The Howlers Interview “We have got plenty of records in the pipeline and lots to share very soon”

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Since forming little over a year ago, London rockers The Howlers have quickly made themselves known as one of the UK’s must-see live acts. The Howlers are set to tour the UK this year, with a new EP that’s coming soon. We caught up with vocalist Adam Young to talk about the new music and upcoming tour.

Hope you, your bandmates, friends, and family have been okay over the course of the pandemic. What have you been doing with your off time during the pandemic?

“We have all been well thank you, I hope the same for you as well, as a band we’ve had a pretty rough time of it through this pandemic, we’ve lost loved ones to covid 19 and I’m personally going through that all again with other family members so it’s been rough, but what gets us through it is each other and the team we have around us, Time off however I think is a term we are not familiar with, we’ve been really busy we may not be gigging but we are doing everything else, as a band we move 100mph so we have got plenty of records in the pipeline and lots to share very soon.”

What’s your song writing process?

“For the most part, I tinker away and come up with a “song”, I’ll probably record a voice note or sometimes a demo and send it to the lads but more often than not we try and make it as organic and natural as possible, write through feeling the energy and emotion in a song, we get in a room together and I’ll just spring a new tune on the boys and then we deconstruct or rewrite it together, as a band our ideas flow very openly and nobody gets shot down or dictated what to do, it means the process is a little longer than most bands but also means each section, each piece of music or each lyric has meaning to it, we all agreed recently actually that we’ve never been in a room of musicians and it be as collaborative as we are. It is truly special and something we hold dear, but that comes from our brotherhood and how close we are.”

What music inspired you to start making music?

“I think we are all just naturally in tuned with music as an outlet for our mental health and personalities, for me its always been there, I’m autistic and dyslexic and from a young age I was told I would never be a ‘good’ musician and told to give up lessons, Id put headphones in and mime in front of the mirror (I’m not afraid to say that) and it wasn’t until my teens that I thought F**k this and I taught my self, hours and hours of fighting my own head, sitting down with my mum who knew a little guitar and trying to learn, in the end I learnt from writing songs and it came naturally that way, still to this day I don’t necessarily know the chord names but I know through sound.”

You’ve said previously on social media that we could see some new music coming very soon, what can we expect from the new music?

“The new tracks are head and shoulders above our catalogue to date, they came from a place where as a band we were in grief and are bond is what kept us going, and I think you can tell in the music, we didn’t write about lockdown or any politics that’s not our bag, we want to represent something different to the standard anger that is in music at the moment it has its place of course but where is the hope, where is the other side to existence except from being angry all the time, observational music has been stamped to death under the heel of a size 9 dr martin and most of the time is faux, we try to be sincere and genuine in our music and hope people understand its a representation of us and things you wish maybe you could talk about, we want people to have that escape.”

You’re hopefully heading on your biggest UK headline tour this year, which has already unfortunately been postponed previously due to the pandemic, are you prepared? Have you got the set list ready, or are you waiting until you know it’s definitely going ahead?

“We are indeed, the world is a weird place right now, our industry is just barely surviving and the emerging scene / breaking scene has been dealt a right wing right hook, left to sink or swim in the closing tide that is Brexit and this pandemic and the ever looming prospect of unemployment, we tore up our old setlist and through it out I think only one track remains from that set list and we wrote a whole new set, we just have to wait and see what happens but from the information we are privy to from the industry, Live isn’t looking likely until end of 2021 or even next year.”

What’s the craziest thing that’s happened to you on tour?

“Where to begin, we seem to get ourselves into all manor of questionable situations and mischief which I think I’ll leave out, but we’ve had some really sincere moments with fans and people we have worked with around the UK, we had a moment during a tour where we received a huge parking fine and at the time we didn’t have a pot to P*ss in so, I tongue and cheek mentioned it on stage in Sheffield, and after our set, 2 guys were so impressed they came up to us and gave us the cash to pay the fine, we were a little gobsmacked to be honest and so thankful as we are with them even turning up and it’s something I’ll never forget as we barely had enough money to pay for fuel home let alone any fine, there is plenty other comical stories to tell but that’s something a little more light hearted.”

What is your favourite song to play?

“There is a new song we have recorded and wrote that is just so fun to play, it’s like being 3 labradors chasing a tennis ball down a hill, hair and smiles all over the shop! but some of our slower more stripped back material I enjoy as there the songs that mean the most to be as they represent a moment in our lifes or an experience we’ve had that we wouldn’t want anybody to go through, In the summer 2020 we debuted a track I wrote after my grandad passed of covid 19, the first time we had played a stripped back acoustic set to a socially distanced crowd and people cried, which was crazy, I was shocked so I guess tracks that have meaning like that not just to us but the listener are the best to play.”

Who would you feel honoured to open for dead or alive?

“That is a hard question …. we admire so many musicians and we are all so different in our answer, speaking for me personally I feel honoured every time our agent calls us up and says ‘Hey do you want to open for ..’ as it means I get to do what I love at least one more time.”

If you could change anything about the music industry, what would it be?

“There is far too many people protecting their social standing opposed to looking out for the industry, there often referred to as gatekeepers but ultimately their narcissists, there not in the industry for a love of music, just the opportunities it affords them usually untoward motivations as well, we’ve met far too many they have no time for anybody who isn’t ‘cool’ you know and what classifies you not being cool, something as small as not kissing their arse or not drinking in the same boozers or wearing the right clothes! luckily we surround ourselves with people who have an ethical and moral compass, people who share our views on just being nice, what ever happened to treat people how you want to be treated you know, it doesn’t always have to be you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours.”

Thanks to Adam for catching up with us, you can catch The Howlers on tour this year at the following dates.

MARCH
18 – YES – Manchester
19 – Rough Trade – Bristol
20 – The Lexington – London
27 – The Rossi Bar – Brighton
APRIL
01 – Edge Of The Wedge – Portsmouth
03 – The Sunflower Lounge – Birmingham
06 – Oporto – Leeds

Can’t wait till then? Check out ‘Matador’: