Sucioperro Talk About Their Upcoming Third Album 'The Heart String' (Interview)
Monday, 25 October 2010
Written by Ben Bland
Ahead of the recent Relentless Energy Sessions Festival in London, Stereoboard caught up with Scottish alt-rock trio Sucioperro for a chat about life under the mainstream radar and details of the band's upcoming third album.
Sucioperro have been around a while now but have struggled to make any commercial breakthrough. How tough is it trying to keep up the band under such circumstances?
JP ‘Dragon’ Reid (Lead Vocals/Guitar): Oooh, that’s a tough one!
Fergus ‘Goose’ Munro (Drums/Backing Vocals): Extremely tough. We don’t make any money out of the band. We’re gradually increasing in our levels of success I suppose. It just puts a bit of a financial dampener on everything. We certainly don’t make any money out of record sales or even selling merch and stuff.
Stewart ‘Spider’ Chown (Bass/Backing Vocals): Everything goes back into the band. So we’re sort of self-sufficient as a band. We don’t make any money for ourselves out of it so we have to work and do other jobs.
Has it been at all frustrating that, despite the success of Biffy Clyro (Sucioperro’s brothers in amps) and Marmaduke Duke (Biffy/Sucioperro side project) recently, there doesn’t seem to have been much of a helping impact on Sucioperro?
JP: No, not at all. Every success that Biffy get is deserved. Those guys have worked really, really hard. We’ve had line-up changes and things happen, we didn’t have label backing and things like that. Any sort of bitterness or resentment towards bands who have got successful can really only hurt yourself.
SC: Especially if you’re bitter and resentful towards your own band, eh Dragon?
JP: Those bastards the Duke! (laughs) We’ve seen so many amazing bands have to quit because of financial reasons and that’s sad but this was never a commercial proposition from the off. We do this because we love to make music. I mean we’re called Sucioperro, reason one. It’s never been an issue and shouldn’t be. There are a lot of crap bands that get success but bands like Biffy deserve all the success they’ve got for sure.
Anything you can tell us about the new album. What it’s going to be called maybe?
JP: Well I guess I can tell you the title of the new album. It’s gonna be called ‘The Heartstring and How to Pull It' and the first single will be ‘Threads’ at the end of November. We’ve also got another couple of possible singles planned. With each single we’re gonna put on some songs we’ve recorded recently. There’ll be like six songs on each single ‘cause we’ve been recording so much. So it’ll be like fifteen other songs released that aren’t on the record with the singles. The first single going out in November gives people some stuff to get into before the album and the release date for the album will be Valentine’s day as it’s obviously a pretty romantic record!
That sounds great. When you released ‘Pain Agency’ back in 2009 you were already talking about songs for the third and even fourth album. How many songs have you actually got back there?
JP: We have many songs. ‘Pain Agency’ could’ve been a double album. I’m always writing songs and we also write songs together. It’s funny ‘cause loads of bands say how long it takes them to get a song together and I don’t understand that. If you’ve got equipment then why can’t you write something in twenty minutes? It might not be a good song but you have to write a lot of crap songs to get the really good ones you know.
You recently re-released your entire back catalogue online through your website. Has that been a success?
JP: Yeah, I’d say so. The main reason we did that was that, although we’re cool with file sharing, we were concerned that people would get crap quality mp3s but we’ve put up high-res stuff and we’ve made it value for money. It’s cheaper than buying all the songs individually off iTunes for sure.
I notice you haven’t been playing as many songs off your first album recently. Have you got a little bored of songs you’ve been playing for, in some cases, five or six years?
SC: I wouldn’t say that we’re bored of them. We’ve got two albums out and a new one coming out. Without doing two hour sets it’s really hard to fit everything in.
FM: It’s not a case of boredom. Sometimes you feel more connected to songs though. We run through all the songs in rehearsals but we just play what we feel like on the night I suppose.
JP: We don’t want to be just playing for ourselves but we want to play songs that we’re in on the vibe with. We’ll only play songs like ‘The Drop’ if we’re really feeling the vibe with that song. We don’t really have any hits though so it’s not like we have to play the festival set so to speak. We’d love to do two hour sets and stuff but that’s just not the way things work unfortunately. Everything’s so set in stone at our level. We always have two or three supports and then play for forty-five minutes or an hour. Why can’t we just play an hour or so of our fave tunes on the iPod and play for an hour AND forty-five minutes?
What’s the best new album you’ve heard this year that you’d like to recommend to Stereoboard readers?
JP: Probably ‘Scatterbrain’ by The Xcerts.
SC: The new Manic Street Preachers record was really good, a return to form. The Xcerts as well obviously. I can’t remember another at the moment!
JP: I got an album from a band called Union of Knives. Dunno if it’s even getting released properly or anything but that was immense. I love Robyn’s stuff as well; it’s really innovative pop music. Shame I’m missing her London show tonight!
Final question. What are your long-term aims for Sucioperro?
JP: Well I always wanted to make a trilogy of records for both Sucio and the Duke. I love making music so much with Sucio that I can’t see us ever not doing it. But it is getting to the point that, you know, if we do this album campaign and we’re not even able to take a tenner each day to pay for stuff...then it’d be an issue. We always have to do little short tours. We never seem to lose money but we have invested money in getting the record mixed and stuff. Obviously the online store and the tees and stuff are helping so we should be able to pay back that money. If we can make enough then we can make another record. If people support the band then we can continue. I’m loathe to go down the pledge route really. I don’t want to rip people off by selling them Spider’s sweaty signed shirt for twenty-five grand! That’s fleecing people. There are people who love us and we know these people spend all the money they’ve got. Enough major labels are fleecing people for CDs and re-releases and DVDs, we don’t want to do that. If there’s a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand that hold our records close to their heart then that’s enough for me.
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Has it been at all frustrating that, despite the success of Biffy Clyro (Sucioperro’s brothers in amps) and Marmaduke Duke (Biffy/Sucioperro side project) recently, there doesn’t seem to have been much of a helping impact on Sucioperro?
