Hello everyone! Hope you've been enjoying our regular updates! We're off to Nottingham tomorrow for festival fun and a preview gig with Airport Girl, Pocketbooks and The Zebras, but, in the meantime, here's an interview with late Indietracks bill addition The Candy Twins....The Candy Twins - hmm ... there seem to be more than two of you and you don't look very similar!Why don’t you tell us a bit more about yourselves?
Yes, we started as a duo - the Ear Candy Twins. But we're not twins, or related, and we couldn't keep time to the backing tracks so decided to become a band, and cut our 'ear' off. But I guess The Candy Twins works ok for indiepop which is what we seem to have been labelled as. We're from the London area and we mostly gig round there though we did tour Germany earlier this year. Our bassist Mat Durrance is possibly the best known of our number - Wedding Present fans may know him from his acoustic covers of Weddoes songs on YouTube. Mat met David our lead singer and songwriter after being lured along to a Candy Twins gig by others who said we sounded a bit like the Wedding Present, who David - to his shame - had at that point never heard of. Since then he's become a Take Fountain addict.
How do you feel about music at the moment and the new crop of indiepop bands?
We're pretty much virgins in the indiepop world. We played a warm up gig at Gramaphone in London recently where St Christopher were headlining - that was fun. But we're looking forward to catching up with more bands at the festival. Indietracks is held at a steam railway.
Tell us about an unusual place you've played a gig in the past.
Our gig in Leipzig on our German tour was bizarre. It was basically an apartment above a cafe - Noch Besser Leben - in one of the city's suburbs. It was like playing in someone's back room. It WAS someone's back room. The organiser was very apologetic before we went off to our accommodation to tune up because only two people had turned up. We came back in a few minutes later to start and the room - a big room - was packed out. For the sound check they just wanted it quieter and quieter so as not to annoy the neighbours. It started off as our worst gig on the tour. David broke a string (as usual), didn't have a spare guitar and it was all going belly up. But at the end the crowd asked us back to do an acoustic set, requesting songs, and giving us a great reception. That was sweet and such a turn-round!
Gosh – that all sounds really exciting! Do you have any exciting plans for the rest of the year?
We're completing our second album (again it's likely to be a self-release) bit by bit. Sad-Glad Songs is its working title. It will include our download single A Younger Crowd which The Sun (no less!) gave a 4/5 rating to in their hot tracks of the week when it came out. And then all the German venues we played earlier this year invited us back so we hope to repeat that tour either later this year or next. It would be nice to do some more British out of London gigs too.
Do any band members have any particular skills, hobbies or claims to fame you wish to share?
As previously mentioned, Mat our bassist is a Wedding Present addict. He'll be at their set on Saturday night. He's probably lost count of the number of Weddoes gigs he's been to. David is a big (fair weather) Hull City fan so looking forward to their debut premier league season in August. Mat once appeared on Master Chef. David once wee-ed in Hannah Hawkswell's barn. It was a two-storey barn. He didn't realise Hannah was underneath milking the cows and therefore got a surprise golden shower. And our tribute song 'Edwyn Collins Is Back' is a big YouTube hit - Edwyn loved it and put us on his guest list for his first comeback gig, but we were too shy to go and say hello afterwards. We've tried to blag a support slot with him but failed so far.
What's going to be on your compilation tapes as you travel down to Indietracks?
El Rey I guess for Mat! The rest of the band are borrowing a Scout minibus that doesn't have a music system.
And what attracted you to playing Indietracks?
We got a lovely review on the Indie-MP3 blog run by Lost Music and spotted the banner on their site and decided that was where we wanted to be, and we are thoroughly looking forward to it.
As ever, we have a free MP3 to give away, click on the link below to hear it!
Free MP3 Download: Start to Believe
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