Outfit - Bristol gig review
Posted on: 2014-01-28
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Atmospheric indie-pop band Outfit at Start The Bus in Bristol
Outfit at Start The Bus in Bristol - Gig review and interview - Monday 27 January 2014
365Bristol talks to atmospheric indie-pop band Outfit about their current tour, and how preparations are going for their second album…
Now midway through their first headline UK tour, Liverpool indie-pop band Outfit could have been forgiven for feeling a little nervous about fronting their own 8-date run. If they are, they’re hiding it well.
Perhaps a busy 2013 promoting their debut album, Performance, and touring as support for Everything Everything and Dutch Uncles has put a justifiable spring in their step, or maybe they’re just naturally laid-back, but they certainly have a relaxed and confident air about them both on and off-stage.
And they have relished the opportunity to play full sets rather than the inevitably truncated versions that a support slot dictates. “It makes a big difference actually,” explains frontman Andrew Hunt. “We get to play a 50-minute+ set that has a natural arc to it. A 25-minute support slot only gives you time for the core songs and there’s no space for you to play a really quiet number or anything like that.”
The intimate surroundings of Bristol’s Start The Bus – where fitting a five-piece band on the stage can be a challenge in itself – gave fans the chance to get up close and personal with Outfit and their enveloping sound.
There remains a sense of the undiscovered about this band, a hidden gem that should be enjoying more of the limelight. Most impressive is the way they are able to reproduce the highly atmospheric tone that defines their album into the live show. For that, they’re deserving of a larger stage in future – not just literally!
The band played through much of their debut album, starting with House on Fire and with other highlights coming in the form of singles I Want What’s Best, Nothing Big and Thank God I Was Dreaming.
The haunting Spraypaint and a deep ballad in the form of album title-track Performance gave a real variety to the set. There were a couple of treats from their earlier material too, with the inclusion of Drakes and Dashing and Passing from their 2012 EP Another Night’s Dreams Reach Earth Again.
From next month, the band will go off the radar temporarily to work on their follow-up album, with the promise that fans won’t be kept waiting too long. “We start work on it in February and hope it will be out later this year,” says co-frontman Tom Gorton. “With the first album, we kind of felt like we could just keep going on creating new material. A few of the tracks on the album were finished quite late in the day – like I Want What’s Best and The Great Outdoors – and we didn’t really have any pressure on us time-wise as we were working in our own studio and just looking to get it as good as it could be. I think we’ll put more of a time limit on it this time though.”
Gorton adds: “As a musician, putting tracks together for an album is one of the most exciting parts of the creative process, where you’re getting exciting about something that’s happening now but you don’t yet know how it’s going to end up. You don’t necessarily understand it yet, but you like it, and that makes you feel like it has some kind of unlimited potential.”
“The challenge then is to refine it, take that energy and turn it into an end product that will stay like that forever.”
Hunt says that the emphasis for album number 2 will be more on pre-production and less on post-production. “With Performance, we recorded the tracks and then spent a lot of time refining the sound after that. This time, there will perhaps be more of an element of working on all of that beforehand, putting that into the initial recording and then just leaving it alone.
“I think that will make it a bit more spontaneous, and also a bit more collaborative in the way we put the songs together. We’ve learned that melodies and harmonies come incredibly naturally to us, so it’s almost something we can ignore for the 2nd album as it will be inherent. Instead, we can concentrate on structure, ignoring any pre-defined expectations… and remembering that above all, it’s fun to make music.”
Review and interview by Martin Allen for 365Bristol
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Born and raised in the suburbs of Swansea, Jimmy moved to Bristol back in 2004 to attend university. Passionate about live music, sport, science and nature, he can usually be found walking his cocker spaniel Baxter at any number of green spots around the city. Call James on 078 9999 3534 or email Editor@365Bristol.com.
