Interview with Celestines: ‘It’s a blend of funk and Royal Blood, I thought the riff needed a punch’

Nottingham, indie dance rockers Celestines will release their next single ‘Cheap Watch’ around September this year.

The band comprises Dev (vocals), Jack Fisher (guitar), Frank Patient (drums) and Axle Foley (bass and yes, it’s really his name). Frank, Dev and Axle went to school together. Jack posted on social media in 2018 that he was looking for a band to join and joined the fold. Both the drummer and bassist have changed since the band’s inception and their name has a great backstory: ‘I only found this out at the weekend (laughs) but Dev and his fiancée had it as an idea for a baby name then he liked it so much he took it for the band,’ Jack said. ‘She wasn’t pregnant then but they’ve got a baby on the way now. He did tell me what it’ll be called but I can’t remember (laughs)…but it won’t be Celestine!’

Jack describes ‘Cheap Watch’ as ‘along the lines’ of their single ‘Our Night’: ‘But musically, it’s quite old school blues rock,’ he said. ‘The title comes from the lyric in the song “you lie like a cheap watch”. If you love the wah, you’ll love ‘Cheap Watch’, it’s full of wah pedals! We love our pedals, the whammy and wah. I used to have loads of pedals but now I’ve got a Line 6 (multi-effects pedal), it’s like having 1,000 pedals!’

Their debut EP ‘Our Night’ was released in April. The title track is incredibly hooky, exploding with a huge riff using a wah pedal and the chords Em, B, A, G and F#.  ‘We wrote ‘Our Night’ in practice, like most of our songs,’ Jack said. ‘I think it was Dev who wrote the lyrics. I think it’s about an affair but not being bothered that that’s what it is. It’s sexy, cheeky and catchy! I started messing around with different chord shapes and bass notes then taught them to Dev. I don’t know if you noticed but the guitar plays after the bass, ‘cos I couldn’t turn the wah pedal off in time (laughs)!’

As the track kicks off: “Don’t tell him you’ll be home late, he’s heard that before. Don’t text ‘Honey, I’m with my friend’, he’ll only play you more…”

‘That funky riff, it grabs you straight away‘

Another track on the EP, ‘Fear’, opens with a very memorable, funk-laden riff that reminds me of the Knight Rider theme music: ‘It’s a fan fave and it’s my dad’s fave,’ Jack said. “He said he wouldn’t come to our last gig unless we played it (laughs). That funky riff, it grabs you straight away. I was trying to write something else when I was drunk one night, I don’t remember what, but I ended up writing this. It’s a blend of funk and Royal Blood. I thought the riff needed a punch, so I used the whammy pedal that added an octave. If someone has an idea, we all jump on it. The chorus used to be at the end of the song, it didn’t have an end, then we wrote the ‘bam bam’ riff.  

He describes the outro as ‘organised chaos’: ‘For pedals I use an overdrive, a fuzz, a phase, a compressor and a whammy with the octave down on. The chorus is a curveball because you’re listening to a funky riff then all of a sudden it drops into just this massive distorted wave of noise! Originally, there weren’t any lyrics in the chorus. For me, personally, it’s strange to be in an indie band ‘cos I listen to a lot of metal (laughs), screamo and 80’s thrash!’

As the title suggests, the song is about fear – in this case, what Jack refers to as ‘beer fear when you’ve had too many’: ‘But it can be about the fear of anything,’ he said. ‘If you’ve got nothing left to give and someone is “take, take, take”.’

It transpires that the first song that he learned to play on the guitar was ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ by Cream: ‘I grew up listening to B.B. King, Queen, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and Duran Duran, then I got into The Smiths and The Cure,’ he said. ‘Before I started to learn guitar, I was watching Glastonbury ’07 when Arctic Monkeys headlined. I was 10 years old and decided that I needed to get a guitar!’

‘I’d like to ask him what it was like with B.B. King’

If he could go for a drink with anyone, he is quick to say Elvis: ‘I’ve always loved his music,’ he said happily. ‘And ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ is the first song I danced to when I was 18 (laughs). I’d like to ask him what it was like with B.B. King, I’d love to know what it was like when that scene was getting massive. If he could tell stories like in his songs, I’d be in for a treat! I just saw the film (with Austin Butler playing the man himself), it gives you a different perspective.’ I say that I haven’t seen the film yet but that I love Måneskin’s cover of ‘If I Can Dream’ which features in it and he gets very animated: ‘I think people used to think of them as that band that won Eurovision but they’ve shown us they’re so much more than that,’ he said. ‘Their cover of ‘Beggin” is brilliant, it put them on the map for me.’

‘RITCO’ on the EP was inspired by the song ‘Munich’ by Editors and the tremolo pick on ‘All The Rage Back Home’ by Interpol: ‘We were going to do a cover of ‘All the Rage’, I’d put all the reverb on my (pedal) board. Our lyrics are based on the film ‘Kinky Boots’, have you seen it?’ I say that I haven’t. ‘That’s where the title and line in the song “red is the colour of sex” comes from. The film’s about a shoemaker going out of business but then starts making shoes for transvestites.’

As the song kicks off: “Red (red), is the colour of sex (sex). And if it’s not like nothing, they’re gonna tell you something.”

They’ve had a lot of fun along the way, according to Jack: ‘We just have a laugh when we’re together and it’s always a good time but if I had to pick a funny moment, I’d probably have to say Axle attempting to speak to the crowd when we were playing a gig once because one of my jack leads broke and there was just pure silence from them!’

His dream line-up would be delightfully raucous: ‘I can’t be selfish, so I’ll say Foals for Frank and Axle, for their dancey aspect and getting people moving,’ he said. ‘Pink Floyd, I love them. I love David Gilmour, he’s an incredible guitarist, he takes you to a different place. And Foo Fighters ‘cos we have different taste but we all love them. Can I have Freddie (Mercury)? His sister used to live near me. A bloke here told me the story of walking into the pub one night and Freddie Mercury was sitting there with David Bowie. Bowie was playing a gig in Nottingham and Freddie was visiting his sister. Can you imagine walking in and seeing that?!’

(Photo from left to right:  Frank, Dev, Axle and Jack.)