Cheatahs - Modern Nineties

A few hours before their show at Lo Fi in Milan last April 16th, we met three quarters of Cheatahs, specifically Nathan Hewitt (vocals and guitar), Dean Reid (bass) and Marc Raue (drums). The conversation touches on several aspects: the shared artistic vision of the quartet, the dedication with which they made their debut album, and also a bit of healthy, well-deserved self-confidence.

You come from different countries, indeed from different continents. Does it still make sense today to imagine that music can be shaped by where you're from?

Nathan: I think the reason we formed the band is our shared musical taste. Actually, speaking of where we're from, we all met in a place none of us was born, even James, who's the only Englishman among us, is from Leicester, which is a very different place from London. Simply put, when we met we were all into the same kind of music, and that's really what brought us together.

Marc: Exactly, we first clicked on a personal level and then also musically.

Dean: It's like a bunch of pirates who all happened to meet on the same island.

I've read that two of you are the songwriters and another one is the producer. Is this a fixed, established scheme? Has anything about it changed from when you started to when you recorded the songs on the album?

Nathan: there have been some big changes. The fact that James and I wrote the songs by ourselves applies to the EPs, whereas for the album it was more of a collective effort, and the same goes for the recording stage, and right now we honestly can't even picture how we'll approach the next records from this point of view. What matters is that it's the best approach for bringing out the songs.

And how does this collective songwriting work, first between the two of you and then with the others too? Does someone bring in a melody that you then work on, or is it more like a group jam?

Nathan: I'd say both. Someone might have a good idea, they bring it in and we realize it works, or maybe only a piece of that idea works and then the others add their own ideas. It's really hard to describe concretely how we write songs, anything that leads to a good result is fine. What I can say is that no song is based on a single person's idea, because it only becomes something concrete when we work on it together.

Marc: even when an idea seems complete enough, we still work on it a lot, chords can change, things like that.

Dean: songs still start out from Nathan and James, but then once we all work on them together they often end up somewhere quite different from where they were when the two of them first brought them to the band.

Nathan: sometimes we simply try playing the songs all together live, and just doing that we already find things to change.

When it comes to artistic production, a lot of bands say that at some point they feel the need for an outside producer, because they need an eye that sees things from the outside and is more objective. Do you think you'll feel that same need at some point, or are you comfortable with the idea of always producing everything in-house?

Dean: it's something we've always been very open to, I think it's only been circumstances that have kept an outside producer from coming on board, but we're not at all closed off to it, quite the opposite. That said, we're convinced we're our own harshest critics — for instance, we'd already finished the record before going on tour last year, so we listened to it while on tour, came back, and at that point it was as if an outside person had really shown up, one who wasn't afraid or hesitant to change something, even though that's not literally what happened. But like I said, we're very open to that possibility. It hasn't happened so far partly because of how we organize our schedule — we're not a band that works to fixed deadlines, and obviously that makes it hard to get a producer's availability, since of course each of them is also working on other things and needs to know in advance when they'll be free for us. We've tried setting ourselves fixed deadlines, but we've never stuck to them, and we've realized that this is simply the best way for us to work.

Given what you're telling me, though, I imagine at this point you'd want a producer who works with you throughout the whole creative process, rather than just being fine with submitting the songs and getting suggestions on how to change them?

Dean: no, not at all, I wouldn't even be closed off to the idea of us doing 75% of the work ourselves and having a producer for the last 25%. That's worked for other people in the past, so it could work for us too.

Nathan: it's really been a matter of circumstances so far, from that point of view. It just happened that way.

Dean: for the next record we'd like to have some outside help.

I also read that the main aim of the record is to explore all the possibilities of modern guitar music.

Dean: I'm afraid that sounds a bit pretentious…

Aside from that, was this a goal you set for yourselves from the moment you started working on the record, or did you realize during the process that you were heading in that direction?

Nathan: it was unconscious, we never explicitly said anything like that to each other. What we did was make the record, then go on tour, then come back and listen to what we had and work on it for another two or three months. That's when some songs took on a completely different direction from what they had before, until we finished the record. So it was a kind of journey, but we didn't say at the start that we wanted to do this - it's just that at the end we looked back and told ourselves that this was more or less what we'd done.

Marc: it was a process that was also fun for us, it was great to see how far we could push things.

Dean: we never sat down to talk about what kind of work we wanted to make.

The main difference between the EPs and the album seems to be that on the EPs the songs rely almost exclusively on melodies, which have an impact on their own, whereas on the album there seems to be more overall work on all the elements of the songs.

Nathan: I agree. The EPs were the first thing we did together and we basically made them in a weekend, whereas we worked on the record for a year.

The other side of the coin is that the melodies on the EPs would probably work with any sound, even just voice and acoustic guitar for example, whereas the ones on the album need the sounds that actually accompany them in order to work. Are you happy with the idea of having found the right sound to make the album's melodies work, or would you be happier if your melodies always gave the impression they could work with any sound?

Nathan: I think the record isn't as immediate as the EPs, but in the long run it makes you want to listen to it again much more. It stays with you longer, even if it doesn't have the same immediacy at first. You can listen to it for a long time and still find something interesting in it that you hadn't noticed before.

Dean: that wasn't a conscious decision either - I agree the EP songs would work well even with a purely acoustic sound, but I think our unconscious desire was precisely to make music that would initially be harder to get into but would then last longer even after repeated listens.

Now that you mention it, I have to confess that I've actually been listening to the album a lot, while I listened to the compilation with the two EPs, but less than I'm listening to the album now. But it's probably easier to approach the record already knowing the EPs - it might be harder for someone who goes straight to the album without knowing the EPs.

Nathan: I agree there too, and I think the reason is always the same, namely the amount of time we spent working on the EPs versus the record. For the album we had the freedom to go back and re-record things, to change others, so there are a lot more nuances.

Dean: there are also melodies on the record that we worked on a great deal, and I still think that, thanks to that work, the record comes across as more interesting.

Several reviews have labeled you as a band very much oriented toward the sound of the Nineties. Do you think that description is accurate, or is it another example of so-called lazy journalism?

Nathan: we are indeed influenced by that sound and by the bands that made it, but I wouldn't say we're a retro-obsessed band that only looks to the past or anything like that. That would bother me, because I think our ideas are fresh, and so is our sound. We have our own identity, but obviously, as with all the bands we love, people can pick out little bits and say "this sounds like that band" and so on. And it should also be said that the bands who influenced us released well more than one album, so they had time to grow. Still, I think we have our own personal filters that let us draw on our influences without being copies.

Dean: whoever labels us as Nineties-influenced certainly isn't wrong, but they'd be wrong to see us only as a band looking to the past.

Instead, what should people expect if they come to see you live in the future, knowing your songs from their studio versions?

Nathan: I think that live it's easier to make out the different parts that make up the sound. Plus the sound itself is definitely more powerful.

Dean: on the record there are songs where we even have fifteen different guitar tracks, whereas on stage obviously we can't have more than two.

Nathan: there's still passion though, a lot of passion.

You got your deal with Wichita precisely thanks to one of your shows, in the sense that two people from the label heard you live and wanted to offer you a contract. Stories like this used to be much more common in the past, whereas nowadays people tend to think that labels discover bands via the internet. They say the internet offers all sorts of opportunities, but in your case playing live proved more useful. So I'd like you to say whatever comes to mind on this subject, on the relationship between the internet as a way of discovering bands and the idea that you can still play live and end up, at the end of the show, with a label wanting to sign you.

Nathan: the very fact that everyone gets discovered through their work online made it sensible for us to do what nobody else was doing, that is play live as much as possible. Also, we were confident in our abilities as a live band, and it seemed to us that there weren't many good live bands in Britain.

But are there still many label people who go around watching shows by bands they don't know? Because if there are only a few left who do that, it's a risk to bet on live shows instead of the internet.

Nathan: in our case, the people from Wichita came to the show we were playing because they knew one of the other bands on the bill that night, but they're also people who genuinely go to a show every single night. I have to be honest with you, I don't know if there are many others like them, but in the end it worked out well for us anyway.

Dean: I think there are still plenty of label people out there going to shows with the idea of discovering new bands.

(18/05/2014)

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