The Guest List are having the summer every young band dreams of. Fresh off a run of festival slots building toward Boardmasters this weekend and a run of Japanese dates to follow, the Manchester five-piece are gearing up for the release of their long-awaited debut album, Something Real, out August 28th.
Recorded in Bergen with Matias Tellez, and building on earlier singles cut with The Coral’s James Skelly, the record marks a shift for the band: heavier subject matter, climate anxiety, domestic abuse, the corrosive effects of social media, sits alongside the romantic songwriting that first built their following. Ahead of a run of UK and European dates that includes a night at London’s Scala in November, frontman Cai Alty sat down with whynow to talk character-based songwriting, why he stays off social media while writing, and the pressure to abandon albums altogether.
whynow: How are you feeling right now, what have you been up to the last week or so?
Cai Alty: We’ve been cracking on with festivals the last couple of weeks, so I’ve really enjoyed that. And now we’re teeing up for the big ones, like Boardmasters this weekend, and then into Japan, so it’s a very exciting time.
whynow: How does that compare to the same time last year, is the schedule a lot more packed?
Cai Alty: There were certainly standout moments last year too, doing Glastonbury was a bucket list moment for any band. But this year, around the album, it feels like we’ve got loads of great festival opportunities to showcase the new music. And I think in the crowd’s perception of us, we’ve stepped up, there’s more respect for us as an artist now with the songs we’ve got out, and with the kind of purpose we bring to the table with an album coming.
whynow: Your singles so far have leaned into emotional, romantic songwriting, but there are new themes on the album. Was there a conscious shift in how you wanted to write?
Cai Alty: The songs are quite old for us now, as they are for any artist about to put an album out, but there was a transition period. Songs would fall into one of two hats: if they sounded like the earlier stuff, we’d think about putting them out pre-album, and if they sounded darker, more layered, with more depth, we’d save them for the album. That’s what we did with songs like ‘Mary’ and ‘Weatherman’, they crop up quite early but we saved them for this.
whynow: How did you decide, as a band, what heavier subjects to tackle?
Cai Alty: We want to be seen as ambitious writers in every regard, musically and lyrically. The lyrics, or the vast majority of them on the album, come from me, and whenever I’m in that position, it would feel wrong to shy away from a subject if it presents itself. I wouldn’t sit down and say, I’m going to write a song about climate change, or domestic abuse. It’s more that if a song takes a certain direction, I’d give it the time of day it deserves and try to do those subjects justice.
whynow: Take climate change specifically, how did that end up folded into a song like ‘Weatherman’?
Cai Alty: I think sometimes writers assume that to write about something like climate change, you have to take a blunt, factual line. But I think that falls short, and actually leaves you more exposed to being dismissed, because climate change is an issue that’s often sniffed at as if it’s inconsequential, even though we can see right now how consequential it is. When I started writing ‘Weatherman’, I could feel the lyrics going in this direction of an apocalypse, a dystopian world where the city’s falling down around this kid, and it’s gone past the point of no return. That felt like a better way of attacking it, because it’s more real to put yourself in those shoes than to shoehorn in statistics, which feel much less personal.
whynow: ‘Mary’ sits in a real songwriting tradition, characters like Eleanor Rigby, Arabella, Sheila, songwriters conjuring a woman to project onto. What pulled you toward that kind of writing?
Cai Alty: I’d never really thought of it like that, character-based songs, but you’re right. The Beatles are probably the most notable band to do it, Eleanor Rigby, that style of narration. I’ve always written like that, not on every song, but on quite a lot of them. ‘161’ was an early example, a very clear narrative about the First World War. I listen to quite a lot of folky stuff now, and you can really hear the realness of lived experience in it, which I try to get across in our songs. I don’t think there was a specific song I was trying to replicate when I wrote ‘Mary’, but the temptation is always there to write about a character, because it’s such a liberating starting point, it immediately takes you out of your own shoes.
whynow: A lot of your following came through TikTok. How do you manage that constant awareness of image while you’re trying to think creatively?
Cai Alty: There’s a clear trade-off if you compare a band now to a band from 20 years ago trying to break through. We’ve clearly benefited from having social media as a tool, it was our first step on the ladder, and it removes an element of nepotism that might have been more of a barrier before, because you’ve got the cards in your own hand to try and be successful. That said, I think social media has a negative impact on the artistic process, and I try to remove myself from it as much as I can. I’m still heavily involved in how we control our image, the content, the videos, what we put out. But in terms of actually being on the platforms, dealing with the response to each video, trying to reckon with people’s perception of us, I think it’s best for the writer to stay shielded from that. It could only ever translate negatively into the songwriting, and skew your focus from making what you want to make into catering to what your audience expects.
whynow: You’re 20, and this album feels like the moment the band stops being “up-and-coming” and starts being a band in your own right. Did it feel that way going in?
Cai Alty: Yeah, definitely. You could delay doing an album almost indefinitely these days, a lot of people will tell you to release singles and EPs until your audience is at a place where an album would have a significant impact. But I think, to show an audience you really mean it, it’s important to do an album, especially if you believe your music is worthy of being written to in that longer format. It’s weird having all the early music out there, bands 20 years ago wouldn’t have had that. Radiohead’s an interesting example, if they’d come up in our generation, they might not even be called Radiohead. They might be called On a Friday, because they might have made an Instagram account early on and had to stick with that name, and they might have had two EPs out before Pablo Honey. Bands now have a lot more music out from when they were still figuring out who they wanted to be. I think that’s just the nature of the beast now, and it actually gives people more insight into the band than if it wasn’t there.
whynow: You worked with Matias Tellez in Bergen and James Skelly here in the UK. What did each of them bring out of you as a band?
Cai Alty: We worked with James first, on ‘Loose Tongue’ and ‘London’. He taught us a lot about arranging, making sure every component of a song has value and is necessary. We brought him quite confused arrangements, where the parts didn’t always live in the same world, a bass part and a drum part need to feel like they’ve been made with one direction, not two people doing their own thing. We had that in mind already going in with Matias. They’ve got very different backgrounds, James comes from more of a northern guitar band circle, Matias has worked in dream pop, with artists like Aurora and Girl in Red, so the sound they’d mix and produce with was always going to be different. But in terms of bringing out our strengths, they had a similar outlook: let us do our thing and don’t get in the way of the songs we wanted to make.
whynow: There’s clearly pressure in the industry to keep releasing singles and chase hype rather than commit to a full album. Is that something you’ll keep pushing back on?
Cai Alty: We’re well aware we’re fresh into an industry we don’t know everything about, so on the marketing side, you do have to be strategic about how your music reaches the right people. That’s the hardest part now, 30 years ago it was clear how a song would reach people, and it would probably require a label, because they’d need to fund it. Now it’s hard to know how to use social media to reach people, you can’t just pay your way there, you have to invest in other things to get your video in front of the right person. We’re open to those things, but our focus will always be on writing what we want to write, and we’d do it for ourselves regardless of how it gets received. Everything around advertising and marketing, you’ve got to take with a pinch of salt as the artist.
whynow: Are there any artists you look at and think, they’ve handled that balance well?
Cai Alty: I always think Fontaines D.C. do it very well. I followed them for years before Romance, and for a long time they didn’t reach that many people, but they never felt like they were begging for attention. It always felt like social media was just a window into the life they were living and the music they were making, never like they were forcing it onto people who didn’t want to hear it. Eventually it paid off, and now they’ve got a huge active audience who’ll engage with whatever they put out. I admire that, that’s where you want to get to as a successful band.
whynow: You’re playing Scala in November, will that be the biggest non-festival venue you’ve played?
Cai Alty: No, actually, we did New Century Hall in Manchester last November. There’s no Manchester date on this run, we’re playing Neighbourhood Festival instead, and there’ll be a Manchester date in March that’ll be bigger again.
whynow: But knowing you’ll have the album fully out by the time you play Scala, will anything be different about the set beyond just the setlist?
Cai Alty: It’ll still just be us playing the songs, but I am expecting a different vibe, from us and from the audience. I really believe in the album, the whole band does, and we’ve had a great reception in London already, it’s good to know we’ve got a strong fan base down south, and that we’re not falling into the classic pitfall of getting stuck in the north like some bands have. I’m just excited to play the album to those audiences and have them know it, it’ll be really special because we’ve had these songs for so long now.
Featured image credit: Freya Barber
