Interview with 32 tens: ‘I wrote it like a song to my future self and my past self’

Warrington, UK-based genre fusing band 32 tens are gearing up to release their next single ‘This Just Ain’t My Year’.

They comprise Max Vickers (vocals and guitar), Sam Glancy (lead guitar), Danny Hall (drums) and Fergus Walker (guest bassist).

Named after the classic 90’s Nokia phone, their name is something of a happy accident: ‘We had a gig all booked in supporting Maximo Park and Billy Bragg,’ Glancy said. Vickers nods: ‘We had two months to write a set (laughs).’ Glancy is laughing: ‘We wrote a whole set and thought the name would be the easy part!’ Vickers nods: ‘We googled every name! We were born in the 90’s, we liked the ‘T,T,T alliteration.’ Glancy is looking at him: ‘You played down me coming up with the really good name, Max! We were thinking numbers, letters, something retro and I remember throwing my phone, a 32 ten, playing football. But then I thought: “Was it actually a 33 ten (laughs)?!” So maybe it’s not even the right name!’

Glancy and Vickers have been friends since nursery school: ‘We’re stuck with each other,’ Vickers quipped. ‘We have to do something to pass the time! We lost touch in our teenage years but reconnected.’ Glancy laughs: ‘I was sick of the crying voicemails, Sara!’ They found Hall via a friend. ‘We’ve had a few members who were a bit mental but not in a good way,’ Glancy said. Vickers nods: ‘We borrowed Ed (Ed Dowling, bass) from The Zangwills but we’re not allowed to keep him (laughs), so we’ve had Fergus now for five or six months.’

‘I wrote it like a song to my future self and my past self’

‘Readjust’, their latest single, opens with such a gentle guitar line that you’re not sure where the song will go before Vickers comes in on vocals, backed up by ‘strings’ created by Glancy on his guitar using an EBow. This was supplemented by Hall playing some elements on the keyboard. It’s haunting and mesmerising, picking up the pace and becoming heavier as it progresses. Their sound manages to seamlessly blend elements of indie rock, rap and pop combined with Vickers’ unique and instantly recognisable voice, which is reminiscent of Jack Cochrane’s from The Snuts: cracked, melodic and edgy with just the right amount of swagger. It’s an attitude that served him well on The Voice in 2017, which he entered with long-time friend Mo Jamil; they took the competition by storm, with Vickers reaching the semi-final stage and Jamil going on to win the competition. I ask Vickers if it opened a lot of doors: ‘Yeah, it was very exciting! I wouldn’t say it opened a lot of doors, maybe if I had had music ready to release straight after, it may have served me better coming off the show, but it did give me a lot of confidence and pushed me to really pursue getting a band together.’

As ‘Readjust’ kicks off: “Oh kid, don’t let the old you, own you. Your fears were meant to rise. You’re written in the old tunes you wrote, you. Your tears are memorised.”

Interestingly, it turns out to be one of their oldest songs: ‘I wrote it when I was early 20’s,’ Vickers said. ‘I was a bit like figuring out who I was, when you feel a bit lost. I wrote it like a song to my future self and my past self. I found it very therapeutic. It was a really positive experience.’

Their songwriting takes many forms: ‘It’s different each time,’ Glancy said. ‘It’s very organic. Sometimes, one of us will have a complete song and people might put their fingerprint on it. Or a song could be birthed in the practice room when we just start jamming. It could just be a riff as well. We’ve got a song coming up for release soon, it’s called ‘This Just Ain’t My Year’. It’s basically two songs that we joined together (laughs), Max, you came in with an acoustic verse for it.’ Vickers nods: ‘We wrote it during lockdown, it just worked. Sometimes, like with this, we’ll really like a bit of a song (laughs). Here, we really loved the verse but we left the rest for four or five months.’ Glancy agrees: ‘Sometimes, to be fair, someone will come up with something and be ‘meh’ but someone else will like it. I went away and started making it more aggressive and energetic. I think it was Ed who said: “What about that riff you were playing a year ago?” Vickers agrees: ‘It’s such a relief when you have the missing bits,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Yeah,’ Glancy deadpanned. ‘It’s like doing a big poo!’

‘We want your part in a song to be you’

It’s clear that making music collectively is what really drives them, finding inspiration in how their band mates might interpret a song: ‘It becomes “us” rather than “me”,’ Glancy said. ‘We’re a group of people who get on well with each other and love music. We want your part in a song to be you. There’s a lot of music in the charts that doesn’t feel authentic.’ Vickers agrees: ‘We’ve got a good bullshit detector (laughs). We’ll change a bit in a song if we don’t all love the sound of it.’

‘This Just Ain’t My Year’ builds on lockdown frustrations but goes beyond that: ‘It’s just expressing our feelings at the time but it could be about anything in our lives,’ Vickers said. Glancy agrees: ‘There was a lot of pent up aggression, we couldn’t see each other a lot.’ And for a song to work, they all have to feel the same about it: ‘For a song to be great, we all have to feel what the other person is feeling,’ Vickers said. ‘This one’s a song that’ll make you want to nod your head!’

Importantly, they bring different musical influences to the band: ‘I think I’ve always just loved the energy and builds of indie rock bands like Arctic Monkeys, Kings of Leon, The Libertines, The Strokes, Jamie T, and then just loved hip hop artists like Kid Cudi and Eminem and how they rhyme over a beat,’ Vickers said. Glancy turns out to be a massive Queen fan: ‘My biggest musical inspirations have been Queen, The White Stripes and Atomic Kitten,’ he said. ‘Queen because they produce operas and a single song takes you on a journey and evokes the most powerful human emotions. They also knew how to put on a proper show! The White Stripes because of their rawness and quirky personalities that come through the music. And Atomic Kitten because they are the greatest band to ever walk the face of the earth!’

‘We just try to be real, that’s all we can do, I think we put that across at our live performances’

‘Tryna Talk’ has a poppier vibe that draws you in, morphing into something heavier and grungier around halfway through, thanks to the frenetic drums and hypnotic, thuddy bass line. As it kicks off: “Sitting on the edge of the bed. Seeing blue, I didn’t mean to colour in hell. I need something to awaken from this hush, uh uh. I worry for what’s in my head. It gets blurry, I don’t want to pretend I need something to erase this inner rush, uh uh.”

Incredibly, the song turns out to be something of a delightful accident: ‘I got my first ever laptop in lockdown,’ Glancy said. ‘I never had one that was my own one. I bought stuff for a studio at home, plugins and things but I only knew how to get stuff off eBay or Amazon (laughs). I got this program and didn’t know how to delete it (laughs), so I built a song around it and that ended up being ‘Tryna Talk’. We’re not cool (laughs), we weren’t going to try to be. We just try to be real, that’s all we can do, I think we put that across at our live performances. We’re a group of mates who keep each other very grounded.’ Vickers agrees: ‘It’s a bit like The Office, imagine me and Sam are both Ricky Gervais (laughs) – and equally awkward!’

32 Tens played their first gig in September 2017 at Rivfest to a crowd of more than 3,000 people supporting Billy Bragg and Maximo Park. Their first single ‘Insane Asylum’ was released the same month followed by ‘Lost’ in October which, by the close of 2018 had been placed in the top-ten most streamed tracks across all of Spotify’s Indie Lists for the year alongside Blossoms, Lewis Capaldi and The 1975.

And what you see is exactly what you get, a completely different beast to the polished TV formats that first launched frontman Max Vickers into the public eye or drummer Danny Hall’s previous venture with Busted’s James Bourne and Son of Dork. They are laid back, authentic and full of gritty integrity – dirty indie at its best.

‘I had a strong sense of how I was feeling at the time’

Songs like ‘Lost’ show us a different side of the band, with Vickers at his most vulnerable on vocals as he sings: “I was lost now I’m found but came back feeling bruised. Smiles soak and surround in the sound. I’m feeling true, summer smoke and painted blues had me feeling like yeah you, you knew you.” It’s easy to see why it’s their most popular song on Spotify. ‘I started writing it when I was 15 or summat,’ Vickers said. ‘I had the bare bones to it. When you’re a teenager, before you reach the age of 23, you feel so lost, don’t you? You have so many racing thoughts and anxiety and really question things. You think the only way of getting through it is to write it down and sing it. I had a strong sense of how I was feeling at the time.’

‘Lost’ could be bookended with ‘Happy’, which is a brilliantly defiant, no-holds barred track, featuring some seriously catchy rap from Vickers. It’s a track that gets more frenetic and anthemic as it progresses. It would be amazing live: ‘We usually play it first, it’s a good pace setter to wake everyone up!,’ Glancy said. ‘It’s tactile at first with the guitar. That “da da da” after the break, that’s our way of saying “We’re here!”. Vickers agrees: ‘It signifies that we’re ready to go, we start our band rehearsals with that warm up. I’ll sing something completely random until something comes out!’ Glancy jumps back in: ‘It was one of our first band songs. I think it started out with just the guitar part that I worked on. When I play it, I hear Mexican trumpets going on but then we quickly realised that none of us could play the trumpet (laughs). In my head, I had a very stereotypical Mexican cowboy wearing a sombrero.’ I say that they should borrow Joe, the trumpeter in Red Rum Club. ‘I’d love Joe to do a guest spot on it,’ Glancy enthused. ‘They’re brilliant, I first saw them play in 2016 and literally the only way we could see them was to use our artist passes to get in the back door, it was that packed.’

We chat for a bit about how great it is to go to a small, intimate gig: ‘There’s nothing like seeing one of your favourite bands play a smallish room,’ Vickers said excitedly. ‘As live music lovers, we try to do that at our gigs.’ They’ve attracted some hardcore fans along the way: ‘It was pretty funny when a fan handcuffed himself to Sam for the night as he came offstage. Well, we thought it was funny, Sam wasn’t too sure!’

I ask them which famous musician they would most like to got for a drink with: ‘Ooooh, that’s a hard question!,’ Glancy said. ‘It’s got to be some sort of legend,’ Vickers grinned. ‘Maybe Pete Doherty but isn’t he teetotal now?! He’d have good stories, we could have a nice brunch with him!’ Glancy has other ideas: ‘I’d have either Freddie Mercury or Jimi Hendrix. Freddie because Queen is my favourite band ever, the most inspiring ever. I love their energy, their passion. Their music is cinematic, like a mini-opera. Jimi was an innovator, the way he communicated with the music. They’re both timeless, aren’t they? I don’t know if I’d go drinking with Freddie, maybe I’d get him a cup of tea!’

(Second photo from left to right: Danny, Sam, Max and Fergus. Photo credits: Sammy Stevens)