The importance of being Big in the Suburbs.
Pizza crunches and lukewarm cans of Tennants. There’s a certain type of joy derived from the little details that make up the bleak end of a night out. At least that’s what Elliot Hall, AKA Welly, seems to believe, whilst exuding the same sense of dryness found in his music as frontman of the eponymous band, Welly. Bursting out of the Brighton music scene, like a purveyor of rose-tinted pedestrian purgatory, with the debut album Big in the Suburbs, catch him at McChuills on 9th February—before he gets big everywhere else.
JM: Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever met a “Welly” before. Is there a story behind the nickname?
EH: I used to say my real name was Wellington but then people thought I was of a far higher class than I actually am. We’re really running out of [unused and comical yet ambiguous explanations] erm… it’s because we used to rehearse on a farm?
JM: Something that strikes me about your music is how it takes mundane suburban activities and places them within an entirely different world. A bit like how early Arctic Monkeys would use a quick switch of pace around the bridge to completely change a song. Is there something perceptive about your songwriting process?
EH: Totally. When I first started writing songs like 6 years ago, I tried to write love songs but after I’d said that I’d loved someone, and I think their eyes are nice, I sorta ran out at that point! I’d just moved to uni and I was homesick for the first time, so it was suddenly as if I’m singing songs about Tesco’s. I was a lot more inspired because it was the stuff I knew. I like pop music that’s really rooted in a place, and when someone’s singing about tea and sandwiches and yellow socks, stuff like that, it means a lot more to me.
JM: You once dubbed it “sarcastic pop” which sounds a bit absurdist from the offset because it doesn’t take itself too seriously but the attention to detail is slickly crucial. How did you fall into that style?
EH: When I first tried to record Welly stuff it was always like I’d listened [to] something that’d been made in Abbey Road like 30 years ago and [say]: “why doesn’t my £10 charity shop drum machine sound like that?”. So I suddenly thought it’s a lot easier if I go: “Y’know what? I actually wanted it to sound like that”, whereas I probably didn’t. It’s charity shop pop, straight to the point – none of the thrills because we can’t really afford thrills. I want it to be like if you were walking down the road and you heard some band rehearsing in some garage somewhere, you’re trying to capture that. You can only make your first album once- […] it took about 5 years to write and about 5 days to record.
JM: 5 days in a “Scottish January” so you say, how’d it all come together?
EH: My Dad lives in Scotland, and he had this house outside Milngavie. Ten miles north of Glasgow, in this tiny little hamlet – he didn’t have any neighbours and a big garden. The maddest thing is the budget was genuinely just how much it costs to feed five people for a week. The guy that makes our videos, Harvey, came up to see us and he’s like: “You lot are weird, and you stink” because we’d all been living in this house and the shower clogged and we were just like “We’ll plow on.” And it was freezing, and we got snowed in and it’s the sound of seven people going a bit “The Shining” together. I wouldn’t go back and do it differently, I’m so proud of how we did it and I wouldn’t change that, however I wouldn’t do it again. I’d like an album where you can hear all the instruments at the same time!
JM: Moving over a bit to playing live, I feel like I ought to mention the PE kits you and the band wear live on stage as a uniform, do you think they play into the sense of nostalgia your music connotates?
EH: When I did my first show called Welly, we thought: “what’s the cheapest thing that’ll match?”. We went into Zara and got 100 packs of white t-shirts and the black shorts, then thought we’ll get the Shoezone trainers and it’s broadly British. Madness is a huge inspiration for it because I viewed it a lot like “Night Boat to Cairo”, “Baggy Trousers” and “House of Fun”, they all play like different characters like we do in our music videos. I want it to look like a GCSE production, I want Welly to look extra-curricular.
JM: It’s quite a cool touring itinerary you have going between all the nooks and crannies of the UK; how important do you think it is to be big in the suburbs before anywhere else?
EH: The only way we got where we were was because we got pretty big in the Brighton scene, if we were from London? No-one would care one bit; we’re this weird band fighting with everyone. When you live in London you have to work 9 days a week, miles away from any venue, all of your friends who want to be in the band don’t care enough, and rehearsal rooms are insane. Don’t bother, you’re better off getting a small little scene and when we tour, I’d much rather mean the world to ten people in some club in Carlisle (which is what we do) rather than try and get on the bill in London. You meet much better characters too, and you can park the car! When I’m booking hotels, I go on booking.com and search from low-high, we don’t make any money but it’s so much fun. When we played Moth Club [in Hackney] people were singing the riffs and that’s literally what dreams are made of.