy revealed that Cameron also had a phobia of the amphibians. It was established that the frog in the album art was not real and could not hurt Cameron, although Freddy joked that he loved the idea of Cameron jumping out of his skin every time he opened a press email about the song release, seeing the shining frog gawking back at him.

As well as having a deep admiration for Big Scary Monsters alumni, Nick Sheehy, and one another, Thank had a lot of love for the acts playing at ArcTanGent too, and I asked them if there was anyone they dreamed of playing with. Steve revealed that after seeing some of their set, he would love to play some shows with Show Me The Body. ‘I feel like even though we’re completely different bands we come from a similar angle of punk stuff, but in a weird way,’ he told me, which I think is a great way of explaining the bands’ stylings. ‘I feel like we probably have shit to chat about anyways,’ he added. Freddy subsequently revealed a hilarious anecdote in which BSM had approached the group, asking them to create a list of dream acts to tour with, with Freddy taking this quite literally; ‘I’d sent them an email like “The Cure, Nine Inch Nails”,’ he laughed. We collectively agreed that it was always best to dream big with these things, even if BSM weren’t quite ready for them just yet.

Thank’s dynamic make them brilliant to watch, both on and off stage. In anticipation of their album coming out, the group teased a release party at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, which is something to look out for over the coming months. It was a pleasure to talk to all four members, and we can’t wait to hear their next single!

Words: Tabitha Smith

Photos: Summer Crane