Two Door Cinema Club has been on the rise since their inception back in 2009, granted not everyone may be familiar with the band, but they would recognize their songs as they’ve made appearances in countless commercials and television shows. Personally I remember receiving their EP from Kitsuné back in January of ’09, not giving it much thought I gave it a quick scan and was thoroughly impressed with the initial offering and since then they’ve remained on my radar. Spending the past year or so touring and especially putting in a ton of work in the North American market in support of the album Tourist History, we were lucky enough to get an opportunity to chat with TDCC.
Here’s how that conversation went…
What’s difference between touring North America and the rest of the world
When we first started touring America obviously it’s was not as good as everywhere else for us. But now we’ve been to most places around the world and doing the small shows and building it up slowly, which is something we’ve always been very passionate about doing, starting small in every territory. So I guess there are some places still where we’re not very well known asides from Dublin and London. But we’ve been to some cool places, like our show in Rio for example, it was our first time there and it was just crazy, one of the best shows we’ve ever been to. The crowd there just went nuts.
What’s the music scene like back home, is it much different than say in North America?
Yeah I think we have a really strong music scene, there are loads of bands that we grew up with over here that kinda only did well in Belfast and Ireland. So we were lucky in that we had a lot of extra different bands that the world didn’t know about. I think the trouble is being from Ireland it’s still kind of remote, like it’s still separate from the UK so a lot of bands still don’t get noticed by the industry in London, only if they really move over and do lots of tours in the UK , so it’s real unfortunate that a lot more bands don’t get discovered. With the Internet though, it’s hard for people to ignore the music scene.
Yeah, I’m sure that Vancouver will be excited for you guys though because we have a pretty big indie scene here and we basically love anybody from anywhere.
[laughs] Yeah, we’ve never been to Vancouver, which is ridiculous. I didn’t realize how close it was to Seattle until recently because we’ve been to Seattle a couple of times, but we’ve never made it as far as Vancouver. I always just assumed that it was a lot further away.
So I know Tourist History came out officially last April, but can you give me a bit of background on it?
We formed the band when we were 17 and we started recording the music for that album when we were 19 or 20, so we had a few years to get good first before we came up with those songs. We had about 30 songs in that space of time that we could choose from, I guess that’s the good thing about your first album is that you have so many songs to choose from. We’re super happy with the 10 that made the album, we felt they all could’ve been singles, which is what we really wanted. With the recording, we did it in London with a guy by the name of Elliott James. Then we got the tracks and got had them mixed by Phillipe Zadar. We’re super happy that we got to work with those guys and we wouldn’t change anything about the album.
Yeah, with the amount time that you guys had to create this album, what sort of things were you guys able to take away to apply to the next project?
Yeah, I think it’s good to go into the studio with your songs ready and we weren’t just ready. We had just recorded our demos ourselves in the bedroom. But that was a necessity at that time because we didn’t have much money based on studio time, so whenever we were going in the studio, we had to know exactly where we wanted to go with the songs. I think that’s something we’ll always do because it’s good to get a bearing on your song before someone else does.
Cool. Sooooo…What’s up with the cat on the album cover? I love cats and this looks cute.
Yeah, we had a few suggestions from people but nothing really stood out to us and then we saw this picture and we just loved it, it really stood out. Sadly though, there’s not much more to it than that, so it’s not anyone’s cat or anything like that.
Aww…that’s too bad. I was hoping for a heart warming story.
I know!
You should tell people it’s your cat.
Yeah, I don’t really like cats so that’d be a big lie, but it’s a good image. It’s by the guys that did our “I Can Talk” video.
The band has been receiving quite a few accolades and awards. I heard with one of the awards you donated the money. Why and who did you guys donate to and what compelled you to go that route?
Yes, it was in Ireland, we had won the Choice Music Prize a couple of weeks ago. We don’t know much about the award, as it’s not televised or anything. We were in Dublin talking to our friends and they were asking us what we were going to do with the money and we’re like “what money?”. We put it to the side, then decided to donate it to charity. We’re at the point where we’re doing festivals and such and we’ll get paid through all that which is nice, so we didn’t think we really needed it, so we’re giving it to a charity in our home town called Abaana, because they’re important and makes us feel good about ourselves.
Absolutely. I think that’s great and not many would do that. You guys also won the Breaking Woodie from mtvU, which is pretty cool!
Yeah, just last week! It was weird. It’s great to feel like people are accepting us in America because we’ve worked so hard in that territory for the past year. We actually spent more time in North America than anywhere else, so it’s always nice when it pays off.
You said it was weird. How was it weird, was there a weird experience?
[laughs] I guess it’s just weird waiting side stage waiting to go on and seeing people that you’d normally see on the tele were there. We met the guy off of Community who was hosting it, Donald Glover. Lenny Kravitz, Dave Grohl walking around, it was just weird. Yeah very surreal.
I’ve also noticed that a lot of the songs from Tourist History are being featured in shows and commercials, that’s pretty cool, how do you guys feel about that?
At the start we were excited to get our music out everywhere, but now we’re a lot more cautious about it. We’ve done a few small things, where we seen it, we thought maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. We did a lottery advert in Belgium and it was awful, we actually saw it on YouTube and it was just awful. I think it’s good in places where you music isn’t getting on radio, but I think we’ll more careful about that. I think if it’s something where you don’t disagree with the brand, you drink or use, then why not. We’re from a small independent label and we had to do things like that to be able to continue to do the things we wanted to do.
So are you guys working on any new material?
We sure are. We’re starting to play a few of them live now, they’re going really well and a lot of fun to play them. It’s exciting to back to creating, we love touring but we’ve done it for so long now that it’s nice to have a change in our day-to-day activities.
Yeah on that topic, you guys seem to have tour non-stop, what do you guys do to unwind and getaway from it all?
We listen to music, even on our downtime because we’re still big music fans. But yeah we’ll play Call of Duty on the xbox, we watch a lot of movies and TV shows because we travel so much.
What’s the best movie you’ve seen lately?
Ohhhh…Oh no. Last night we watched The Deer Hunter, it wasn’t as good as I thought it was going to be, so that was a bad example. [laughs]
Are you guys football fans?
Yeah! We’re part of a charity match in Scotland that’s raising money for Japan. Yeah I think there’ll be some bands there so it should be a fun day.
Can you guys actually play?
Well…I think the standard will be at our level, so I’m not too worried. But yeah we don’t get a lot of time to play. Our first few tours in America though, we’d buy a football and play at service stations to stretch the legs.
Who’s your team that you follow?
Yes! Manchester United.
Ahh yes, they’re playing soon right? Against Chelsea I believe. I’m a Real Madrid fan so I’ll be watching. But Barcelona is going to kill everybody.
[laughs] Yeah they’re the best team in the world. We shot our music video, the latest one, in Spain and got to go to a Barcelona match. It was so good, yeah amazing.
So with you guys working on new music, when do you think fans will hear a new album?
We’re hoping to record it before Christmas and then who knows, March or April, but it all depends on how long it takes. It could 6 months to a year, it’s just one of those things. It’s hard to say direction wise where it’ll be though, we have a few new songs and they’re all so different from one another, but they’re all very good. I think the common denominator is that it’ll be very melodic and upbeat.
Do you guys think you’d use some of those original 30 tracks that you recorded earlier?
No, no. We’ve discussed doing some of them live to make our set a bit longer, but we just thought that we should spend the time, instead of playing old songs, writing new ones. Especially since they didn’t make the album for a reason.
Are there musical goals that the band would like make happen and achieve?
Oooh, I think it’d be great to still be going in 10 years time. It’s quite a big deal nowadays when someone lasts that long. So yeah hopefully we’ll make the 10 year mark and beyond. ALSO it’d be great to win a Grammy or one of the big ones.
What if someone said to you today is the last day you’ll ever play any music ever again. What would you do with that day and then what you do moving forward?
I’d play Madison Square Garden with The Strokes supporting us and Kanye West playing after us. I would then try and be an actor or a professional footballer.
Dream big right? You never know Man U might need a guy.
Exactly!
TDCC at Coachella 2011 “What You Know”
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