Aleutians: ‘There’s something more interesting about slightly more laid back, mid-paced music that’s got that capacity to erupt’

New Brighton on the Wirral’s nostalgic guitar pop Aleutians have released ‘A Boy, Here’, a song about going home to where you grew up and how little changes.

Inspired by local history and bands such as Death Cab For Cutie, Alvvays and the Boo Radleys, Aleutians aka Will creates wistful, nostalgic chunks of guitar pop about loves lost and chances missed. The name of the project is taken from the Aleutian Islands, which form part of Alaska: ‘It’s a volcanic string of islands off Alaska and I liked the contrast between the picturesque wintery-looking scenery and that undercurrent of bubbling volcanic energy,’ Will said. ‘Obviously, there’s something to be said for really energetic music and there’s certainly a lot of stuff that I really enjoy but I always think that there’s something more interesting about slightly more laid back, mid-paced music that’s got that capacity to erupt, and so I was trying to capture that feeling.’

‘A Boy, Here’ will form part of an upcoming EP featuring four or five songs later this year: ‘It’s about coming home to the place that you grew up and how things are so different but also the same, which is such a cliché,’ he said. ‘People have changed, people have moved on, but really, you’re still the people you were when you were teenage idiots. I was going for more of a Postal Service feel for it. Initially, it was just an acoustic song but I was trying to get a Bon Iver feel, I wanted to put trumpet fills on it. I left it for about four or five years because it wasn’t something I wrote for this project. When I came back to it, I put synths on it and a guitar and everything else. It’s something I’ve built from the ground up and tried to strip out what didn’t work, so hopefully it’ll be a good one!’

As the song goes: “Back home again. I can see the towers shake on the red rocks. From my seat on the westbound train. I can feel the wind. The wind that shakes the window. And pushes the sailboats. Out across the bay.”

‘We spent a lot of time on the promenade, looking at the ships and places along the river’

Last month, Aleutians released the single ‘Waves of the Mersey’, a poignant track about spreading his father’s ashes across the river: ‘We spent a lot of time on the promenade, looking at the ships and places along the river,’ he said. ‘Without delving too deeply and upsetting myself, it’s about losing my dad. We kept his ashes for a long time but that wasn’t what he wanted, so that’s what that song’s about, that’s where he wanted to be.’

It’s a wistful track underpinned by an acoustic guitar and a few sonic surprises which are interwoven towards the end, including an instrument that I initially thought was a cello but which turns out to be a synth bass cleverly imitating it: ‘I really do tend to over-complicate things, I think I always have. Here, there’s a little bit of synthesizer and drums at the end, and then a synth bass, which I think came out sounding a bit more like a cello, which is brilliant, but I can’t play the cello! It’s on a microKORG, I thought it worked better than the bass guitar, because I really wanted that kind of sustain which you get with a cello and the bass guitar just wasn’t cutting it.’

As the track goes: “When I’m gone, throw me in the waves of the Mersey. Say so long, I’ve been waiting for so long. And scatter me here at the gun site, or at the place where the pier once stood. And scatter me here in Vale Park, where the blossoms fell in the rose garden.”

Will’s own vocals are also layered up on it, creating a dreamy effect. ‘I do everything but I’d love to collaborate with other people,’ he said. ‘This is a completely anonymous project, this is something that I’m not really sharing with anyone. I was in bands years ago and this is something that I do in between working, to be honest with you. I might come off after work and just try and lash out a few tracks and if I think they’re all right, maybe I’ll release them, but if I don’t, then I don’t. I’m not looking to play live like when I was younger and chasing gig after gig. Now, it’s a hobby and if anyone listens to the songs, that’s great, and I really appreciate it, but it’s for me this time.’

‘There needs to be some degree of investment and a rethink of grassroots venues and how we can support up-and-coming musicians’

We get chatting about what a difficult time it is for new music and for bands trying to break onto the scene: ‘When I was doing it years ago, there wasn’t a lot of money in it and I think that’s only got worse,’ he said. ‘We were trying to do a tour. Once you’ve got petrol, and you’ve got a hotel room, you might sell a few bits of merch but you’re coming home with a couple extra quid in your pocket, if you make anything at all, so it was difficult. There are a lot of great bands who deserve more and they’re not getting it. There needs to be some degree of investment and a rethink of grassroots venues and how we can support up-and-coming musicians. If you’re looking for grassroots bands and momentum in any city, you will find it, if you look hard enough. There are so many good bands, a lot of them go really under-appreciated as well. There are bands you come across on social media that you haven’t heard a peep out of, no one’s mentioned them to you, and all of a sudden you’re like: “Wow, these guys are brilliant!” I picked up on a band from Texas last year, called Mister Data, they’re absolutely fantastic! I don’t want to be a Luddite, this sort of AI influx we’ve got, where you’ve got AI music on streaming, you know, I don’t understand that. Why you wouldn’t want something created by a person? Weirdly, after mentioning Mister Data, the only person I would trust to make AI music would be Data from Star Trek because I don’t think there’s any other AI that is capable of doing it!’

‘Beg to differ’ reminds me of Scottish folk-pop band Tidelines, it’s a powerful and thought-provoking track about getting older: ‘I think I started with the line “God bless the lines around your eyes” because it’s about watching yourself and the people that you love grow older,’ he said. ‘When you’re young, you think: “Oh, when I hit 30, that’s it, I’m done” (laughs) but there’s so much more to appreciate, so much more to life than what you thought there was. There’s more to it than a nine to five job. You feel a bit stuck in it but you can still do the things you always wanted to, you can still be the person that you want to be and I don’t think I articulated that particularly well in that song. It’s about getting older and realising that perhaps that isn’t the monstrous scenario that you thought it would be. You get to the point where you don’t care anymore, where you think I’m gonna do what I want to do, I’m gonna experience what I want to experience, tell the people that you love that you love them and there’s no reason to limit yourself. I think when I was younger, I was afraid of a lot of stuff like that and I think a lot of my friends were, too.’

Sonically, ‘Beg to differ’ was born out of a different song that Will had written a while before: ‘I can’t remember the name of it but it started with the guitar riff in the chorus, which I think has been buried underneath various instruments but it’s basically just a couple of octaves, a C sharp minor and a B. I tried to build on that. Like I said, I overcomplicate things, I tend to put 20 or 30 layers on top and then strip it back. There’ll be stuff which doesn’t work, so I’ll take that out but also stuff where I like the melody, so I’ll put that back in and turn the volume down, or leave a pan left and right and try to overload something, and then strip it out to as basic as it can be made.’

‘There’s something to be said for instruments playing off each other, where you have layers where you can’t really tell what’s playing what’

Essentially, one of his goals is to blend the sonic layers so seamlessly that it’s hard to tell where one instrument ends and another begins: ‘There’s something to be said for instruments playing off each other, where you have layers where you can’t really tell what’s playing what,’ he said. ‘One of the things I always used to like to do, and one of the things that I’m unfortunate not to be able to do anymore, is in one of my previous bands, me and the other guitarist, got to the point where the lines overlapped so much that you couldn’t tell who was playing what. I don’t like guitar solos, I never have, so it wasn’t like that, it was melodic, it was rhythmic, we built around that. You couldn’t tell what the other person was playing because we were that locked in. It’s a pity to lose that but that’s what I’m aiming for, that sort of layering where everything is saving the song.’

He cites John Samson from The Weakerthans and Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard as hugely influential: ‘I’m a huge Death Cab fan, a huge Postal Service fan and of Mike Kinsella from American Football (an American emo band), and I think his solo project Owen is absolutely fantastic. There are a lot of other artists and songwriters that I’m really into as well, like Matt Pryor from The Get Up Kids, although I don’t think that kind of influence ever really comes through in what I’m trying to do but I love The Get Up Kids, and Robert Smith from The Cure. Again, I don’t think that really comes through either! It’s a cliché but you should listen to everything and take what you like from each genre.’

Other tracks like ‘More Fool Me’ and ‘Only This Time’ feel like a natural pairing, both navigating heartbreak and moving on and it turns out that he wrote them around the same time: ‘Maybe it’s a cliché but I think the thing that most people come back to is relationships and friendships,’ he said. ‘They’re about the breakdown of those relationships and friendships and trying to make sense of what happened, the regrets that may be there, the bitterness that may be there, or that you once felt, and you don’t anymore. I didn’t think that that was what was going to happen. You believe the best about a situation and the best about someone and then it falls apart. Perhaps it’s no fault of either person, things just happen and peter out but I think that there’s a way to make sense of that.’

He admits that he hangs onto the past and nostalgia but tries to do so in a positive way without getting bogged down in the negatives: ‘I enjoyed writing ‘More Fool Me’, I like playing it. It’s one of the few songs I can sit down with an acoustic guitar and just play, where I’m not massively laid up. I put quite a few bits on that as well but it’s just probably the only one of the recent songs I’ve put out which is just an acoustic guitar, apart from ‘Waves of the Mersey’, which is pretty much just that. It always sounds bad, I always think it’s weird when people like their own songs but I do actually like that one.’

‘You’d listen to some songs that much, or you’d hear your dad listen to songs that much, that you’d be: “I never want to hear that song again!”‘

Growing up, Will listened to bands such as The Beatles, The Travelling Wilburys, Johnny Cash and The Kinks, courtesy of his dad: ‘My brothers and sisters were into 80’s stuff like The Cure, The Smiths, New Order, Joy Division, which was late-70’s, and punk stuff like The Buzzcocks. It was basically through osmosis that you would end up listening to this stuff, it was really good. You’d listen to some songs that much, or you’d hear your dad listen to songs that much, that you’d be: “I never want to hear that song again!” There was a John Denver song, it wasn’t even a famous one, and I just remember thinking: “I can never listen to John Denver ever again!'” I ask him if he’s changed his mind in the intervening years. ‘I’m not going to turn it off! There are silly Beatles songs like ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’; they’re the best band ever but that song isn’t exactly a great one!’

If he could go for a drink with anyone, he is quick to say The Cure’s Robert Smith: ‘I’d love to know what the background is and why he hates Morrissey so much?! Maybe I’d just like to hear him moan about Morrissey for a bit, that’d be fun! And Greg (Gilbert) from Delays, who sadly passed away a few years ago. Faded Seaside Glamour (2004) was one of my favourite albums when I was growing up, and I’d listen to it again this year, there’s so much good stuff on there. It’s got those really high Cocteau Twins-esque vocals and beautiful, 60’s-influenced guitars. It might be nice to have a chat with him about what his influences were and what really influenced that album because he’s one of my favourites.’

He’s had some funny moments along the way in previous bands, which he recounts: ‘I’m not even sure it’s that funny, it’s just a bit weird! The place they put us up in, we didn’t notice until we got up in the morning, was above an “adult” shop, shall we say. So, it was quite awkward coming down through the back of the flat, out through the shop, and seeing the clientele, and us coming out and trying to be: “We were just staying in the flat, it’s nothing to do with us, you know!” There was underwear, there were toys and DVDs, and pretty much everything, and some fellas in there walking around. It was too much first thing in the morning!’

If he could put together his dream line up for a night, he has an eclectic mix in mind: ‘I’ve spoken about clichés a lot but let’s fully embrace them now! If you aren’t wanting to see The Beatles live through some sorcery, then what’s wrong with you?! So yeah, The Beatles. Death Cab for Cutie, The Postal Service, I’ve seen them both live. Death Cab a hell of a lot, they always put on a great show. Turnover, Stars, American Football, Rival Schools, Joy Division, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Cure, The Weakerthans, OutKast, Nas, Secret Stars, Rage Against The Machine and At the Drive-In – how long is the night?!’