Interview with HMS Morris: ‘Partypooper is a response to the mental highs and lows of being a musician’

Cardiff-based alt rock duo HMS Morris will bring out an EP comprising five tracks on 4 December, including one new song, ‘Marshmallow’.

The duo comprises Heledd Watkins (vocals/ guitar/ synths) and Sam Roberts (bass/ synth/ loops/ backing vocals). Their name comes from Watkins’ family, who are Morrises on her mother’s side, in a bid to keep the name alive as her mother is an only child. The HMS is a reference to her fear of the sea.

Watkins describes ‘Marshmallow’ as ‘sometimes I look in the mirror and I think I look like a marshmallow’. Roberts chips in: ‘It’s slightly dreamy, following a thought. It’s light and koyai (Japanese for ‘dreamy’).’

The song has a slightly surreal spacey feel to it, largely due to the synths that weave in and out. As the lyrics go: ‘I know you see that my face has the squarest of jaw-lines, so much so that it makes all my features seem small. In a ball, in a ball, in a ball, so much room for it all, for it all, if I had the time I’d paint it with China’s great wall.’ 

‘A great many of us struggle with a little internal partypooper’

Earlier this month, they released their single ‘Partypooper’, an addictive latin-infused track about trying to silence the voice of doom in our heads and, perhaps more opaquely, about depression. As Watkins describes it: ‘Partypooper is a response to the mental highs and lows of being a musician – or any kind of person really. A great many of us struggle with a little internal partypooper, a malignant imp who likes to wait until we’re at our happiest before screwing up her mean little face and blowing mightily on her shit-horn of doubt and regret. She’s not above putting the boot in when you’re down either, during the downtime in between gigs, or as you’re reading a crap review of a record you spent the last year perfecting. We all have one. We all deal with them in different ways. Here’s hoping that mine has a fear of high-tempo latin numbers with horns and distorted wailing!’

The track marks a departure for HMS Morris because it’s the first time they have incorporated brass. ‘The riff and intro were there from the start,’ Roberts said. ‘We’ve never featured brass players before but once the brass got put in, it heightened that clash between the serious lyrics and upbeat melody.’ The latin flavour was partly inspired by Carwyn Ellis and Rio 18’s samba-infused album, Joia: ‘I listened to it quite a lot, I think it influenced me. What you listen to seeps through into what you write,’ Roberts said.

In addition to these tracks, the EP will also include an extended version of ‘Partypooper’, according to Roberts: ‘It has a whole extra orchestral section in the middle that’s around two minutes,’ he said. ‘Poetry’ and ‘Myfyrwyr Rhyngwladol’ (international students), which were both released as singles this year, will also feature on the EP.

‘Poetry’, which came out earlier this year, deals with obsession: ‘It’s about having an obsession with someone you can’t have and you turn up to their house in the middle of the night and look in,’ Watkins said. The lyrics really encapsulate that: ‘What if I caught an early flight and I came to your house at night, stared through PVC windows oh, if they weren’t triple glazed I’d say, heeeeeeeey take me away! Take me away! Take me away!’

The song was inspired by a podcast Watkins listened to about the American serial killer, Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., better known as the Golden State killer. ‘It sort of fed its way into the song,’ she said.

HMS Morris flit seamlessly between different influences and sounds and nowhere is this more evident than on the second track of their eponymous second album Inspirational Talks (2018), which sounds distinctly Middle Eastern in places. ‘Yeah, the scales are pretty eastern,’ said Roberts. ‘I think we were sort of into The Wytches (a now Brighton-based rock band) at the time and they love chromatic. (The chromatic scale or twelve-tone scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone above or below its adjacent pitches.) ‘Like Jaws?,’ I ask and Watkins laughs. ‘Yes!,’ she said. Roberts continues: ‘It’s that sort of heavy guitar with a riff that sounds Middle Eastern. We realized that we love rocking out live to it.’

‘We’ve never felt pressure to follow a plan’

Their sonic diversity can be both a good and a bad thing, according to Watkins: ‘Sometimes, the different sounds work for us, sometimes I think it confuses people.’ Roberts jumps in: ‘We’ve never felt pressure to follow a plan.’

Of their songs, Watkins picks ‘Myfyrwyr Rhyngwladol’ as her favourite: “It changes all the time but I can really picture playing it live.’ Roberts goes with “From the Neck Down’ from their first album, Interior Design (2016). ‘I think it’s the best one we have,’ he said. ‘With hindsight, you can think of something to change but with this one I wouldn’t change a thing. I play bass on that and it has a nice bassline.’

They have been touring and recording since 2015, and are supported by the Cardiff-based Bubblewrap Collective. Their two full-length albums both earned nominations for the Welsh Music Prize, and were variously described as ‘innovative, forward thinking pop music’, ‘strange and beautiful music’ and a ‘multi-dimensional sound that trapizes across hitherto unexplored regions of sound’.

Locally, Roberts is a big fan of four-piece band Sock, ‘they’re really great’. Watkins likes adrenaline-scorched band Los Blancos: ‘It’s slacker rock, young and fun but you can really see they’re having a laugh,’ she said. They both like Peri Hunter who Watkins says ‘plays electronic stuff, it’s peaceful’. Watkins also really likes Belgian rock band Balzathar: ‘They’re indie rock with a dark twist like us.’

Their dream line up is as eclectic as their influences, which include Ariel Pink, Phoebe Bridgers and Sinclair. ‘They always say you shouldn’t meet your heroes,’ Roberts muses. ‘But I’d have to say The Beatles in the early days and to see Freddie Mercury smashing it as well. Tom Waits, definitely, but he doesn’t tour much. Nick Cave would be amazing, so would Jeff Buckley. It would be the classic big boys!’ Watkins jumps in: ‘I would put together a crazy line-up. I’d have Shirley Bassey, Lady Gaga, Shakira and us. I want all of my guilty pleasures in one room! We’re driving off to different parts of the country now and I know what kind of playlist I’m going to put on: I’ll wind the window down and belt out Shirley Bassey!’