When you consider that the three members of Danish alt.rock trio Baby In Vain are all still only in their early 20s, their grasp on the grungy mid-90s noise rock and indie which informs their sound becomes all the more impressive. With new album More Nothing – which might just be one of the best debut albums we’ve encountered in 2017 so far – freshly released and a European tour on the horizon, we catch up with the band to find out more. You can read our chat, and check out videos and full UK tour dates, below.
Can you introduce yourselves – where are you from, who does what and what are your roles in the band?
Lola: “We are Lola on guitar and vocals, Andrea on guitar and vocals and Benedicte on drums, we are from Copenhagen, Denmark.”
How did you guys meet and start making music together?
Lola: “We met through mutual friends who also play in bands… or just one band, actually. They are called Electric Elephants, they’re like our family-band. So we wanted to have a band as well, so we just started jamming. Andrea had the name for the band before we even had our first band practice.”
What were your key influences/inspirations in getting the band together?
Lola: “I think it was just hanging out and having fun, that was our main motivation. Bene was a big Green Day fan back then, just before the band started. I was very into Kyuss. Andrea was a troubled and rebellious teenager listening to The Cure and Echo And The Bunnymen and The Smiths.”
You guys are not long out of school – how does it feel to go straight into life as a touring band?
Bene: “Actually I’ve just finished my bachelor degree in history at the University of Copenhagen, not that I was really serious about it; touring and making music was the best “excuse” to get away from it. Also – and I know I’m gonna sound spoiled when I say this – we “get paid” to study in Denmark, so I would rather do that than have a boring job somewhere. I like learning stuff and I had a good, fun three years there. Now I’m just really happy about having all the time in the world to play music and tour without having to think about studying.”
What’s the story behind the name of the band?
Lola: “There’s not really a story, Andrea just thought it sounded cool and Bene and I thought so too. It’s inspired by a song called Unbalanced Pieces by Soulsavers.”
How would you describe your sound in three words for people who’ve never heard you?
Andrea: “GUITARS, DRUMS, VOCALS.”
What’s the story behind new album More Nothing, and how did it come together?
Bene: “It has been coming together for a while now. When we first recorded the songs from the EP For The Kids, we actually recorded songs for a whole album, but I’m really happy that we only released it as an EP so that some of the other songs could grow and get better. It also gave us more time to write new songs for the actual album. We recorded it at Eve Studios near Manchester with Rob Ellis as the producer, and we lived in the studio for 11 days, almost like waking up, grabbing a cup of coffee and record a track. We had a really good time there, and once we were recording our songs there it just felt very natural and for the first time we felt like we actually had an album coming out of it.”
What were your key influences on the album, and what drew you to the themes it covers?
Andrea: “The songs on the album are all from different times in our career. Some of them are old songs we brought back to life when we were writing for the album, some of them are new songs we wrote for the album. Because the songs are all from different times in our lives and creativity, it’s difficult to say what the key influences on the album are. It’s easier to talk about the inspiration for the album, which is more or less everything we’ve ever seen, heard, red, watched, experienced, at different times in our lives.”
What’s your favourite story/anecdote from recording the album?
Lola: “It was a joy all along! I don’t know if I have a favourite anecdote, the only thing that comes to mind is one night we ordered fish and chips for dinner and Rob (Ellis, producer) ordered fried spam, which impressed/disgusted us quite a bit.”
What, in your opinion, is the stand-out track on the album?
Bene: “That’s a tough one… every song reminds me of being in the studio having a nice time, and I really like that about the way I listen to the album. My favourites might be Transcendent or One Feather, I really liked the songwriting process of those two tracks. They’re stand-out tracks in different ways but yeah, I would say one of those two songs.”
What do you hope people will take away from the album, and your music in general?
Lola: “I just hope they like to listen to the songs and will come out to the shows if they like the songs.”
What’s been the highlight of your time in the band so far?
Andrea: “Definitely recording the album. Except for a few overdubs we did in Copenhagen, we recorded the whole thing in eleven days at Eve studio in Bradbury and it’s without comparison, the happiest and most excited I’ve ever been. It’s difficult to explain what was so magical about the time we spent there. It just felt like all of us, our engineer and producer included, connected on a higher creative level and were able to make the album sound exactly as it was supposed to sound.”
What are you most looking forward to about the future?
Bene: “We were actually just talking about how much we wanna go to the States and tour again. And also writing new songs, because now we’re going to play the same 15-ish songs for a lot of time while we’re on tour and it’s going to be nice playing something totally new and fresh and just chilling in the rehearsal whilst songwriting.”
What do you have planned for next?
Lola: “We’re on tour now until the 10th of November, when we get home we don’t have shows again until January, so we’ll get working on some new material. Then we have a short Denmark tour coming up in March and hopefully some Scandinavian shows too.”
Baby In Vain’s debut album, More Nothing, is available now via Partisan Records, and you can pick it up from Amazon. They’re currently on tour in the UK, catch them at one of the dates below:
9 Oct: Camden Assembly, London, UK
10 Oct: Moles, Bath, UK
12 Oct: The Joiners, Southampton, UK
13 Oct: The Moon Club, Cardiff, UK
14 Oct: Actress & Bishop, Birmingham, UK
15 Oct: The Bodega, Nottingham, UK
17 Oct: The Portland Arms, Cambridge, UK
19 Oct: The Horn, St Albans, UK
20 Oct: Forum, Tunbridge Wells, UK
21 Oct: Ritual Union Festival, Oxford, UK
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