The Punk Archive: So, are you excited to be back?
Aled: Yeah. I can't remember the last time we were in Southampton.
Philip: Very excited, yeah. It's the first show of the year for us as well, I think.
The Punk Archive: It's a really good line-up as well, you must be really excited to see a lot of your friends here…
Joel: Yeah, like Funeral, Canterbury, Blitz Kids, Jett Black… Have I missed anyone?
Joel, Philip and Aled with one of The Punk Archive's new flyers
The Punk Archive: So, we can't really interview you without talking about it. What has got you to the decision to break up?
Aled: I dunno, I think it's just one of those decisions. We always wanted to end without fading out, really, and we're happy with our fourth record. We thought it's a solid body of work, without releasing anything we weren't proud of, and without doing anything for the sake of it. I don't think anyone's really motivated to do another album, so we thought that maybe now was a good time to move on and do something new. It felt like a natural decision, really.
The Punk Archive: So you all feel it's the right time…
Philip: Yeah, we've achieved all that, which is more than we'd ever thought we'd achieve. We felt it was the right time. We're completely excited for the last tour, which, if anything, has made our year really really exciting.
The Punk Archive: Your farewell year is absolutely incredible, you've got some brilliant stuff lined up…
Joel: Yeah, we're going to be doing festivals and stuff all year now, and the big tour at the end, which is good.
The Punk Archive: It's already selling out, isn't it…
Aled: It's amazing. We always hoped that the last thing we did would be memorable, so I think doing it this way has given us a good chance for that to happen. It's been really humbling, and the response has been amazing, so it's been a really nice way to bring it all to a close I suppose.
The Punk Archive: So I know this is a really difficult question, but over your career, what are the real, real highlights, the things which really stand out?
Joel: There's been loads. Headlining all the big venues in London, Koko and stuff, and then back home in Cardiff has been a personal highlight, as well as some of the big stages at Reading that we've done.
Philip: It's gone like a whirlwind: it's hard to pinpoint one exact moment. Just having the chance to travel the world, Japan and Australia; we went over to America on recording… things you take for granted, like the amount of studios we've been fortunate enough to record in has just been a dream come true. It's really difficult to pinpoint. It's just been a really rad fucking time.
Aled: Yeah, like all the guys have said. I think releasing our first album: it's been so long, and we've done so much since that I kinda forget what a massive, monumental event that was, not just in our band's lifetime, but in mine as well.
The Punk Archive: It must have been amazing to have walked into HMV and seen your record on the shelf…
Aled: Exactly, at that point you've not done any of it before. It loses a bit of its shimmer every time, but the first record, you go through everything and it's an amazing experience.
The Punk Archive: So how would you say your sound has evolved over the years? Right at the beginning, you had much more of a pop-punk feel. How would you say you've matured and developed as a band?
Aled: I think with the first album, it was very much just the five of us, two guitars, bass and vocals, with very little admonishments on the side. After that, the albums got a bit more diverse, and a bit more interesting musically I think. In some cases, the songs could have been a bit more simple but we made them more interesting by bringing stuff in. We never wanted to rest on our laurels.
The Punk Archive: How did you manage to stay true to your roots?
Philip: We've always had a massive pop sensibility, which I think has run through all four of our albums. I think another thing that's always been consistent with us is like Aled said, we never wanted to do the same thing, so having that ambition and bold element to our band. We never wanted to regurgitate the same album.
The Punk Archive: In terms of the records you've released, is there one you're most proud of?
Philip: I think each one of them encapsulates something I'm really proud of in some capacity. The first one, I'd say is us at our most pure, and also at the same time, I'd say the fourth one too. Each one we did something different. The third one, I'm really proud that we tried to do something really ambitious, and the second one was just a massive, massive record, our career high almost.
The Punk Archive: You went on some amazing tours. Which was your favourite country to play in outside of the UK?
Aled: The biggest tour we did was with Simple Plan in 2008, off the back of Smart Casual. It was the first time we'd ever been to Europe and it was a pretty good tour to be on. Sometimes it's difficult to find a tour where you can be a good match, and at that time they were pretty big in Europe, so it was playing to between three and seven thousand people, which is quite an overwhelming experience when you've never been somewhere before. We were kinda thrown in the deep end, but it was amazing. To do Europe for the first time in that way was amazing.
The Punk Archive: So as people, how have you changed over the years? What is this experience going to leave with you guys, do you think?
Aled: Bitter, cynical, jaded (laughs).
The Punk Archive: (laughing) it's been great then, yeah?
Joel: It's been a great experience, to travel about everywhere, it's something you can't just do anywhere. Being able to do that over the last eight years has just been a really good experience. I think everyone's going to leave having gained from it.
Philip: You can't really get the experience in another profession. The five of us have worked, no, it's not even worked, we've been in a band together for so long, and never once did we have a massive falling out. We may have had some arguments, but they were never resolved in a bad way. If you can retain that kind of relationship with your friends and live in such close proximity and never fall out that badly, that's something you can't really learn. It's quite an achievement in such a high stress environment.
Aled: I think it's hard to quantify how much you learn from being in a band. There's so many different aspects to it. You're self-employed for one thing, to stay constantly motivated (especially when shit things happen, with as many bad days as good): yeah, just that. Perseverance, and learning how to deal with people in all those different countries, learning how different people react. It's been a really worthwhile education, I'd say! Better than university: not to a potential employer, perhaps, but to me!
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