As a new town Milton Keynes is still lacking one vital ingredient and that’s a band breaking into the mainstream to give it a signature sound. Rising stars Naked Next Door are creating waves with their unique indie sound and it’s looking likely that they’re going to do for Milton Keynes what The Smiths did for Manchester.
Hi guys. Can you introduce yourselves?
Euan: I sing and play rhythm guitar
Callum: I drum
Tommy: I play lead guitar
Corin: I’m the bassist
The band formed in 2017. How do you rate your progress so far?
Euan: I think we’ve made a lot of progress. When we first started we were all 17, apart from Callum who’s a bit older, and it was my first time playing in a band so from now to then is a big difference.
How did the band form? Did music draw you together?
Kyle: Me and Tommy had known each other for a long time, we’d been playing in bands together. Euan was a singer/songwriter before performing acoustic stuff and was looking to start a band and he knew Callum was a drummer and then Paul, our manager, brought us all together.
The band is signed to Honest Records. How did that come about?
Euan: It was through Joe, who originally signed us, he’s part owner of the label and he was the producer on our first EP. He heard our demo and really liked it and he’d just set up a label and was looking for a band, he wanted to branch out into the indie rock scene. He’s done some really exciting stuff, like playing guitar on Zayn’s ‘Pillow Talk’, so we were really pleased that he was excited .
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What else was appealing about the Honest deal?
Euan: I think because it was our first real break, we were really excited about it anyway, our managers did a good job of levelling our expectations, but we were still really over-excited and they’ve worked with big acts but in different fields and we knew they had big s that could really help us.
What are your musical influences?
Euan: I’d say Tom’s the biggest music guy out of all of us. He’s got all the Spotify playlists…
Callum: I first got into music with AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix, all that kind of stuff…
Corin: We all like Catfish and the Bottlemen. That was our common interest.
Euan: Bands like Stereophonics. Kenny Jones for me is a big inspiration and bands like Counting Crows…so a big range.
Bands like Stereophonics have had careers longer that you’ve been alive. What was your introduction to them and why did you look to them for inspiration?
Euan: I was brought up around music, my dad’s always playing music, some of his stuff I’m not into but he’s got a vast musical knowledge. I was raised on bands like Snow Patrol and Counting Crows. Stereophonics I discovered a bit later on and I really loved the story telling in their songs.
Pulse: Is there one band that unites you all?
Tommy: It’s got to be Catfish and the Bottlemen. When we first got together and had a discussion about who we all liked that was the one band we all agreed on.
Euan: We all knew a bunch of their songs and we’ve seen them live a couple of times.
So where do you draw lyrical inspiration from?
Euan: To be honest a lot of my personal experiences. I find it easiest to write from how I’m feeling at the time. Usually if I’ve gone through something I’ll go back any explore it and my way of expressing it is through my lyrics so it’s an insight of what’s going on in my head and life.
How do you put songs together? Are you all involved?
Euan: We all have a say. Usually I’ll come up with some lyrics or a melody on my guitar then we get together and we all put in our individual bits and it’s really cool for songs to come together like that: from acoustic to everyone putting their elements in.
You hail from Milton Keynes. I wonder does that town shape your sound at all?
Euan: I think subconsciously, yes. I’ve lived their all my life and if I lived out in the countryside away from the city I’d have completely different things to write about. We all hangout together, go to clubs and pubs together so that’s inspired me as well.
Your latest EP (Swerving Out Wide) was released in May last year. How do you feel you’ve developed between releases?
Callum: I think for one we’re all a bit more confident in these songs, not that we weren’t in the other tunes but we’ve been playing these ones for a long time and we feel like these are the right tunes for the EP. Another thing is our producer Larry Hibbert who has produced loads of bands that we love and he really brought our sound out of us. We’d really been searching for a producer who could get that signature sound we all wanted.
Euan: I think you go through stages as well. Although you wouldn’t be able to tell but on our last EP we just weren’t ready. We had to write songs and then when we wrote our next batch of songs we noticed things that weren’t quite right with those original songs. So now we are writing in a way where we whittle them down and take bits so this is the most ready we’ve been I think.
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The organic music scene is thriving but the media only seem interested in rap and grime. How do you plan on breaking into the mainstream?
Euan: Our edge is that there’s a lot of melody to our songs, they’re slightly more commercial than a lot of bands out there. I feel our songs can appeal to a wide range of people. We’re still an indie rock band but with a commercial edge.
You’re now spending a lot of time together. How do you gel together as a group?
Corin: We’re all great friends.
Euan: It’s strange because before the band we were complete strangers to each other but now there’s no one we’re more comfortable with, which is cool.
If I had a magic wand and could make your dreams come true, where would you wish to be in five years time?
All: Headlining Reading!
Swerving Out Wide is available now
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